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I am planning to build a training site which will accommodate multiple users. It will also have lots of custom pages with videos in them. Which CMS/CMF is better suited for this project? Please advise..
Wordpress is designed from the ground up to be a blog, but also to be modular. Drupal is designed to be a complete CMS out of the box, but there are also extensions for Drupal too. Both are CMS systems, but again, Wordpress is really designed to be a blogging platform. Also, Drupal is a little more complicated at first and has a higher learning curve.
However, you can do what you are trying to do with either one. In addition to out of the box functionality, you can customize both Drupal or Wordpress. People tend to specialize in one or the other, and the choice comes down to personal preference (people make a living off of being Drupal or Wordpress developers, that's what's great about open source!). Once you become proficient in PHP and the CMS platform of choice, you can build your own extensions/modules and have a very custom website, but I would minimize customization to only what you absolutely need. If you are creative in using the framework and freely available modules, you may not need to write any code.
Lastly, Drupal is getting a complete re-write with version 7, which people have been waiting a long time for! If you want to get into Drupal, you may want to look into the newest version.
Edit: Personally, I prefer Wordpress, I think the admin section looks great, gives you a lot of control, but without being overwhelming (however, my opinion doesn't really matter). I really think Wordpress has a lower learning curve. I'm also pretty sure, although you haven't given many details, but if you are planning on having simple pages with videos on them, and want access to those pages to be restricted only to authenticated users, I'm pretty sure you can do that without any custom PHP coding, just some HTML.
Here's a couple helpful links for Wordpress:
Restrict Page View to Authenticated Users
Setting your Posts or Entire Blog to Private
It can be confusing trying to decide which CMS to dive into; I hope that helps a little!
The answer is Drupal.
I've been running various websites, and few years ago I decided to use Drupal as my main CMS engine and I never looked back.
I used Joomla, phpNuke, Mambo and WordPress before and nothing is as flexible, as maintainable as Drupal.
My biggest website – www.mugen.pl has 14853 registered users so I can confirm Drupal is just perfect for big, heavily used web portals.
Drupal has few wonderful 'social-networking' modules I make an excellent use of to make sure my users are keen to stay on the website, sneak preview: (sorry, I've got only screenshots in Polish):
(source: mugen.pl)
Unfortunately for Drupal, sometimes it takes a while to understand this system. Some theming stuff is not that obvious at first, but the online community is huge and always helpful.
Additionally, Drupal has excellent support for SEO. It’s built-in “path” module allows to set custom URLs for every item on the page, and other available modules (i.e. Nodewords) allow to set custom meta data for every subpage.
When you decided to go with Drupal, you should have a look at the following modules:
Content Construction Kit - http://drupal.org/project/cck
Views - http://drupal.org/project/views
Custom breadcrumbs - http://drupal.org/project/custom_breadcrumbs
Last Node - http://drupal.org/project/last_node
Nodewords - http://drupal.org/project/nodewords
Fivestar - http://drupal.org/project/fivestar
Go with Drupal ;-)
With the new release of WordPress 3.0, I would have to say WP. Many useful updates just came around the bend (menu system et al) that make it even easier to create a "site" out of a WP installation instead of just a "blog".
Drupal is extremely powerful and accommodating to the time-allowed developer, but falls short on the ease-of-use-side of things (at least from my experiences.
In short, if you're looking to make a site that's easy to install, update, and maintain - especially for posting media, go with WordPress.
Hope that helps.
Read both JohnB's and Lance May's answers. The choice is quite tricky so the only way you can make a good decision is to do your own feature comparison/score matrix.
List all the features that you need and assign importance score to them - then objectively go through both systems (or ask again on so) to get their scores.
This will also help you if you have to justify your decision later.
In the end both are good, both have quirks and both will get the job done.
WordPress is just easy to understand, for both the developer and the content editors.
