Drupal vs ASP.NET

i would be highly suspicious of any one or business saying 'no issues will arise'-- total bs. no matter what the platform-- there are always issues.

ASP.net is more robust? In what way did they say? Is it because you can put an ASP.net website on any server and it's easier to deploy than a LAMP app? no wait...I don't think that's the case. :)

I would assume that maybe the development firms you are talking to specialize in Micro$oft products? So they are leaning that direction and perhaps want your business. Like a Ford dealer talking about a Chevrolet dealer.

Also, saying "NO such issues will arise" is a salesman approach and like WorldFallz pointed out, it's suspicious. Maybe not suspicious, but rather blind? I think some of the best developers out there have the confidence to say what the issues are with their preferred development software. Maybe you should ask them what the downfalls/issues of ASP.net are. If they say "nothing", then walk away. Nothing is perfect.

Just looking at the Drupal home page and all of its stats...now close to 8400 modules. All those developers. The community support. Awesome I think.

And in the end, if you love Drupal as much as you say you do, go with what you love. You'll have more fun if you like doing it!!!
Have fun! :)

First, you should know that Drupal is a software package. It is a type of software package that is intended to be used for web applications, meaning it is used to create websites with. It is written with the PHP scripting language. The reason why a person would use Drupal and the reason it was created was and is to give that user like you the ability to create a professional looking web site with lots of features without having to know how to write the code to make it all happen.

It does this by creating an interpretation layer between you and the code. The interpretation layer allows you to say "I want this picture here, and this text here, and my address and phone number here" to make what you want show up on the web page. To do this, Drupal makes assumptions about what a web page should look like and what it should do and how it should do it. The best way to recognize this is the template you chose for your web site. Making a change to that template could be very hard. In short, you are confined or limited to what you can do, unless you know how to write PHP (and html and css and javascript, etc).

PHP is a scripting language that in the past required a Linux like web server to run on. ASP.NET is the functional equivalent to PHP. In the past, and still today, you can choose what kind of web server you want to have, either a Linux operating system/PHP based one or a Microsoft operating system/ASP.NET. In fact, ASP was Microsoft's response to the development of PHP.

PHP and ASP.NET do the same thing in general, that is they can be used to write the code to create a dynamic interactive web site. And if you are writing code, then you are not limited to following a certain model or limitations. Drupal, on the other hand provides a certain model. The Drupal model gave you some ability to create a web site. But the cost of that ability meant you have to follow the model.

The reason a lot of web designers like ASP.NET is because that is what they were taught and it is fairly easy and quick to crank out web pages of a certain level of complexity. Most web site that are built for businesses are not highly complex. And this is what ASP.Net good at. Time is money in the web industry. If it takes me three hours to crank out ASP. Net web site and five hours to do the same in PHP, I might be prone to use ASP.NET in a web design business where fast production matters.

Your web site could be made with either PHP or ASP.NET, or you can continue to use Drupal.

Are you sure that your needs are such that you HAVE to deal with a local developer to get your site done? There are MANY experienced and knowledgeable Drupal developers worldwide, and I would say that in many if not most cases contracting with a remote developer would not be all that much different from contracting with someone local.

If you love Drupal, my advice would definitely be to stand firm, stick with it, and tell the ASP folks to take a hike. I agree with the others that no solution is without issues. As long as imperfect humans are involved and as long as hardware eventually breaks down, there will be issues. And if you stick with Drupal, when those issues arise you would have the advantages of an open platform, a tremendous variety of potential solutions, and a cooperative community that's ready, willing and able to help. With an ASP.NET developer, you're much more likely to find yourself locked into their solution and dependent upon them for assistance if/when problems arise or you need some updates made.

All you need to do is check the Drupal Marketplace or ask around for recommendations. Local or remote, you CAN find someone who can produce a world-class Drupal-based web site for you!

I'm primarily a C# developer but I work with PHP a lot and I've been working with Drupal in particular for a few years. I'll toss some thoughts out and will be happy to follow-up as required. To avoid flames from either site, let's assume that every point begins with "I'm of the opinion that ..." or "It's been my experience that ..."

