Author Topic: Drupal is f*cked (Read 66402 times)

Shades · « **Reply #25 on:** August 31, 2008, 08:58 PM »

It's clear that mileage does vary....I have setup a lot more clients with a Joomla powered site than with Drupal. Well, that was their choice after being introduced to multiple CMS's. Seems that it is easier to maintain the content part for those people.

Dr-Leech · « **Reply #26 on:** August 31, 2008, 09:06 PM »

yes, probably for the common user Joomla is easier. But for the developer it's really annoying.
I prefer Drupal over Joomla, specially for the big developers community around, which makes everything easy. Also all the modules are free (or almost all, I don't know of commercial ones for Drupal) and well organized, not like Joomla that redirects you to the developer website (if it already exists) and luckily it will be free..

notzippy · « **Reply #27 on:** September 02, 2008, 10:38 AM »

I have deployed sites with mambo, joomla, phpwebsite and none of them were as complicated as a drupal powered site. There may be power there but the learning curve for it takes far too long.

I have sworn off of Joomla since there GPL Licensing campaign (started version 1.1.3 ) The developers in that group branched from Mambo then a year later tell all the developers that there components (plug-ins) cannot be sold, they must be open-source.

Here is another package to stay away from if your are a developer "Magento Commerce". This ecommerce CMS uses the EAV database schema and if you have ever thought data-mining was difficult you aint seen nothing yet !, And the ability to "theme" a site has so much code in the template that when a version change occurs you have to redo your "theme" !

One CMS I am tempted to look into is silverstripe (http://silverstripe.com/) has anyone tried or worked in this before ?

s

city_zen · « **Reply #28 on:** September 25, 2008, 10:43 PM »

The very best way to read about these different CMS solution from people who actually used them is to go here http://www.opensourc...ask=view&id=2097 and for each solution, you will see user comments at the bottom. I spent a whole night browsing through them and reading these comments. Was truly the best way.
-cnewtonne (April 11, 2007, 03:06 PM)

Yup, I agree with you.

But if you just want to do a quick feature-wise comparison of just about any CMS out there, CMS Matrix offers a very powerful search and comparison tool. You can compare up to 10 out of 961 (!) CMS on what must be like 100 different features. Worth taking a look.

mouser · « **Reply #29 on:** February 13, 2009, 02:39 PM »

As much as i have ranted against drupal from a usability standpoint, I do need to say that from a developer's standpoint it's pretty darn impressive, and i keep coming back to it when thinking about larger projects.

Given the plans for Drupal 7 it seems like they realize how bad the usability of Drupal is and are focusing on that heavily for the next major release. That's a good sign.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #30 on:** February 13, 2009, 03:16 PM »

True - I have only been put of Drupal because it is so unapproachable - if they get that right in version 7 they will have a real winner.

PPLandry · « **Reply #31 on:** February 13, 2009, 03:20 PM »

I love Drupal. It is so nice, so easy to modify and the list of modules is extensive.

Those that have conceptual issues / questions, do not hesitate to ask. I'll gladly try to answer

(and I didn't even touch the Content Construction Kit (CCK) and Views yet, which are real gem!)

40hz · « **Reply #32 on:** February 14, 2009, 07:21 AM »

I've been experimenting with Drupal over the last six months, and nice as it is, it does present several conceptual hurdles to a new user/developer. That being said, IMHO it's probably the most powerful of all the CMSs out there. Whether that power always translates into practicality or usefulness is up for debate.

The thing I find most annoying about working with it is the Drupal organization itself. There is a definite "circle the wagons" mentality to be found in many places within the community. And there also seems to be a tendency to confuse a critique with a complaint. Many times I have seen obviously constructive criticism met with comments like "it's only you that is complaining about that."

I've been reading some of the community backscatter on the usability testing and I'm still seeing the same old thing.

But hope springs eternal.

Fingers crossed...

mouser · « **Reply #33 on:** February 14, 2009, 08:22 AM »

I have also noticed that on the drupal forums a huge number of posts asking for help or clarification go ignored.. I'm not sure what that tells you but it's not a great sign.

