Thread

Wish there was an obvious answer. I’ve worked on a site that is in this dilemma too. The marketing side of the site is built in drupal but the application is coded on its own (in C I think). It’s been tough to piece together the places where the lines between app and web site blur, but we just kind of take it on a case by case basis. I don’t think there is one perfect, blanket answer

I am planning on building a Rich Application for my client using Code Igniter, JQuery, CSS and Javascript. Just wanted to rule out Drupal before I get started.

(I have a feeling that getting the desired affect from CSS and Javascript would be difficult in Drupal)

Where do you think I will face problems, down the line, if I choose to build my application in Drupal?

Drupal would help in that it has some great libraries and framework structures that would get you up and going really quickly. But it is built for enterprise-level content management, not for applications. Code Igniter is built for applications. The biggest drawback is that Drupal would add a lot of unnecessary bloat (needless code, useless queries, etc.)

Typically you should consider Drupal or ExpressionEngine for Web sites and CodeIgniter for custom applications

I found this thread really interesting, as so many of the comments reflected my experience with CI and Drupal.

I’ve developed a few Drupal sites, including the student newspaper site for the college where I teach, I’ve read Drupal books, and I even attended DrupalCon last year.  The last six months I’ve been working extensively with CI on a tutoring application.  As Colin and others have said, Drupal and CI each have their strengths.

But for me, developing in CI feels less like work than Drupal, even though Drupal is theoretically more functional out of the box.  Sometimes in Drupal it’s a challenge just deciding which of the half-dozen modules available for every conceivable task is best suited for what I need to do, especially when some contributed modules are dependent on other contributed modules.  When I build something in CI, yes, it may take more actual programming time, but I feel like my overall decision-making time on a project is reduced, because at least I know exactly what I need to do and how to do it.

So it just comes down to how you want to spend your development time. Everyone knows Drupal has a prolific community of developers, but working effectively in Drupal practically requires that you keep pace with what’s happening in that community, and that takes time.  CI requires more initial development time for things like CRUD and user authentication, but from there you can build just what you need.  And the CI forum is active enough to answer questions and help with best practices and so on.

Very true. What I like about using CI is exactly that: build what you need instead of twirling the spaghetti.

The problem with Drupal is that it offers so much in terms of customisation it is incredibly complex and hard to learn. I personally think Drupal has become bloated and is kind of killing itself with each and every commit to its codebase.

I mean seriously, Wordpress can be just as powerful as Drupal with half the size of Drupals codebase and half the learning time it takes to learn how to create themes, plugins and add in core functionality. I can’t stand monolithic CMS’s like Drupal.

I think we all are tired of using bloated cms’s that we have to hack to do what we really need.  Not to mention after you you make it work you have to teach it to someone. 

Solution:
You need to check out http://osmek.com Osmek was developed with CI
Its a super lightweight, beautiful cms were your data is accessed through an API.
Its your content, available where and how you need it

oh and did I mention there is a codeigniter library http://ellislab.com/forums/viewthread/160685/