I represent a major media site who is planning the redevelopment of their web site. I am the company's management consultant and technical advisor for all Internet initiatives. I am considering Drupal as the foundation of the site and would like the communities opinions about how appropriate the application might be.
The current site is custom developed on a LAMP platform, is media rich (photo galleries, video, etc.), is a PR7 site, has tens of thousands of pages, and produces a few hundred pages of additional in-house content each week. The client is very aware of Web 2.0 standards and would like to incorporate them (both technical and philosophy) as much as possible.
I am also looking for a handful of developers, who are capable of developing and maintaining the site, to field bids. This would be a very major undertaking and would require several full-time employees for development AND ongoing maintenance.
Any thoughts ideas?
Thanks,
Josh
Comments
my site is media heavy
and done it drupal :)
http://www.artistshousemusic.com
Randy
hi there
Well, I see that you have already made your decision. Therefore, I have edited my comment to you because there is no more need for me to provide a feedback.
Steve, I'm sorry you feel
Steve, I'm sorry you feel that way. I definitely have not made my decision yet, I still have a lot of questions and concerns. I've received some great comments through private messages that give a lot of insight into Drupal's scalability.
In addition to scalability, one of my main concerns is having to customize Drupal, or any platform, too much. The more customization that happens, the less it looks like Drupal, and the harder it is for others to maintain the site. It also makes it very difficult to upgrade as Drupal comes out with new releases.
Our requirements are heavily news oriented with embedded media files (photos and video platforms), lots of advertising, Flickr galleries, forums, several branded mini-sites within the domain, and several journalists posting stories, etc.
The beauty of customising
The beauty of customising Drupal is that (if it is done correctly, and believe me I have seen plenty of cases were it hasn't been!) you do not need to alter the core or contributed modules - meaning that you can happily install updates/patches with no worries. You would also write your modules in the "drupal way" meaning that any other Drupal developer should be able to pick them up without a problem.
I think you would struggle to find a full team of Drupal guys for a project like this - and your best bet would be to get in 1 or 2 Drupal gods to architect the site, and then have them work with a non-Drupal PHP team to implement.
Like books? Check out booktribes the new (Drupal based) community for book lovers
from Computerminds
Mike,
Computerminds offer Drupal development, consulting and training
hello
I have searched and studied just about every open source cms.
Drupal is more of a hardcore cms that you can wire to do just about anything that you want it to do. However, some bugs are still circling for many years. If you are a somewhat picky administrator, then you might be spending time wiring the cms then production but once wired then you have yourself a great cms that cant be beat and can last for many years. There is a module that will update your drupal to rid another small bug from time to time. Sorry, I cant remember that module name.
You might want to look at xoops.org
Out of the box, it has most of the features that you need and requires much less hacking than most popular cms and has lots of great looking themes. However, it lacks in collaboration effort but I doubt that you will need this.
If you want to spent time patching a module file or fixing something in the css to make your website just prefect, or if you want a collaboration effort, and approval system, and a good forum ect, then drupal is right for you. With drupal, you can get things done and fast if you are not so picky, but you can always find something else that needs to be done. There is a very large community of skilled patchers and programmers alike.
If you want an out of the box experience that needs very little if any patching, low collaboration effort, and all the other small goodies, then the xoop.org is where you should go. However, xoops is not as friendly, does not have as large of a community as drupal, and lack a solid api.
Drupal = at the professional level with small bugs from time to time. A lot of effort and discussion is going into this cms. Drupal is the leader and is running fast from second place. It is just that at this stage, drupal is more being wired.
Xoops = Basic, fast and easy. Does not have as good of an api as drupal. Requires very little hacking if any. Has just about everything other then a good workflow, approval system, ect.
In other words, for the computer nut that wants to get things done then drupal rocks!
For the not so stilled person that just want a site to run by itself, then go for xoops the basic and simple.
Very curious, Steve: you
Very curious, Steve: you wrote: "However, some bugs are still circling for many years. " Could you elaborate a bit on this? Which are these bugs??
