Hi Experts,
This is my first post here and straightaway i require frank opinion and inputs from drupal community. Hope i would come out with some decision after this. Coming directly to me query, I wish to start a website, mainly featuring reviews of some type (take it as cnet, rottentomatoes, amazon sorts - though not that extensive in starting, but yes, thats the plan).
I have been on a lookout to finalize the web hosting server, scripting language, cms to be used and stuff from quiet sometime, and frankly, i am not yet able to make my mind. I will put my query on CMS here, please provide an honest opinion.
Drupal, of course, is the most famous, award winning, developer oriented CMS (as the google says), and then comes Joomla, and now modx and others catching up, and blogpress progressing fast. I am not php coding, but i thought of selecting it after again doing lots of reading (i am into some sql and oo stuff, so can understand technical stuff), there were comaparisons with .net, and java (sought out to be most scalable, another story). I think lot of people go through the same process, it is both knowledgeable and confusing!!! and I am more confused than before now :) Pleassss help.
I would put the requirement and doubts here below, as far as i have gathered, for my website in a nutshell:
1. no standard template of drupal fits my need, so it has to be customized completely, to give space to ads, home page ratings, other placeholders - Doubt: does it has everything to do with CSS and not drupal framework, and how much customization is achievable easily, please guide
2. i want to have many flash/jquery/ajax features to make it look like a faster navigating site (plz see forbes.com menu system, and cnet.com home page - move cursor over thumbnail and it displays image, may be flash based) - Doubt: how much easier is it to customize and integrate these things in drupal over other CMS, or I am better off without any CMS?
3. I plan to integrate a very user friendly rating feature - score based. Doubt: is it out of the box feature to be developed or some third party tools/websites (i heard of django) can be utilized here, not much info i have on this, please guid.
Sorry to have put so much details, but i thought no point spreading it over many posts and coming straight to point would be better to get better answers. Now, my requirements are pretty much from end user perspective as of now, and not developer perspective.
Please guide if Drupal would be the right choice and php for that matter (i know rottentomatoes is made in php, but not the CMS).
or as I have heard modx has lot better ajax capabilities.
Thanks a lot in advance. Hope i wont be disappointed by the much appreciated drupal community. :)
Regards,
Rohit
Comments
For me, Drupal is the best
For me, Drupal is the best open-source software on the internet. Why?
1. Offers great documentation, modules, people who want to help you when you're stuck, and of course as a CMS written in php it gives huge arsenal of tools with you can customize ANYTHING to your willing without EXPERT knowledge in PHP.
2. Drupal Advantages and Disadvantages that I've discovered from my experience -- Like said in previous sentence, the things I like in drupal are that you can customize stuff on your way without hurting the software code, It gives you (ill mention some of features that i like) Key modules that are "MUST" to use when building a website are : CCK, Views, Admin menu, Pathauto, Token, Rules, Workflow, .. (and pretty much listed here http://drupalmodules.com/module-finder and on the drupal.org statistics site). With those modules you can start building content types and give your site power to interact with users by allowing them to post what you want with powerful drupal "PERMISSION" system who is also one of the best things that drupal have. Modularity is also one of the best sides of drupal - which allows you to build custom code module for your drupal site who will do whatever you told it to do in code, without any limits.. well as far as I know, there are no limits. And there are many many things that I like but I can't afford much time typing all the stuff.
3. And finally disadvantages - In good there's always bad. So one of things I didnt like is drupal performance in some cases, but when you see all the features that it gives, giving the drupal site some extra memory and cpu will not make you sorry. Sometimes you ran into module that doesn't fulfill your wishes, but hey! The more you have exp with Drupal, the higher chance to build your own module!
All in all, Drupal is best open-source software on the internet, and It grows every day. And I assure you that it will please you and your customers with its value.
;)
flexiblity, web 2.0?
Hi, Thanks for prompt reply. Those points would help, but core of my doubts still stands tall!
