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Drupal's Creator Aims For World Domination
angry tapir writes "Open-source content management system Drupal has come a long way since it was initially released in 2001. Drupal now runs 2% of the world's websites — but Drupal's creator Dries Buytaert thinks that this could easily grow to 10%. I caught up with Dries to talk about Drupal's evolution from a pure CMS to a Web platform, cracking the enterprise market, and the upcoming release of Drupal 8, which features significant architectural changes — incorporating elements of the Symfony2 Web framework to replace Drupal's aging architecture."
Drupal is the best of the "big 3" CMSes. Hands down.
However, it has a Matterhorn learning curve, and I choose not to use it in most of my work; opting for WordPress.
The thing about Drupal is that it has an extremely solid extension mechanism. Lots of good hooks, and thoughtful design.
I write plugins for all 3 CMSes. I am extremely familiar with what it takes to extend each. Drupal and WP can be extended with a single file that allows me to provide a powerful administrative interface, content filter and module system.
Joomla, on the other hand, requires -I am not exaggerating- ten times as much work as either Drupal or WP, and, subsequently, ten times as many "problem nodes," for juicy, fat bugs.
For example, if I want to handle AJAX responses, Drupal and WP each offer a simple hook to intercept program execution at a point between CMS setup (authentication, module initialization, etc.) and HTTP output (I need to output prior to any headers being sent out). Since I can use the same module file, I can preserve object context. Also, they each have a very simple CSV options/preferences system that abstracts the database behind a basic functional interface.
In Joomla, I am forced to write an entire system plugin, and use a pretty hairy database "semaphore" system to communicate context. I also need to write a content plugin in order to allow a shortcode ability. In both Drupal and WP, the content filter is simply another functional interface in the same context.
However, for the kind of extensibility that Joomla offers, only Drupal can match it, and Drupal has that learning curve, so it tends to be popular amongst folks that want a heavily-customized site, with less knowledge, than Joomla.
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."
-H. L. Mencken
Drupal being "best" is in the eyes of the beholder. If you already are familiar with CMS and mySQL, then Drupal is the best. But if you have very little experience, Wordpress is by far the easiest. For my own sites, I use Drupal, but for client sites, I use Wordpress because it's easier for non-technicals to operate. That being said, Drupal has an upgrading catch. I'm running 6.28, I think, and find it impossible to port over to version 7 without manually porting over the database table by table. There should be a way to port content tables to new versions without a lot of pain and suffering...