Drupal vs .Net

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N.Mehrabany
CSS Formatter & Optimizer
Baruzh web design & programming

Show them a prototype (rough version) of the site with Drupal and then tell them how long it took you.

Show them that Open source has a large market cap based on this:

http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2007/11/overallc.gif

Or head to http://news.netcraft.com/ to prove them the point. ;-)

The obvious commercial argument aside...

A critical consideration is that the .NET framework is much less built up than Drupal or any other CMS. .NET is not a CMS which means that a pure .NET CMS type solution will need built up. I can tell you that I've managed large teams of people building .NET applications to do what a pre-built CMS platform already did. The costs were enormous just to get to par with a higher level solution like Drupal, Joomla!, or DotNetNuke.

The commercial footprint is pretty important. .Net will require time, VS, MSSQL, CALs, Windows Server, and expensive controls. Drupal requires time. .Net is most compelling when you are licensed under generous terms that allow you to scale without linear licensing costs.

My thoughts...

When you say "to a .NET based CMS" do you mean that they have one in mind? The better comparison would be between Drupal and this particular solution they are thinking of rather than .NET in general otherwise it's like comparing MS Office with OS X or apples with an Orange tree.

I do a lot of developing in CakePHP (which is similar to .NET but for PHP) and it's very powerful and flexible, but it's a whole level below solutions like Drupal, Joomla, SugarCRM, etc... To create something as complicated and mature as Drupal from a framework like .NET or CakePHP would take a LOT of time and effort.

As was mentioned before, the choice is not Drupal vs. a proprietary solution. There are plenty of open source .NET CMSes out there. DotNetNuke was mentioned, and MojoPortal is now getting some attention after winning Packt Publishing's Best Other Open Source Content Management System (that is, non-PHP). Both are open source, and there are others out there.

Now, if it comes down to it, PHP is an open-source language while .NET framework is a proprietary one. Still, this really isn't that much of an issue, as there's probably not anything you can't do using either one -- at least with regard to web frameworks. (Though, I'm not a programmer so someone could correct me.) PHP might be easier or harder, but frankly the language isn't usually that much of an issue -- you need to compare CMSes on their own terms, and not based solely on what language they're written in.

What you really need to do is get past your client's position -- switching to .NET -- and find out their interests -- why they want to switch. For example, do they have a contingent of people that are already skilled in .NET? Or are they just following what some marketing guy is telling them? Once you understand why they want to switch, then you can review the pros and cons of actually switching vs. using Drupal.

Though we all love Drupal, you have to leave room for the possibility that a .NET CMS -- open source or otherwise -- might actually be the best solution for the client. It all depends on their circumstances.

I am in a similar situation but I'm with the "media company" We were considering Drupal and were moving forward with that but are now considering a change to DotNetNuke. Can anyone help with some input as to the pro's and con's of these two solutions?

We'd like to share thoughts with anyone here as well ... Thanks.

I have been a PHP programmer for 8 years and a .NET programmer for 7 years. I also program in JAVA, Perl, and C++. I stumbled across this post and had to respond even though it is a little old.

In response to what one person wrote. See my answers after the ---->

-Lower cost of server
----> Server costs are the same. The OS can be free for Linux, but Linux costs more to administer. The Gartner group found that in an apples to apples comparison, Linux servers required 33% more labor to administer then the equivalent MS server and in the long run are about a wash when it comes to TCO.
- Easy to use Database (mySql vs MS SQL)
----> Seriously? MS SQL is significantly easier to use than MySQL and scales much better for larger databases.
- More server capabilities (Linux vs Windows) (examples: htaccess, url-rewrite, better performance,...)
----> You must not work in .NET. The MS servers and IIS have all of those capabilities and then some. Performance? Again, Seriously? For everything except for the smallest of websites, .NET is the faster more scalable solution. This is one area where DNN DOES have issues in that the code that it produces is extremely bloated.
- A lot of free and easy to use add-ons (Modules)
----> That one goes to Drupal, but there are some good ones for DNN as well
- Also I like the way drupal does the SEO and works with google(I don't know a better one in .NET neither in PHP)
----> This must be a preference thing because DNN handles SEO easily
- .NET has its own powerful capabilities but PHP is powerful enough for running a huge website with lots of users.
----> That is why Facebook runs so fast (not). Once again, the .NET solution scales better than ANYTHING out there including PHP, Ruby, JSP-based, etc.
- .NET is more complicated / PHP is much simpler and easy to learn
----> PHP is the simplest open source language to learn, but it is not easier than VB.NET in any galaxy (I prefer C# though)
- Deploying a .NET developer costs more than deploying a PHP developer
---->You should really check your facts on this one.
- Theme and interface development is faster and easy to do with PHP and Drupal
----> Absolutely wrong, but they are very different and this can be influenced by previous experience.

I suspect that I work for the same "large media company" that the original poster works for. Possibly on the same floor.

Here is the REAL answer. Drupal is best if your company does not want to hire real developers. DNN still requires a modicum of programming skill. DNN and drupal both spew out unbelievably bloated code, but DNN is worse about that. For sites that have just a few pages and are being hit by less than 50 people at a time, Drupal might have an edge in performance, otherwise it goes to .NET. If your company already has licenses set up for .NET servers then DNN is the logical solution. If your company has a major investment in JAVA and or PHP on a Linux/Unix platform, then Drupal makes the most sense.

Yes, you are right, you canot compare .net to drupal. not becasue one is openn source and the other is closed source, but because one is CMS and the other is programming language.
what you can do is compare Drupal to sharepoint or DotNetNuke (DNN).
in my opinion Drupal is better than share point and no comparison with DNN.
the most noticable advantage of sharepoint over drupal is that. it is more secure and not vulnerable. you don't need to install security updates everyone and then. you just need to do that once in the year or in the 2 years.

you can find more comparison between the two, if you just googled drupal vs sharepoint