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I’ve already evaluated a number of other systems. Jake, you need to explain why you refuse to work with Drupal.
Can we please touch on this issue.
Jeff, I don’t think it’s matter we’ve decided, so shove it — Warren introduced an excellent system that some of the staff looked into, and it seems much more easier, cleaner and funner (is that a word?) to work with.
We also did some searches around for alternatives and also didn’t come up with anything tasteful.
I believe the reason for Jake refusing to work with Drupal is that it’s very time consuming. This is already an issue we are trying to battle. If we can find something MORE people can work with (other than just Jake) than it’s an obvious choice to change.
Either Warren or Dave can fill you in on our choice of change.
It’s not more or less time consuming than anything else. I’ve already discussed and expressed my disllike for it privately with Jeff, and if I recall, he’s agreed to look into some other systems as options in the future.
Quote:I’ve already discussed and expressed my disllike for it privately with Jeff, and if I recall, he’s agreed to look into some other systems as options in the future.Was the choice we had in mind not to par? Next time update the rest of us please 😉
Yeah, basically I’m thinking we’ll all (admins) have a meeting in a week or so and discuss other options and then come up with a list and put out a poll to see what the staff likes and dislikes, and then go from there. Drupal is very low on my list of possibilities, though. How about a meeting sometime not this coming week, but the next week? (starting the 11th) I’m not sure what day (I’ll be getting a new work schedule that week), but sometime that week I think we all need to have a conference call/chat to see what we’re going to do the following week (my vacation week… AKA Project BBBv4 Week ;)).
This isn’t open for discussion. We’re using Drupal for our CMS. What IS open for discussion is whether we use vbDrupal or “regular” Drupal, and whether we use a wiki for some part of the site.
Here are some sites using Drupal today:
MTV | MTV UK [mtv.co.uk]
Home | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source [theonion.com]
Home | Grateful Dead [dead.net] (The Grateful Dead site)
Your network | GoingOn Home [goingon.com] (Forbes. Yes, that Forbes.)
playboy . online [playboy.de] (Playboy Germany, NSFW)
FightHunger.org | Help the UN World Food Programme End Child Hunger by 2015 [fighthunger.org] (The UN)Even the inventor of the Internet, Tim Berners Lee uses Drupal for his personal blog:
timbl’s blog | Decentralized Information Group (DIG) Breadcrumbs [mit.edu]There is a review of a recent book on Drupal at Slashdot. The review is mildly interesting; the discussion that follows much more so:
Slashdot | Pro Drupal DevelopmentHrm. Maybe it was just vbDrupal that was crappy, then.
It’s just that the base installation of Drupal didn’t “wow” me at all, but I guess there’s a community with plugins, mods, whatever they’re called (kinda like Firefox, ick). If we do it right, I guess it can work out. I just didn’t know that Drupal was so powerful, it just seemed simple when I was using it.
Whilst searching for suitable candidates for some sites I need to run, I’ve come across a few choice picks that I think BigBlueBall might benefit from. Along with these picks, I’ll be including my opinion and critique in relation to how it could benefit BigBlueBall.
First off, let’s start with Drupal. Having worked with it in the past, I can honestly say it is overwhelming. Yes, it can be quite powerful given time and _A LOT_ of effort, but why should we use it when there are better alternatives?
One of the issues I had with Drupal was the lack of user-friendly documentation. I had to spend HOURS just to find out how to do something that you would think would be a feature — move the “Read more…” link from the post’s footer to just after or within the post’s content. Why this isn’t a feature is beyond me. Now if it took me hours to find that out, imagine how much time we would need to waste to solve other issues or queries we may have.
Another issue I had was with the way their resources were organised. It was really difficult just to find something I wanted. Even if I knew exactly what I wanted, it took hours.
However, don’t get me wrong. Once you get Drupal up and running it really is quite powerful.
Now, please remember, I am talking about Drupal. I have no experience whatsoever with vbDrupal.
Drupal is a good choice for the new BigBlueBall, but it requires a lot of work to shape it into a great site.
With that out of the way, I’ve found a few usable alternatives:
WikyBlog
Official WikyBlog Homepage
OpenSourceCMS Page – WikyBlogOSCMS WikyBlog – Demo
OSCMS WikyBlog – Admin Demo
Username: admin123
Password: demo123WikyBlog is different in that it is one of the few CMSs that employ the wiki style of content management. As with wikis, WikyBlog generally comes with ease of use – that is…until you get to its complex AJAX tabular function. Then, in my opinion, all hell breaks loose.
Perhaps it is because I am just not familiar with wikis and how they work or maybe I was just tired when playing around with WikyBlog, but either way I do love the ease of use – being able to easily edit a page and being able to see past revisions, but the overall usage is quite confusing and I must have gotten 3 headaches using it. I really think it was solely due to the confusing interface – silly tabs.
And then there’s the loops you sometimes need to jump through to add content and not to mention the lack of ample security against spam bots etc.
Overall, WikyBlog seems to be new to the game and as such doesn’t have that many extensions or a large community surrounding it – but it does give light to a better way to manage content. I’m starting to really like the wiki style of content management. Having each individual element editable by placing an edit button right on/next to it is ingenious as it eliminates the need to go through a cluttered Administration interface just to hunt down one page you wish to edit.
Could we use it? Of course, but it would require a little editing that I’m sure Jake and Dave can easily do.
Joomla!
Official Joomla! Homepage
OpenSourceCMS Page – Joomla!Official Joomla! Demo
Note: Requires registration to test the Administration interface.OSCMS Joomla! – Demo
OSCMS Joomla! – Admin Demo
Username: admin
Password: demoIf for whatever reason you liked Drupal, then you’ll surely love Joomla!
Where Drupal brings power, Joomla! brings power, usability, userfriendly-ness and ease of use – right out of the box. Install Joomla! and you’re ready to go, really. The only thing stopping you would be the lack of originality that surrounds your default Joomla! install. But even that takes mere seconds to get rid of – there are tons of Joomla! themes available and making your own is a breeze.
The community surrounding Joomla! is simply amazing and their support teams organize the documentation and resources in a professional, helpful, userfriendly manner. The extensions its community has to offer are endless – much like Drupal’s collection and the many different sources of support available are really helpful.
Although Joomla! does not offer the same level of ease of use as a wiki, its Administration backend is very userfriendly and extremely powerful – not to forget infinitely extendable.
Truly, what I’ve found is Drupal is more for developers and Joomla! is for everyone else and for ease of use.
Could we use it? Definitely. It’s like Drupal but with a lot less work needed to get it “running”.
SilverStripe
Official SilverStripe Homepage
OpenSourceCMS Page – SilverStripeOSCMS SilverStripe – Demo
OSCMS SilverStripe – Admin Demo
Username: admin
Password: passwordOne thing that popped into my head the second I encountered and was exposed to SilverStripe was: “Wow! This is really different!” Because in all honesty, it is. I’ve not seen any other CMS that blew me away with a mere demo or a quick read of their Tour.
One cannot forget that SilverStripe is somewhat “new” (even though it is at Version 2.0 already) and as such lacks extensions (despite being quite extensible) and lacks documentation (although they are doing *really* well with fixing both of these downfalls), however with what documentation they have available – you can clearly see just how powerful SilverStripe really is.
Although the ease of use surely can’t stand up to that of a wiki, SilverStripe is definitely way up there. I could try explaining why this is so..but if you look at the demo, I think you’ll get what I mean much more clearly than if I had to explain it.
The only realy downfall I can see with SilverStripe is the insane requirements it has:
- PHP 5 is REQUIRED (PHP 5.0.4+)
- gd2, mysql, mcrypt, mbstring modules loaded
- MySQL 4.1+
- Apache 1.3+/2.0+/2.2+ with mod_rewrite, and the ability to set rewriting rules in .htaccess files via “Allow Override”.
- Set the maximum memory to at least 32 mb.
Plone
And then I found Plone. Given that the WOW factor had not worn off with SilverStripe, Plone took me by surprise. I was extremely impressed with it and I think it would be absolutely perfect for BigBlueBall – if its requirements can be met.
Plone has everything. The ease of use a wiki can offer AND the power of SilverStripe and Joomla combined. It truly is no wonder as to why organizations like the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Nokia, Early Detection Research Network (EDRN) and a whole lot more choose to use Plone for their websites. Did I mention Plone is endorsed by NASA?
Plone is extremely secure and has been around for over five years. Its development team consists/consisted of close to over a hundred developers all over the world and it is open source.
I could go on all day about Plone, seriously. But what would be the point? I mean you could easily go onto Plone’s site and read all about it. It’s much more well written than I could ever write it. Interested? I suggest you start here.
The only downfall Plone has is the rather odd requirements:
- Zope 2.9.7
- Python 2.4.4
- Archetypes 1.3.2. or higher (comes with Plone nowadays)
- Relations 0.5b1 or higher
Note: I’m not really sure about these requirements except that Zope and Python are required as I don’t have a server that handles this…
All in all, I highly recommend you read through this “report” and play around with all the demos/watch all the movies etc. for you to get a taste of why these alternatives are more suited for BigBlueBall than Drupal is.
Topic Closed (I already installed Drupal and it’s working nicely). See this thread for more information about the current standings, etc.
https://bigblueball.com/forums/staff-room/40655-new-cms-do-list.html
- The topic ‘The BBB/vbDrupal CMS Thread’ is closed to new replies.