---
layout: post
title: Bye bye Drupal! Hello GaSP!
author: Steven
date: 2011-03-11 07:10:33
categories: 
- Musings
tags: 
- design
- drupal
- gasp
- google
- gwt
featured_image: https://www.stevenjaycohen.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/wsi-imageoptim-drupal.png
---

	As you may have noticed, my site is no longer powered by Drupal. Let me start by saying that I have nothing against Drupal, I think it is a wonderful system, but... (and there's always a but) when trying to upgrade to Drupal 7, I got stuck without being to fulfill the minimum requirements to install. And, when I figured out a work around, I was going to lose all of my data and need to rebuild the entire database. I wasn't happy. Drupal 6 had been a reliable (albeit slow) workhorse. It never let me down.

	

	What was I to do? Stuck on Drupal 6, I decided to really investigate its inner workings. And, I soon discovered that the reason for its slowness is its incredibly flexible design. To structure data so that it can be used on virtually any site on the internet, Drupal made some decisions that resulted in a much slower database than was needed for my little blog.

	

	So, I decided to write my own Content Management System. And, since I work with Google Web Toolkit day in and out, I thought it would be fun to build one based in GWT. But, since I didn't have a Java Application Server available, I decided to write the backend in PHP.

	

	And so, GaSP (GWT + SQL + PHP) was born. In fact, you're looking at it right now. As you can see, it is still a work in progress. When I am happy with the functionality, I am going to opensource the code. Anyone interested in using it, or helping to build/maintain it, should let me know.