Ludo
Using Drupal 5.1
break security
I am saying that 5v is already perhaps a few years old. Generally a new release is beta tested and then tested again. To make this point clear, v6 is worked on right now, and it might be a few years before it gets to a pubic release or 6.1. Consider that in the changelog file, Drupal 4.6.0 was released at 2005-04-15.
Lets not forget that each version is worked on and many bugs are fixed before a pubic release, but every once in a while we have a bug that is just not important enough for the 'majority' to squash. My point is that I have posted a bug report that is now 2 weeks old. Many has replied but nobody so far is able to fix and consider that the pubic release for v5 was 2 months ago. However, this bug may not be the result of a pubic release.
Let say that this bug was fixed in the HEAD 2 years ago, then 1 year later somebody does a small modification to the file in question and the bug is back again. This bug may have been floating around for many years. There may be a smaller bug that is not even noticed until 8 months from now, but this bug could be floating around for 4+ years. Therefore, we must pay attention to the slightest of bug.
In reference to this fine work of a program, we must take matters seriously because some bugs might be the result of an inside programmers work as an attempt to break security on day. Do not be eluded by the slightest of bug as there may be a propose for everything. The slightest of bug must be thought of as most paramount and must be payed attention to. This is a webmasters program and us webmasters must pay attention to fine details, or we could wake up one day and see that our website was hacked. A mysterious person could say, "The hacker can hack the hacking!"
Recommended read:
http://drupal.org/node/54607
http://drupal.org/project/issues/drupal?page=26&states=1&categories=bug
http://drupal.org/search/node/%22old+bugs%22
my bug report > http://drupal.org/node/122990
http://drupal.org/node/27334
http://drupal.org/node/34405
!!!???
Excuse you? This is non-sense.
You have a two week old account and your specific commentary shows that you are not familiar with the community, Drupal versions or the development cycle of Drupal. The versions are explained here.
Drupal 5 was released THIS year and is not 'a few years old'. A security issue was brought to the developers attention and an update was released 5.1 along with other various bug fixes. Currently Drupal 5 is in maintenance mode. This means that bug fix and security updates will be released as needed. As with any software package.
Drupal 6 is being worked on yes. It will NOT be several years before it is release. The code freeze for Drupal 6 is June. After that it will go into testing till a beta release, then a release candidate, then a full release. This is the SAME release cycle Drupal has had since it's initial release 6 years ago as a stable platform.
Stevestark, this seriously sounds like you have some personal ax to grind. You keep saying 'We' in your commentary like you are part of the long term participating 'we' when you are in fact not. Drupal is not perfect but your vague insinuations amount to fear mongering.
Jabevan, there are several large scale sites using Drupal successfully. Our Media is one that immediately comes to mind, The Onion is another and a recent addition by Team Sugar yet another. We'll just skip MTV or Sony and Ad's of the world.
I would also recommend posting on the Newspapers in Drupal interest group for other professional opinions that are probably more relevant to real world Drupal media use.
A last note, sometimes it is useful to click on a persons nick to see their account. You can see how old their account is and what level and type of participation they have with the community. This can provide valuable insight into various people and their responses.
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
Your quote in bold, "Drupal
Your quote in bold, "Drupal 5 was released THIS year..."
I suggest that you re-read my comment...
my quote "consider that the pubic release for v5 was 2 months ago'.
Your quote "Drupal 5 was released THIS year and is not 'a few years old'"
my quote "I am saying that 5v is already perhaps a few years old. Generally a new release is beta tested and then tested again. " I am talking about the first attempts of v5. Tell me, was v5 being worked on about 1 years ago. Yes it was, because I was here under a different name and I know so. Was it here about 2 years ago. Once again, I repeat. So you see, v5 is already 2 years or more in the makings.
Now you do not need to tell me about the release cycle. My point is that every time a major release is out, there is soon after a major security warning.
Your quote "This is the SAME release cycle Drupal has had since it's initial release 6 years ago as a stable platform"
and here is the changelog...
