Drupal 7.14

I use Drupal for several years now. It used to be a good CMS.
Like others it has some strong points and some weak ones.
Today I prefer to use other CMS that are more advanced technologically.
Jenny

Drupal is very stable, very great for theming. Very great for how very complex solutions like views and CCK and panels modules integrate. I can see why all big companies are switching to it. One unescapeable minus - is that it has a steep learning curve. But from all the growth that Drupal is having, it seems to be a valuable investment.

@Nastua after reading your reply, I can only conclude that you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

no per page template? read about the Anatomy of a Drupal Theme
Drupal has not flexibility in design. It is a real pain to customize the template. -> false. it has the singlemost flexible templating solution EVER. Its not my fault you dont understand hooks, views and taxonomy right?

All your remarks can be kicked in the ground by a good drupal developer, and obviously you're not one.

What ever comments, critics or people said, one thing that can proved Drupal is at the top of other CMS, it had won twice consecutively.

Kicking all the CMS at the same par. Thats all.

Drupal is like Joomla. Both system offer more or less the same : a lot of features, many templates.
Difference between both systems is that in Drupal you need to install modules to add features whereas in Joomla the core already includes many features.

This is were Joomla is better than Drupal: adding modules is always awkward because their development does not correspond to the core development. Drupal has a lot of modules that are not maintained anymore.
On the other hand, Drupal is better than Joomla in the way the code is written.

Both system are easy to install and out of the box. Very easy to use for new comers. This good side includes its own drawback: out of the bow systems implies limitations in flexibility.
Both, Drupal and Joomla have a limited flexibility. Unless you have a budget like the one of a huge company, you will hardly been able to design exactly what you want with these 2 CMS.
Other CMS (Silverstrip, Typolight, ModX, Simple CMS and many other) have design flexibility in core. It is so easy with them to design a site.

If you consider flexibility to add feature. Drupal is certainly easier than Joomla. With both you can easily develop new features.
But it has to be said that you can also develop easily new features with almost any CMS.

If you consider extendability (extend the CMS features with existing modules) then both Joomla and Drupal are very rich. Few CMS will do better (Plone, Typo3, EZ Publish for example). But again these 2 CMS have thousands of modules to help to extend the CMS.

But despite you have such a huge number of modules, you hardly will find top level modules (usually nothing I will use for customers).
For example in Drupal you have many modules that allow you to display pictures. None of them is fascinating. It is basic technology.
You have also loads of modules to install a text editor. But in many other CMS, text editor is in core.
So numerous modules, but usually basic and redundant.
This is OK for a personal site, but for professional work it is insufficient.

Reading other comments here below, I agree that Drupal has bad performances. Other CMS, in same environment, are much faster.

Considering that the 3 most important characteristics of the Internet are: performance, design and features, Drupal answer only one of them (features) through its numerous modules.

I would make much more sense to have less modules but much better performance and a total design freedom as it is the case for other CMS.

But again, if you have a little site (or a budget with millions in it) and can accept templates how they are, you'll be satisfied with both Joomla or Drupal.

i m advance php programmer ,and I don't like drupal

Drupal is a good CMS for non skilled people that need a system out of the box.
It is a feature rich CMS that you will be able to use in little time.

Saying that some big companies use it is ridiculous as the average Drupal user do not have the immense budget of these organization.

Anyway, for new comers Drupal is perfect.

The only major drawback I see is the bad performance of Drupal, even on dedicated servers (when compared to other CMS).

If you need more sophistication, then you will get into trouble.
As independent developer working for customers I do not like to use it: I prefer the flexibility of other CMS.
Customers want their own design and sometimes very specific layout. Drupal is definitively not done for such tasks. Sure one can do some template customization in Drupal, but the required flexibility is far from what other CMS offer.

Next issue are all the modules you need to install and to maintain. Customers get crazy about them and you spend an horrific time to run after issues that should not exist.
On top of that modules are often discontinued and it has happened many times that we were obliged to develop on our own modules that were no more followed up. A real pain and a real cost.

At last performance issue. Drupal has a bad caching system way below what many other CMS offer. This is also very critical for customers.

But if your project is to use Drupal for your own site, then you should be quite happy with it.
Nevertheless you should be interested in more modern CMS: true, Drupal is outdated.

Drupal 6 is wonderful, but it's not for everyone. If you're an advanced PHP user, Drupal's not worth your time, but if you can't code your own CMS and don't like Joomla, Drupal is the next best thing.

Word of caution, the performance of Drupal is very bad. Large sites need to avoid using Drupal. Communities need to avoid Drupal, too. If you need a community-oriented CMS, try e107, but be warned, e107 is not as pretty as Drupal.

I spent a long time evaluating CMS systems and delighted to have gone for Drupal. Out of the box it is quite basic in terms of modules so the demo doesn't do it justice but with the plethora of quality modules you can do just about anything; wiki, blog, brochure site, online shop, gallery site etc.

I cannot understand people saying it is outdated, hard to use and hard to skin. You can do all the above without touching one line of PHP and skin a site by understanding the theme system and knowing some HTML, CSS, very basic PHP statement e.g. if() echo . Don't believe me, flick through the excellent O'Reilly book 'Using Drupal'.

