Hi,

The following tries to do two things at once:

  • Find out how "good" Drupal is
  • Adjust my expectations before I dig too deeply into any OSS CMS

(And advance apologies for the length)

So here we go:

A group of friends has decided that they want "a website" - the basic idea is to support the social network with an online medium.

Some poor sod (aka "me") has been tasked to make it happen - so that poor sod draws up some rough specs.

  • LAMP (ubiquity of cheap ISPs)
  • Tight control over what is public and what is private to the group as a whole - and what is private to sub-groups.
  • Very easy to administer, because the administrator (aka "me") is extremely short on time
  • Customizing should be kept to a minimum; while the technical side of things shouldn't be a problem, *time* is a major problem. I cannot afford to dig into a(ny) CMS, OSS or not, to customize it heavily. It needs to be flexible enough to allow a few things, yet rigid enough to keep the learning curve flat
  • Uneducated(!) users can easily add content, without there being a risk that the integrity of the layout / the site goes downhill. It is the *users* who will have to provide content and who are expected to add/edit it - themselves, and without any hand-holding required.
  • Content is "text", "marked up text", "image" (galleries),
  • Calendar (I would love folks to be able to use Outlook to access that calendar, one way or the other - necessity, not choice, sorry)
  • Blogs
  • Forums (actually I'd love to have the yahoogroups, formerly egroups, concept at my finger tips - boy, what a wonderful mix between fora and mailing lists)
  • I myself would like to have my folks try wikis :->
  • No, strictly no, active content (JavaScript and worse) required
  • Heaps of (optional) email notifications for everything under the sun

I think that roughly covers the specs side.

From what I have seen so far, Drupal matches these specs nicely, expect for:

  • access control - pending?
  • ease of use ("uneducated user")
  • customizing

ACLs do not worry me too much at the moment. Usability (for users, admins) does worry me enormously. Before I continue, a few examples:

  • I looked at http://typo3.org/ and ditched it.
    Power to no end, a nightmare to use, a learning curve
    as steep as a cliff. Nice eye-candy, but I could
    predict that barely anybody of my target group would
    ever be able to tinker with content.
  • I looked at http://www.xaraya.com/ and ditched it.
    Just by instinct, I have to add :-) They scared me
    away somehow.
  • http://www.tikiwiki.org/ scared me away, probably
    simply because of its look and feel.

    (There has been more and my experimental server setup
    is full of corpses of dead OSS, LAMP CMSs)

But I keep returning to Drupal, wondering, as I poke around here and there: What exactly can I expect from an OSS CMS?

Do I *have* to customize the PHP implementation? I don't really care about being *able* to - I simply lack the time to dig into the design and implementation to customize - and keep these customizations over updates and upgrades to Drupal. (Replace Drupal with any other name if you like)

From my tinkering, I seem to recall that adding content was not 100% trivial. Yes, it was easy for me to get something out (not necessarily where I wanted it, that is). How will the uneducated user fare?

I think I am somehow looking for a mission statement - "what is drupal, whom do we serve primarily?"

Anybody interested in having a go at it?

Comments

daffy’s picture

... how could I forget.

My target audience will not accept English as the web site's language. German it will have to be. No way around that.

Steven’s picture

The cheezy answer would be 'we serve everyone', but of course that's not entirely true.
An administrator will need to have some basic knowledge about web stuff (setting up apache/php/sql), but a pure user (who uses a Drupal site set up by someone else) shouldn't need that. As long as people aren't afraid to try new things, they shouldn't have much problems with Drupal. Aside from the core installation, we have a bunch of modules in the contributions repository which can help you build your site (installing one of the taxonomy_* modules is a good idea for structure).

Customizing Drupal's code isn't necessary, but will of course lead to a better site. However, we try to keep Drupal's design as simple and clean as possible, so maintaining changes shouldn't be a big issue.

Oh and localisation is not an issue.

The best suggestion I can think of is to browse the Drupal sites list and see what other people have done.

nuwonda’s picture

i am in a somewhat similar boat, i have done projects in the past with postnuke, phpwebsite and recently with e107 (www.lustspiel.at, customized script and 100% self made theme, down to the last pixel)

the upcoming project requires
* multisite administration abilities with shared user db which atm points towards phpwebsite since its "branch" feature is unbested atm.
although I read in the drupal cvs there's some stir in the multisite corner

* seamless integration of htmlarea or possibly xopus (xopus.org)
drupal fits this description for htmlarea (as does e107 to some respect and phpwebsite too).

* "easy to use" content creation for the "editor" (being a HTML/IT illiterate)
no open source CMS (of the over 30 I tested so far) meets this requirement
scenario: editor writes a usability report on the drupal feature "static page creation"
1) he splits his report into 3 sections
2) each section should have 1 screenshot thumbnail floating either left or right of the paragraph
3) clicking on a thumb should open a window with the full size image (window.open)
4) at the end/bottom of page he wants to add an inconized link to a pdf version of his report (opening in a new window)

solution: he finds this impossible to achieve

* use [image:node_id,left ir right] for the thumbs, create the "images" with the image module before writing the report, note down the node ids for your images, create a pdf icon, too.. editor: "no way!"
* adding links with htmlarea "should" work even for "editors"
"editor sceptically eyes htmlarea"
* adding links that point to a certain pdf not already in the DB and having that link open in a new window is a no go. "editor shakes head and says: you do it".

ideally:
* editor can choose images by
a) browse hd (images are automatically uploaded to the right place)
b) choose from a list of images
and "format" the images in an "options" screen offering the options in a way he/she can understand them.
* editor can place images and change placement at any time
* ditto for pdf files, click "show icon in front of link" for that pdf icon spiffiness, click show link in new window for "target=_blank" etc...
* choose the way the page is rendered (no author, date, read more links for static pages since "static pages" are no "news posts" nor "stories" nor anything else warranting such linkage.
* since the editor split the article in 3 sections he might want it to be presented on 3 "pages" offering a "page breadcrumb" at bottom or top or both (page 1 | 2 | 3) with the active page number unlinked and in a different color.
* finally he wants the report to be linked under menu entry "Reports->Usability->CMS->Drupal" with the title "Page Creation" and wants a link on top in the block "Recent Reports"

this simple scenario shows the inadequacies of todays open source cms scripts. "Content Composition" cannot be achieved without knowledge in html or other cryptic code (yes BBCODE is also considered cryptic for any and all editors I met so far...)
file/document/media incorporation in this "composotion" process is direly lacking (usability) in any cms to date.

nonetheless, drupal is among the top 10 contenders on my cms list, so far.

tested cms systems in no particular order:
plone, tikiwiki, e107 (what I use atm), phpwebsite, postnuke, xoops, xaraya, typo3, ezpublish, opencms, phpwebthings, mambo, moveabletype, wordpress (only 250kb!), drupal.

note: my brief cvs test of drupal went smooth with a few hitches. a) menus is not working in cvs and "static pages" never show up in the navigation even if links are specified (links work ONLY when switching to "example" theme, rest is no go).
+ had drupal up and running in less than 5 minutes
- install requires manual steps which will pose problems for unexperienced users.