Drupal 5.1, 2007-01-29
Drupal 5.0, 2007-01-15
Drupal 4.7.5, 2007-01-05
Drupal 4.7.4, 2006-10-18
Drupal 4.7.2, 2006-06-01
Drupal 4.5.8, 2006-03-13
Drupal 4.5.7, 2005-12-12
Drupal 4.1.0, 2003-02-01
Drupal 4.0.0, 2002-06-15
Drupal 3.0.1, 2001-10-15
Drupal 3.0.0, 2001-09-15
Drupal 2.0.0, 2001-03-15
Drupal 1.0.0, 2001-01-15
as you can see, this averages at about 2+ years for a new release.
sepeck, it sounds like you have not carefully read my comment. There is no need to attack. We are merely having a discussion. I am merely expressing my feelings as to how I see things.
your quote, "A last note, sometimes it is useful to click on a persons nick to see their account."
This is just very bad tactics. You see, if you would read this message carefully, you would know that I am a member for a much longer time. It is just that I changed my membership name. :) To start new conversations of the like.
Now lets try to keep this as less emotion as possible. There is no need to uncork the bottle.
....
Changed your name? Interesting. Did you not want to associate your past tracker with your current? You can change your nick without creating a new account and have been able to do so for as long as I've had an account which is several years.
In any case your change log is missing several major version releases. Here's All the major version releases without the point releases. I see at least one a year.
Drupal 5.0, 2007-01-15
Drupal 4.7.0, 2006-05-01
Drupal 4.6.0, 2005-04-15
Drupal 4.5.0, 2004-10-18
Drupal 4.4.0, 2004-04-01
Drupal 4.3.0, 2003-11-01
Drupal 4.2.0, 2003-08-01
Drupal 4.1.0, 2003-02-01
Drupal 4.0.0, 2002-06-15
Drupal 3.0.0, 2001-09-15
Drupal 2.0.0, 2001-03-15
Drupal 1.0.0, 2001-01-15
The rest of your previous commentary contains a lot of hyperbole. As to 'bad tactics', new people may not know that they can view this type of information on accounts. It wasn't a tactic, it was an informative bit to help other new comers to the community evaluate the words of people answering their question. I checked your tracker to see your previous participation in light of your rather random comments, I felt that others should know of the option as well.
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
hyperbole courteous
My new account has nothing to do with changing a username because it is the result of a forgotten password and/or a changed email address. I find no benefit in proving this however i am able to do so.
Quote me if i am wrong. The first number in those versions is the major release, the second number is the minor release. Calculations can show that 5 releases in 7 years will average more than 1 year and less than 2 years. :)
your quote "I checked your tracker to see your previous participation in light of your rather random comments"
Are you saying that members are not free to randomly comment on any topic because I see no point in this remark.
sepeck, I fully understand your concern. However, my motivation was only to provide information for the author of this topic. At first I did not want to provide information but I was later asked to do so. My intension was not to mislead or sway another member in anyway. I have replied to you in the same way that you have replied to me. I have only demonstrated a tick for tack.
ok ...
The link I provided about version numbers had this information.
For 5.0 the first number is the major release and the second the minor release.
For 4.7.0 and each previous release the first AND second digit is the MAJOR release.
Calculations show 12 major releases in 6 years.
The point is your comments here, here and here present a view of someone who has not used Drupal extensively. The fact that you do not understand the Drupal version numbers nor the recent version scheme change demonstrates you are not familiar with current Drupal. Yet in your posts you imply great experience with Drupal.
You are perfectly free to provide what information you want but your comments just struck me as odd so I thought it would be best to try and provide balance and links.
There was a release, two weeks ago, of a brand new never existed before module that will notify you of newer module versions but it will not update your site for you.
While it is true that work goes into each version, v5 is not a few years old. It was released this year. True elements that went into 5 have been discussed for a while but that merely means they were not ready or additional ground work needed to be laid before adding to a production release as is responsible.
This is open source software, so it's development is open for the world to see and this is just a really weird sentence.
Every code commit is in cvs, project module and there are only 4 people with CVS commit access. Your phrasing seems to be that of a long term contributor to Drupal and this may be confusing to a new person who you are answering questions when your tracker doesn't demonstrate this.
