What I need, and how Drupal contributes

Ok, so just to focus my thinking about why I am putting so much effort into mastering Drupal, here are some of the things that Drupal enables me to do.

Create and manage users

This can be done a million other ways, but it is overhead I've rarely been willing to expend. Now I hook up any of my existing tools with a database of users.

Enable users

This is especially useful for my swfbook efforts, which in my mind is the single best thing I've ever created. The ability to allow people to create the type of content swfbooks typically contained without needing to store local copies of their work is a big step up. Plus, with Drupalization, people can have html pages in their swfbooks, not just images and swfs.

Collect feedback

This is not really new, and so far I've garnered almost no useful feedback, but the feedback mechanisms built into Drupal are better and more varied than anything I can easily put together on a Dreamweaver site.