[pmwiki-users] Meetup? Drupal?

[Crisses]

On Oct 1, 2006, at 5:10 AM, Joachim Durchholz wrote:

> Stirling Westrup schrieb:
>> 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.
>
> You might also take a look at Joomla.
> It's being used by people of varying technical background, and I  
> haven't
> heard anything about technical trouble from them.
> The Joomly people say it's simple to install and administer, and that
> seems indeed to be the case.
> It needs a MySQL database. Tables get a prefix (modifiable).

This has become a standard across nearly every package I've installed  
-- some people on hosting services only get access to one database...  
so having a table prefix means you can install as many programs as  
you want.

Please note that I've had personal poor experiences with Joomla!  I  
evaluated Drupal, Joomla! and Xoops for a set of features I required  
for a website.  Drupal failed to have all the features I wanted.   
Xoops was missing maybe one.  Joomla! was pretty and tempting.  After  
investigating Joomla! and noting the prices on some of the modules I  
needed, I decided it was worth the price.  I never wrote down the  
"feature" that I needed multiple extensible user groups.  After  
having used Xoops I simply ASSUMED all CMS packages used multiple  
extensible user groups.

Long story short, I started buying and installing modules then went  
to set up user groups and couldn't find the ability to do so.  Some  
research revealed that there are a set number of user groups, someone  
had written a core program hack to fix that, but it came with no  
guarantees and would break upgrading until the hack caught up with a  
new release, and possibly break other modules/plug-ins.  Combine this  
with the fact that I had to pay for at least 3 of the features I  
required, and had already bought one, I was exceptionally upset with  
the package.

If you don't require that extensibility in the foreseeable future,  
Joomla may be the package for you, but be sure to make a detailed  
list of features you want, look the feature packages up, research the  
prices if any (about half of the ones I needed had either a price tag  
or a limited version with a price tag on a "full version" offered if  
you wanted more features in the plug-in), and decide if the price is  
worth your while.  Add a little more money in the budget in case you  
missed something.  If you need real free software with a lot of add- 
ons (and decide not to go with PmWiki), make a list of features and  
investigate Xoops.  It doesn't have the fame that Drupal and Joomla!  
have, but it's stable, has a strong community, many plug-in modules,  
and is more wisely built.  I have used it several times and have yet  
to pay for any add-ons.  BUT it's not as pretty out-of-the-box and  
every(!) feature except core user/group functionality is a plug-in,  
including forums.  The only assumptions I think they made is you're  
going to have authentication, users, groups, HTML templates and plug- 
in modules.  That keeps the core light, and extensibility is of  
primary importance otherwise there would be no functionality at all.

Crisses
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