WordPress is best suited for sites with:
1) Typical CMS needs - Pages, Posts, Menus - I would also include embedded videos in this list
2) Low to Moderate Traffic Loads - I know there are sites like Smashing Magazine that user WordPress under high-load, but I am sure there is some custom code added to introduce a better caching architecture and multiple servers
3) Hand off to Client for Content Editing - In my opinion, the best feature of WP is the admin user interface. The sleek visual design, smart use of ajax controls, and the simple layout makes it possible to hand off content editing to "non-technical" people
When I start a WP site, I create a new theme with two files, index.php and styles.css. Then I build my own, custom theme, that is uniquely designed for my project. Examples of my work are http://perqworks.com, http://janemonheitonline.com and http://generalordersno9.com. As you can see, these are not blogs, but CMS sites. I agree, WP was a blog platform, but it has proven itself as a CMS-lite application.
I prefer WordPress because of its extensibility and easy install and modifications.
Version 2.0 has introduced a bunch of features (like custom post types) that makes using it as a CMS easy.
Wordpress is mostly use for blogging and Drupal is used for creating websites. YOu should consider using drupal for that ;)
You may be lured to WP immediately from how quick it is to get started. But in the long term, do yourself a favor and use Drupal. It's a proven CMS framework and less prone to security issues from contributed modules. I can count on two hands how many times a WP plugin has bit me in the ass, even highly rated ones. It has very granular security also, so you know exactly what your users can and cannot do.
I've used both and Drupal is just easier to extend and configure. I don't get why people think it has a huge learning curve.
I also think a big deal breaker is the end user experience - WordPress makes it just so damn easy to manage your website, all whilst looking (in my opinion) rather beautiful at the same time.
Every client I've handed a WP site to has been impressed with it's simplicity - as the iPad put it;
You already know how to use it!
I prefer Drupal over Wordpress . Drupal is made for flexibility . But you must know how to do it , ie all . You may need some time to read how to do with that module x and how to with module Y . But once you have learned you will be comfortable to do any site.
The main advantage of Drupal is CCK and Views . Wordpress 3 have come with CCK , but Drupal has it from version 5. Now we are moving to 7, and it still misses Views :) . Yes ofcourse wordpress is a wonderful tool for blogging with ease. But when talking other than blog, you may want to opt for Drupal . Once you have learned how to do with drupal , you will never say wordpress .
If some one is against Drupal then he may have not used or learned it to the extent :) . So my suggestion for you to checkout Drupal 6 for now , as Drupal 7 is still in alpha for the present time.
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I'm not quite getting used to using CMS, usually hand coding and uploading the site directly to the server without dealing with CMS. But recently I've got a project from a friend, aka my client, who wants to run an online magazine with a limited budget and also need a "custom design website" without any looks and feel of template or amateur site. Please guide me to the final solution which CMS between these big 3 is the best that suits our needs:
Requirements:
"Custom Design" magazine website - almost every single page has different layout with sophisticated design and custom functionality.
Basic features such as blog, web-board, post, and etc.
Plenty of FREE beautiful and modifiable plugins/widgets as my client has a limited budget.
A client doesn't want to pay any extra maintenance and update costs in the future. He wants to update the site content (online magazine) himself with his basic knowledge in IT and zero knowledge in html.
The main revenue of the website comes from banner, ads section (both paid and free ads) and classified ads.
Support more complex features in the future such as membership area and etc.
What should be the best CMS choice for this requirement?
According to your needs, i suggest you the wordpress.
You can hava look at for comparison those 3 CMS here
I also use wordpress and i am really happy with wordpress
I'm a Drupal guy and I'm suggesting that. I think other repliers are fine with the suggested CMS so here is how Drupal would be useful for this.
"Custom Design" magazine website - almost every single page has different layout with sophisticated design and custom functionality.
-- You have to make a theme for whatever CMS you use - "Custom theme"
Basic features such as blog, web-board, post, and etc.
