Drupal for ERT?

[Srirangan]

I just recently worked on implementing a Drupal based website for a client. While hunting for modules for the client, I came across this..

topic

This is a simple topic/answer module.

An user with the correct permission, usually an admin or a moderator, posts topics on a web site. These are normally questions. The user creating the node determines how many answers each user can enter, and how many days the topic will remain open. Users with the appropriate permissions then answer the topic. They can also edit their answers, as long as the topic is still open....

Perfect for ERT? Drupal is a popular, clean, stable open source CMS. Considered to be one of the best by techies all around. I'm sure many of you have used it. In my opinion, it is a near perfect CMS for ERT, what do you people think?

[Huntress]

It sounds interesting.  It might be good in the future to have something like this.  Nice find!

[COBOLdinosaur]

Droopal does not impress me.  It has a higher than average ratio of bug fixes and some are security patches.  So it is no better or worse than other softeware in the open source CMS market.  We are not going to change software at this point, and the next version of the site will be custom php5 with better security than conventional open source software offers.

Drupal was on of the options when this site was set up.  It is already loaded on the host with about 30 other PHP products for quick installation.  If PHPBB had not been availaable I would have either download PHPBB and installed it manually or gone with YaBB, I could not see me trying to work with Drupal it is not PHP noob friendly.

[COBOLdinosaur]

BTW,

This is posted in teh wrong place.  Propose and Consult is intended for policy, and rules matters that require a community vote, we shou probley move this to another forum.

I think a discussion of Drupal and a lot of other middle level (ordinary) software is worth while.  Everyone of these things has a handful of fanatic supports ... Mambo is the same way; but none of them ever hist a home.  Every onece in a while something like Mozilla come along and everyone starts thinking all the open source is like that NOPE.  80% crap; 15% ordinary ;4.9% good; .1% great products.  

Even crap does well if it used on the right project; and every one of them is in the .1% according to their promotional hype.  But they are mostly crap.  There are a couple of hundred FF extensions.  I have tried about 60, and 55 are pure garbage.  The other 5 are installed, on my computer;  But every one of those 55 has someone who beliees in it and evey one of them had at least a few positive reviews.

You have to take software and kick the snot out of it before you know how it will perform.  That means it should be tolerant to being installed wrong, being misused abused and hacked.  If it can't stand up it should be tossed until it is mature enough to work outside the lab in the real world.

[Srirangan]

Well comparing Mambo and Drupal is really unfair. Mambo is nowhere in the same league of Drupal. I have used Drupal along with a lot of other CMS' and Drupal by far takes the leaed. Now I'm saying this out of experience rather than anything else.

Yes, custom code is ideal. But then Drupal would be much better than the phpBB system in place. Now I don't recommend a change of system, just a simple try out, perhaps on a ubdomain just to compare the two systems. Heck why just these two, compare all that suit the bill.

PS: Huntress please move this in the appropriate TA. Thanks.

[Srirangan]

I could not see me trying to work with Drupal it is not PHP noob friendly.

Yes, Drupal doesn't have a wizard basd interface. But to call it hard to install is not quite believable. There's a query to be run, settings file to be altered and Drupal to be uploaded. That's all.

Cd&, A little request. Just try to run Drupal in some sub domain. The powerful taxonomy will impress you. The sheer power of the content types, modules the free templating etc.

A phpBB based discussion forum lacks the feel of being a comprehensive resource that ERT should have. Drupal well implemented would be much much better.

[COBOLdinosaur]

I've look at all kinds of site using Drupal.  I am not impressed.  

It is a non-starter for me.  The use a defective doctype so I would either have to replace that and then fix there code that does not work with a proper doctype.  Or keep their defect xhtml1 format and deal with all the problems it creates.  Then when the transition to the real xhtml standard (xhtml 2.0) becomes possible it will be necesary to re-write large pieces because they are not compatible.

I've been doing this for 40 years I have seen hundreds of Drupals come and go.  PHPBB probably started out as decent code, but it has been turned to crap with patching; however as ugly as it is; and as crappy as the code it; it works.  

I don't use wizards; I modify code. I get down into the sewer where the PHPBB code resides and I fix it; modify it; improve it, and make it work with a valid strict doctype.

I can do that because I do not have to drill down through layers of abstraction to find what I am looking for.  If you like Drupal that's fine.  I know people who like progamming in C and a few that think everything should be written lisp.  Drupal is not the kind of tool I want to work with.

The sheer power of the content types, modules the free templating etc.

No that is not going to impress me. Java developed in Eclipse impresses me.  Java swing impresses me.  Google search technology impresses me, just another webdev tool does not impress me; they are a dime a dozen, and new ones arrive on the scene every day; and with very little variation they all do the same thing.  In the end you are stuck with some other developers ideas on how you should develop a web site.  Whether it is PHPBB or Drupal it is still somebody else dictating the architecture and the limits.

So you toss up what it simple until you can do it right with a custom solution.

[Srirangan]

It is a non-starter for me. The use a defective doctype so I would either have to replace that and then fix there code that does not work with a proper doctype. Or keep their defect xhtml1 format and deal with all the problems it creates. Then when the transition to the real xhtml standard (xhtml 2.0) becomes possible it will be necesary to re-write large pieces because they are not compatible.

