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By daveplml on
Greetings everyone,
We have a specific project we're specing out, and I'd really appreciate your thoughts about Drupal's ability to compare with Dot Net Nuke for several key points. We're comparing Drupal and DNN because we have complete flexibility over the technology, and it seems fair to compare what seem to be the two biggest CMSs for both .Net and PHP. Here are our specifications:
• Proven longevity and support
• Support for Section 508 Compatible Themes and Visuals
• Support for w3c XHTML strict valid and CSS compliance
• Multiple Language Support
• Ease and expense of extensibility (availability of programmers to help extend the framework for custom design)
• Ability to easily configure and integrate additional database tables (including QuickBase) and custom calendar management
• Ability to create public/private calendars, and calendaring for different communities and/or event topics
• Ability to easily integrate Ning and/or other external communities
On all counts, both DNN and Drupal seem capable. What would you all suggest for choosing Drupal (besides that it's great!) over DNN (besides that it's .Net) in this case? Your thoughts are really valued!
--Dave
Comments
I think many people ,
I think many people , including me, does not have any information about DNN due to diffrent server structure it needs. But let me to clear a few points for Drupal
1- Drupal has been on the scene long enough (literally 2001) and as you can see it has an active community support. If you want more than community support check out acquia
2- Drupals default theme engine phptemplate allow us to create any theme we want and you can change module outputs by overwriting theme hooks at template file
3- look at #2
4- With Drupal 6 it has multilanguage support but you may need i18n module according to your needs
5- Drupals existing modules fit for many projects but there are always someone to do custom things (including me :P )
6- You will need some coding job but ofcourse you can
7- I believe this can be done with existing modules if can't you will need custom module
8- I haven't heard any module with this functionality so propably you will need custom module
If I were you I would definitely chose Drupal. Because
- number of .NET developers are limited compared to PHP (aren't they)
- hourly rates for PHP developers are lower than .NET
- server expenses definitely lower than .NET servers
- I am an anti microsoft guy
Not DNN
I've actually used both, so maybe I can help.
Section 508: A lot of DNN's core features use javascript to do postbacks, with no fallbacks. This breaks 508. Its theming system is nowhere near as good as Drupal's so to 'hack' this compliance into DNN will mean modifying its core. Which of course you'll have to re-hack everytime you upgrade. (Or you could make your own DNN modules to make up for this shortcomming, but why use a CMS if you have to recreate its own functionality again).
XHTML strict: the new DNN 5 is certainly well on the way to this, the real concern is all the 3rd party modules you use probably aren't.
With Drupal you have complete control of the code that gets to the browser, so its up to your designers should have no problems generating a XHTML 508 compliant skin.
The big thing for me though is the difference in modules, with DNN each module seems to be its own little island of content, where Drupal and its hooks system allows content to be displayed anyway you like. Have you actually used Drupal before? Don't want to scare you away with a whole lot of new jargon if you haven't...
Dot Net Nuke