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Mambo Vs. Drupal:

07.28.2005

I’ve noticed a recent tsunami of interest from potential clients in content management systems. Often, there is a tendency among these clients to “shop around” the dozens of open-source content management packages. They go to the various websites, and look at product features, see who is using the systems, and treat picking an open source CMS as though it was a car. For them, it is like picking between a Mazda or Toyota. Unfortunately, this tendency is misguided. Picking a CMS is a lot more like picking a stock to invest in.

This distinction is crucial. And failure to make this distinction leads to a bad decision. I’ve yet to find a case where Mambo was a better choice than Drupal. It is not surprising that mambo is always the first choice of most customers who decided to do some shopping. Mambo knows how to market itself to the layman, Drupal’s website speaks to an educated elite.

Compare the first thing that a shopper sees when they visit the two sites:

Drupal: “Community Plumbing”

Lead text: “Equipped with a powerful blend of features, Drupal can support a variety of websites ranging from personal weblogs to large community-driven websites.”

Mambo: “Power in Simplicity”  

Lead text: “Mambo is one of the most powerful Open Source Content Management Systems on the planet. It is used all over the world for everything from simple websites to complex corporate applications. Mambo is easy to install, simple to manage, and reliable.”

The truth is that Mambo is bulky, badly optimized for search engines, and generally rigid and brittle to customized. Drupal, on the other hand, is perhaps the most search engine friendly CMS on the market. Its modular, flexible, its underlying design has been guided by a stellar philosophy. But, I only know that because I work with the things. Customers who do their shopping, on the other hand, have the word “plumbing” as part of their first impression of drupal.

Drupal chose a word that evokes images of ass-cracks, human waste, clogged toilets, bills from the plumber, and plungers. Other words and phrases, “blend of features” (are features like coffee?) “personal website”(read:not professional), “large community-driven websites”(read: large amounts of not professionals) are totally hurting the widespread adoption that drupal deserves. I mean seriously, compare those two first impressions, and it becomes no secret why customers always think mambo is a better choice

So, in short, be forewarned: don’t judge a CMS on its marketing pitch. All marketing is an attempt to cover up lies. In addition, Drupal… as a solid and fanatical supporter, I beg you: help me market your platform. Leave out words that evoke ass-cracks, and solid waste!

Comments

Tue, 2007-05-22 21:32 — Freeware Eugen (not verified)

hi, i used mambo and yoomla

hi, i used mambo and yoomla - is very good, but is to complicate :( . drupal is simply and fast :)

Mon, 2007-05-21 18:42 — nick (not verified)

Joomla Vs Drupal

I have been studying a lot recently on the Drupal Vs Joomla debate. Just documented some of my findings at my blog.
Drupal Vs Joomla: Drupal Installation

I have however installed Drupal for the first time yesterday on my site Complete acne treatment and found it to be really easy. After upload the entire installation took some 10 minutes (Drupal 5.0). I have been till now reading that Joomla installation is comparatively easy but I can't really understand what could be easier than this. May be a joomla installation on next site will give a better idea. I will be updating my findings on Joomla Vs Drupal on my blog regularly.

Sun, 2007-04-08 12:47 — a passing drifter (not verified)

This concise evaluation says it all.

http://www.jdavidrogers.com/2007/04/07/drupal-or-joomla-picking-a-cms/

Says it all...

Thu, 2007-04-05 10:15 — a passing drifter (not verified)

drupal takes the cake

I have been experimenting for about a week now with drupal and it literally takes the cake as far as cms's go. Mambo/Joomla was my previous preferred platform but after designing and launching a test site for our local news company, the frontpage on Joomla was taking 300 sql query knocks alone! Which is why I swtiched over to Drupal, its vastly superior. I admit it took me about a week to get use to the whole UI but once u get past u initial taxonomy fright, its all smooth sailing.

Thu, 2007-05-10 12:30 — garetho (not verified)

How to install and use Drupal

I'm won over by what I have read about Drupal but how do I install it. I am a non technical person so need lots of help!