• To correct prior a prior comment, PHP is not the same as ASP.NET. PHP is a language and ASP.NET is a framework. More accurately, PHP is like C# or VB.NET where Zend, or Drupal itself is more like ASP.NET. ASP.NET provides structure which guides requests from a browser through server rules and on to application rules. This is really what Drupal does as requests are routed through the core, on to modules, and then to your data.
• ASP.NET with C# or VB.NET is as capable as any framework with PHP. Let's put aside posturing about how FOSS is better than a proprietary OS, the cathedral vs the bazaar, and other such things. Stability is determined by the individual developers. At the technology level they are all as competent and equally stable.
• Comparing Drupal to ASP.NET isn't really apples-to-apples. Drupal is not just a "framework", it's a Content Management System. It's a framework for managing content. ASP.NET is a framework for routing transactions, with no inherent application tier at all. CMS systems, arguably comparable to Drupal, have been written in ASP.NET. Examples include DotNetNuke and SiteFinity. Notice how these are applications over the technology, just as Drupal is an application over basic PHP.
• Should developers write a website in ASP.NET vs Drupal? The better question is, what are you going to do with a website where the technology is at all important? Rather than writing a new website in ASP.NET, why not start with a CMS written in ASP.NET? What does writing a new site get you? If you want to administer the site on your own, you need a CMS. Is that what they are writing? That's a lot of code just to get you to exactly where Drupal already is. Again, what else are you getting with whatever they want to write, beyond a basic website where you can administer content?
• Perhaps they want to make use of ASP.NET code behind your website. Are they aware that it's easy to invoke an ASP.NET page/component within a Drupal website using an IFrame. Again though, what is the specific functionality that they want which is not already in Drupal? The choice of a platform requires compelling information, not just personal preferences.
• If you have an application where you need to integrate website data with other business data, there can be some disparity. ASP.NET apps usually use SQL Server for the database. Drupal generally uses MySQL. If a user registers in Drupal, the .NET guys will need to extract that data out in order to use it with their app based on SQL Server. Some cross-referencing will need to be established. Periodic updates will need to be done, or a hook will have to be made into the Drupal user maintenance code (or a trigger needs to be used) which then makes a remote call to update the SQL Server database. Someone only familiar with ASP.NET might be inclined to avoid that sort of database integration and just write everything over SQL Server. That said, it's just as easy to write an ASP.NET app over MySQL. The issue is when Drupal updates the database outside of the ASP.NET app. Again, to avoid unknown issues, the .NET guys might be inclined to write everything on their own. I don't think that's a great reason to undertake such a massive development effort.
• As to the multitude of Drupal modules, the world full of developers, etc. Let's get real. Every Drupal release has a large number of modules that simply don't work well. We have a very large selection of modules here, but only "some percentage" of them are actually usable. In the FOSS world in general, the number of crapware projects and modules by amateur developers vastly outnumbers the volume of quality offerings. For every successful PHP class there are hundreds that never made it. For every decent Drupal module there are dozens, perhaps hundreds that are simply junk. I'm not saying this is an issue with PHP. This applies to freeware available in any language including Java, Perl, C++, and C#. I'm just saying that claims of "masses amounts of FOSS and millions of developers" does not translate to good and usable software. Just look at Sourceforge, Github, and Codeplex, where the number of junk projects seems to outweigh usable software by perhaps 100 to 1. Quantity != Quality.
• Similarly, with every new Drupal release, now D7, there is a large number of modules that just don't get brought forward. We lost a lot from D4 to D5, D5 to D6, and now we're seeing that many aren't ready for D7. Sure, this happens everywhere, but the reality of "thousands of modules" translates to "a lot now, but some of them will be unusable later, so don't get too attached to them." Very few modules get a critical mass of users, and of those that are successful, very few get more than one developer. All of us who drink the Drupal Kool-Aid must accept that some of these developers are going to get burned out, and the software might need maintenance that it's never going to get. We're faced with the choice of fixing it ourselves (Viva le FOSS!), looking for a new module, or simply doing without functionality. I'm not going into this to denigrate Drupal anyway but to ensure that we acknowledge the reality that this is not the panacea that some people claim
• Coming back to the "what are you going to get with ASP.NET that you won't get with Drupal" question, I'll ask: Rather than writing a new CMS from scratch, why not put your development funds into helping with Drupal development? If you find a module here that needs work, it's not tough to find a PHP developer who will gladly enhance it on a for-fee basis. The developer burnout and graveyards of dead projects mentioned above are the result of simple economics: we can't pay the rent working on everything for free for someone else. Inherent in the FOSS model is that the software is "free" (beer) so the money you save you can now be invested in making the FOSS better for yourself and everyone else. The question becomes: do you really need a new CMS written in ASP.NET, or might you get what you need with significant enhancements to existing Drupal modules (perhaps some of the nice but abandoned ones out there).
• With respect for all developer colleagues, and in particular the guys pushing for "ASP.NET vs Drupal", I think passion for technology stems from ignorance of the alternatives. I have simultaneously seen people in forums say "PHP is the only language I know" and "PHP is the best language". Such claims frequently accompany comments equating to "anything from Microsoft is bad". It's impossible to compare alternatives if you don't understand what you're comparing to. Sun Tzu said you need to know yourself, the enemy, and the terrain. It's possible that anyone who says they want to write a new ASP.NET website rather than using Drupal simply doesn't know anything about Drupal. They might not be skilled with PHP and it's financially not in their best interest to even give PHP-based offerings a fair critique.

As you see, unfair bias can be present on both sides and for different reasons. If you're going to be paying for development, you need people who can provide you with solid consultation without unreasonable bias, or based on their own lack of understanding. You need a solution that's good for you, not the developer. You'll need to use the software long after they're gone.

I guess that's enough food for thought for now. The bottom line is that the technology is not important. Make a list of your requirements, then shop around for what you can get out of the box with various solutions, and then find out how much it will cost to make up for whatever is left.

HTH
(Wow, I really didn't intend to write that much...)

The bottom line is that a developer familiar with ASP.Net is going to push that product/framework. A developer familiar with PHP or Drupal is going to push that product/framework. They will tend to recommend what they know (and thus can make money on). There are probably very few developers proficient in both, who could give an honest answer as to which is best for you. Beware of anyone who guarantees "no issues", unless they have written guarantees and post a performance bond to ensure they'll quickly deal with any problems (which there will be).

If you're still here (msrrautela), just out of curiosity, were you going to outside developers because you felt that you couldn't design a good site on your own? Otherwise, are you comfortable with the mechanics of the site (via Drupal), and it was a matter of design quality? Perhaps hiring a website designer to look over your current implementation and suggest look-and-feel changes for you to make to update the site would have been better? Even if your business has been a success, you don't want to spend money for the sake of spending money. You want to get the most bang for the buck, realizing that completely rebuilding a site from scratch carries its own risks to your business (loss of customers, etc., while kinks in the live site are worked out).