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By geddon on
Until recently, I hadn't noticed how similar Drupal is to Wordpress. Aside from being a PHP/MySQL application, Wordpress and Drupal share similar paths to theme and extend the application. While it seems that Wordpress is a much more mature product, Drupal ultimately seems to be more extensible from the non-developers perspective.
Where Drupal falls behind Wordpress is usability in general. To begin with, Drupal.com could potentially act as Wordpress.com, allowing new users the ability to log in and create their own Drupal.com website. As with Wordpress, this site would be free, with a myriad of "nickle and dime" features to help raise money for the project.
There is a lot Drupal.com could learn from Wordpress.com, such as:
1. Dashboard screen connecting directly to the user community. Additional feeds could also report updates to the user's Drupal sites, along with feeds from Drupal.org.
2. A navigation bar which is all the rage amongst social websites including Wordpress.com, Blogger.com, and Ning.com. This would allow visitors to automatically join Drupal.com while giving site owners control over their sites.
3. AJAX is critical to Drupal, and would provide a wonderful element of simplicity for site creation on Drupal.com. Imagine drag-and-dropping sidebar elements, page layouts, and modules for a site.
If anyone is interested in conceptualizing Drupal.com, feel free to send me a line. I'd be more than happy to help out through wireframing and documentation!
Comments
have you seen this post?
Possible IA redesign mockup:
http://groups.drupal.org/node/3769
maybe a good place for your input.
Thanks for the tip!
I just noticed a post from this group in Drupal Groups. I appreciate the heads-up!
(cR)
cool!
It's mentioned in that thread how invisible groups.drupal can be to visitors of drupal.org, hence my crosslink! :-)
The projects are simply not philisophically comparable
If you haven't read this link, you really should.
http://drupal.org/node/65922
Apparently new users are drawn to Drupal because of its modularity, but the majority of casual users who are pleased with wordpress will not be able to stomach the lack of backwards compatibility between drupal versions.
The modularity is Drupal's greatest strength, but is also its greatest weakness in terms of the more demanding casual users who will not be able to understand why certain things are broked.
My view is to let Wordpress chase casual users.
Let Drupal be the venue for innovative and customizable web development.
After Downloading Wordpress...
I experienced a bit of a shock when I discovered that the "Multiple Blog Edit Bar" and the simple drag-and-drop page design on Wordpress.com wasn't included in the download.
This make sense being that I agree with you in saying the modularity is one of Drupal's greatest strengths. If all of these simple "bells and whistles" were included in the download, developers would have to work even hard to omit these changes (unless they were simply unchecked as a standard module).
That said, Drupal.org can provide a strong framework for Drupal.com. These improvements are simply meant to help spread Drupal and raise much-needed financial support and public awareness.
I guess my question is
"These improvements are simply meant to help spread Drupal and raise much-needed financial support and public awareness."
Have I missed a post that says that financial support for this project is "much needed"? I am relatively new here, but has that been said by a core developer? Also, why would they need to raise public awareness somewhat artificially, when now public awareness is raising at a manageable pace so that support forums can offer support and not be flooded with garbage posts, and developers can actually get to work instead of spending their time with users of their "free site". My impression is that most developers would rather code Drupal instead of attempting to run a business on the side consuming time away from working on Drupal.
Also, I think it is important to know the history of Wordpress. Matt M., the key developer over there, has always been trying to make money out of Wordpress, even through illegitimate means. That is his choice, but it is important not to confuse the idea that he wants to make money out of wordpress with what other free software projects might hold as their ideal for their projects (which might not be financial at all).
What Matt did two years ago was truly disgusting to me, and frankly I do not trust him or his project.
Here are the details:
http://www.waxy.org/archive/2005/03/30/wordpres.shtml
I will never use wordpress again, and I hope to goodness the attitude of Drupal developers never follows this "chasing every last dollar" model.
Keep in mind that he uses the dashboard to monitor the amount of users logged into the program, and that previously wordpress sent a ping back to wordpress everytime it was installed. It is also so self obsessive that every time you install it, your frontpage will have links directly back to wordpress. It's just too much self-promotion and it is about making a dollar for Matt far more than it is about creating a clean and open project.
He might be a good person otherwise, but for me, his reputation precedes him.
You seem resolved on this issue..
I think it's a safe bet to assume that Drupal could use financial support -- although the post your post regarding Wordpress is very much appreciated. One of the things which makes me such a huge proponent of FOSS is the fact that solutions are valued more highly than wealth.
But let's not throw the Capitalist out with the bathwater. There are still a lot of great ideas on Wordpress.com which could be incorporated into Drupal.com.
Hold up...
I'm a complete capitalist myself, in fact I'm a flaming free market libertarian at that... however, I will not support another individual at the personal expense of my values and good-intentions when it comes to supporting a free software product! In other words, don't use me to game your software for your own benefit blatantly and openly in front of my face.
Since that is largely what wordpress.com is about, I really would be disappointed to see that mentality infect Drupal.
I am resolved on this issue, only because free software depends on reputation more than anything, and having jumped into the wordpress code a year ago I can tell you there were definitely some quirky schemes going on under the hood.
"I think it's a safe bet to assume that Drupal could use financial support"
I just don't see why anyone would assume such a thing without direct evidence.
Wordpress was merely an example..
After reading your comments regarding free market capitalism I'm suddenly moved to rant on the subject of Open Socialism.
I'll pause for the moment simply because capitalism and the controversy surround Wordpress has little to do with certain usability elements of Wordpress.com which interest me.
Though I am curious to know why such a proud capitalist would question the need for financial support?
I don't "question the need for financial support"
if Dries or core developers are asking for it. Each project can have its own goal or philisophical focus which doesn't have to be commercial for the creators of the software. Of course many developers are using drupal to make websites for large organizations and get paid through that, then they contribute the developments of those projects back to Drupal, which I suppose is something you might not be aware of?
I believe for many developers Drupal isn't an "end product" which needs to be "marketed on an open market to end-users", it is much more a collection of refinements from the customization of Drupal for an open market, which in free software terms is usually known as a "support service". Since most revenue in the software industry comes from support services (i.e. customization), there is already funding in the system, and Drupal benefts from the results of that funding.
Wordpress, on the otherhand, has that "end-product" mentality, and so doesn't have much of a market for customization, meaning that their goal is to sell their actual product as a service to end-users, and therefore ease of customization takes a back seat.
What you and others are advocating is essentially the destruction of Drupal's customization market (which benefits many developers who use drupal in the market to make a living, and then provide patches back to the community) for an end-user driven market with a financially top-heavy burden to create code from the inside, (no customization market means less innovative patch submissions from outside of the project), that would only send money directly to the core developers (in Wordpress's case, mostly Matt).
If you consider the way the linux kernel is developed today, you would see that drupal shares the same type of organizational structure. Dries basically sits at the helm and collects patches from any random developer in the world who has likely changed drupal for a project they are working on, and Dries reviews the code in the patches and chooses whether to incorporate it or not. This is why saying "core developers" is actually very confusing since there really isn't any centrally organized core all hanging out in an office somewhere.
Wordpress is very different, with a real core of developers, many hired by wordpress to work directly on chasing end user demands. This unfortunately kills a market for customizability which tends to drive innovative code as I mentioned earlier.
I don't find either model unethical, by the way, though Matt's previous behavior was unethical, his current model seems to be at least ethical.
What it comes down to is that I am much more comfortable with the results of a linux kernel model of development than I am with the centralized method of wordpress. There is less room for abuse, and more focus on a true marketplace for its development.
So, a lot of free software and market theory there for you, hopefully I explained it well.