-- Drupal comes with basic blog built in, but for extra awesomeness you can make a blog-like section using a custom node type.
Plenty of FREE beautiful and modifiable plugins/widgets as my client has a limited budget.
-- If you want to use "Install and everything is magically set" type of modules, consider this a minus point.
A client doesn't want to pay any extra maintenance and update costs in the future. He wants to update the site content (online magazine) himself with his basic knowledge in IT and zero knowledge in html.
-- When coupled with a WYSIWYG editor, most users can make content. Wordpress is best in ease of use I believe.
Support more complex features in the future such as membership area and etc
-- This is where you need Drupal. Drupal has virtually unlimited capabilities due to it's modular design. But as the web developer, YOU have to spend time settling things down. Nothing is automagical.
Drupal is amazing, even for small sites. I will always pick Drupal because even the smallest blog site eventually require bigger developments. I've made that mistake many times with sticking with WordPress and then a few months later, the client wants something that can be done so simply with Drupal.
Go with Drupal, many themes out there which you can build off of, easy to develop modules for, very easy to customize, and amazingly flexible.
I read the customer's requirements. All customer requirements are resolved features Drupal. Wordpress is easy to you, but the problem client. Jumla is a problem for both. Drupal is a problem for you, but convenient for the customer. And more ... I think that you're not familiar with these CMS.
For about a year and a half I used Codeigniter to build my sites. Then a client begged me to build theirs in Wordpress. I soon found the joy of using a CMS (if Wordpress can be called that). So for about the last 8 months I have been using Wordpress as much as possible to buld my sites - I made the content fit the design.
Well, I began to grow very tired of the limitations of Wordpress - I needed more control and flexibility over my sites. So, I have recently started using Drupal 7 (not 6.x - I really like the admin panel).
After working with Drupal now for a little under two months - I have begun to feel like I'm using Stone Age Tools to build Space Age equipment.
So my question is: does Drupal get any better? Do you really have to use Views to display your content? Asking for help on the forums is just a shake better than asking a wall. I feel like to do anything requires a module. Why? Is one better off sticking to a framework?
"After working with Drupal now for a little under two months - I have begun to feel like I'm using Stone Age Tools to build Space Age equipment."
Well, my intiial reaction is that this is what you're going to feel like you're doing when you're working with Drupal 7, which isn't out of alpha yet. A good number of the folks who maintain modules haven't started upgrading to 7 yet, and that means that you're missing out on one of the great features of Drupal, which is it's wide and deep space of premade modules.
Try 6.
Do you need to use views to display all content? No, not at all. You can go in, create a new module, and write the sql and presentation that you want. Or you can find a module that will display things for you. Or, depending, you might be able to get the effect you want just by adjusting the theme you're using.
(As a side note, using an admin theme really pretties up the Drupal experience. I'm fond of rootcandy, although Rubik is nice too. Problem with Rubik is that it's not on drupal.org.)
The strength of Drupal is that by using modules, you don't have to re-write code that someone else has written - you can instead take that code and modify it (with hooks) to do what you want. This means you don't have to write an authentication/autherization system again - it's there in core. You don't need to write up openid handlers - it's in core. You don't need to write code to integrate with twitter directly - there's a module that contains an api that helps out. You don't have to write an xmlrpc server from scratch - you can use the services module.
You don't need to write a website from scratch. Instead, you can start with Drupal, add most of the functionality you need, and then spend your time making it fit what your client wants.
Firstly, you can install the Admin module to pretty up Drupal 6 admin. You don't have to use 7. 7 is still in alpha, by the way. Garland sucks, but, Garland is just a theme- its not 'the' admin itself. The Drupal admin can take the form of any Drupal theme, which is useful in its own right, depending on the use-case.
In Drupal, you can create content types clicking through the interface in Drupal 6 or 7. As far as I can see in WP3, you have to script it. A few clicks vs scripting, the choice for me is not hard there. The first way is a lot more efficient, and a task you can hand off to a non coder to get done.
