Other Software > Developer's Corner
Choosing a CMS
mouser:
One thing i will add that was touched on by other posters.
In my (albeit limited) experience, it is a mistake to compare the features of product A (out of the box) to product B (with lots of community-built extensions/addons).
The more addons/extensions you use, the harder it is to maintain, and in general the more likely you are to have problems and strange interactions, and trouble upgrading.
That's not to say you shouldn't use extensions/addons, but it is to say that you should prefer a system whose CORE is closest to your needs, and that relying on a large number of extensions to get the functionality you want is never as simple as it seems.
When I get up to speed with Django however I am sure it will become my preferred choice over Drupal.-bscott
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im looking into the same transition at the moment and have much of the same feelings as you. I have done work with Drupal hoping to use it as a "framework" because of the very excellent developer-friendly approach to coding and good documentation, but just found Drupal too alien and too large a CMS to work well as a general framework. From the perspective of building general purpose website applications, Django looks promising. However, deployment of Python sites is much trickier than PHP, and there is a lot about Django i don't love. Haven't found a better framework yet though (pylons looks interesting but a bit chaotic).
Renegade:
One thing i will add that was touched on by other posters.
In my (albeit limited) experience, it is a mistake to compare the features of product A (out of the box) to product B (with lots of community-built extensions/addons).
The more addons/extensions you use, the harder it is to maintain, and in general the more likely you are to have problems and strange interactions, and trouble upgrading.
That's not to say you shouldn't use extensions/addons, but it is to say that you should prefer a system whose CORE is closest to your needs, and that relying on a large number of extensions to get the functionality you want is never as simple as it seems.
-mouser (January 29, 2011, 07:04 PM)
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+1 - I've been burned very badly by modules in the past, and always try to stick to using as few as possible, and often with a view to an "exit strategy" from them if needed.
"Magic Gadget" was one of the best modules ever made for DNN. Then the developer dropped off the face of the earth. That blew. I was f**ked unbelievably hard as I'd relied on it completely. I talked a bit about it here:
http://renegademinds.com/Home/Blog/tabid/60/EntryID/141/Default.aspx
Pain pain pain...
I also had used it for the altools.net site... Sigh... That took me forever to fix as I had a TONNE of content to sort. Even MORE pain there...
rgdot:
Wordpress is a "CMS" in the same sense that SMF (the system this forum uses) is a "CMS". It manages "content", yes. But it's not what most people think of when they think of "CMS". It's not a general-purpose system that's actually *made for* making average, non-blog websites. Wordpress was made for and is still best for *blog* sites. If you have no intention of doing blog-style content, or if blog-style content is not the *core* of your site, then Wordpress is in my opinion not the best solution. You'll be working against the system and/or with lots of hacks and addons to get it to do normal stuff that works out of the box with other more generalized CMS platforms. That being said other CMS systems don't give you blog functionality that is as nice and complete and easy to use, in most cases. So again if blog-type content (not even necessarily a real "blog" per se, but sequentially posted blog-roll style content/articles) is your goal, then Wordpress may still be best. For all else, set it aside.
- Oshyan
-JavaJones (January 29, 2011, 03:29 PM)
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But these are not the words you would hear, for the most part anyway.
The CMS aspect is so much the buzz there that a recent thread (http://wordpress.org/support/topic/what-should-2011-hold-for-wordpress) on the WordPress forums where Jane Wells (one of the WP leads) asked about feedback is full of suggestions that relate to CMS. Not only they pretty prominently showcase CMS sites (http://wordpress.org/showcase/) but the users, the type who would look to give feedback, are into it and asking for it.
JavaJones:
That's because people start small or blog-oriented sites with Wordpress because it's easy to use and then later want to do more with it but don't want to leave their familiarity with WP behind. So the demand for addons that make WP more like a full-blown CMS is high. That doesn't make WP a good CMS to start a *new* site with by any means though. I see that this may be a direction WP wants to go in the future, but I think it would take some very significant work to do it well. Part of the magic of WP's simplicity and ease of use is in its focus on a smaller set of features. If WP could do everything Joomla could do, well, it would be more complicated. If they do go down the road of trying to turn it into a more general CMS, I think they might be better served doing it as a new core and adapting the original WP to be an addon or integrated with it, but keep the UI approach and usability model. Maybe make a "Site Press" with "Word Press" component.
- Oshyan
rgdot:
That's because people start small or blog-oriented sites with Wordpress because it's easy to use and then later want to do more with it but don't want to leave their familiarity with WP behind. So the demand for addons that make WP more like a full-blown CMS is high. That doesn't make WP a good CMS to start a *new* site with by any means though. I see that this may be a direction WP wants to go in the future, but I think it would take some very significant work to do it well. Part of the magic of WP's simplicity and ease of use is in its focus on a smaller set of features. If WP could do everything Joomla could do, well, it would be more complicated. If they do go down the road of trying to turn it into a more general CMS, I think they might be better served doing it as a new core and adapting the original WP to be an addon or integrated with it, but keep the UI approach and usability model. Maybe make a "Site Press" with "Word Press" component.
- Oshyan
-JavaJones (January 30, 2011, 04:58 PM)
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All true.
Depending on third party addons is risky unless you have 'in house' expertise.
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