I worked with both Wordpress and Drupal and in overall I really like Drupal better. After seeing the below video I think that there’s mainly 2 things that Wordpress 2.7 does better than Drupal though. They are first a better usability for posting and administering content, and then second a better usability for installing plugins and themes.
Check out the video on this page or this alternative page. My favorite part starts at 6 minutes or so. It’s the new Wordpress 2.7 dashboard demo. Their 2.7 version isn’t release yet.
Drupal people: get some coffee, grab a seat, log out of IRC, and find 16 minutes to watch this video. Wordpress is leading the way in terms of posting and administering content, and we'd better be taking notes. The bits that I'm particularly jonesing over are the drag and drop widgets, the content administration dashboard, and the instant installation of plugins and themes.
- Robert Douglass
Another post by Robert: Wordpress 2.6 features that Drupal should have
Robert Douglass is author of the book titled Building Online Communities With Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress.
Enjoy,
Comments
yeah, good dashboard
That's definitely the way the drupal admin interface needs to go as well, but obviously it's a bit harder to be this trimmed down when you have so many more options. The plugin installation at the end of the video is also a lot better than drupal's, and it was one of the drupal things I never understood why it had to be so complicated.
Regarding the admin dashboard, I was actually more impressed by the link to the Habari demo in the comments (http://binarybonsai.com/interfacing-habari). It's very clean, responsive, and the timeline is a cool way of managing content.
I am not fond of the WP
I am not fond of the WP administration interface, could be FAR better IMO for a project that has been around for so long. Habari looks slick though! very slick.
Tj Holowaychuk
Vision Media - Victoria BC Web Design
Victoria British Columbia Web Design School
Tj Holowaychuk
Vision Media - Victoria BC Web Design
Victoria British Columbia Web Design School
There is hope
Module installation through the interface has been worked upon.
Now there ist Plugin Manager http://drupal.org/project/plugin_manager
Absolutely leading in the field to me is Firefox 3 - when wanting to install an Add-On, you get a little window that searches for modules with a name you enter, then you are shown a short description of all matching Plugins in this little window and you can also install it from there - very quick, no need to go to any webpage.
This would be a dream...
Life is a process
Life is a journey, not a destination
Hmm well for developers
Hmm well for developers there is this command line utility to install modules and core within seconds:
http://vision-media.ca/resources/drupal/drupal-module-builder-gem
Tj Holowaychuk
Vision Media - Victoria BC Web Design
Victoria British Columbia Web Design School
Tj Holowaychuk
Vision Media - Victoria BC Web Design
Victoria British Columbia Web Design School
Habari
After watching the Habari video, I just had to download it and give it a try. They too have a disappearing help (on log in, welcome text appears but after the first post all the welcome text disappears) issue and to solve that have linked to a AJAX powered (ie. not powered by habari) set of HTML pages on mydomain.com/doc/manual
Neat stuff hey? I am
Neat stuff hey? I am impressed with what they are doing, I took a look at the code and was not overly happy but the over all appeal is very nice. There are alot of cons of Ajax functionality when working with a project like Drupal but it will get there.
Tj Holowaychuk
Vision Media - Victoria BC Web Design
Victoria British Columbia Web Design School
Tj Holowaychuk
Vision Media - Victoria BC Web Design
Victoria British Columbia Web Design School
Check Silverstripe's UI for content
I didn't want to start another thread on looking outside of Drupal for UI ideas...so I hope no one minds me attaching to this thread. If you have some time, take a look at Silverstripe's demo site and log into their admin system: http://demo.silverstripe.com/ .
While I had some questions about performance, I have to say that I really liked their UI for editing content. The admin layout with "tab browsing" enabled access to a host of functions without scrolling (1280x1024 screen). Try adding a link to the "home" page and see the interface just for the links (mine showed up on the right). While Wordpress is much more polished, Silverstripe seems to be on the right track for usability too.
Bryan
CMS Report
Bryan Ruby
socPub
Check out these guys as well
Check out these guys as well this is really solid work
http://www.squarespace.com/
Tj Holowaychuk
Vision Media - Victoria BC Web Design
Victoria British Columbia Web Design School
Tj Holowaychuk
Vision Media - Victoria BC Web Design
Victoria British Columbia Web Design School
Holy Moly
Squarespace is unbelievable. They will eat us alive.
Actually, we should hire those guys :)
Life is a process
Life is a journey, not a destination
"Better" Software vs. Open Source
In my work with open source technologies like Drupal, I often see and sometimes even drift myself into envy at what seems like better technology from proprietary vendors, like Squarespace, or whathaveyou.
What I always remind myself is that the essential value of an open source system like Drupal comes not from a direct feature comparison with other technologies, but from it's open source development and licensing model.
We will always be able to point to technologies that do this or that better than Drupal, but I don't believe ANY proprietary technology will ever match the strengths that the open source model gives Drupal.
For example, Squarespace heralds their deployment of the TinyMCE WYSIWYG editor in recent blog entries. How long has Drupal had the ability to let you choose what content editing interface you will use, TinyMCE included?
A proprietary technology is like a benign dictator—great while it lasts and a lot less messy than democracy or open source—but never the safest choice over the long term.
eat us?
Judging by the kind of sites they do, they're more aimed at the wordpress crowd.