First off, sorry for resurrecting this thread. It's just that I've kept meaning to post since this discussion started.<div><br></div><div>Totally agree w/Rae on 2 of his points: 1) Any CMS requires some level of time investment 2) Wordpress *is* notorious for security issues.</div>
<div>However, Joomla's way worse (~3x as many critical security issues vs. WP at any given time). There was a report I saw early last year that compared 4 of the top CMSes in the realm of security. Plone came in first with like 9 security issues. Drupal was 2nd w/like 50, Wordpress was 3rd w/like 300 & Joomla was 4th w/~900!!! I haven't been able to find the bookmark to the article by that security firm but as soon as I do, I'll share it here.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Basically, the reason why Joomla is so insecure is due to there not being a dedicated team that vets contributed plugins so the end-result is lots of plugins contributed by folks who don't know how to write secure PHP code. As Braydon mentioned, Wordpress' security issues stem from WP-content being out in the open. Drupal has a dedicated team of people who verify contributed modules but issues still arise. However, Drupal is more secure than ever before. Back in the day, Drupal wasn't considered as an option for government agencies due to it not being fully up-to-snuff on security. It's quite the opposite now, TONS of government agencies all throughout the US & even moreso abroad are adopting Drupal as their platform of choice. After all, <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov">www.whitehouse.gov</a> is a Drupal site.</div>
<div><br></div><div>In re: to Braydon's knowledgeable insights, I agree & disagree. Yes, WP is more of a blogging platform w/a focus on non-technical end users. I still say that WP does blogging out of the box better than any other solution. I've been saying for years now that Drupal is more of a CMF (content mgtm. framework) than CMS due to it's insanely rich API system known as the Hooks system. What this allows Drupaleros to do is customize the smack out of every single function if they so choose. This results in the potential for the creation of awesome web solutions. Also agree that Drupal's learning curve is way stiffer than most but once you clear that hurdle the "aha" moments start coming in left & right. Lastly, it's true that Drupal's not always been the friendliest to end users but super friendly to developers.</div>
<div><br></div><div>However, where I disagree w/Braydon is that user unfriendliness is still the case. Drupal 7 was released in Jan. & the main focus was on the UI to be less intimidating (then again, a good Drupal developer makes this a non-issue as there are many ways to hide things that content editors don't need to see but many are too lazy to invest the time in doing so, or sometimes the budget doesn't allow for those extra hours). To that end, there's an entirely new admin interface that's really slick. The other focus was to your other point about module cohesiveness in that several of the most widely-used contributed modules were incorporated into Drupal core. As someone who comes from a longtime Software/Web QA background, one of my favorites is the inclusion of the SimpleTest module which is now just called "Testing" in D7. I gave a presentation last year on SimpleTest in D7 & you can see my slides here: <a href="http://migshouse.com/content/simpletest-drupal-7-you">http://migshouse.com/content/simpletest-drupal-7-you</a>. I'd suggest y'all check out <a href="http://www.drupalgardens.com">www.drupalgardens.com</a> (built on D7) which is Drupal's answer to wordpress.com- it's free & you don't have to pay for hosting so like LeVar Burton used to say on "Reading Rainbow", "You don't have to take my word for it, take a look..."</div>
<div><br></div><div>Additionally, there's LOTS of work being done in the realm of Drupal distributions. OpenPublish is a platform for publishers & other media providers. Drupal Commons is a great solution if you'd like to build a social networking site. OpenAtrium is an intranet-in-a-box. There's also Managing News (exactly what it sounds like). Putting together a conference? Conference Organizing Distribution (COD) is what you want. Drigg is a Digg clone. OpenPublic is a distro for governments. OpenChurch is for ministries. Pressflow is for high availability, performance & scalability (Grammys.com is a Drupal site & in 2010 they used Pressflow to scale their site to be able to handle 82 million uniques on that day alone). There's even early work being done on a Genealogy distro. I don't see any other CMS/CMF pushing the distro forefront like Drupal is, but I could totally be wrong.</div>
<div><br></div><div>I'm currently involved in the creation of a Drupal distro at <a href="http://www.vozmob.net">www.vozmob.net</a>. Vozmob users can create blogs by simply sending a text message to the server & including audio, video & pics. It's being used for civic engagement & is allowing a technologically marginalized population acess to the internet where normally they'd have none. This population had never heard of open source yet now discusses "codigo libre" & "codigo abierto" (open source) all the time. Specifically, I'm working on a white label version of Vozmob which will be licensed under the GPL. It's completely open source-based & will be available to anyone who'd like to use it. You can see a 3min video: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL5utjMK8Us">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL5utjMK8Us</a>. Vozmob recently won the World Summit Award for Best Mobile Content: <a href="http://vozmob.net/en/story/mobile-voices-wins-world-summit-award">http://vozmob.net/en/story/mobile-voices-wins-world-summit-award</a>. I'd be glad to talk about this more later or even present on Vozmob/Drupal if people would like to hear more, down the road.</div>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div><br></div><div>These are all the reasons why I suggested Drupal for the SGVLUG re-design after the site got attacked last year (Matt Campbell & I are still working on its deployment). Apologies for such a long post.</div>
<div><br></div><div>--miguel</div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">