virtual appliance gridThe TurnKey Linux Virtual Appliance Library is an open source project developing a free virtual appliance library that pre-integrates the very best server-oriented open source software. TurnKey Linux appliances are simple, ready-to-use servers that are designed to "just work" and can be deployed in minutes on a virtual machine, bare metal or in the cloud.

The purpose of this case study is to discuss our experience using Drupal to implement TurnKey's web site.

In case you're not familiar with the project, TurnKey is all about making it super simple to deploy open source based solutions (up to 40 so far). For example, need a file server or domain controller? An email server (e.g., Zimbra), web development framework (e.g., LAMP, Rails, Tomcat), or issue tracking system (e.g., Redmine)? And let's not forget TurnKey Drupal, which we pre-integrate with MySQL, phpMyAdmin, Postfix and a collection of popular modules.

From the beginning it was clear that a big part of the challenge in building a successful new open source project would be developing the right web site to nurture the community and showcase the appliances.

When TurnKey met Drupal

To make things more difficult we started out two years ago without any experience with content management systems and were initially overwhelmed by the many options available. Fortunately we found Drupal and as we explored deeper it quickly became clear that it would be the superior choice for the project's needs.

At first it was a bit confusing because Drupal is more of a framework for developing highly customized web sites than a one-size-fits-all content management system. As can be expected from such a powerful and flexible beast, it can take time to master Drupal, but the investment is well worth it. Drupal, along with its incredibly rich ecosystem of contrib modules gave us the leverage to incrementally develop exactly the web site we wanted without having to develop any custom code.