I have been developing for Drupal for 5 years, with a portfolio of many large scale projects. I am also the author of some popular Drupal modules.
With all that said, in my experience, Drupal offers zero TCO or ETA advantage over Django or Symfony on any medium to large project. A lot of the great things you may hear about Drupal are coming from either (a) Non-developers or (b) People who have staked their careers on Drupal.
A few reasons why Drupal cannot be taken seriously include...
Would you be willing to elaborate a little on your concerns, please?
Some colleagues and I are about to start a major overhaul of a moderately large site (a few dozen pages, a few thousand users, a few hundred visitors per day). It seems like the first choice is basically between "standard framework with some plug-in custom features" (CMSes like Drupal) and "custom architecture with some standard plug-in features" (using things like Django and some common libraries).
So far, we've been forming the opposite view to you: a lot of the site we'll be producing is static content, but a few parts will require moderately structured data (the equivalent of a few tables and some simple SQL queries), and for that balance Drupal seems like the best tool we've considered so far. We don't have much experience with these particular tools, but the guys building the system will be proper designers/developers, while the guys maintaining some of the content will be entirely non-technical. Is our situation just different to what you're describing, or are there really a bunch of problems waiting for us a little way down the line?
I am a LAMP developer who was kind of thrown into doing Drupal development. Maybe I can offer some insight.
If you don't have *Drupal* developers, forget it. Drupal's famous learning curve will prevent your guys from working for a while (its been frustrating for me). Documentation isn't great. There are a few books, but...it's *very* complex.
Drupal is more than a mere MVC. It does some cool things, like Inversion of Control (via its hooks) and it does some things I feel a pretty lamebrained (it's so mod
Thanks for sharing your experience and insights. It sounds like both your background before Drupal and your general views of development are pretty similar to most of our guys.
We've reached the first test you described so far: we've got a test install, and established that much of what we need can be done with the core plus a few modules built around CCK and Views for the custom data. Some of it is indeed not as simple as with just writing a bit of database code, to be sure, but so far it's been close enoug
I think Drupal can be taken seriously, but I'm just a casual user. I'm learning how it works in my spare time by setting up a web site and seeing what works and what doesn't. One resource I've found that has made it easier to separate the wheat from the chaff (as far as modules go) is the book Using Drupal [usingdrupal.com], reviewed here [slashdot.org]
Maybe Drupal is an amateur CMS and all I'll get out of it is a beautiful blog, wiki or image gallery, but it seems to have a lot of potential. There are modules for e-commerce, file handlin
Drupal cannot currently be taken seriously (Score:5, Informative)
I have been developing for Drupal for 5 years, with a portfolio of many large scale projects. I am also the author of some popular Drupal modules.
With all that said, in my experience, Drupal offers zero TCO or ETA advantage over Django or Symfony on any medium to large project. A lot of the great things you may hear about Drupal are coming from either (a) Non-developers or (b) People who have staked their careers on Drupal.
A few reasons why Drupal cannot be taken seriously include...
1) Lack of unified model
Re:Drupal cannot currently be taken seriously (Score:4, Insightful)
Would you be willing to elaborate a little on your concerns, please?
Some colleagues and I are about to start a major overhaul of a moderately large site (a few dozen pages, a few thousand users, a few hundred visitors per day). It seems like the first choice is basically between "standard framework with some plug-in custom features" (CMSes like Drupal) and "custom architecture with some standard plug-in features" (using things like Django and some common libraries).
So far, we've been forming the opposite view to you: a lot of the site we'll be producing is static content, but a few parts will require moderately structured data (the equivalent of a few tables and some simple SQL queries), and for that balance Drupal seems like the best tool we've considered so far. We don't have much experience with these particular tools, but the guys building the system will be proper designers/developers, while the guys maintaining some of the content will be entirely non-technical. Is our situation just different to what you're describing, or are there really a bunch of problems waiting for us a little way down the line?
Re: (Score:2)
I am a LAMP developer who was kind of thrown into doing Drupal development. Maybe I can offer some insight.
If you don't have *Drupal* developers, forget it. Drupal's famous learning curve will prevent your guys from working for a while (its been frustrating for me). Documentation isn't great. There are a few books, but...it's *very* complex.
Drupal is more than a mere MVC. It does some cool things, like Inversion of Control (via its hooks) and it does some things I feel a pretty lamebrained (it's so mod
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks for sharing your experience and insights. It sounds like both your background before Drupal and your general views of development are pretty similar to most of our guys.
We've reached the first test you described so far: we've got a test install, and established that much of what we need can be done with the core plus a few modules built around CCK and Views for the custom data. Some of it is indeed not as simple as with just writing a bit of database code, to be sure, but so far it's been close enoug
Re: (Score:1)
I think Drupal can be taken seriously, but I'm just a casual user. I'm learning how it works in my spare time by setting up a web site and seeing what works and what doesn't. One resource I've found that has made it easier to separate the wheat from the chaff (as far as modules go) is the book Using Drupal [usingdrupal.com], reviewed here [slashdot.org]
Maybe Drupal is an amateur CMS and all I'll get out of it is a beautiful blog, wiki or image gallery, but it seems to have a lot of potential. There are modules for e-commerce, file handlin