What is true however, and is very impressive, is that the Drupal developers have gone to extraordinary lengths to make a system that is extensible without having to modify the core code.. Drupal uses an elaborate system of callbacks that makes it possible to modify nearly any aspect of the system using a "plugin" module.

You come to appreciate such things after working on a system like the forum software we use here (simple machines forum) where modifications and extensions are done by actually changing the core codebase -- the problem being that when the system software is updated the chance of something breaking or requiring intricate fixing is very high.

mouser · « **Reply #34 on:** February 14, 2009, 01:36 PM »

ps. For programmers wishing to extend Drupal I can *highly* recommend the book "Pro Drupal Development" (by John K. VanDyk).

40hz · « **Reply #35 on:** February 14, 2009, 01:59 PM »

I have also noticed that on the drupal forums a huge number of posts asking for help or clarification go ignored.. I'm not sure what that tells you but it's not a great sign.

-mouser (February 14, 2009, 08:22 AM)

I think it tells you that the developers, having received A Vision, are not particularly interested in clarifying or explaining things. There seems to be an attitude saying that if someone's not bright enough to grasp what Drupal is doing (after they've RTFM) then perhaps it's best if they go elsewhere.

This, unfortunately, is the darker side of FOSS.

I also suspect that some of the key figures have a far better grasp of "formal" English than they do the colloquial. Many times I've seen responses from the development team that either seemed to miss the point of the original query; or where offense was taken when it was obvious that none was intended.

But I suppose we should expect that, since the lesser gods have always been known to be a bit touchy.

James Thurber said it best: Mighty oafs from little icons grow.

tranglos · « **Reply #36 on:** May 12, 2009, 09:45 AM »

I have also noticed that on the drupal forums a huge number of posts asking for help or clarification go ignored.. I'm not sure what that tells you but it's not a great sign.
-mouser (February 14, 2009, 08:22 AM)

For what it's worth, Joomla forums are much like that, too. Plenty of good questions go unanswered, and then there are lots of beginner questions by people with 1-post count, answered by people with a 4-post count, who clearly don't really know the answer, either.

cranioscopical · « **Reply #37 on:** May 12, 2009, 10:43 AM »

James Thurber said it best: Mighty oafs from little icons grow.
-40hz (February 14, 2009, 01:59 PM)

And the icon doesn't fall far from the free.

40hz · « **Reply #38 on:** May 12, 2009, 06:03 PM »

James Thurber said it best: Mighty oafs from little icons grow.
-40hz (February 14, 2009, 01:59 PM)
And the icon doesn't fall far from the free.
-cranioscopical (May 12, 2009, 10:43 AM)

You never cease to amaze me.

mouser · « **Reply #39 on:** December 03, 2009, 11:28 AM »

today i'm back to loathing drupal.. there is a lot good about it but there is so much bad, sometimes its unbearable.

Dormouse · « **Reply #40 on:** December 03, 2009, 11:49 AM »

today i'm back to loathing drupal.. there is a lot good about it but there is so much bad, sometimes its unbearable.
-mouser (December 03, 2009, 11:28 AM)

I've never loathed Drupal.
I've never chosen to use it.

40hz · « **Reply #41 on:** December 03, 2009, 12:37 PM »

today i'm back to loathing drupal.. there is a lot good about it but there is so much bad, sometimes its unbearable.
-mouser (December 03, 2009, 11:28 AM)

+1 with that.

I'm starting to loathe content management systems in general.

Ashraf · « **Reply #42 on:** December 03, 2009, 12:59 PM »

Gizmo's has its fair share of problems with Drupal.

PPLandry · « **Reply #43 on:** December 03, 2009, 01:27 PM »

today i'm back to loathing drupal.. there is a lot good about it but there is so much bad, sometimes its unbearable.
-mouser (December 03, 2009, 11:28 AM)

Such as ? ...

iphigenie · « **Reply #44 on:** December 04, 2009, 03:29 AM »

Drupal is a typical example of a platform that was built for developers. They have at least realised that and are working hard at improving the user and manager experience, but it's still a very coder centric system.

