On Oct 31, 8:44 am, shacker <shac...@birdhouse.org> wrote:
> At the university where I work, there is a LOT of momentum behind
> Drupal. A large and active users group, and dozens of departmental
> sites running it. I've succeeded in building a few departmental sites
> with Django but still feel like it's an uphill battle convincing
> managers to agree to go with a relative unknown, both in terms of
> language (Python) and platform. Things like the announcement that
> whitehouse.gov switched to Drupal just cement the deal in many
> managers' minds.
>
> I'd like to put together a summary sheet and blog post summarizing all
> the reasons why I feel Django is the better choice for many sites, to
> try and help make the "sale" to managers. I have my own set of reasons
> but am not going to include them in this message. I'm especially
> interested in hearing from people who have done development in both
> Django and Drupal (or WordPress or Joomla, or other). Would be
> interested in hearing comments on things like:
>
I helped produce a med-large site in drupal for a local non-profit.
This was at the tail of Drupal 5, and haven't used it a ton since, but
had set up several smaller drupal sites before then.
There are going to be lots of "it depends"
> - Overall development time
For a basic CMS site - Drupal will be faster and more full featured
out of the box.
Page design time is going to be about the same either way
> - Ease of making changes to templates
Implementing templates for Django is easier as they are just simple
files and the inheritance system is simple - there are books about
doing templates in Drupal
> - Ease of finding 3rd party functionality (modules vs. reusable apps)
Both have the problem of often complex dependencies. The biggest
problem with Drupal is its relatively fast moving core - so that
modules for the "current version" are hard to find, or often
abandoned. Also Drupal modules almost always seem to do 80% of what
you need.
> - Ease of building data models that reflect the needs of the
> organization
Depends on the complexity - for relatively "flat" data, Drupal's CCK
is usable by non devs to create custom content types, and the Views
module allow for simple generic_view style pages. When it comes to
more complex objects, Django's ORM is far superior.
> - Ease of finding other developers to take on a project when someone
> leaves
In my experience it was hard to find any Drupal devs who wanted to do
small fixes, or maintenance. Everyone was looking for the big fish of
bigger full site design with more $$$ involved.
> - User friendliness (admin and editorial interface)
While both can have a decent staff-admin UI, Django's user-admin UI
can be made much more clear and focused. Where Drupal has its single
biggest advantage, is that a technical user, a sys-admin etc, can get
Drupal up and running. Someone doesn't have to know PHP AT ALL to get
drupal going. This is because Drupal has a decent admin-UI - where
modules are pretty much drop in, activate and configure.
Setting up even a basic Django site REQUIRES someone who has some
programming skills, even if thats just a matter of setting up the
settings.py file.
What happens is that non-developer/technical decision makers will
evaluate Drupal and think that all their needs will be met out of the
box. When they find out they aren't, they need to hire developers,
and then those developers have to massage existing modules to
customize and tweak. Then at some point they have this monster of
hodgepodge code. But its that entry point that is the key to Drupal's
popularity.
What Django needs IMHO is an admin UI for Pinax. Pinax project plans
to do this "someday". When Pinax can have a web-based install, with
an admin UI to enable/disable pluggable apps - Django will experience
huge win. Because the same thing will happen as does for Drupal,
there will be technical users who evaluate pinax and think it can do
everything for them. At some point they will need a custom app - they
HIRE a django dev. That Django dev writes a well done reusable app -
and often with the blessing of the hiring company, releases that into
the world. Let this process continue and you can see that eventually
the Django app universe will grow.
I don't think people appreciate how much Drupal development is spawned
by this existence of a usable entry point for Drupal by non-
developers. (and that it has 1-click installs on hosts, and in general
uses the far more common infrastructure of PHP-MySQL)
> - Ease of getting the system to do highly custom tasks
Django just wins this so hands down. Here is part of the reason why.
Drupals assumptions translate into your code having to jump through a
lot of hoops - where as in Django, you make the assumptions and you
make the hoops.
> - Ease of upgrades
> - Security
>
> etc. etc. - anything at all. Please indicate whether it's OK to quote
> you (I can paraphrase you if not)
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Scot
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