By chrisi99 on
hi drupal-users!
we are currently searching/evaluating for a cms suitable for a planned (more or less scientifical) project.
we don't want to use typo3 as of reasons of "personal dislike" and narrowed our search down to "Drupal", "Ez Publish" and "ZMS".
here is what we need:
- multilingual support (from the core would be appreciated)
- granulated user access controls (contributers will write from many locations..)
- version controll for content
- message board ("forum")
- reuse of content (should be provided by the node concept)
- workflow controll (should be possible by CCK)
maybe someone here can help me by sharing his/her experience in administering projects of that kind!
best regards
Chris
PS:excuse my english, i am from Austria ;.)
Comments
PS: we have capable
PS: we have capable php-programmers, but no real experience with plone/zope. So we would like to stick with php/mysql and opensource! :)
Not sure what ZMS is, but I
Not sure what ZMS is, but I think you'll find Ez Publish anything but easy, I tried to build a multi-lingual site with it a while back (just to learn something different) and long story short I just gave up.
Plone is probably the flagship for multi-lingual content (lingua plone is awesome), but I just did one with Drupal and it works very well, although we seriously considered Plone (even built test sites) especially with its side by side panels in the translation page, very nice. For the Drupal multilingual site we used i18n module (its built on 5.7).
Drupal can do all you want of it - yes it takes some work, esp with multi-lingual sites (lots to learn before you start, more the better), the plethora of modules available is staggering (many much better than others, be warned).
You should search around this site, theres a lot of write ups from site developers detailing how they went about building their sites and invaluable tips can be picked up reading some of them - you might find something that resonates with your project so give that a crack.
I would be thinking that taxonomy would be your friend with a scientific project, perhaps?
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Adaptivetheme - theming system for people who don't code.
taxonomy
Hi!
Thank you for your helpful reply!
After reviewing lots of live sites it came to me, that plone must have some big advantage, because it is used very often in sites related to scientific projects.
I did do a local test installation and could not figure out the advantages in the short time I have had to test it.
EZ does in some way support multilingual features and a very distinct user/role management. But as you pointed out is not that clearly structured and sometimes misleading.
Maybe you could explain in short why you did stick with drupal at the mentioned project. If superior in any way we might buy a server to run zope and use plone.
I "played" with the taxonomy system a few minutes (well, may have been a couple of hours ;) but could not completely understand its philosophy. Is there a "in depth" explanation out there?
kind regards
Christoph
Why we went with Drupal 1)
Why we went with Drupal
1) Cost of Plone developers was too high if I was suddenly not around (client is an NGO, of which I am a member).
2) Adding the necessary meta data in Plone is a multi step process requiring one to think a bit (we were going to use Smart Folders), but in Drupal we can use taxonomy - just choose your category from the drop list - simple. We use taxonomy to structure the site and to display relational content.
3) CivicCRM - fantastic and precisely what the client wanted.
4) Spam control, in the future we want to have user blogs and allow for anon comments (that get moderated), Plone blogging modules were woeful and almost no spam control features at all (could be different now). Trackback spam we saw as a potential major problem.
5) Imagecache - didnt find anything like this available in Plone, look it up, its a very handy module.
6) A big big point is that I at least know some PHP, but I was learning Python as I went... not a good thing with a beast as complex as Zope and Plone.
There's a lot of other reasons as well, such as CCK and Views.
heres the site if you are interested - please note we had a pretty small budget so no real flashy design or anyting, but it works and the org is very happy with there new site (replaced an old horrible flat file site that was years out of date).
http://www.twiga.se/sv
I think if you go the Plone route, you have to go boots and all and really commit to that path of development, learn the ZMI like its your old friend and have a good handle on Python. I'm glad I mucked around with it (I did build a very nice theme, which I considered a major achievement!).
I understand about taxonomy, it takes a bit to get your head around the concept, but once you do, you will see its what sets Drupal apart in a big way - in short its a system for classifying content, but you can leverage it in so many ways - such as building lists of content, building navigation, displaying related content etc etc. Just look throught the list of availble Drupal modules under taxonomy, that will give you a fair idea of what you can do - http://drupal.org/project/Modules/category/71
Pimp your Drupal 8 Toolbar - make it badass.
Adaptivetheme - theming system for people who don't code.