Not helped by the fact that most PHP templating systems are very messy and the choices made in Drupal are no exception

But still, in the PHP sphere, if you want an open source web engine that is powerful and customisable, with some social features, Drupal is the main choice.

mouser · « **Reply #45 on:** December 04, 2009, 03:45 AM »

commenting on iphigenie's post, i think one way to view the root of the problem with Drupal is that it is extremely schizophrenic in that a huge part of it is clearly focused on addressing developer's needs, as if it was a development platform, but then another half of it is all about providing these really intricate configuration systems that are designed to bypass the need to do any coding. It's this part that i find intensely frustrating from a developer's standpoint.

The result of this, at least from this programmer's perspective, is an extremely painful experience where you may set something up and if you come back to it next week you'll have no hope in the world of remembering what exactly you did and why the system is behaving the way it is.

As an example of this, take a look at the Views module, which is seeing widespread adoption and praise. This is a very very powerful module that is insanely flexible and let's you create all kinds of very intricate configurations all using a very complicated user interface. Web designers and community maintainers who are not programmers can manage to eventually figure it out, which is fine for a one-time use, but from a developer's standpoint i find it just the completely wrong approach. This is a case where trying to build something that can be configured to do everything using a user interface that bypasses any coding, results in something totally opaque that becomes unmaintainable.

I feel like there are a lot of things like that in Drupal -- it's like half of the team was/is building drupal for developers to use as a platform, and the other half was/is trying to wrestle control out of the hands of developers and make it something that can be infinitely configured to do a million different things using not just a million options, but options that involve multi-step creation of recursive filter structures using a drag and drop user interface. Stuff that once you create becomes opaque and undecipherable.

Again, there is much to love about Drupal -- but as a developer wanting to use it as the cms foundation to custom web service creation, i find it frustrating, and likely moving in the wrong direction. I'd really love to find a more developer-centric cms platform/framework, where the focus was not on making it infinitely configurable through a million options from the online gui configuration dialog, but rather through a programming API.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #46 on:** December 04, 2009, 04:47 AM »

Have you tried Joomla? The back end is simple but the API is apparently comprehensive for producing new modules and components (I haven't used it myself but it seems to be liked by the people who use it). Version 1.6 is looking to be a big step forward when it is released as it will streamline some of the code, remove all the legacy issues and introduce a proper user access rights module.

Personally I found the multiple layers and vocabulary in Drupal very confusing and poorly explained in the 'documentation' - maybe it is just me but I fimd Joomla to be well thought out and pretty straightforward to use.

mouser · « **Reply #47 on:** December 04, 2009, 05:10 AM »

My impression is that Joomla is less suitable as a development platform than Drupal. That could just be my lack of experience with it.

There are a LOT of things to be impressed with about Drupal from a coding standpoint -- for example how much effort has gone into the hook system and insuring that Modules can do what they need to do without ever messing with any core files. And there are some excellent books on coding for Drupal, which makes a huge difference for me.

One way to look at my complaints and frustrations about Drupal is simply that Drupal is trying mostly to be a CMS that sites can install and configure and use. Whereas I am less interested in being able to "configure" it to do custom stuff, but rather interested in writing code to extend and customize it. I may go back to using a framework like CodeIgniter, CakePhp, etc., I've just been very torn between taking a framework and adding more robust CMS features, versus taking a developer-centric CMS, and building on top of that. I've not yet found something i'm truly thrilled with.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #48 on:** December 04, 2009, 05:18 AM »

Joomla functionality seems to be designed to be entirely based on add on modules and components. Even Joomla as installed is based on replaceable modules and components.

I understand what you are saying about core hacking but it has been my experience in looking for 3rd party modules and components that you don't have to hack the core. There are lots of core hacks out there but many of the problems being solved are cracked by other coders without touching the core so the core hacking brigade are only really doing from laziness, bravado or incompetence. There are loads of coding books on Joomla too and it has the largest 3rd party add on library of any of the CMSes which are mostly free or inexpensive.

mouser · « **Reply #49 on:** September 23, 2010, 12:04 AM »

quick update:

there is just no way to express in a human language how horribly horribly wrong configuring and maintaining drupal is.. i've experienced few things that are as convoluted and guaranteed to end in frustration and anger.