How does one know the success of an open content management system (CMS)? By the amount of quotes you get on jobs in that realm. Drupal, as many know, is a very stable and flexible content management system used by many firms and a large quantity of web developers.

The trick? Drupal isn’t a walk in the park in terms of PHP development. A new PHP programmer still picking up basic concepts will soon drown in the intensity of Drupal. Although Drupal is very clean (coding wise) and hugely extensible to the experienced PHP programmer, there doesn’t seem to be a large pool of developers.

If you know Drupal and you’re a PHP developer, this is good news for you. If you’re a PHP developer and you don’t know Drupal then here is a project for you: learn Drupal.

Over the last six months, my project at techdiversions.com has many Drupal web designers asking “wow, how can I do that for my customer?” TechDiversions uses the Drupal E-Commerce modules and exists to sell video games, but honestly, the amount of money made by the video games as compared to additional contract work for building such a site just doesn’t compare.

Video game profit margins are not the best in the world of retail but Drupal PHP development does yield better margins (but requires more design, experience and sheer brain power to develop). It’s funny to see a site that’s slowly growing its customer base have higher profit margins in contract jobs just because it shows that E-Commerce and Drupal can provide a working solution for companies around the globe.

Why are we showing off TechDiversions? If you’re a video game player then you should buy stuff from the site, but that’s not the real point. The real point is learn Drupal and develope a first class site to draw in more jobs!

If you’re a drupal developer or want to become one, you should sit down and build a few websites. You don’t have to do a full E-Commerce solution but show off your skills and build some custom modules to do something fantastic to show off your skills to potential clients.

Fortunately, MediaCrumb has an experienced lead web designer and an experienced lead developer to build full solutions for customers. But, many web designers lack the training or patience to learn PHP and tackle a drupal problem. You’ll find, as a Drupal developer, web designers sending you e-mail and asking “hey, my client needs a bit of code in this module to do…” or “can you modify a core Drupal module for my needs…” or “can I keep you in contact for future modules?”

If you want to make some good money as a web programmer/developer I suggest learning the in’s and out’s to Drupal and become a commodity to web designers around the world.

So I got an email today from an awesome reader of the blog. Just read…

Hi guys, just thought I would let you know about this. I recently saw someone placing my own site design in their personal portfolio as something they made and in the comments section of my blog entry on the subject someone noted that one of your designs is in there as well.

You can find the link and details on my blog entry, http://joshuabryant.com/asinne

First of all, we just want to say thanks to josh for taking the time to warn us of this INSANELY BLATANT copy of our work. It’s really cool to know that designers will actually take care of one another and not allow shady wanna-bes to steal their work without asking. It fact, it was really nice to find out from josh, simply because we think his site and work is bad ass and had not seen it before his email. I guess some good can come out of this right?

In the end though what is a designer to do? Well, it looks like someone (probably josh) sent them over some emails letting them know that stealing wasn’t cool. Now when you head over to http://inclinationstudio.com/ (the people that ripped off our work) all you get is a coming soon. So let that be a lesson to all you fakers, thieves, and con artist. Eventually we are going to find our own work and if not, another designer will. The design community knows how to watch the backs of it’s fellow members. So just do what we did. Work hard, and come up with your own ideas and skills. Your client will thank you.

thanks josh.