Don't think that companies like Yahoo use it because with all their skilled developers they have the knowledge to use it, it is more likely they don't want to waste one second of time developing things others already have.

Like Joomla, Drupal is a enormous system. There is not much difference between both of them.
A new comer can do a site without spending a lot of time: everything is out of the box.

This kind of system are a real fun for non developers.
You can virtually do a bit of everything with them.

But this is also their main problem. Being able to do everything means also doing nothing in-depth.

Drupal especially is bad here.
Many modules to extend the CMS, but nothing really brilliant.
E-commerce? You have better systems out there. Gallery? same. Blog? same. Etc.

But the main issue with Drupal is its bad performance.
Once you install 40-50 modules in Drupal, you can see the performance totally down.
Problem is with Drupal: you have to instll many modules to have a decent site.
Joomla and other system are much faster.

Last problem of Drupal: no design flexibility at all.
Don't tell me about some Zen template, etc. This is not at all flexibility, but rather a try to enhance a bad situation.

Simply the best!

It does everything that one needs for most websites.

I am not sure whether I am stupid or very clever but I found Drupal much easier and more friendly to use than Joomla and many others, in spite of the claims of others to be "simple".

Maybe it's because I don't believe in god, so, not having to waste time in temples, mosques, churches or synagogues, gives me extra time to find out how to make a decent website with Drupal!

Even if Drupal is outdated as a CMS you still will be able to build a decent website.

If you need flexibility in design (for your customers for example) you'll be dead.
Sure you always can hack Drupal themes, but what a lost of time for a not satisfying result.
If you are ready to accept the free available template, you'll be happy.

Well,it has to be said that you still can do some design customization with Zen template for instance. But this is far behind the flexibility offered by many other CMS (Silverstripe for example).

So, the comments here below are not at all relevant when they claim flexibility for Drupal templating system. They do not refer to the same world and to the same kind of flexibility.

The good point of Drupal is its numerous modules that allows users to customize / extend the website.

The worst point of Drupal is its extremely bad performance.
We have tested Drupal and 15 other CMS on dedicated servers. Drupal has been one of the worst in performances.

OK, I have to say here that we did install around 30 modules. If you install no modules, Drupal will be OK in performances.
But we did the test with 30 modules installed because if you want to run a basic website, you need at least to install 40+ modules.
Because what you find in core in many other CMS are modules in Drupal (pictures, blog, text editor, etc.).

We could see with Drupal that the more you install modules, the worse the performances are.
Performance issues in Drupal are due to the bad cache system. Drupal need a full code redesign here. But as far as you can see what's going on in the next release (Drupal 7) this matter is not solved.

So, bad performances and no poor design flexibility, what can you then offer to your customers?

Look, I see so many comments here about "Drupal is not easy to customize... not easy to customize look and feel, the templates, etc"...

Yeah, blah blah blah! The honest truth is that Drupal is so darn simple to customize. It's a total piece of cake for me to mod a template and develop something custom-looking. Now some of the free templates out there for D are not so great, and are not so easy to hack. But in all honesty, the majority of them are well designed.

Now as far as templates, I use the awesome "Zen" for some things. But for the majority of what I do, I only use templates from one team: Top Notch Themes. TNT's free themes, like Acquia Prosper and Marina are absolutely beautiful. And the Fusion theme offers a TON of flexibility, from point N click css changes to on-the-fly dynamic changes.


Those of you who are complaining about Drupal not being easy to customize are 100% wrong. First, if you're gonna custom a theme, you need to have certain foundation knowledge, like knowledge of CSS, HTML and php. If you don't have that then yeah, it's gonna seem daunting to you. But then again, any cms will be daunting to customize.

But if you have at least some of the fundamental knowledge then hacking Drupal themes should pose absolutely no "real" challenge to you. And the reason why I use Top Notch Themes is because the code is laid out perfectly. Heck, even a beginner can customize a TNT template. And with "Zen", it tells you exactly what to do and what css functions control what.


As for Drupal itself: I've found NO OTHER cms that comes close to what Drupal is as a whole. Maybe Drupal is not for beginners... and it does have a steep learning curve... but c'mon people, it's not "that" bad. Once you learn Drupal, it becomes such a snap. I can create a page of content in 2 minutes. To me, Drupal is the "big dog" of CMS. Forget the absolutely silly Joomla! Drupal leaves it in the dust. And... when D7 comes out, it will address most of these complaints.

If you're blogging or just "playing around", then go for Word Press or Joomla! But if you're truly serious about a web design, and want the ultimate flexibility and power, then you will NEVER go wrong with Drupal. Like someone said: "If you can't do it with Drupal, then you probably shouldn't be doing it".

Yes, Drupal has a steep learning curve, but once you're past that initial intimidation, it's hard to find something that Drupal CAN'T do! It's just a matter of choosing the right modules and configuring them to suit you. Drupal can create any type of site, from a simple page to ecommerce to a social network site. It took me about a month of working with Drupal before something just went "click" in my head and I "got it". It's not a great blogging CMS out-of-the-box like Wordpress is, but it can be configured to give WP a run for its money. Check it out and keep working with it. It's worth the effort.

Good CMS For E-Commerse