When I recommend to someone that they should use Drupal for a project it is not uncommon for them to question my wisdom on the subject. Those new to Drupal are often shocked by Drupal's initial learning curve, no rich text editor in the core, and a user interface with a longer workflow than it really should be. As powerful and functional as Drupal can be it historically has had usability issues.
WordPress is the de-facto standard blogging engine and is often used to build full websites. Its power lies in its simplicity, allowing authors to start building their websites in minutes. However, WordPress is still missing some basic features keeping it from becoming a full fledged CMS. SitePress tries to close that gap.
SitePress is an ambitious mega-plugin for WordPress. It intends to turn WP into a reasonably featured content management system. SitePress contributes exactly where WordPress is short:
Idealware is providing online a report on open source content management systems by comparing Wordpress, Joomla!, Drupal, and Plone. This 60-page independent Idealware report in PDF format provides both an introduction to the topic and a very detailed comparison of the four systems. The report also includes their new directory of the consultants and firms who help nonprofit create websites and implement these Content Management Systems.
Dries Buytaert announced on his blog that a set of Drupal modules are available for integrating Drupal with Alfresco.
Alfresco and Optaros, in conjunction with Acquia, have made available a set of Drupal modules that integrate Drupal with Alfresco using the CMIS APIs. See the CMIS module and the CMIS Alfresco module on drupal.org.
I have never had good luck hosting my Drupal sites on shared hosting plans. My last venture into budget hosting was a disaster with the hosting company locking me out of my own account due to too many requests to the remote database. The truth is that I've only been happy with running my personal Drupal sites on virtual private servers (VPS). However, I'm having a difficult time justifying my yearly costs of using a VPS to host my sites.
This is a really cool story on how local governments can improve their presence on the Internet and save money using open source software. The City of Albert Lea needed to improve their website but the small Minnesota city was facing project costs of $10,000 to $30,000. In walks Wordpress being utilized as a full content management system. As reported by the Albert Lea Tribune:
Some cities pay a consultant $10,000, $20,000, even $50,000 for a Web-based content-management site that looks professional and is consistent through and through. Fairbault is one instance.
Albert Lea, however, paid $720 to local resident Jeshua Erickson last December, she said. Kauffmann was in charge of the site’s revision, and last October she put together a committee of city
officials to advise her.She said the committee decided to shoot for a site using a content management system — or CMS — but it was outside of her Internet skills. The city began seeking estimates from Web design companies. When the estimates returned, they realized the city couldn’t afford it.
“We just didn’t feel we could justify spending $20,000-plus on a Web site,” Kauffmann said. “I happened to run into Jeshua Erickson on the Pelican Breeze one day, and we talked about Web sites and how he was developing them using WordPress.”
I'll have to say that even though Wordpress is open source and "free", this city got a steal with getting a website for under $1000. While Albert Lea is a small city, developing government sites can become big projects with lots of complications. Either the city was kind to the developer and his hours or he felt some civil duty to give the city's taxpayers a good deal. An example of this developer doing such a good job, Albert Lea's website is currently running Wordpress 2.7 which is the latest available version of Wordpress. Very well done Mr. Erickson.
Royal Pingdom completed a survey looking at the top blog platforms of the top 100 blogs. This survey mirrors other studies that I've read showing that Wordpress is king of the blog platform.
We found that Wordpress is the most-used platform among self-hosted blogs, which perhaps isn’t a huge surprise. It has more than twice as many blogs in the top 100 as Movable Type, the blog platform that came in second place.
Wordpress is used by 27 blogs in the top 100.
Movable Type is used by 12 blogs in the top 100.
Last year I was one of the beta testers for Acquia's Drupal distribution and the Acquia Network. I was evaluating Acquia's products and services for a potential intranet project at work. For this particular project, unfortunately, it looks as if Acquia or Drupal wasn't the right solution. Our regional folks wanted a solution similar to Microsoft's Sharepoint that is more integrated with Microsoft Office and heavily featured in document management. That's alright though because there are a number of smaller intranet projects at work where Drupal is the perfect solution and a lot of
Earlier today, Matthew Mullenweg announced the official release of Wordpress 2.7. This new version of WordPress is a dandy with significant improvements made to the WordPress administrative interface and dashboard. The choices you now have to customizing our blogging workflow is almost endless.
While we could start reading off from the changelogs for all the new features in WordPress 2.7, It's probably just as easy to show you the video.
For the second straight year, Packt Publishing has announced Drupal as the recipient of its Overall Open Source CMS Award. Drupal was also the winner this year in the award category for Best PHP Open Source CMS.
Packt’s annual Open Source Content Management System (CMS) Award reached its climax today with the announcement that Drupal has won the Overall category, collecting a first prize of $5,000. Three months after it was launched and a staggering 20,000 votes later, Drupal finished ahead of Joomla! and DotNetNuke to retain the Award it won in 2007.
Joomla! also placed second in the Overall category followed by DotNetNuke for third position.