As far as I am concerned I am providing answers to the original post as well. You are welcome to provide information. I am trying to help educate you on some of the details which you seem to not quite have right. I also provided links to known high traffic multi-media Drupal sites that are working very well to show Drupal in such use as originally asked.
I and others often use people's tracker to check the extent of support participation, gauge the relative experience in the community of someone and see what areas they seem to be working in. It can be a useful tool in evaluating answers people give.
All we are having is a conversation and all I am trying to do is help provide you and others with information to make an informed choice.
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
Please pay attention to the fine details
Lets consider that there are 12 major releases in 6 years. Then what you are saying is that there will most likely be 1 major security warning in about every 6 months. Instead of the 2 years that I am suggesting. I fail to see how that can discredit me. If anything, it enforces my comments.
If I should not talk about only the 'X' in the X,Y,Z version system and drupal is not using a standard version system, then my comments are still enforced.
...
Perhaps you should read the link I provided about long history of Drupal's version numbering and stop making random nonsensical comments that truly demonstrate your complete ignorance of the Drupal development cycle, project history and how it is used and deployed in production environments large and small worldwide.
Despite your earlier claim as someone who used Drupal it is obvious you have not. You seem to have an ax to grind or a troll and as such no longer interesting.
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
improve your tactics
Quote from wikipedia, "Internet trolling involves a user making comments intended to provoke an angry response.": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolling
you have ran down a member as an attempt to discredit...
your quotes, "this seriously sounds like you have some personal ax to grind... You have a two week old account... your previous commentary contains a lot of hyperbole..."
You are not paying attention to the fine details.
my quotes, "I suggest that you re-read my comment... sepeck, it sounds like you have not carefully read my comment... You see, if you would read this message carefully..."
You have successfully managed to twist this topic into a pretzel.
Your obvious attempts to discredit me, only enforces my previous comments.
If I should not talk about only the 'X' in the X.Y.Y version system and drupal is not using a standard version system, then my comments are still enforced.
Your comments contain too much irrelevant content. Please, improve your tactics because you are only discrediting yourself.
its interesting that you
its interesting that you post that link about what trolling is as it seems to be exactly what you are doing. Why else would anyone hijack this thread in the manner that you have?
It is most interesting that
You are already a contributor of this topic...
You are motivated because I stated to you that you have just enforced my comment.
Therefore, you have made a bias trolling decision.
I thank you once again for enforcing my previous comment.
Yes, you are VeryMisunderstood!
Why change membership name?
"You see, if you would read this message carefully, you would know that I am a member for a much longer time. It is just that I changed my membership name. :)"
I am a noob, but I am having a hard time making some of your comments make sense. Why did you change your name?
You are raving
There is peer review and there are core committers. It's one thing to overlook something or that the combination of two things break something but to break security deliberately?
--
The news is Now Public | Drupal development: making the world better, one patch at a time. | A bedroom without a teddy is like a face without a smile. | Blog about life in Hungary
--
Drupal development: making the world better, one patch at a time. | A bedroom without a teddy is like a face without a smile.
a very skilled person
your quote "peer review and there are core committers."
Have a look at some open source cms websites. Do they not express a security concern just weeks after a major release? If you can give me a good reason why this never happens in this world then I will consider.
There is no debit here. I am merely suggesting that the slightest of bug may be the next major security brake. Many of us know that drupal is stable and powerful and has a great community, but there is no such thing as unhackable!
Do they not express a
this is not a correct statement, there are MANY other open source CMS's that find a secuirty situation after a major public release, this information is freely available on the internet as well.
secuirty releases are made shortly after they are found, and by shortly, i mean hours after discovery. your validation bug report is hardly an open door for hackers.
exactly correct
This is again, a misunderstanding of my above comment.
Here, I will quote what you quoted, but I will put in the sentence before it.
This is what I said, "Have a look at some open source cms websites. Do they not express a security concern just weeks after a major release? If you can give me a good reason why this never happens in this world then I will consider."
In the above, I am not talking about drupal. I am talking about the other websites.
Here is your quote, "there are MANY other open source CMS's that find a secuirty situation after a major public release"
My point exactly, as you have just enforced my above comment. Thank you.
