Forum OpenACS CMS: Why I Choose Drupal (OpenACS was not on the list)

This is a cross post from a mailing list, but I think it is interesting to read so we know where we can improve OpenACS. Part of the deal was that it had to be a LAMP system, so obviously I was unable to get OpenACS on this list (though I did try ...).

*** Why I Choose Drupal for Ashoka****

Starting in July 2005, I was hired by leading citizen organizatio to develop a content management system that be would used
to host online collaborative competitions on multiple sites, and potentially
also be used as a larger knowledge management system.

Based on research and planning I recognized that some of the key
required features of the project include:

* Database style content forms
* Searchable and sortable tables of content listings
* Workflow engine for content approval
* Automated user authentication
* Multi-site deployment
* Multi-lingual deployment
* Granular privileges
* Extensible user profiles
* Export of user data
* Flexible rating of content
* Private and public discussion forums
* Commenting on content
* User tracking and audit trails
* Potential for additional features like tagging and drill-down taxonomies

As well, the system had to be easy to install on common Linux server
configurations, secure, scalable for thousands of users, flexible for future
modifications and open source for sharing with other social mission
organizations.

Rather than create a new content management system (CMS) from scratch, I
decided to use an established open source application that could be tailored
and modified to meet our needs. This way we could pull from, build on, and
contribute back to years of community software development. The big question
was: of the hundreds of open source CMS applications out there, which one
would we use?

After some investigation and comparisons on www.cmsmatrix.org, I created a
short list of...

Drupal: www.drupal.org

Mambo: www.mamboserver.com

TYPO3: www.typo3.org

WebGUI: www.plainblack.com/webgui3

Xaraya: www.xaraya.com

Each of these applications seemed to have highest potential for fulfilling
the requirements, although no single one was perfect.

To make the final decision I sent emails and posted messages to developers
of each application asking specifically for examples of sites that
demonstrate scalability, multi-site deployment, multi-lingual support,
granular privileges, customizable workflow and customizable databases. From
my experience, if the developers can not provide a working example of the
feature you need, than chances are it's still a long time coming.

The results of my investigations and discussions with developers...

For TYPO3, the customizable databases would have to be a new extension,
which is more development work than I had budgeted for.

Mambo had nice usability, but developers said that is had limited
flexibility, difficult customize and granular privileges and workflow were
"coming soon".

WebGUI's workflow engine was "still in progress" and the customizable
database required authoring SQL code, which would mean either a barrier for
most users, or require extra development to make a useble interface.

Xaraya seemed to have a lot of potential and great flexibility. Although a
new comer to the CMS scene, the developer community seems to be quite lively
and the feature sets are good. Beyond some limitations around field sorting
for the database option, my main concern was that I did not know personally
of any organizations or developers using the software, which I do for all
the others. I had concerns about my ability to find experienced developers
to support it.

Drupal become an obvious choice for many reasons:

* Drupal is extremely popular with thousands of site using it, including
many in the social mission sector. I personally know many developers that
use it for popular web sites and praise it's capacity.

* The default install comes with many of the required features, like forums,
commenting, extensible profiles, user tracking and decent granular
privileges.

* Multi-lingual support is well established, e.g. www.drupal.jp
www.drupal.hu www.drupal.ru www.levavie.com

* Multi-deployment is effectively demonstrated e.g.
http://bryght.com/solutions/massdeployment

* The architecture makes it easy to build new modules and modify
configurations e.g. http://drupal.org/project/Modules

* The flexinode module provides the necessary database features e.g.
http://www.mbr.org/flexinode/search/1

* www.SpreadFirefox.com is a hugely popular international site that proves
it's stability and scalability.

* And most of all, within a few days of posting a request to the developer
forum, someone responded and was able to set-up a working demonstration of a
collaborative contest for me using Drupal

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Posted by Jon Griffin on
Too add to this, Greenpeace is most likely going to dump OACS also.

http://groups.drupal.org/node/411

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Posted by Torben Brosten on
"...Right now the Greenpeace UK team is using a custom ColdFusion CMS and it no longer meets their needs... " --rob purdie ( http://groups.drupal.org/?q=node/29 )

Apparently, this is not a shift away from planet2, just a local implementation decision.

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Posted by Daniël Mantione on
It is still a loss for OpenACS, which was considered:

http://importantprojects.com/archives/000084.php

Apparently Greenpeace UK still thinks Drupal is better for them even though all the other offices use OpenACS. Better keep the eyes open they consider Drupal better.