[pmwiki-users] ZAP CMS bundle cancelled

[The Editor]

On 12/5/07, Hans <design5 at softflow.co.uk> wrote:
> Wednesday, December 5, 2007, 12:00:34 AM, Ben Stallings wrote:
>
> > I want to make clear that it's not that you can't make a good CMS with
> > PmWiki and ZAP... it's just that you can get a much better one for a lot
> > less work with Drupal.  And now that I have a client causing me to spend
> > most of my waking hours with Drupal instead of PmWiki, I have no time
> > left to try to make PmWiki act like Drupal, noble as that cause may be.
>
> Funny, I have to start learning Drupal for a client site. My first
> impressions after installing it were:
>
> 1. Oh what a pretty way to do admin configurations, I wish PmWiki could
> do some of it like this!
>
> 2. Give me PmWiki anytime for easy editing! How do I make text
> emphasised (& any other style) in Drupal? Do I have to add HTML tags
> in the editor?
>
> 3. What a poor help system, it does not explain much. So Drupal is using
> nodes for everything, but what are they? (And where are the GUI
> buttons? And styles?)
>
> 4. Oh dear, I made a new page, but lost it from the navigation! Where is
> it?
>
> Anyway, I hope it will get better once I dig into it...
>
> If you have an idea how to do  a dual or multi language site with
> Drupal, please let me know!
>
>
>   ~Hans


I spent months learning to work with Drupal before stumbling on to
PmWiki and while I was able to make a pretty site, pretty quickly, I
had a nightmare of a time doing upgrades. As everything was locked
into databases. And to install a module I had to go into an sql
program that could update the drupal database table structure. Mess
that up and you jeopardize your whole site installation. Upgrades mean
you have to go through a detailed process of reconfiguring your
tweaks, reinstalling your modules, repeating all those sql calls, etc.
Ben's plenty good with databases, so that probably won't be a problem
for him, but at the time I knew nothing about programming and I ended
up getting one version of my site fried. And I finally settled for
just skipping upgrades. On the other hands, drupal upgrades could
result in a consistent source of revenue from client to programmer...

When I found PmWiki, I thought I had died and gone to heaven--even as
a non programmer. Yes, it required me to get in and tinker a bit with
config files, but it was easy enough to do and the support community
was great.  And the one or two things that I missed from Drupal have
long since been solved by recipes like ZAP and FOX. Drupal may have
some nice features, but PmWiki has nearly limitless expansibility. On
the ease of use side of things, on the admin side, there's little
comparison.

This is not to say PmWiki does not have room for improvement (at least
IMHO). It's just that PmWiki makes it easy to expand. Three cheers for
Pm having designed something extraordinary!  I spent months working
with Drupal and PmWiki. I never once looked back.

Dan