Your quote, "security releases are made shortly after they are found, and by shortly, i mean hours after discovery."
hours, weeks, minutes... but my point is that the security warning generally comes shortly after the major release.
Clarification
This is an old site with approximately 20,000,000 page views per month. In my search I need to field two things:
1) is Drupal up to the task, can it stand up to that much traffic (at times the site will do around 1,000,000 views within a few hours during special events).
2) is the developer up to the task, the development will require several dedicated employees to develop and maintain the site on an ongoing basis.
I need to reiterate that this is a major media site.
Drupal is built on PHP and scales nicely - Don't believe myths
Josh,
Yahoo, Amazon, Google. They all use scripting languages. Yahoo uses PHP as it's primary programming language ( with javascript thrown in).
Drupal is built on PHP also. The latest versions run nearly neck and neck with Java platforms. Don't believe me ?
But remember what TRUE scalability is...(or defined)
See here - > http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2003/10/15/php_scalability.html
Or here -> http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2004/07/php_scales.html
Or here -> http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/archives/2006/07/rasmus-lerdorf-php-web...
It's just a matter of how far you want to take Drupal. It's a great platform / framework to start from. But incorporating Web 2.0 technologies can be done without Drupal's help. Always keep that in mind also. Using GWT (Google Web Tools) or Yahoo's many tools found on their Developer Network can bring Web 2.0 functionality to any existing site. As can several thousands of dollars and a bunch of good guys / girls with lots of time on their hands. ;-)
Best of Luck in your decision !
- Thad
The current site is LAMP
The current site is LAMP (i.e. PHP) and runs pretty well. The underlying infrastructure is about six years old though and desperately needs to be overhauled. There is a lot of overhead spent maintaining the site. I've always been impressed with Drupal and the community built around it, but have no hands on experience with the platform myself.
The development budget is in the several hundred thousand dollar range, as is the ongoing maintenance budget.
Question, how receptive is Drupal to changes to the source? I would say, if this site goes with Drupal, it will likely be the most high-profile site on the application, but with that comes demand as well....
If you are a Drupal and/or LAMP prodigy, preferably in the Southeast US, please send me a portfolio / resume and rate requirements. I'm looking for an all-star cast of really talented programmers and designers.
with that kind of a budget,
with that kind of a budget, why not seek out the consultants ? lullabots.com who did mtv.uk for example ? There are many highly skilled drupal developers floating around these parts, though not sure how often they swing by the general discussion forum. Your topic may be better suited for the paid drupal services forum.
2bits.com are also highly skilled with drupal.
there is a consultants list floating around here somewhere, though for the life of me, I couldn't find it with my quick browse through.
Good advice, than you. I
Good advice, thank you.
I was probably too quick to post, I didn't noticed a paid services forum. Thanks!
Lullabot.com
Josh, we're a reasonably large city portal in Australia (ourbrisbane.com) (not on Drupal yet, but well on its way :) and had 2 of the lullabots (Angie and Ted) flown out here for a week to assist us in planning our move to Drupal. The purpose was not actually working on the site, but more about consultancy regarding the best plan of attack for this very large project.
It wasn't exactly cheap, but nobody here has ever regretted that investment and it sounds like you have a healthy budget. It really gave us a headstart and a comforting confidence that we're making the right move, which is invaluable when tackling a long-term project that fundamentally affects the way people in an organization work...it will also give you far clearer answers to the question whether Drupal is right for your circumstances than any forum post can do.
Good luck...
I am just a small time dude
I do a music tv show on Public Access.
I have to pay for it (from end to end) out of my pocket.
You said you are a custom developed on LAMP.
One thing I would change, is I would use FBSD instead of linux.
(but that just me, because I learned about packet sequence guessing)
You should probably just set drupal up and try it.
One thing I don't see addressed is I wonder how you will convert your "tens of thousands of pages" into drupal's database format?