You don't HAVE to use Views to display content.
You -can- use Views to make the display of content easier, by telling Drupal to gather data and provide a Page, Block, or Feed to display . This lets you create specific sections of content for areas of the site. Otherwise, you would have to create a node, and hijack its template, run a direct sql query yourself AND write the pager functions just to show something easy like the latest 10 "Press Releases" content type. Then, if someone added a new field to that content type, you have to update all that SQL code and display code. Views makes your life easier in that respect. In minutes you can flesh out site sections and arrange content in a myriad of ways. In Wordpress, this method of arranging content without functionality of Views is/was a modern nightmare and a reason I do not want to use it at all unless its a blog and nothing more.
The Drupal Support Forum is tricky. Not all modules are as active as say, Views or Pathauto (being two of the most popular modules). However, SO is also at your disposal. I answer a lot of Drupal questions here. The trick to the Forum there is you have to ask it in the right spot. True, sometimes you may have to wait a few days to get an answer, then again no one -owes- you an answer for a free product. Thats the nature of open source.
Every developer has their favorite modules to use with Drupal, and more often than not, its the same 20 or so modules. It depends on what you are doing, what you are trying to implement. It's not that 'everything needs a module' its that Drupal is such a vanilla install because Drupal does not want to assume your purpose nor overwhelm with options. The UX is something they are trying to improve anyway, and popular modules are making their way into core.
Well, I began to grow very tired of
the limitations of Wordpress - I
needed more control and flexibility
over my sites. So... I have recently
started using Drupal 7
Why not go back to CI? Drupal certainly has it's strengths, but I don't think Drupal will give you any more "control and flexibility" than Wordpress.
If the standard modules/plugins, themes/templates, from WP, Drupal, or Joomla, fill your needs, then using a CMS can be a lot faster than building a site from scratch. But, if those CMSs do not fill your needs, you could find yourself "fighting the framework" and never really getting what you want.
You're just coming out from WordPress, which has great support and is relatively easy to extend to overcome what you call its limitations, if you know basic PHP, HTML, CSS & JavaScript. Every framework has its own potential/limitations.
As a user of WordPress my humble opinion is that you should have stayed with it.
As of you last question, It depends, to stick with one and only one framework has its advantages and disadvantages, the best of all is that you get to know it very well and eventually learn how to extended it. The bad part is that very often frameworks lose popularity and you are left to you own without an active user community and support.
Regards.
All of the popular CMS products (I'd maybe add Expression Engine to the mix) are great for 80% of what you want to accomplish and a huge pain to handle the other 20%.
That's just the nature of the beast.
On the plus side, it's OS so there's lots of people hacking away at it just like you which opens up the potential for someone else already having invented the wheel.
And with bulky enterprise CM solutions like SharePoint I find that you have to reverse the equation to 20/80 (ugh!).
If you're discouraged with Drupal and prefer to stick with WP, WordPress has many thousands of plugins, including ones that can overcome the limitations you're running into and make WP behave more like a normal CMS.
Just do a Google search for "top Wordpress CMS plugins." There's a lot of articles out there that can recommend ways to get WP to do exactly what you want.
I would like to know how feasible is Joomla or Drupal towards a website development which has around 80 web pages? I'm a part time website designer who does a bit of server end development as well using PHP and Python/Django. However, i have never attempted developing a website of this scale. There is a lot of static content on this website and some user interactions using JS/JQuery. The only PHP used would be in contact forms. Rest would be only HTML/CSS/JS. As there is lot of text information to be coded into the web pages i would like to know how Joomla or Drupal would help me?
When you use Content Management Systems, you don't need to use code to make content, that is what the CMS is for. If your site is purely static content with a contact form, Drupal might not be the best choice unless.
You already know Drupal.
You want to learn how to make sites with Drupal.
