I am in education and I want a framework that allows me to manage the toolbox Teachers (Blog with features) and student blogs.
I want to choose between wordpress-mu and drupal, but I do not know which to choose:
here are my needs:
multiblogging-user (one blog for each user for the site)
gradebook (to grade Assignments for students)
post-it (or to do list for teacher)
I want to access the platform through a remote client (in php) using the protocol by exmple xml rpc
I just searched in google, wordpress and drupal. I realized that drupal for me because it offers such services module, gradebook module, and blogs module (which provides the default multiblogging)
I also saw that wordpress is earlier oriented blogging.
Drupal is he really the right choice?
someone else would be other compelling arguments that corroborate this choice
While Wordpress has a larger userbase, Drupal is far more conservative about what gets into core. The qa process is slightly better. The end result is that writing custom modules and using the GUI as much as possible to make your system meet your requirement is a much nicer experience.
With wordpress is code horrors such as: a two similarly named functions but one with an underscore prefixed. The prefixed function includes an echo statement while the other returns the entity. Bad duplication of code!
Wordpress 3rd party plugins tend to be nightmare to maintain as even with incremental releases of Wordpress plugin support may be broken.
Upgrading Drupal modules is usually alot safer!
I've heard good things about moodle too which is an open source project aimed at education institutions.
One of the main gripes about Drupal is that the admin is hard to use. Whereas Wordpress is much easier. With the arrival of Drupal 7 last year, the Ux has improved significantly.
Wordpress has a great wsysiwyg bundled editor. With Drupal there is none bundled. I would suggest you avoid giving your users full blown HTML, and opt for a limited subset of HTML tags. Ckeditor, imce, imce bridge and wysiwyg module will help you there.
Sometimes with Drupal 7 very popular modules are still only avilable to Drupal 6.
The only time I ever use Wordpress is when I need a blog and thats it. Anything more then I go Drupal. Anything more involved than that usually zend framework or similar.
Good luck!
Related
we want to build a website that have some forms (including image attachments, info, etc…) online payments, tracking system, and other features that I may add later.
The number of users using the site is estimated to be maybe more than 50,000.
I'm using Wordpress to develop regular websites, but I'm afraid to use it in this project because I don't know how optimized is WordPress for high database usage (and page rendering, bandwidth usage, and …)
My options (those that I know) are:
WordPress
Drupal
Pressflow
Agility CMS
Writing PHP/MySQL code from scratch (or using a framework)
I know it maybe unrelated, but how good is to use ASP.net instead of these options?
Right. If you are most comfortable with PHP (the scripting language behind Wordpress and Drupal), you'll most likely be more comfortable making the step to Drupal. Pressflow is just a fork of Drupal optimized for particular needs (and there are other forks of it -- all of them are really just Drupal and are often the basis for various Drupal distributions).
ASP.NET has a lot of capable options to do this. The most common ones (at least in my world), are Kentico, Umbraco, and DotNetNuke. There are a ton of others.
You'll find lots of capable CMS systems to work with no matter what language you're looking at. Use what you're most comfortable working with.
I need to develop a newspaper site in Drupal, I've already played around with Drupal a little, and I think I know which modules would best suit my purposes. Naturally, one of the modules I'll be needing to use most is Views, but I have a couple of questions:
Because this is a content-intensive site, I was wondering if using 5-6 views on each page to generate node teaser + thumbnail lists would impact performance adversely?
I am a designer with significant front-end development experience. Like I said I've played around with Drupal quite a bit and other than running into a few hurdles which I eventually overcame, for the most part I was able to get it to do what I needed it to. Having said that, does one also need strong programming skills to fully develop a site in Drupal?
Thank you very much for your help!
Jane
Views offers caching and Drupal also has block caching, which should help you improve performance. The SQL that Views generates is never as good as handwritten SQL, but if you make simple Views, the SQL is actually quite good and not a performance problem (unless you have millions of page views).
If you can create the features you need, with modules from Drupal.org, you don't need strong developer skills. But you do need to know some PHP to make a Drupal theme which is what controls the layout of the site. It will also be a great help, in understanding the Drupal theming system, but not a requirement.
First off, check out openpublishapp.com for a Drupal distro that is made for publishers from the ground up, it's pretty hot.
To answer your questions:
1) As far as performance and views goes, having 5-6 views on a page is a normal requirement for a drupal news site and the performance issues are usually handled by views/panel cache, and using a page cache like Varnish in front of a web server, Object caches like Memcached (for the DB) and opcode caches like APC...if you don't want to learn all that off the bat you should still be fine if your traffic isn't too intense (but go sign up at getpantheon.com for awesome hosting with all of that and the kitchen sink, and check out groups.drupal.org/pantheon)
2) If the functionality exists by way of core/contrib modules, to fully develop a site for the most part one only needs to understand enough PHP to theme, and often with starter themes like Fusion, and some of the others you hardly even need that, just an understanding of how they work and are extended (which is well documented). That said, if you want functionality that doesn't exist, you'll have to code it, or have someone code it for which strong programming skills are desired, but not necessarily required :)
Even I recommend the use of the OPENPUBLISH - https://www.acquia.com/solutions/publishing
On top of to this you can make an efficient usage of
1. APC - PHP byte-code caching
2. Drupal Caching - block/template/view level caching
3. Boost - Caching module which doesn’t need any external tools
4. Varnish - HTTP accelerator
5. Memcache - Data intensive content.
Apart from this you will also need to think effectively on deciding on DEPLOYMENT ARCHITECTURE of the site - preferably Acquia or Amazon environment.