Now if we could get COBOLdinosaur to stop judging web applications by their markup code alone. For any reason if you think Drupal forces you to use any of their client side templates, you are mistaken.  :D

I've been doing this for 40 years I have seen hundreds of Drupals come and go. PHPBB probably started out as decent code, but it has been turned to crap with patching; however as ugly as it is; and as crappy as the code it; it works.

Well, Drupal works. Very well. Infact I can bet all I have that the current stable version of Drupal can work better than the current stable version of phpBB. Infact phpBB and Drupal are incomparable.

No that is not going to impress me. Java developed in Eclipse impresses me. Java swing impresses me. Google search technology impresses me,

Now how is any of these comparisons even valid to this Drupal v/s phpBB debate? Yes, Drupal isn't Google, well phpBB isn't either.

just another webdev tool does not impress me; they are a dime a dozen, and new ones arrive on the scene every day; and with very little variation they all do the same thing.

In your free time, try working with Drupal. You'll realize the vastness of difference between phpBB and Drupal. No they are not the same thing with "little variation".

In the end you are stuck with some other developers ideas on how you should develop a web site. Whether it is PHPBB or Drupal it is still somebody else dictating the architecture and the limits.

Yes, we are stuck for the time being using someone else's code. But then why pick one which frankly sucks over the other which doesn't?

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Seriously, if you don't have the time, allow me to setup Drupal for ERT. I'll do it on my server and configure it for an ERT type site, only if ofcourse, you guys will atleast consider it as one of the options. Fair deal?

[COBOLdinosaur]

I can bet all I have that the current stable version of Drupal can work better than the current stable version of phpBB.

So what! When this site was brought up I needed a forum, Drupal is not a forum you have to code it. PHPBB is a forum. 10 minutes after I installed it I had a working, fully functional forum, that the site builders could use to co-ordinate the effort of building the site.  Two hours after it was up I was dding features I wanted and extending it instead of trying to find answers in Drupal documentation about how to do a forum.

I don't need or want a CMS.  I have my own design that Drupal will not easily support, whereas the DB structure of PHPBB and the way it handles text from the forums is easily adapted to my design; and the tools I am developing.

Using Drupal would be like using an electric drill to pound in a nail because your hammer is old and the drill is cool looking. I would not even think about Drupal for a forum considering there are 20-30 off-the shelf forum packages.

Now how is any of these comparisons even valid to this Drupal v/s phpBB debate?

You missed the point. You want me to be impressed by something that is very ordinary and common.  Real technical innovation impresses me. Incremental improvments in common approaches don't.  It is very ordinary software; and I have not seen it used to do anything that cannot be done by other off the shelf software.  If has nothing unique or special about it.

If I was looking for a CMS I might look at Drupal.  I wasn't; I'm not ; and I won't be using a packaged CMS solution. Nothing I have seen will easily support what I want to do.

As for the markup issue; that has nothing to do with the quality.  That has to do with deadending and having to re-write a lot of code because a moronic designer wanted to use the latest cool stuff instead of the reliable stuff that will allow forward migration with the least amount of pain.

If you want to put Drupal up and duplicate the ERT functionality.  Go ahead.  All it proves is that you can do a forum in drupal.  So what! you can do a fourm with just about anything if you want.  Why use an electric drive to drive a nail if there is a beat up old hammer (PHPBB) sitting there?

[nicholassolutions]

I'm sure Drupal is a nice piece of software, but IMO, this is a moot point regardless of the specifics. It might have been worth discussing a few months ago, but for whatever the reasons may be, we have phpBB now, and we have a lot of content in it. More importantly, people have settled in with the current setup, and it's taken a lot of work to get them here and to keep them here. Switching to a new system would involve migrating a lot of data and getting a lot of people to get used to a new system. Now, this is only a minor headache in the grand scheme of things, but it's not worth it to switch over to a system that (whether it's better or not) will require extensive modifications before we can use it. It will be worth it when we hae a custom solution that does exactly what we want, but right now there are better things we can spend our time on.

Somewhat separately, ERT is really more of an idea than a website, and we have yet to see if the idea really works. If the idea does work, it will certainly work with phpBB or any other BBS. Until we see that happen, I personally can't justify putting in a lot of working creating a badass interface that no one will actually end up using.

[Srirangan]

I'm sure Drupal is a nice piece of software, but IMO, this is a moot point regardless of the specifics. It might have been worth discussing a few months ago, but for whatever the reasons may be, we have phpBB now, and we have a lot of content in it. More importantly, people have settled in with the current setup, and it's taken a lot of work to get them here and to keep them here. Switching to a new system would involve migrating a lot of data and getting a lot of people to get used to a new system. Now, this is only a minor headache in the grand scheme of things, but it's not worth it to switch over to a system that (whether it's better or not) will require extensive modifications before we can use it. It will be worth it when we hae a custom solution that does exactly what we want, but right now there are better things we can spend our time on.

Somewhat separately, ERT is really more of an idea than a website, and we have yet to see if the idea really works. If the idea does work, it will certainly work with phpBB or any other BBS. Until we see that happen, I personally can't justify putting in a lot of working creating a badass interface that no one will actually end up using.

Good point. I wish I could have made the suggestion back in September/October, but then I wasn't around.  :scratch:

[nicholassolutions]

Yeah, well timing is everything  :wink: I actually don't think it will be all that long until we've got a custom solution, and now that you are here, your input and een help coding will a lot more valuable than picking a better short term setup. Hopefully we'll be hanging around soon having a good chuckle about the good (or is it bad?) old days with phpBB...