By JasonDiceman on

Hi Drupal folks

I'm doing research to decide what CMS to use for a complex community-choice competitions system I'm doing for the large global development charity organization: www.ashoka.org

The main CMS options I am considering are

Drupal Mambo TYPO3 WebGUI and Xaraya

After making a choice, I'll most likely hire developers that specialize in that CMS to help me customize it for the project needs.

To help decide what CMS to use and who to hire, I'm looking for examples of great community sites that use these CMS and that demonstrate the following attributes...

1. Scalable for mass community use
For example, sites will not crash with 100,000 visitors and hundreds of logged-in users using the site on a daily basis day.

2. Multi-site Deployment
Host multiple web sites that use the same installation. Each site has its own domain, permissions, languages, templates and content. It should be possible for some roles (e.g. super-admin, lead editor, organization members) to use the same login in multiple sites, or better yet, maintain a continuous login session and user profile across multiple sites.

3. Multi-lingual
Editor interfaces and content should support most popular languages. Ideal examples would include Arabic, Hebrew, and Chinese.

4. Granular Privileges
Admin should be able to create custom user types, roles or groups that specify permissions for what data a user can see, what they can edit, as well as what features they can access.

5. Customizable Workflow
Content approval process should be customizable to include from zero to five stages and/or levels of approval. E.g. content could be approved by the 'editor' for viewing by logged in 'members', but not for the public until approved by the 'marketing department'.

6. Customizable Databases
Admin should be able to easily create customized “databases”, i.e. create a form with multiple fields and different input types, browse, search and filter records by different fields and edit individual or a group of records. This should be 80-100% accomplished without the admin having to do any PHP or SQL code. Examples of such a feature my be in the form of surveys, articles with extensive meta-data, trackers, etc.

If you could send me descriptions, URLs and possibly logins to Drupal sites that demonstrate some or all of these 6 attributes, I would really appreciate it.

If you would like to be considered for hiring to do coding work on the project, you should also include some details about your related skills and development experience.

I'll share the example sites and information I learn on this page:
http://www.cmswiki.com/tiki-index.php?page=Compare+top+PHP+CMS
...and possibly in an article I'll send around to some big lists, blogs and CMS sites.

Thanks so much for your time and assistance.

Cheers

- jd- -

------------------------------
Jason Diceman Co-op Tools
www.CoopTools.ca
Phone: 416-538-co-op (2667)
Toll-free: 1-866-519-co-op (2667)
jd@cooptools.ca
------------------------------

Comments

Steven’s picture

Steven commented

Firstly, there is no single best CMS... it all depends on what your needs are. Drupal excels at community-oriented things.

1. Yes, see SpreadFirefox.com.
2. Drupal has multi-site support. All sites hosted on Bryght.com (hundreds) run off a single codebase for example. Though you can set up distributed authentication, there is no direct single sign on, and sharing users is an all-or-nothing affair at the moment, with database table sharing.
3. We have downloadable translations on this site, which you use with locale.module, and you can implement multi-lingual content with i18n.module.
4. Yes, but you'll need a node access module for content-based permissions (node privacy by role, taxonomy access).
5. There is a workflow module in contrib which supports arbitrary workflows.
6. You want flexinode.module (and perhaps survey.module).

Still, you can't get a good idea of Drupal without trying it yourself. Its flexibility comes from modules and a lot of sites don't use its full capabilities.

Also, Drupal is very modular and extensible, so you have a much better chance with implementing missing features in Drupal than in any of the other CMSes you've mentioned.

--
If you have a problem, please search before posting a question.

azote’s picture

azote commented

I'm comming from WebGUI (GW) and.. I dont think drupal is as powerfull as WG yet... the thing about WG is that you could do everything that you could imagine posible (after adding a couple of modules) from the browser with out having to KNOW any coding... and without having to change any code...

Comming from WG I find very hard to make things look like I want to on drupal.. Dont get me wrong is not hard once you know that you have to add php code to add some extra content.. on blocks or pages.. but compared to WG it is...

I used WG only for 3 years and I saw how it evolve... and the latest code was so intuitive that i didnt have to explain much to my friends on how to add or change the look .. or arange blocks on a page ... or how to get certain information from a website and show it in yours... etc..

One of my reasons from moving away from it .. is that I HATE PERL.. (trying to make an language object oriented... which was not design to be).
For updates and other things you had to restart the webserver... so if you dont have your own server it was kind of dificult... and the main reason was that the latest code in that time was bringing down the server if it was slashdoted!!

pamphile’s picture

pamphile commented

I won't go into detail, but Drupal can do every single point you raised.
But since you will have to install the free modules, it will take a little time.
About 1 - 3 months or less. But it's really worth it. Especially if you learn how to write your own modules.

Take a look at http://www.mbr.org/

MBR , makes excellent use of the flexinode module. The flexinode module will let you create forms and browse through them or search them.

Excellent example: http://www.mbr.org/players
Forum example: http://www.mbr.org/forum

Thread announcing MBR.
http://drupal.org/node/20097

http://01debug.com
http://01community.com

edrupalec’s picture

edrupalec commented

hi
what are you using for the cart on mbr?
-----
Drupal ecommerce, at www.drupalecommerce.com is a new site written using language that Drupal beginners and intermediate users can understand. Quick links to "Modules."

jeditdog’s picture

jeditdog commented

Hey, I just gone done complaining that I find forums like vBulletin more intuitive than the forum Drupal offers, and then I saw the mbr implementation of it. I think it looks great! thank you for showing it. I like that way the shading of the boxes look and I hope I can use the forum as effeciently as you have.