After earning a BFA with a focus in Information Architecture and Digital Media Production from Maine College of Art in 1999, I moved to Boston. Working for some of the top agencies in New England gave me the experience to think big and outside the creative norm.
As the web changed from grid-based HTML design to organic semantic XHTML and CSS, I moved with the flow. I embraced the upcoming Open-Source CMS frameworks as a new wave allowing designers to dive deeper into the development of building dynamic websites. First my research lead me to Wordpress and the ease of making dynamic blog sites, providing thousands of templates to start from. Other CMS frameworks like Joomla caught my eye at next with their rapid development and easy deployment of community based features that would take time to develop by hand.
Joomla was a great option for me to offer my clients and opened the door for services that I once needed a PHP developer for. Through that, I discovered a love for the endless searching / exploring for new components, modules and pluggins daily as they launched on tho the scene. As I dove deeper, I found limitations that i did not initially see. Lack of control for base code and add modifications made it difficult to update pluggins.
After spending leaning the ins-and-outs of Open-Source Community I stumbled upon Drupal. Winning The Best Over-All CMS in 2008 told me it was time I started the migration over to Drupal. Since then I've built multiple sites using the wealth of research that can be found using the community forums.
Please tell me your thoughts and experiences on this subject. Right now, I am head deep in Drupal and don't see my path changing anytime soon.