Drupal is very powerful, it's extremely flexible and a great framework. But it comes with a cost, it's more difficult to learn. If you just want to make a site with 80 or more pages and a contact form, you will most likely be better of with Wordpress. It's more simple and userfriendly. It's not a great development framework like Drupal, but if you only need a contact form and content, you wont need a development framework anyways.
If you're not used to using a CMS, both of these options will be quite a culture shock. In my experience, Joomla is slightly easier to learn than Drupal, but each are a LOT more work than hand-coding a bunch of pages.
Who will be updating the content, if at all? This should be a major factor in choosing a CMS, especially for a small, relatively static site. If the answer is "you" or "one person who can be trained" then you might want to think about keeping it hand-coded (making use of SSI or similar, where appropriate).
Alternatively, if you want a lightweight CMS, take a look at something like kirby or perch, both of which are excellent CMSs for small sites, with relatively low learning curves.
Drupal is pretty powerfull when it comes to content management content management. 80 pages is really nothing. You can sort everything easily with built in Taxonomy-module(used for categorys, tagging, ...) and even create own displays with the Views module. Because of CCK, you can make as many different content types you want, with all kinds of input options(wysiwig text, select lists, checkboxes, files, ...). For the contact form you just use the built in one or use the Webform-module.
I dout you'll have to do any coding for this, but beware, drupal is quite big and you might take some time to understand how it works and how to install. Once done however, it's all very smooth :)
Haven't worked with Joomla yet, can't help you there, but you might wanna google "drupal vs joomla" or similiar, there's plenty of articles. From what I've read, Drupal can do more, but Joomla' easier to learn.
It totaly depends on what functionality you want to have. If you are interested in multimedia or more complex functionality then Joomla is a better option. Thus when it comes to build up a complex and robust website full of features and functionality, you should go with Drupal. Go through this blog to get clear information: http://hirejoomlaprogrammer.blogspot.in/2012/07/joomla-drupal-or-wordpress-which-cms-to.html
I'm going to be moving my website to a CMS in the coming months I'd I need some help on choosing an appropriate CMS. Many of the websites I've seen tend to say "use Drupal, hands down". However, my website truly doesn't have a need for commenting or community features. Its pages will need to be modified occasionally, but not extensively. My website will also consist of many programs, each with their own sub-pages and menus.
There are probably 25 people that will need access to the content on my website and will need the ability to update it.
I do like the idea of being able to tag and categorize the content, and the modular aspect of Drupal but is it really right for my website? If not, which CMS may fit my needs better?
It sounds like Drupal would be an excellent solution to your company's needs. I used to recommend WordPress for smaller, single-blog type sites, but now, even for those, I recommend Drupal because you can start small and scale up as your needs grow. It has a very dedicated community and there is a module for just about any need you may have.
I would agree with Drupal. The thing about Drupal is that you start out very small and add on as you need things. There is a ton of documentation, it is well coded, always being expanded on, good forum support, and free. It's the easiest to install, most problem free, and most maintainable CMS system I've seen so far.
You can turn Drupal commenting off with the press of a button, and if/when you decide to add onto your website, perhaps you want an ad rotator, more extensive user permissions, etc, etc, it is all already developed for you and ready to go.
I am not sure if Wordpress supports multiple users on a site.
The smallest you can go for a CMS is something like 10kCMS or the more popular TinyMCE
If it is something small I will go with WordPress as it is easily themed and extensible. There are a lot of community plugins and support. Their documentation is also fairly simple as they don't have a thousand of functions and stuff you need to remember and understand. With some creativity the basic functionality of WordPress is sufficient to solve almost all problems that might arise in small to mid-size website.