Learning curve may vary depending on your current skills in PHP or Drupal. Usage of already established distribution like OPENPUBLISH may help you to minimize the dependability on too much custom coding.
I'm working at a company that uses Drupal 6 to host documentation for it's SAAS products. The documentation is organized in various books using Book.module.
We have a Production Drupal site with the documentation for the production SAAS product.
Secondly, we have a "Preview" site, for the upcoming version of our product - the documentation is slightly different than on the Production site.
Thirdly, we have a "Development" site, which contains the unstable version of our product documentation. The documentation here changes frequently
Documents are originally authored on Development, moved to Preview, and then finally to Production.
It's quite unwieldy to manually update each Drupal site as our product evolves. I've looked at Deploy.module, and although it looks promising, it has limitations wrt books (ie: it can't handle the book structure/menus). It also makes for a solution that is quite complex with lots or moving parts.
I'm hoping that I've been over-thinking everything and some Drupal rockstar out there can point out an obvious (or not-so-obvious) solution.
(An obvious non-drupal solution would probably just be store the documentation pages as html in version control and update each site with the appropriate revision. But with this I lose the ACL functionality that Drupal is so good at.)
Thoughts?
Cheers
I've had good luck with the Feeds module to get one site to consume a certain view from another site when I choose or periodically. It will take some configuration work to get going but it's more flexible than a turn-key solution and it's less fragile than any SQL dump -> import of the node revisions table.
I have never used DotNetNuke before. I'm thinking about giving it a try to help me build websites, and I'd like to hear from other developers who are in a position to compare DotNetNuke with other CMS's/Web Application Frameworks.
I have used both DNN and Drupal to build fairly large, content-based sites. My focus is more on the production side... UI/themeing, module configuration, etc. I'm sold on Drupal, but there may be other choices that meet your needs just as well. I just happened to work with both systems in recent months.
Drupal's core taxonomy module gives you the benefit of creating a relationship between different kinds of content. If you have "article" and "video" content types, you can easily display data from both types based on the shared taxonomy terms. This is huge and something DNN lacks.
Drupal's hook system is also a big benefit when building your own modules or creating "sub-modules" to alter or add to the default functionality of an existing module. This allows you to customize functionality or take advantage of another module's functionality as your application runs. If you purchase a module for DNN, you will have to alter the module if it doesn't meet your needs. Once you do this, you will need to update it each time there's a new release that you would like to take advantage of. DNN modules seem to be more stand-alone solutions. For example, if a DNN module has a rating system, it's only a part of that solution. With Drupal, I can use the "5 Star" rating module in my forums, my blogs, my articles, my videos, etc. There's central configuration for it and I only theme it once.
The themeing layer in Drupal also gives you a large amount of flexibility in that process. My frustration with themeing DNN sites was that I was stuck working with the markup the developer used, with no option for altering the output without hacking the module. With theme hooks and function overrides, I can change the output from those modules to meet my needs (not completely sometimes, but enough), without touching the module code itself.
The biggest problem I had with DNN modules, including some of the most popular, was just a lack of documentation or discussions available for how to achieve your goal. While Drupal's forums can be hard to navigate and you might not always find the answer you are looking for, there are many outlets for gathering information. Honestly, using DNN made me appreciate the community approach of Drupal more.
I was left feeling that DNN would be fine for building sites with more basic needs. But for that, I would still choose something like WordPress or Joomla, considering they have much larger user bases and, in my opinion, are more sophisticated.
Hope this helps you some.
DNN is a pretty good .NET solution for CMS. If you want more flexibility, I would look at SiteFinity for .NET CMS systems. This is a very flexible and elegant CMS for .NET
If you venture out of .NET and want to look at PHP solutions, then DRUPAL, JOOMLA, and WORDPRESS are best solutions. Some comments about each:
WORDPRESS - Is the simplest and most elegant CMS to work with. Originally a blogging software, it has a super-easy user interface, although that also reads as more limited power and features. It's excellent for content driven websites and templates are easily built.
DRUPAL - Is very flexible and configurable, but I find it more complicated than the others. The Admin interface requires more programming knowledge to pull off and adding components and extras is a little more complicated. But, DRUPAL has been proven in the business and government world as a secure and reliable CMS.
