Something troubles me and I'm seeking other opinions. Some of you likely have heard about a Portland-based CMS called concrete5. I did a lot of due-diligence before deciding to use Drupal myself, but regardless of that decision my job requires that I be aware of and agnostic about some other good CMS too. c5 being local made them doubly interesting. As a result I looked at c5 a couple of times, reading reviews, talking to their people, watching videos, etc. The short version is, c5 started in 03 as a proprietary CMS and moved to FOSS in 08. Fans of c5 often call it a very nice, easy-to-use little CMS good for small/simple sites, with limited add-ons (modules), about half of which you have to pay for (similar to Joomla).
My concern stems from the conversations I've had with their people and the public statements they make on email lists and on their website. Their commentary is framed in unsubstantiated and inaccurate "Drupal and Joomla suck" language, more than in "this is what makes us great" language. In general, the more someone talks down a competitor, the more threatened by that competitor you know they are. However, as I understand it, it's generally considered really bad form to badmouth other FOSS projects, particularly at the organizational level, and it is certainly bad form to negatively misrepresent them.
For an example, read concrete5's About page and you get:
"Systems like Drupal and Joomla were designed by and for developers. Building and maintaining a site in Drupal or Joomla is pretty complex and intimidating for someone who can't program computers. Imagine having to call a consultant every time you wanted to write a new Word document. How useful is that to your business?"
Now we can all see some truth in this as Drupal has been harder to learn than many and UX has been an issue, but even taking this into account, I feel that at best this is misleading, possibly just uninformed, at worst it is blatant dishonesty. I'm wondering if I'm just being too literal or something, but let me explain how it appears to me. All CMS are designed for end-users, not developers, but c5 make it sound as if their rivals wrote CMS for use by only programmers, which is illogical. Being designed to make it easy for programmers to extend and having mediocre UX is very different from being designed for programmers. They make it sound like only coders are able to use Drupal and Joomla, which again is a falsehood as both have many site-creators with no coding skills. I myself was introduced to Drupal by my wife, a designer, and she was introduced to it by another designer. Yes, to fully get Drupal's power you need some code, and theming involves some PHP, but my understanding is that C5 shares this limitation. The 2nd last line seems diabolical, implying that only a coder can change Drupal and Joomla content, i.e. that they are not CMS at all. They then go on to have a similar go at Wordpress.
So, am I overreacting? To put it in some perspective, this all came to the forefront for me after even worse comments came up during a conversation on the PDXPHP list, where c5's CEO, Franz, said things like, "it's just as powerful as both (Drupal and Joomla)," which to me it clearly is not, given that they have 157 add-ons (modules), a tiny fraction of what Drupal and Joomla have. In a subsequent email, he also said the following, "Sure, there's over 3000 add-ons in Drupal's marketplace but many of them straight up don't work, and the majority will have compatibility issues if you have more than one installed. Their add-ons are intended to be used by site developers, not site owners, so you're taking a gamble any time you see something you'd like installed." The only shred of truth I see in that is that there are indeed many modules that don't work and I definitely think we need more quality control there, but even then he makes it sound like a much bigger issue than it is. Aside from that it seems like a collection of outrageous falsehoods to me.
I'd really like to hear some of your thoughts on this.
Comments
These are tough times
Especially for software development. No Company no mater how large can compete with the idea of Open Source. Gimp and photoshop are a perfect example. Drupal gets more user-friendly by the month i have to keep lowering my prices. Just a year ago making a shopping cart site was a lot of work now You can set one up in hours it’s amazing where are we going to be in five years. Dries said the goal is to make it so You do not need a developer i never believed it could happen butt it is getting closer. (There will always be people who do not want to mess with this stuffJ) So You are starting to see the frustration from Apps that are not getting the support because they are trying to make money and have put in thousands of hrs of coding. Your right bad mouthing Your competitor is the first sign of defeat.
On a different note when You log-in to this drupal site on the front page Your password does not get encrypted because the handshake has not been made. Does someone want to debate this? Of course You can ad the s and refresh then log-in.
Their worst case scenario
If you chose all the worst modules in Drupal, you would probably have an experience like the c5 folks describe. But I definitely know people who don't know a word of php or even know what programming syntax is who have put together some pretty nifty websites using Drupal with a lot of contributed modules.
Doing so requires that you look up recipes for which modules to use. What you really need of you want to make nifty websites with Drupal - and I assume any decent CMS - is how to find suggestions and answers online, or maybe buy some books. Where are those recipes? Where can you go to ask questions? And in the process you will have some very frustrating times. But so do the very best of developers.
It also depends on how picky you are. As a freelance consultant, I've had some clients who had functional sites up, but there were a few things they just couldn't figure out, and they hired somebody like me for two hours to finish it off. But the sites were not useless without my help. More often than not, the help was some theming - getting something to look just like they wanted. But sometimes it was functional as well.
Who can guess at motivations - why the c5 people were saying what they did. It's pointless to speculate on that. Every CMS is going to have different strengths and weaknesses, pros and cons. I know one non-programmer who complained to me about how hard Drupal was to use - he had used at least two other CMSs. But it seems to be the main one he uses now when he needs a site. So I wouldn't dwell too much on the c5 complaints - though I might add a comment that usage speaks for itself.
FUD and reliability
The amount of FUD, disinformation, exaggeration, and outright lies ("Sure, there's over 3000 add-ons in Drupal's marketplace but many of them straight up don't work, and the majority will have compatibility issues if you have more than one installed") in that thread are pretty hilarious.
But hey, that's what some salespeople feel they need to do, especially if they lack confidence in the ability of their product to stand up to the competition.
It would be nice to see the c5 folks actually work on their product, rather than use flamebait as a means of gaining notice.
One of the reasons I don't recommend c5 for anything (unlike both Wordpress and Joomla, which can be excellent fits for some projects) is that, based on the attitude/behavior of the c5 project leads, I wonder about the longevity of the project.
Cheers,
Bill
FunnyMonkey
Thanks for the replies
I meant to thank all of you for your replies. I agree with Bill that C5's attitude makes me doubt their longevity. No matter what, it just does isn't right.
As to the complexity of Drupal, Heather at Acquia recently wrote an interesting post addressing that: Problem with the Drupal learning curve. The way I put it is, there are several CMS that are easier to get started with, but unless your requirements are modest (and stay modest), there are likely none that are easier to finish projects with.
As an interesting aside, it is risky to take on a powerful OS community like Drupal. Jive took a big swipe at open source and Drupal with a whitepaper titled, "Jive vs. Open Source." and soon they were weathering a firestorm and took it down. The result? Well, the way many see it, Acquia's Drupal Commons is Social Software to Take on Jive Software.
Sala kahle,
Grant