I can't say I understand why you have such a strong distaste for Drupal... definitely to each his own, but personally I've spent some serious time getting to know everything possible about Drupal - past present and future, and I think it's a terrific piece of software, with a base of developers and users that really care about it on a deep level. They are tirelessly working day and night to improve it, never satisfied that it can't be improved in some other new and better way. I've listened to all the Lullabot and other podcasts and screencasts, the developer conferences and meetups, read guides and discussions from various sources including IBM, and seen excellent sites made with it as their core and weather significant traffic surges without breaking a sweat. I've heard countless testimonials of programmers admiring Drupal's quality code, security, attention to detail, and flexibility to be molded into almost any purpose you need (as compared to other popular CMS frameworks). I've had a look at the future roadmap and plans and the ideas and improvements are impressive - including a gamut of terrific modules and projects from this year's Summer of Code, which will soon make their way into Drupal core or production modules.
NeverAPI on the other hand is excellent as well - the page load times are lightening fast, Jeremie and everyone has done terrific work on it thus far. However, Jeremie, Scott, and other developers do not have the time to continue on it now, and a surplus of brilliant PHP programmers with plenty of free time haven't exactly appeared to take over. NeverAPI is not complete, and is for the time being missing almost all but the most core features and abilities needed for a community site - features that we can spend the next many months (or even years) catching up on adding, or we can use a powerful system such as Drupal and vBulletin, and have a very solid and flexible system very soon. And then we can get on with some new directions I and others have planned to take NS to the next level. Neverside was never "meant" to turn into this huge development project - that just happened unfortunately, and that in my opinion, is largely why it has dwindled away (not at all to say that the development was bad - it was good - it just was not supposed to have become the primary focus of the community which everything revolved around, and is not why Neverside's primary audience has or ever will participate in the site).
Regarding the vBulletin hack comment.... it is not at all that we don't "want to [touch] any of the code [our]selves" .... there is simply a modular plugin system for vBulletin now, and any hacks/modifications will be done through that. Likewise, Drupal has a modular system, and little or no core hacking will be done, as that will greatly impede future upgrades. If we decide we must have the above mentioned feature and there's no current plugin that already does that, then we can of course write it ourselves - there are at least 1-2 skilled vBulletin hack/module programmers currently on the project. The point being - I/we are not out to reinvent the wheel, particularly when there are some excellent "wheels" to be used already. Neverside is certainly a community for designers and programmers, but that has absolutely no bearing on whether the site itself "ought" to be completely made from scratch. It can be done - there are seriously talented people here, and perhaps at some point NeverAPI will be completed and surplant Drupal as a better solution. I already have stated that once the new version is up, ongoing development of NeverAPI can continue with whoever is willing - perhaps it could even spring up into as exciting and massive a project as Drupal currently is. At the current pace of things, I (no guarantees of course) suspect we should have the new Neverside ready for beta testing within several weeks.
Anyhow, that's my position on the matter. I respect and appreciate your opinion, but we have chosen our path, invested time effort and money into it, and are going to carry it out to completion. In the end to me it is not about the software - it is about the people and the community, the art, ideas, and help we exchange with each other... the community and friendships that we build together.
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-- Dave
Neverside Admin
absolutecross.com
October 14th, 2006 