JOOMLA - Is my personal favorite. It is also very powerful and I prefer the Admin. interface. Joomla allows for much flexibility and has the most user created modules and plug-ins out there. You have to invent near nothing with this one. I am biased in favor of Joomla, because I use it the most. That said, it has limiting factors against DRUPAL, such as user security features. But this is being fixed in the next upgrade.
Hope that helps as well.
I have development experience using both DNN and Drupal to build content-rich websites. My preference is Drupal for a number of reasons:
Development time-line was shorter; I was able to produce more in less time.
Drupal has a larger and more active developer community. More resources are available to aid in development.
DNN is not actually a CMS. It is only a framework; Drupal is a framework with a foundational CMS.
Drupal is easier to install.
DNN modules cost money; Drupal modules are free.
Actually, I put together some notes a while back when trying to understand the architectural differences between DNN and Drupal. Found those notes, they are here: DNN versus Drupal. Hope this is helpful.
I experienced a fairly high degree of frustration when working with DNN and I don't believe I am alone in that regard. About a year ago, ASPdotnetStoreFront abandoned their involvement with DNN calling it a "disaster to work with".
I am curious to know what piqued your interest in DNN and if you have a specific website project in mind. Regardless, I wish you success and I hope this helps.
I worked in a .NET development shop utilizing Kentico CMS. I agree, it is feature rich and stable. The API and DB are documented well. Overall, it is a great CMS. There is a limited free version: http://www.kentico.com/freecms.aspx
I'm testing out DNN right now. So far, so good, but I think it depends a lot on what you are using it for. I've only been looking at it for 3 days, but so far I do find the documentation lacking or outdated.
I evaluated many of the different Portal/CMS systems out there back in 2004 and DotNetNuke ended up being my choice and I've been very pleased with it, for everything but E-Commerce, ever since. DotNetNuke is endlessly extensible, easy to skin, easy for non-technical folks to update, has a great 3rd party eco-system, and the development team is very active and talented. There isn't a great Articles module in the core but there are several really good ones available from 3rd parties for a reasonable price.
I tried using Joomla a few years ago and hated it. Wordpress is good for a blog style site but doesn't have nearly the power or flexibility of something like DNN. I am intrigued by SiteFinity, Umbraco, and Kentico for sites where all that's really needed is a CMS, but not enough that I've bothered trying them over DNN.
Another good .NET solution - from what I've read - is Umbraco.
Take a look at Kentico CMS. It's commercial, but still affordable. In my experience from dozens of projects on both CMS, Kentico is much more feature-rich, stable and well documented.
Or maybe other OS cms?
I want to form a members website, with registration, member profile and member personal photo galleries
What would you suggest? I'm pretty advanced with PHP just don't have the time to develop from scratch
I don't know much about Drupal but if you're using Joomla you may need to install something like Community Builder and/or Simple ACL. Joomla's default user management isn't great.
Drupal does what you are asking from a basic install with quite a degree of fine grained control over members, profiles, permissions etc. I have set several up with little or no extra modules, plugins or programming.
I actually run one site with several hundred members with not problems. I am not saying you cannot do this with Joomla, just have not had the experience. I think Drupal may well be more "community" oriented in this respect.
I vote for Drupal. Even Obama has voted for Drupal.
Joomla and Community Builder / JomSocial should be a nice pair.
In my experience, Drupal is far more flexible than Joomla. If you're comfortable with PHP, I'd recommend picking it.
Definitely Drupal, especially if you already know advanced PHP.
Nobody has great user features out of the box, but Drupal has more and better quality user-related modules.
Look at drupalmodules.com for 'user' modules in the 6.x versions, and you'll see tons of related modules for each one you check out.
There are modules for advanced profiles, for a percentage (of the profile) completed, user badges to make them feel special, imagecache for excellent image support, image upload with cropping, ckk and views can setup many different kinds of photo galleries from scratch so they are completely customized for your site, ubercart if you want to sell premium memberships, etc.
I think both Drupal and Joomla would be able to handle creating a basic version of what you describe. The turning point is going to be, what more you want to do.
One of Drupal's strengths is first truely uncovered when you develop. You can very easily customize the look and feel of your Drupal site. You'll have more fine grained control of both what it does and what how it outputs it's markup etc. It's a powerful tool, only downside is that it can be a bit hard to understand for normal people. But knowing PHP that shouldn't be a hindrance to you.
I already created 2 Drupal Sites and 1 Joomla Site with this Feature.
Since I've worked with Joomla some years too, I think I can give you some Hints on it:
Drupal is WAY more flexible and professional than Joomla. But you have to put some effort into it. But if you know how to use it, it will do what you want. And since Drupal itself is so flexible the core does handle almost every feature you need. So it is possible to mix a lot of features together and do things nobody has thinked of before.
If you use Joomla, you have to pick a module for this task (like CommunityBuilder http://www.joomlapolis.com/) and while this module is very powerful, it may work together with other modules, but likely it will not.