I know there is a developer community around it, but how large is that community? Have you ever gone into the code to make changes? I’m wondering how easy or hard it would be to make modifications. I suppose I just need to install it and see for myself.

Thanks again for the info.

Adding, editing, and moving around of blocks (small, content outputs from modules, like a most recent comments block) on the sidebars are pretty straightforward as well; you can do this from the admin interface instead of needing to edit the theme’s code to move them.

You can also restrict which blocks are seen based on users and groups.

I think Kristine would like all of her blog posts to be read beyond friends and family, but maybe not. This could be a way for her to keep some posts within a select group and avoid some of the potential problems.

Thanks for the suggestion. What do you think of Drupal in general as a content management system? I’ve mostly heard good things about it.

I used to have a personal blog and a professional/portfolio blog. My personal blog was private to friends and family only by login, while the pro blog was available to anyone. Once I figured out what I could do in Drupal, I merged the blogs into 1. So now after I write a post, I change the access to either anonymous (anyone can view it) or to a specific group like friends or family.

So with drupal I control which posts are for family only, which are for friends only, and which are for everyone. All on one website with no worries. This access granting also works on static page content, forums, and calendar events in Drupal as well.

You must have some strange clients though.

Hell yeah I do! And I love ‘em all!

Glad you’re finding the comments helpful Kristine. I know this isn’t an easy decision for you. I feel the same about anonymous blogging. It seems to defeat the point to me. If you have to hide behind anonymity then it taints what you say for me.

It’s not an easy decision to balance what you owe to yourself and your obligation to the people signing your paycheck. If you stay away from blogging about things that should remain inside the company, business secrets of personal information about the employees you really should be fine. You don’t owe it to your company to hold your opinion on topics they may not agree with, but you do owe them the respect of not saying anything they don’t make publicly available.

Thanks for the article Laura. I think it’s probably a little much for the state to tell employees what they can blog about, but I suppose when you take a government job you end up owing a little more to your employer whether you like it or not.

One of the reasons I never wanted a government job.

I guess it’s more a code of ethics that the county suggests you should follow than anything they’ll be enforcing. In that case it’s probably ok as it doesn’t require anyone to do anything, but rather asks them to follow certain guidelines.

I also agree with what SEFL says. My concern is not so much that I’ll be fired, as that consequence I can accept. I also wouldn’t want to work for any entity that would fire me because of what I said on my personal blog.

My concern is more how do I balance my obligations to the company for which I work, and for which I am (at least for one) a primary contact and spokesperson. I guess that’s what I’m trying to figure out. How much could what I write personally impact what I write professionally, and how much should that matter to me.

Of course, this presupposes that the two worlds will collide, which they may never do. Still, I wanted to think about all the possible consequences before making the jump.

But…the decision to publish content that some might deem to be a tad bit controversial came down to a simple philosophy for me: I don’t really want to deal with anyone who doesn’t want to deal with me as I am. My clients know me and understand me very well, and respect who I am. The really bizarre thing I found is that a lot of my clients actually liked the controversial content because it made me even more human in their eyes (that, and since I was dealing with their spam in a creative manner, it meant they didn’t need to bother.)

If you’re that worried that a company will fire you or you’ll lose a client just because you do something that has nothing to do with them but that they perceive to be a bad thing on your personal blog, then you’re not on firm enough ground with that client or company to begin with and chances are that something else will come along to knock you off your perch anyway.