I can't help ya there. I had that problem when I came from another format also. I ended up hand doing about 75 pages of important value then blew the rest off. data entry is a pain in the ass. Maybe it's better for you to hire some data entry folks to cull through those tens of thousands of pages? (You didn't say what format it was)
As far as adding a few hundred pages each week, as long as your ISP can handle it eh? I am sure drupal can handle it. and if you got some 200k hits, that again is an ISP issue eh? colo/unmaged/managed/whatever+your bandwidth, just throw money at that problem eh? I don't see how this is a drupal issue. Although I am just a small time dude.
One thing I have learned that if your gonna have a myriad of video content posted by different methods, different people (Some who know nothing about code), your gonna loose your xhtml validation. I don't care what any of the guru's here say.
(lets see em fix the rss heh..)
When you got someone posting a
<br>in html and another a<br />in xhtml your validation is b0rked. (Just a dumbed down example) It could be missing alt= images or whatever.Anyway you might consider a developer to work out some kind of code where no matter who enters what, it get's filtered/fixed to be xhtml. Otherwise your validation might look something like this:
http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fsacxtra.com%2Fm...
Which is really no worse than anywhere else actually. I try to be xhtml compliant. It's all I can do. I would worry more if I were you about accessibility. The way I used to do it was to fire up lynx and if I could browse my site, the accessibility was FINE in my opinion. But then I am just a small time dude.
As far as web 2.0 I couldn't tell you about that. As far as I am concerned, that's just a made up term. (Maybe by Oreily?) Code is Code. Ideas are Ideas. nothing special there. I am not impressed by anything with a Web 2.0 name in it. If you have some new IDEAS then I might be impressed by that.
If you search around, you will find developers that work for money. (I don't have that luxury) But they are out there.
The page ranking thing (I didn't even know that term) I couldn't help you with, I checked our sites and I get like 3-4 depending on what page you hit. I don't see how having some link ranking thing has any bearing on if drupal is suitable. but then I am just one dude doing to much stuff. I guess I screwed up on my meta tags. Since I am not for profit, I don't care. But if that's your thing, I would assume that a 7/10 page rank is not as good as a 10/10 which means you probably need someone to fix your meta tags too. Or if your site spams the same info everywhere start yanking the links down..
Personally, I think drupal can handle anything you can throw at it. In the last couple years I noticed a hell of a lot of democratic websites all using drupal. And I know for a fact a lot of them get a boatload of bandwidth because of the topics.
Sadly I am not the .css guru either. But You probably want someone that knows specifically how to tweak every part of a drupal theme. Obviously your going to want your own theme.
Being a major media outlet, I guess you never picked a bad topic like electronic voting machine failures and electronic voting machine fraud or suddenly you'd have find your servers under constant Ddos like mine are now.
Anyway, that's my advice dude.
I don't even know why I wrote this, since I hate corporate media and their blackout on certain topics. I hope your not that. But then who cares right? I don't care what anyone here says. It's my opinion, and my RIGHT to say it.
Bottom line.
Drupal rocks!
Can it rock for you? You'll have SOME hoops to jump, but that's with anything. Know WHERE to find the ACCURATE information quickly, never panic, and you'll do just fine.
With 100,000 dollar budget it hell-a could. Man if I had that money I'd throw it at some servers. Then again you can donate to open source, or drupal or save the penguins or club the baby seals, or whatever. Drupal is Open Source so your not really spending a lot of money there.
disclamer note:
I didn't attack anyone personally here, so give me the same respect, all I did was give opinion/help/3yr old drupal wisdom, no need for any personal attacks. If you want to clarify FACT that's great! but if all you wanna do is show your superiority and lambaste, bugger off and go do whatever the hell you want, cause I don't really give a crap what ya do OR THINK or even who you are or who you think you are, one way or the other in the big picture it does not matter.
I agree
Most people are only giving an opinion, to help the original author of this topic to make a decision.
So, Sepeck, please move your trolling tactics to another topic.
...
I corrected mis information supplied and provided relavant links for the originating author. I also provided links to accurate information that you seemed to have over looked and still haven't read so that people could make an informed opinion.
Please follow the links and improve your understanding of the subjects you posted on rather then trying to pick a fight or play the victim.
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide