Thread

I wonder when Wordpress will break out of it’s blogging shell, if ever.  I suppose it is plenty successful as a blogging engine.

I don’t think it ever will. It has made some strides in tacking on CMS features (pages support, using pages as your “index” rather than the blog list, etc.) but Wordpress == blogging.

I believe Automattic will leave the transition of Wordpress to a CMS up to the theme/plugin developers out there. It’s extremely easy to do - there are a ton of magazine themes out there that replicate a CMS quite well.

On one of my blogs (MOGBase), although I use it primarily as a blog I have incorporated quite a few CMS’ish features into it (particularly, within the Game Directory) via custom plugins and “outside the box” thinking when it comes to templates.

Ok,
My Experience is to use EE or do a custom system for you needs borrowing from the OS projects.
I hate all major CMS’s: Drupal, Joomla, Mambo, XOOPS, Typo3, Etc…
-Matt

Well thank you for all your support I will let you know when I hear from the hiring manager.

Hopefully no more kittens will be hurt!

[update]Got an email, apprantly HR manager will be in touch 😊 [/update]

To update everyone, I did eventually get an offer from Apple this week and needless to say it wasn’t great so I am for the foreseeable killing kittens and dieing a little bit inside every time I look at drupal code.

Any update with this? Do you still hate drupal?  I am going to start a new job soon managing a descent sized website, and have been looking at CMSish solutions.  I was thinking with using Drupal, but now am leaning towards wordpress.

ExpressionEngine. Seriously. I’ve only played around with EE, and I have a few complaints, but it never felt like I was ramming my ideas down the software’s throat. I had to twist Drupal really hard to make a fairly simple website come together, simply because my idea of how a document should be formed and theirs didn’t quite match up.

And I’m not just saying that because this is an EllisLab network forum. 😊

Mambo, Druopal, Joomla folks give a try to Typevista CMS it is based on CodeIgniter. Try demo at http://demo.typevista.com. Actually I am looking for fellow developer who would help me to run this project opensource.

It seems like all who hate Drupal just don’t have the patience (nor the chops, maybe) to grasp its concepts. I’m not going to waste time defending it. It wins CMS awards year after year and is supported by major corporations (notably IBM).

What I think it really lacks is good documentation, and that is to blame with much of the frustration. (But I’d bet people who hate it have never even read a book on it, or at the least breezed through the bootstrapping files.)

I have bad experience with Dropal so i won’t recommend using it.

I started to know drupal around 2003 and kept away due to bad themes, and turned to mambo, soon joomla and wordpress, and then back to drupal. I am an end user with a bit of flash knowledge, no php expert. What I find the most friendly to play around safely is drupal this far. That’s why I keep using it for almost 3 years now.

Sometimes I just need a simple blogging software, I can use wordpress just as easily. Sometimes I need a simpler CMF for a simple client, that’s why I am still looking for alternatives. And that’s why I am here to find out about CI. I am not that kind of guy with like and dislike temperaments. The only reason is simply because they are open source. I can not hate one due to something I can not accomplish. What I can do as an end user is to optimize the software I am using upto my very needs to the best knowledge I know.

It seems like all who hate Drupal just don’t have the patience (nor the chops, maybe) to grasp its concepts. I’m not going to waste time defending it. It wins CMS awards year after year and is supported by major corporations (notably IBM).

What I think it really lacks is good documentation, and that is to blame with much of the frustration. (But I’d bet people who hate it have never even read a book on it, or at the least breezed through the bootstrapping files.)

You’re right; I’d guess that 90% or more of my frustration with Drupal as a platform is that all the sophisticated stuff is undocumented. Most of the “how do I do X” questions I have are answered with, “Oh, you can use hook_something to capture that.” But there’s no documentation on hook_something anywhere in the codebase. The best way to learn the platform, seemingly, is to download a dozen themes and take them apart to see how they work: thank Shai-halud that themes are open-source.

And if you fear for your sanity, don’t look at the third-party modules to see the atrocious HTML they put out. Once you see it, you can’t un-see it.

