Thinking of using Drupal for k-12 district
Hi all, I'm new here..just thought I'd get some opinions on what Drupal can offer to a k-12 school district (10k students). We are currently evaluating CMSs and we're down to Joomla or Drupal. I've done my own experimenting and searching online but I thought I could get some insight from users who already are using Drupal.
We will be hiring someone to initially create our theme and design our site (bc of time). We have a great deal of knowledge in web design and programming from myself and my coworker, so customizing in the future and integrating with other systems is crucial.
Read moreIs a fellow FOSS CMS slandering Drupal?
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.
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