The Ultimate Super Web Tool, is it Drupal?
(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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If you’ve read my previous posts you’d know by now that I’ve been sifting through Open Source solutions for many years. In a way, I was looking for that Ultimate Super Solution to my every web need.
My Ultimate Super Solution (USS) would have been able to act as a Web Portal, a Blog, a Forum, a Knowledge Base, be Wiki-like, a Document Authoring tool, a Content Management tool, a Project Management System, and an eCommerce system. Additionally, it has to come with all the latest Social Networking tools, and be FREE.
Many stand-alone applications exist today that are excellent at what they were designed for. For instance, take Word Press, it is arguably the best Blogging solution today that is Open Source and free of charge. Additionally, phpBB and vBulletin were designed to be a discussion forums and they are arguably the best Forum solution out there today. Similarly, osCommerce and its cousin ZenCart are the best eCommerce solutions. For wiki’s I’d say that WikiMedia is the best Wiki engine.
And Then Came Drupal,
I’ve spent a lot of time lately (every free minute over the last three months, and counting) learning Drupal, which is a great Open Source platform that has the potential of satisfying many of your website’s needs. Drupal has the potential of becoming your Web Portal, Blog, Forum, CMS, Project Management tool, and an eCommerce solution. I was excited about the idea that Drupal could be that Ultimate Super Solution I was looking for.
Is Drupal The Ultimate Super Solution?
Initially, there is a learning curve to Drupal newbies, especially non-programmers. But I found that investing time to become familiar with Drupal is definitely worth it. I am speaking from experience when I say this, the more you learn about Drupal the more you will love it.
Having said that, and despite that Drupal is the best open source CMS out there. I mean, it is better than Joomla, TYPO3, XOOPs and others. I still cannot proclaim Drupal is the Ultimate Super Solution. You may ask why?
Let’s quickly examine each aspect of what my Ultimate Super Solution would be and how I rate Drupal’s ability and suitability:
- Web Potal: Drupal is a Perfect web Portal.
- Forums: Both phpBB and vBulletin are far superior to Drupal’s built in Forum module, especially on the administration side. You can integrate phpBB with Drupal however, thus I give Drupal a rating of Good.
- Blogs: While I consider WordPress a Perfect blogging tool. I also rate Drupal as a Perfect blogging solution. Drupal matches WP in its blogging capabilities, and of course Drupal can do much more.
- Knowledge Base: I’d rate Drupal as Perfect Knowledge Base.
- CMS: Drupal is a Perfect CMS tool.
- Wiki-like: If you love Wiki syntax Drupal can accommodate this. However, Drupal can easily provide Wiki functionality (collaborative document editing and publishing) without the Wiki syntax and arguably the lack of user friendliness that Wiki’s pose. For offering Wiki functionality I rate Drupal as Perfect.
- Document Authoring: Drupa is Perfect.
- Project Management: I rate Drupal as Good. The Project Management module needs to mature more.
- eCommerce: Drupal has its own ecommerce module, ubercart, however its shipping module needs to mature further. Both ZenCart and osCommerce are superior choices for your ecom website. On eCommerce I rate Drupal as Weak.
- Social Networking: Drupal seems to offer many useful tools for social networking. I rate it Perfect.
- Free: It is Free. Perfect.
I think Drupal is a very good CMS especially for extensibility reasons.. But as it does not score perfectly in all the categories above, it is not the Ultimate Super Solution; it comes close though. For all intents and purposes, Drupal is my pick for the Best Solution, but it’s not the Ultimate, yet.
Why Search for The Ultimate Super Solution Anyway?
I think it’s only human to seek perfection. But, as life is, nothing is perfect and most of the time specializing is much better than generalizing. I am no longer in my quest for a one-fits-all web solution.
Perhaps, the idea of coming up with something so specialized like ZenCart or phpBB as part of Drupal is a not fitting. Drupal is a CMS platform not an eCommerce or a Forums platform. It thus is not designed to excel at everything that other tools excel at.
What about Integration?
Since no Ultimate Super Solution exists on it’s own, integrating 3rd part tools that work really well into your site to achieve your own Super Solution is your best choice. Drupal currently integrates tinyMCE, Gallery2, and phpBB. I read somewhere that a Zencart integration exists as well. Perhaps more integrations exist that I’m unaware of.
Integration however will introduce complexities. For example, ZenCart is awkward to work with when compared to Drupal; it’s annoying to theme and hellish to write contributions for.
Assuming you integrate Drupal with WordPress, you would have to keep WP upgrades and also track and upgrade each of its many plug-ins individually. Add to the mix phpBB and ZenCart integrations and upgrades. Maintaining such integrated platform can be daunting.
Based on my experience, a typical scenario would be to start a company site first as an HTML site with a WordPress blog, then add on phpBB, then perhaps add WordPress podcast installs, and then ZenCart. Naturally, updating WordPress, WordPress plugins, phpBB and ZenCart becomes a burden and the user opts to port their sites to Drupal. If you had one Drupal installation, updating Drupal and any modules is much simpler.
In closing, integration is fine, but no integration module can possibly replace a well written Drupal solution. I am not going to tell you what to do. However if you want my opinion I’d say to stick with Drupal as much as you can unless it really doesn’t offer what you need. Looking at the list above, the only categories where 3rd party tools exceed Drupal in performance are eCommerce and Forums, perhaps Project Management.
Do you have any opinions to contribute? please do so below.
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Disclaimer: The Drupal community is huge and I do not claim to know-it-all. I consider myself a newbie when compared to a seasoned Drupal user or developer. What I write here is my own experience and my humble opinion.