And if you fear for your sanity, don’t look at the third-party modules to see the atrocious HTML they put out. Once you see it, you can’t un-see it.

Yeah, but the HTML anything puts out is moot, because you can just override it with your theme.

“Oh, you can use hook_something to capture that.” But there’s no documentation on hook_something anywhere in the codebase.

http://api.drupal.org/ has always been my friend. As far as poor contributed modules go, put that blame on the creators and maintainers of those modules, not Drupal.

I’m as equally a fan of Drupal as I am of CodeIgniter. I think CodeIgniter, as a framework, could borrow a lot of ideas from Drupal, as could all those who use CodeIgniter. I never see something in Joomla or Mambo where I say, “Damn! That’s elegant! Wish CI had some sort of feature/convention/workflow/API like that.” Happens all the time with Drupal.

I have been developing websites for a few years and have done a few sites in Xoops and Drupal and write a technical blog using Wordpress.

Wordpress and Drupal are not two comparable entities.  Wordpress is great for writing a blog.  The admin interface is great, there are hundreds of plugins, there are thousands of themes, and many of them look pretty good without needing to update them.  Other than that, it’s just blog software.

Drupal on the other hand is a full fledged CMS, and realistically more.  I didn’t understand Drupal at first when a developer friend started touting it to me.  It took me a couple of years to really understand the powerful features that it has built in (and that’s if you don’t know how to program PHP).  If you do know how to write/modify PHP, it opens up even greater doors.

I have found the support for Drupal and it’s modules very good.  Maybe you just haven’t searched the site thoroughly enough.  There is api.drupal.org.  There is groups.drupal.org, and each module that has a maintainer has an issues/bug report queue for asking questions, reporting bugs, and creating patches.  There is also the Drupal Handbooks - http://drupal.org/handbooks

I do all of my basic brochureware, band, and corporate type sites in Drupal now.  I also recently did an online radio station with a Drupal front end.

That being said, I’m starting to learn PHP, whereas before I was just installing and managing scripts written in PHP.

I’m curious about 1 thing.  Why would I write a PHP application using PHP with a framework instead of writing a custom Drupal module?

As far as I see it here are the pros and cons.  Please correct me where I’m wrong.
Pros for PHP with framework: Very flexible, can use existing framework libraries.

Cons for PHP with framework: need to build basic foundations of website such as user login, security/roles/permission, admin interface, blog, captcha, menu system, etc.  Need to build a template system (if the framework doesn’t have one) or use Smarty (or other PHP template system)

Pros for Drupal writing a custom module: all basic foundation of the website are already built and easy/quick to install/setup.  There are multitudes of pre-written modules to choose from.  The core code is constantly “stress tested” for security holes and patched accordingly.

Cons for Drupal writing a custom module: Potentially less flexibility than pure PHP (maybe I’m wrong on that). Need to understand the Drupal API.

I already know how to customize Drupal themes, which is a big plug.  With learning a new framework, I feel like I need to start from scratch with the themes.

Can anybody shed object light on this?  I know the actual task that you are trying to accomplish with a custom PHP development job probably dictates the technology to be used more than anything.

@lazyburners

Drupal isn’t really intended for applications because of its bulkiness. It’s amazing for rapid prototyping, but if you’re writing a serious application, you are going to want to keep it as lightweight as possible. Something like CodeIgniter is especially great in this scenario because you have so much control. I think most people’s frustration with CI is that they don’t fully understand its role. It’s a framework in the truest sense. It’s not a CMS, nor is it what I call “prefab applications,” like Yii, CakePHP, etc., which come with goodies like user authentication out of the box.

Drupal for Web sites. CodeIgniter for Web apps.

@lazyburners

Drupal for Web sites. CodeIgniter for Web apps.

I guess, that’s in a nutshell, what my question is.  How to decipher the difference between a traditional website that I’m used to developing and a specific web task, which is inherintely a website.

For example, it needs all the basic foundations that a normal “website” would need.

I’ve asked this on the Drupal discussion forums and the #drupal IRC channel and have not really had anyone lay out “the obvious” to me.