This post was mentioned on Twitter by steveandrewsad: Joomla vs Drupal
http://bit.ly/16Tvcv…

Its always nice to read Yours articles….

Don’t believe all you read. I am fluent with HTML and CSS and have no trouble handcoding a static site. However, my recent experience with Drupal has left me looking around for alternatives.

The author is correct when he states it uses the worst jargon around, although I don’t feel quite so flippant about it. The lack of work in this crucial area (do you want to create a page, or story – do you understand that your content is a node, published in a node, which is actually a page, etc etc) seems to reflect their approach generally i.e. it’s very haphazard. I take a dim view of this lack of polish as it’s the bit I can see and they couldn’t be bothered tidying it up. What kind of mess is the bit I can’t see?

To anyone considering it I’d have to say that despite its great promise Drupal is little more than a tinkerers toy. Yes, some nice sites have been made with it, but given the speed with which Ruby on Rails developers are making alpha CMSs I can’t see Drupal lasting the pace. It lacks the crucial sophistication needed to survive in my view. And before anyone goes mad they are at version 5, they’ve had plenty of time to take a good look at much of the mess.

The documentation really sucks. Try finding a solution for adding META tags to your site, it’s just a confused mess of opinions with few solutions. Add into this mix some seriously dodgy “modules” which are little more than people having a go. When you add it together its just not worth the effort.

As for any kind of commercial application? Bear in mind Drupal make no secret of the fact they don’t even try to make new releases backward compatible! Hardly likely to endear them to an IT team.

All in this is CMS developed with a Linux mentality. It’s a confusing mess that has much promise but will almost certainly be outstripped by newer kids on the block. As noted my money’s on Ruby on Rails, as even the early alpha releases seem to take care to try and understand how a designer/developer actually makes a website. It is this element, thinking ahead, that Drupal seems to lack. It’s not really good enough any more to assume site creators will spend the time looking for workarounds to accomplish tasks. And the main reason I use a CMS to avoid the kind of coding until dawn kind of stuff you have to do to jam a new template into Drupals torturous templating system.

Finally, to put this in perspective, Drupal is the kind of thing I would have loved when I was 18. Tinkering around and learning stuff. I just don’t have the time anymore as not enough of it works right out of the box. A brave attempt but already slipping compared to others.