I hv read a lot about how many modules it has, and it is modularized approach, and also, some issues related to performance. But, at the moment, what I am largely concerned about it, how easy it is (or even if possible, is it advisable?) to have completely customized template to integrate Ajax/Flash and such things to have more of client side scripting once you enter the site.
Also, someone please throw some light on what it means when they say ModX has good ajax capabilities, or silverlight for that matter, how does Drupal score over them in terms of my requirement. I am sure drupal is not the only CMS web masters have used here, so franky, even if we can do something in Drupal, will it make sense to use it over other CMS for my requirements, or some other CMS would fit-in better? (though in my mind praises about Drupal are sitting tight, but i need some pointers to think rationaly about other CMS available as well).
Please guide.
_
imo you can't get more flexibility without expert knowledge and coding a cms manually, then drupal provides. there's virtually nothing that can't be customized without hacking the core files. That's a hugely important distinction, because anything is hackable, but once you've hacked the core system you've essentially created a fork that will take loads of effort to maintain going forward. With drupal you make all your changes in your own theme and modules and still benefit from core development and upgrades.
I've played with many of the more common CMSs (joomla, wordpress, movable type, mediawiki, typepad, ezpublish, etc) and ended up coming back to drupal time and time again.
As for theming-- you can completely customize every aspect of your theme, again without hacking any core or contributed files. You're only limited by your own skills. If you truly want to start from scratch, I recommend one of the excellent base/starter themes meant for that purpose-- zen, adaptivetheme, fusion, etc.
Drupal includes jquery (and d7 include jquery_ui) so js/ajax is easily added, no problem. With respect to flash that is also no problem and I have seen more than a couple of sites that are completely a flash front end with drupal driving the backend and content creation.
You're asking on drupa.org, so you're bound to get biased responses, but there's nothing you describe that drupal couldn't handle. What makes drupal stand out from the pack, is that you spend less time fighting with it to undo prepackaged functionality in order to make it do what you want than any of the competing options (with exception of pure frameworks like rails and django) which are much more rigid in their supported use cases.
For some great examples of what drupal do, browse some of the site listed at http://buytaert.net/tag/drupal-sites.
You need a CMS
Okay...
You need a CMS unless you're planning on paying someone to make you your own CMS (which doesn't make sense). The PHP/SQL is separate from all your presentation (CSS/Flash/AJAX). If you need a system that will allow you to quickly post content(reviews) and allow users to comment then Drupal among others is more than qualified to do that.
For what you want to do, Drupal is solid. Virtually all content on the site that is generated can have static or dynamic id's which allow you to do anything you want to the content visually.
yes, i need CMS
Thanks anthonylicari for your reply, it came while i was typing my reply.
Could you please reply my above posted doubt before your post? Yes, definitely I am going to use CMS (not custom developed), but I most probably will have to hire a good php developer (may be CSS/flash too?). but most important for me now is to finalize the approach i am going to follow for my website, so that i can plan accordingly (and don't have to repent later on, ohh i should have chosen that CMS).
Also, i would like to add a point, that is, if some paid CMS is what suits my needs better, please suggest, if it suits my budget, i would like to have a look at it.
Thanks for your opinions again.
Rohit
Right
It makes sense to spend even an extra month right now deciding on the correct way to go but he who hesitates is lost so once you make a decision I would really try to go that way full speed ahead.
As far as how AJAX(Y) something is as well as flash the key to remember there is the users performance and the reason the users are on your site. Unless the all the extra stuff is in direct correlation with providing information (google maps for example) then I would not choose your solution based on its presentation capabilities.
I know that's debatable HOWEVER most of us are looking for information first and if it has a nice presentation along with it well that's augmentation to the content but content comes first.
In your case, most of them are going to do the same as I said. I would look more for which one has community support and has the capabilities of expanding.
Here, look at this site: http://www.popsugar.com
They used to run Drupal (not sure if they still do) but can say they were doing all that Flashy/Ajaxy stuff when they were on Drupal.