[pmwiki-users] Meetup? Drupal?

Sandy sandy at onebit.ca
Thu Sep 28 12:15:48 CDT 2006


Stirling Westrup wrote:
> 
> Secondly, someone else suggested that we use Drupal instead, not because
> of any particular familiarity with it (as far as I could tell) but
> because its well known and has a large user base. I've never used it but
> I've heard its hard to install and set-up and would like to hear the
> opinions of anyone here who's used it. I'm not really interested in
> trashing it, but I would like to have some (reasonably) objective pros
> and cons to put forward before a decision is made.
> 

I tried Drupal for my CMS for six months, including following the forum. 
May have changed, but at the time there were too many competing ideas 
and no one willing to say we'll go with X. (And the one time they did, 
it became political.) They also couldn't agree on whether the target 
user was comfortable with Unix and php editing or wanted it all automated.

Some modules / recipes required changing the core. Upgrading 
instructions were longer than PmWiki's (even before the changes you make 
to the core). More complicated skin design system (probably because they 
tried several ways to make it easy).

On the good side, Drupal was easy to install using Fantastico. (But 
Fantastico couldn't upgrade it.) Most modules easy to install. 
Reasonably fast responses from the forums. The features, permissions and 
skins were all changed using lists and forms. (PmWiki's config.php is a 
great compromise.)

Overall, though, I decided that I needed the flexibility of a wiki 
rather than the structure of a CMS. I get a bit less automation, but 
even that is coming. I like Pm's management style, no edits to the core, 
lots of recipes, ease of upgrading, and the newsgroup.

If not for your need for RSVP, I'd suggest PmWiki plus a mailing list.

Sandy






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