Adam Jimenez | drupal / joomla / mambo etc

drupal / joomla / mambo etc

There is quite a bit of hype surrounding open source systems like

drupal
joomla
mambo
etc

I've looked into them but have so far avoided using them.

I'm not against these systems per se. I think they are good for non-profits or sites with limited budgets. They allow peeps who aren't web developers to create and manage their own fairly sophisticated web-sites. But this is also part of the problem, it's almost like Frontpage for PHP. It allows them to create a functional system very easily. But as soon as they have to customise it in a way which wasn't originally intended; they start hitting brick walls. Either that or the systems are over-complicated to use.

Every website is different. And a lot of websites have unique features which are different to any other site. At some point you have to get down and dirty and write some proper code and not expect a system to do it all for you.

And what happens if the system you are using is no longer supported, or an upgrade comes along that breaks your existing site or modules?

So what's the alternative?

Well here's what I do. I've developed a generic/ flexible CMS system that I use for a back-end on all my CMS projects. The front-end is always coded from scratch. This gives the designers complete freedom to design the site anyway they see fit and I integrate the CMS into their design. Over the years I've developed a core library that speeds up development by taking care of ecommerce/ account logins etc. But at all times I've got complete control over the functionality.

some interesting quotes from a slashdot article on drupal:

Recently we managed to phase out our corporate drupal-based site. It was close to impossible to upgrade from Drupal 4.x up to 5.x (and 6.x) because of custom modules and we have no human resources to recode someone's crap from version to version every year.

Don't even talk about "Joomla" and "Mambo". They're a nightmare to maintain, and a royal pain in the ASS for building an SEO friendly site with friendly URL's that don't look like a matrix reloaded computer screenshot.

The problem is, the moment you make the mistake of thinking you're going to add fields to modules, apply true custom skins to them, rearrange their content, etc. on top of an already largely built framework, it very quickly falls apart. You get two choices at that point: add on systems that kinda sorta give you some of what you need but still leave you limited or hacking in to the source code that's really not built with that kind of customization in mind.

I spent months with Drupal, tracking the boards, reading the docs, listening to many podcast series. But I came away feeling that, despite its many features and modules, it's quite kludgey.

And this one:

http://books.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/18/139218&from=rss

I'm so tired of taking over sites where the former "developer" used a Drupal or Joomla installation.

It is inevitable that the requirements of a custom web app will eventually exceed the capability of these systems. Knowledge of a particular CMS does not a developer make! These are tools in a toolbox and should be used as such. I hate it when people sell themselves as freelance "programmers", but really they only know how to use a particular CMS. So lets write a book and encourage this behavior - bluagh..

I still have some websites lingering around that use Joomla but I am very much dissociated with that CMS, infact any CMS nowadays. I find the issues that these systems bring to the table far outweigh any little added productivity that a small group can sustain. There are teams of script kiddies from Asia and elsewhere scouring online websites for these systems to prove just how easy they are to hack into. If you have an online database with confidential client information, you are in trouble.

The problem with popular CMS systems today stems from the tight coupling of back-end architecture and front-end architecture.

Remove the coupling, and the need for a book on Front End Drupal vanishes, leaving us with a simple API which we can integrate with our own custom or third party front-end.

06/05/2009 permalink | Posted in web development | 9 Comments »