Thu, 2006-11-30 08:44 — Partly Technical (not verified)

More a matter of WordPress vs. Drupal

I experimented with Mambo once. It seemed promising, but I found that it lacked the control to set up a decent navigation. Or you can do this, but the method isn't obvious. I agree, they market well, but I didn't find that CMS stands up well.

I am running a few websites with WordPress. It is great software if all you want is a blog.

I am working on getting a site going with Drupal. It is harder to set up, which is why I am working on it and have not completed the job. I went for the low hanging fruit first, that's why I have several WordPress sites and no credible Drupal site yet.

When I do get the Drupal site going, it will be much more interesting than the WordpPress sites. There are more features.

I wrote a brief article comparing Drupal with WordPress, which you may find interesting.

Wed, 2006-11-22 18:14 — Programmer (not verified)

Read this all, Looks like

Read this all,
Looks like Drupal is the favourite, then mambo then the rest,this is the first time im not gonna make a site or anything from scratch *(am a Programmer) i usally design my sites with great javascripts stuff but this past times i have lost time of making things in photoshop then frontpage then dreamweaver, just got too tired, and let me just tell you guyz what i need in a cms and maybe u can advice me more,
I want a site that is easy to edit but also can make sort of mod's that can accsess most of the setting but not all and one that supports links , blog module, polls and much more, and btw if it is hard to configure i may need it to be opensource.

Thx in Advance.

*Nothing is better than customizing,making and perfecting codes*11

Sat, 2006-10-28 21:08 — jakeg (not verified)

Drupal hooks are essential

For me, Drupal's hooks have been essential to help me build my yearbook website. I spoke with Joomla's lead developer at LinuxWorld in London and he explained how Joomla didn't have such hooks and doesn't plan to any time soon due to its architecture. His words "Joomla is more top-to-bottom whilst Drupal is more vertical", meaning that in Drupal each module can hook into each other, whilst in Joomla if something's done at a low-level, higher levels can't interfere with it.

Wed, 2006-11-01 07:41 — Nick Lewis

I think I talked to the same

I think I talked to the same guy at Google's summmer of code summit. The Joomla! guys are freaking hardcore... they managed to make Mambo a workable web development platform -- which required rewriting basically the entire thing... and they maintained 90% percent backward compatibility.

Dude...

Man...

They are some bad ass mother fuckers.

That said, what the hell is the difference between a 'vertical' platform vs. 'top to bottom' bottom platform? And why is a good thing for the top to not be able to ever interfere with the bottom? [zing]

Tue, 2006-10-10 03:10 — daego (not verified)

I choose Drupal after reading the thread.

I have been trying a lot of CMS to setup a company intranet website. I installed XOOPS,PHPNUKE,POSTNUKE,JOOMLA,DRUPAL in my PC.

I am confused by all of them and I have to make a final decision. So I googled and found this page.

Thank you for your opinions. I will choose Drupal althoug I am not so satisifed with its UI. It is difficult for me to setup a good template for it.

Wed, 2006-12-06 00:09 — Partly Technical (not verified)

I think you made the right choice

I hear you, daego, I did more or less the same thing. When you aren't used to how a CMS works, and how you get the site you want from the a complex blend of templates, modules, set-up etc., they all seem hard to configure into what you want. Especially when you are trying to get the hang of four or five all at once.

I seems to me that most of the CMS systems I tried are find if you want the same kind of website that the developers had in mind, but hell if you don't.

Drupal didn't seem like it was up to much at first compared to the others (say Mambo for example) but I quickly realized that with something like Mambo, what you see is what you get (and I didn't like what I saw!), where as with Drupal, you can get what you want if you put a little time into it. Once you commit yourself to it, I really don't think its that bad, as long as you don't mind at least some semi-technical tasks like installing modules (easy if you are tech-savvy, and doable for most people who are comfortable with ftp transfers, and server back-ends). I think Drupal is a relatively small time investment that will pay off.

I'm looking forward to getting into Drupal more. I've not had time yet, but actually, the more I read about it (on posts like this one for example), the more I realize that it will really rock once I learn a few more advanced things. Even the basics are pretty good.