I also like Drupal, but you may consider Umbraco as well. http://umbraco.org/ I'd use Umbraco over Drupal if your team is stronger in .Net than PHP. (Really, I think that's a larger concern - what are your organization's strengths? Play to suit them. You are making a decision that will pave the way for many developers besides yourself, and business decisions of your company.) Both are extendable and open source so you can write your own modules/components to customize. It may be cleaner to import into Drupal tables than Umbraco, since it goes down to xslt files. (EDIT: This looks to be no longer the case in the new version - http://umbracohosting.com/umbraco-4---get-excited/one-cms-any-database) From a front end dev perspective, both offer great control of the final output.
From working on legacy stuff a lot, you may end up hiring interns to do the gruntwork. There's bound to be tons of inline tables and all sorts of un-reusable code in there, it may be easier to scrape the content manually and start w/clean markup for the content portions.
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I talked to a few friends who say that Drupal is amazing, and it is a way better than Joomla. What are the major differences/advantages?
The general consensus is that programmers prefer Drupal whereas mere mortals prefer Joomla. Joomla is praised for having a simpler user interface. (I personally don't agree with that; I think Joomla's UI is pretty painful to use. But then again, I'm looking at it with a programmer's eye.) Drupal, on the other hand, is praised for its high level of extensibility, along with its large library of high-quality (more or less) plug-ins that add features ("modules" in Drupal lingo) and many of which are extensible themselves.
Start using Joomla today, and you'll probably end up with a decent but not quite perfect web site tonight. Start using Drupal today, and you'll be able to build exactly the web site you're wishing for - once you've put the time in.
If you're considering parlaying your skills into a paid job one day, you should definitely side with Drupal.
The community around drupal - theres a module to do just about everything. Sometimes, theres more than one way to do something too.
If you want to change almost anything, from presentation (themes) to function (hooks), its possible. However, its not MVC and it does take a lot of getting used to.
With Views + CCK + Panels Module, you rarely need to touch code to create a wide variety of pages.
Finally, Drupal's User and Roles system is much more flexible.
The API. Every form and pretty much every bit of functionality can be modified via a module that hooks into the API, without having touch core code. This makes upgrades much easier, as your customisations aren't overwritten.
The code it outputs by default is much nicer, as well.
Under the hood, Joomla runs on mostly an OO architecture, whereas Drupal is almost entirely procedural with OO paradigms. Joomla has no form builder (that I am aware of), so you are forced to hand-code entire blocks of html for the form, whereas, with Drupal, you create forms as structured arrays. In Joomla, creating administrative features and front end featured requires that you place files in both administrative directories and in front end directories or create an install file to correctly partition things for you. In Drupal, everything pertaining to a particular module is contained in 1 directory, and you control access and url structure.
In general, Joomla's admin GUI is considered prettier and more user-friendly than Drupal's, but Joomla is, in my opinion, a less intuitive system at the programming level and makes certain tasks more difficult than necessary. 2 areas where Drupal truly outshines Joomla in my opinion is in the ability to create various content types - with various fields - on the fly to easily segment data, and the ability to create pretty seo-friendly urls with path or, even better, with pathauto.
Bottom Line: Joomla tends to look pretty from an administration perspective, but Drupal tends to outperform Joomla and be a more easily customizable system to achieve many of the things you really want out of a CMS.
Starting off, Joomla is fun and easy, from both an administrative and user view, but once the site needs to be customised (naturally), it becomes a pain.
In my opinion, Drupal is opposite. It has a steep learning curve (the pain part), but becomes easier not harder over time. This is from both the admin and user part.
For what it's worth Joomla before 1.5 was pretty ugly, and the API included a lot of very specific calls related to older Mambo code. The most recent version, and all future versions are built ontop of a very powerful OO framework, so if you haven't looked at it recently, do now.
Drupal shines with these two modules.
CCK: Adds custom fields to nodes
Views: Controls how lists of content are presented; it is essentially a smart query builder
What I like about Drupal is the plugin model: you have your core of drupal, and you can customize it however you want it by creating your own seperate template directory and modules (the plugins).
For a complete technical overview you can also tick Drupal and Joomla in http://www.cmsmatrix.org/matrix/cms-matrix