By madkapsk8 on

I thought the subject line would draw people.

I understand the power of a CMS but never got around to learning one. But now for work i'm in charge of moving us to a CMS, we finally decided on going with a PHP open source. i did my own research and everything kept pointing to Drupal. I started on a path to find PHP developers/contractors to build it out for us. But our SEO company recommended me to a PHP developer they've used in the past and he introduced me to MODx. He said MODx had a strong community like Drupal and could offer a lot of the same functionality as Drupal too. Honestly at this point, i'm open to whichever but wanted to solicit some opinions first.

Here are some of my requirements. we have one main site which will have a theme throughout with different layouts but one overall theme and other mini sites with custom themes.

* Meta Data for each page
* LDAP authentication
* author/manager/uber admin (ability to have some create content but having someone else approve to go live)
* RSS feeds

Any suggestions, recommendations or comments about why Druapl is so badass would be greatly appreciated. Thanks everyone in advance. I'm excited about this tool.

Comments

vm’s picture

vm commented

Everything you're asking for above is available in Drupal.

This being a drupal community, your responses will be biased toward drupal. That should go without saying. Rather than using an SEO company who's introducing a 3rd party developer who is now pushing different CMS.

I'd say, fire the SEO company ... have you taken a walk through google and seen how many drupal built sites are on the first page?

take the money you are spending on SEO and hire a drupal developer. http://drupal.org/drupal-services

steve02476’s picture

steve02476 commented

I know it's a common way to do things, but it might be a mistake to first pick your consultants and then to choose your CMS based on those people's recommendations. What I see happening sometimes is that your website will get built, for better or worse, and you'll part ways with your developers after a year or so. Maybe happily or maybe not. That's typical. But your CMS will still be there for for much longer than a year or two (unless it was a disaster).

So why not pick your CMS first (Drupal or whatever) and then once you're sure about your CMS, only then select someone to help you implement it. Of course, when you're choosing a CMS, think about how big of a "talent pool" you're going to have for developers that are experienced with that CMS. If things go sour with your first developer you may have to go with another developer.

I have seen many cases of organizations choosing a web development company, and then going with whatever CMS that company recommends, only to outgrow the developers but still be stuck with the CMS they got.

At any rate, good luck with your project.

eMPee584’s picture

eMPee584 commented

Uhmm yeah questioning go0gle is a good way to come up with something useful. If you take a second look, not everything on the internet does make sense though. (hint: http://www.hiprank.com/drupal-vs-hitler-vs-joomla-vs-modx.html ....)
anyways, on to coding with drupal ;)

steammultimedia’s picture

steammultimedia commented

I had a similar problem with choosing the right CMS. I looked at Joomla, Modx, Drupal and much more. I went with drupal because there is such a better community behind it compaired to the other CMS systems so it was Drupal or joomla at this stage. when i was choosing between both of them i found out that for alot of the modules with Joomla you had to pay for them. So drupal won.

I have not looked back after choosing drupal.

The best advice would be to choose one CMS that you think can do everything you need and you will be able to develop on and then learn it inside and out

c-m’s picture

c-m commented

I'm biased as i have done all my work in Modx.

I started with Drupal but the theming confused me. Modx can easily use HTML themes and you can have a site running within 30mins.

Remember that modx is just a framework and not a full blown CMS like drupal. These means that it has a small fast footprint, but doesn't offer as much functionality out of the box. It is however infintely customisable.

I have build many sites in modx and their community is great, however for my latest site I am tempted to try drupal again, mainly because it is a much more mature platform and a lot of the functionality i need for this has not yet been developed in Modx (i'm not a programmer so can't develop them myself).

Both are great, but if you can't build it yourself, I would say go with drupal as are more likely to find a developer that is familiar with it, if you get into trouble.