Drupal?

[Alex Faundez]

Hi all,

Does any of you use Drupal to run their website(s)?

If you had to describe one or two things you like about it, and one or two negative points, what would they be?

Someone mentioned Drupal and the fact that some UN entities are using it to run their website to our management, so I'm trying to find a few pros and cons for this solution.

I'm trying to push for an approach where we define our needs BEFORE we pick the CMS, but I need convincing arguments for management (other than "it doesn't make sense" :-)

Any feedback is welcome!

Thanks

a

Alex Faundez about.me/alex.faundez

Content strategist and online communications specialist
faunde...@gmail.com

Founder of Geneva Content Strategy Meetup

alexandr...@unctad.org // unctad.org

[Virginia Ruan]

Hi Alex,

I have used Drupal for a long time (oakfnd.org). It is great for databases of content and for searching. I honestly find it a little rigid though. It is hard to manipulate the design. But, it may be my lack of knowledge. For an intranet, I have heard good things about drupal commons. 

Good luck!

Virginia

Sent from my iPhone

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[Atanu Garai]

Hello Alex,

Great question and though difficult to answer J

I prefer starting what the website wants to be like. Is the website going to be for organization, data visualizations, event, content store, managing business processes? Once you have figured out no. 1 goal of this website, selecting a CMS would be easier.

 

I would rate all 3 PHP CMS – Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress quite good, with all three now matching feature by features. In terms of implementation and output, I would put both

Drupal and Joomla in same category in terms of features, complexity and time taken to customize and implement them. WordPress takes lot lesser time to customize and publish website. Every CMS has some cons and they are applicable only to specific use cases. One common complaint for Drupal and Joomla is that they are slow if not properly configured.

 

Kind regards,

Atanu

 

Atanu Garai

SocialWell Technologies

Skype: atanugarai | Phone: (91) 97761.83915

at...@socialwell.net

atanu...@gmail.com

www.socialwell.net

@SocialWellNet

 

 

From: geneva-w...@googlegroups.com [mailto:geneva-w...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Alex Faundez
Sent: Tuesday, March 21, 2017 7:28 PM
To: Geneva Web Group <geneva-w...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: {GWG: 2870} Drupal?

 

Hi all,

Does any of you use Drupal to run their website(s)?

If you had to describe one or two things you like about it, and one or two negative points, what would they be?

Someone mentioned Drupal and the fact that some UN entities are using it to run their website to our management, so I'm trying to find a few pros and cons for this solution.

I'm trying to push for an approach where we define our needs BEFORE we pick the CMS, but I need convincing arguments for management (other than "it doesn't make sense" :-)

Any feedback is welcome!

Thanks

a

Alex Faundez about.me/alex.faundez

Content strategist and online communications specialist
faunde...@gmail.com

Founder of Geneva Content Strategy Meetup

alexandr...@unctad.org // unctad.org

--

[Hasan Tanvir]

Hi Alex,

I have been working in the web development industry for 16 years and now I am running my own software company in Australia. In the past, I have served UN, Australian Government and some large/small private organisations.

In my professional opinion, Drupal is definitely number 1. Gartner has the same opinion about Acquia (the commercial end of Drupal).

The size of active Drupal community is also another factor.

These days any renowned CMS can get the job done. There are workarounds available for almost anything; if the Event module of Drupal is not fit for your purpose, you can integrate EventBrite's API into your website. 

Obviously I would suggest you to start with the analysis of your web requirements but it does help to know what the rest of world is doing in this space.

In 2014, Australian Federal Govt. spent 24 million dollars to develop a Drupal distribution which is now available for FREE for anyone to download and use. This distribution is regularly updated, security patches are proactively fixed, etc. as it is used by the biggest names in Australian Govt.

It is a ready to use Drupal distribution for Govt Agencies, NGOs, Corporates. Within 4 hours, with a little bit of Drupal knowledge, you can setup a professional corporate looking website. This distribution is called "govCMS" and on this website you can read more about it and the departments that are currently using it.

Australian Dept. of Finance observed that every federal/state/local department is spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayers money on getting professional corporate websites. This whole arrangement is well thought out and built with great ethos.

Hope you find this information useful. Please feel free to ask more questions.

Best regards,

Hasan T Anjum

My LinkedIn Profile

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[Tanja Kerleta-Gajic]

Hi Alex,

UN Global Intranet (iSeek) runs on Drupal, which is the "UN recommended standard for web content management".

Category 1	Category 2	PRODUCT/SERVICE	VENDOR	OWNER	NEXT REVIEW	SCOPE
Common Applications	Content Management	Drupal	Drupal	OICT/KMS	31/12/2017	ENTERPRISE

The case doc:

https://iseek-geneva.un.org/system/files/2010-014_drupal_case_2_changeofstandard.pdf

For the practical part (pros vs cons), you may contact Fausto F. from UNOG.

Hope that this helps.

Tanja

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From: geneva-w...@googlegroups.com <geneva-w...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Alex Faundez <faunde...@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 21, 2017 1:58 PM
To: Geneva Web Group
Subject: {GWG: 2870} Drupal?

 

Hi all,

Does any of you use Drupal to run their website(s)?

If you had to describe one or two things you like about it, and one or two negative points, what would they be?

Someone mentioned Drupal and the fact that some UN entities are using it to run their website to our management, so I'm trying to find a few pros and cons for this solution.

I'm trying to push for an approach where we define our needs BEFORE we pick the CMS, but I need convincing arguments for management (other than "it doesn't make sense" :-)

Any feedback is welcome!

Thanks

a

Alex Faundez about.me/alex.faundez

Alex Faundez on about.me about.me Alex is a Content strategist in Geneva, Switzerland. View Alex’s portfolio from their page.

Content strategist and online communications specialist
faunde...@gmail.com

Founder of Geneva Content Strategy Meetup

alexandr...@unctad.org // unctad.org

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[Hapee de Groot]

Agree with moth Atanu says. except that I would add Joomla as part of the 4 PHP CMS of which I prefer Drupal if I have to choose one of those 4. But we actually do not have enough information from Alex, to make a serious judgement, is it a simple site, does it need a lot of backend logic, is it used to store a lot of data, only if we know that we can judge the right one, and another question to Alex, what are the alternatives you consider? I do not want a fight about CMS if you have strong thoughts about one of the CMS's.

Generally I am moving away from one systems fits all, I rather set up a Mattermost for internal discussions, a static/dynamic website using jekyll for secure publishing and away from php/mysql driven websites that are becoming increasingly insecure.

Kind regards,

Hapee

[Eva]

Hi Alex,

I have used Drupal for a number of projects, and in one way I think it's the most sophisticated and powerful CMS out there. There are thousands of modules for just about every single feature you might want to add to your site. And for any missing feature you can modify the open source modules and get help with this from a very active community.

It's fantastic for heavily data driven sites and for searches.

BUT I agree with Virginia that there is a very steep initial learning curve, even for an experienced PHP developer. And because of the complexity even the admin back end can be daunting for someone without solid understanding of web technologies.

Plus, Drupal has very frequent and time intensive security updates you have to be willing to run. Or to ignore.

And I agree with Atanu that Drupal, Joomla and Wordpress are all good.

I'd go for Drupal for large site that requires some data integration and will be maintained by experienced PHP coders.

For smaller projects and less technical teams it can be a bit of an overkill.

Hope this helps.

Eva

[Daniel D'Esposito]

Hi Alex, 

Drupal used to be more suitable than Wordpress for advanced organisational websites, because it had custom content types, so you could fashion more advanced dynamic pages.

But Wordpress also has content types for a number of years now so that advantage has vanished.

However, as has been mentioned on this thread, Drupal remains more complex to master, has a touch learning curve, and can it can be punishing to make it do what you want.

Like they say, Drupal is for engineers, Wordpress is for communicators.

I would say there are three compelling reasons to use Drupal: 

- Your in-house web developer is a Drupal fan and masters it

- Your web development company  of choice love Drupal and master it.

- Your client is the UN and Drupal is forced on you by their IT policy.

If these do not apply, then I would opt for Wordpress: 

- more activity

- more plugins

- more themes

- more developers

- more fun

- simpler and quicker and cheaper development

- same results

Here is a good example of a Wordpress website: 

https://www.icj.org/

Best, 

Daniel

Daniel D'Esposito

Linked In

skype: daniel.desposito 

mobile, whatapp, signal: +41774228662

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[Evren Kiefer]

Hello Everyone,

I don't have Drupal experience so I wasn't going to intervene in the thread but I have tons of WordPress experience and I would like to respectfully disagree with Daniel. The Myth of WordPress' cheapness is dangerous. Don't get that idea into your managers' heads. WordPress is not at all cheap if you want to store various content types and structure them. Quite the contrary. You have to basically recode the post editing page to be able to get your data in as meta fields. It takes a competent coder to do those things. And it accrues a lot of resistance to later change and tech debt. Or you can go through a plugin that does this for you but then you stuck with it forever. Moreover, the fact that there's loads of plugins doesn't help as much as one would think. A Multi-site WordPress platform I helped run had 130 plugins in total for, like, 8 sites. Each plugin adds its own CSS and Javascript files, adding HTTP requests and sucking all performance out of your project. Moreover, cheap or free plugins sound great until you have to monitor the developers' moods on Twitter and jump from one plugin to the next when they are tired of keeping them up to date.

I love WordPress for publishing articles or simple content types but for more advanced stuff, it's as expensive and complicated as it gets.

Kind regards,
Evren