Mon, 2006-09-18 23:16 — Hans, with a news paper on Drupal (not verified)

Drupal rocks

We have had only good experianed running our small net news paper on Drupal.

The flexibility made it possible to great a rather good, personal interface quite fast. We had also no problem to create a language to describe to article powerfull enough to eliminate to need for a editor but still easy enough to use.

I couldnt really see anyother free CMS flexible enough for us. We dont only try to build a news paper, but rather a community with a combined news paper and wikipedia-lika-database.

It works acctually rather well. Today we for example wrote an article about two farmprojects in Uganda. They are introducing aloe vera and grapes among the farmers. The news article are here: Uganda satsar på aloe vera och vindruvor If you take a look you noticing that it makes a reference to the fact page for aloe vera.

The green box in the end of the news article are a recommended resource. In this case a link to a non-profit organisation who document plants on tropical Africa.

Best luck with your blog, and thanks for a nice site. Hans Husman

Thu, 2006-08-10 20:32 — Anonymous (not verified)

Give Them a Test Run

Like many of you, I stumbled upon this blog during my quest to pick a CMS. I started thinking that I would need to install and compare each one. But, then I came across a site that lets you test drive open source CMS applications. You can pick from Joomla, Mambo, Drupal, Wordpress, CivicSpace and more. You can log in, create pages, post content, create users and more. While I still haven't made a selection, I have found it very helpful to compare features of the administration modules:

www.opensourcecms.com

Enjoy!
Tue, 2006-08-08 09:05 — Christopher Pelham (not verified)

looking for a new community solution

We have a small site that we design and maintain in Dreamweaver using templates and CSS. We are a community center serving the healing and creative arts. We currently use phpBB and phpList, as well as appointmentquest.com to schedule therapy sessions. We are mostly happy except for two main problems: under the current system three different account logins are required of our community (phpBB, phpList, appointmentquest.com), and appointmentquest.com has some limitations (and costs a monthly fee). We will add some more content in the future and probably basic e-commerce but primarly we want to simplify and unify the different elements of our online community to improve ease of use for the end users. Two people maintain the site, one in English and one in Japanese. We currently use phpBB because it supports Japanese language posts well. I have found that Joomla has modules for appointment scheeduling and forums (or even for using phpBB) but I don't know if I would like to switch to their templates. Drupal doesn't seem to have an appointment scheduling module that is robust enough. Any suggestions?
Wed, 2006-07-12 05:49 — 3dguru (not verified)

IBM made his decision for their CMS project

I think there is not much to think about which CMS to use. At least for me. I have decided to use Drupal for at least 2 years from now, and I am very happpy. Here is a research made by IBM within GPL licenced open source content management systems... and guess who is the winner...

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/ibm/library/i-osource1/index.html

| Project Development | Webmail |
Sun, 2006-11-19 08:20 — Lanny (not verified)

Why is IBM decision so important?

I read this blog with great interest and appreciate the points made in the discussion. I am deciding on a CMS for a community project and have checked and installed many.

Drupal is very good but why do you think that IBM's inclussion of it in their workbench is so important? A typical user of CMS can hardly compare to IBM in terms of resources and skills.

Joomla won some first places in recent "competitions" and the sites created with it look "better", IMO, than Drupal presentations - there is much greater variation (probably because there is more of them)

Lanny

Sat, 2006-12-02 22:21 — a passing drifter (not verified)

I'm still in the undecided

I'm still in the undecided camp myself. But I did notice that the big win was a contest run by a publishing company that sells a Joomla! book (Packit Publishing, I think). And they don't have a Drupal book. Drupal came a close second. So I don't know if the contest was influenced by the audience or not. But I'd take that point with a grain of salt.

Fri, 2006-07-07 04:23 — Resedit (not verified)

Mambo Vs. Drupal: Templates Themes and Modules

I haven't seen the kind of Joomla/Mambo professional looking templates and modules available fro Drupal. Most of the demos and sites listed look rather utilitarian and lack some of the richer theme designs. Is it just because I haven't looked around enough, or is that a weak area for Drupal. Also, in regards to performance, has anyone done a comparison on server load and response time?
Mon, 2006-07-03 01:29 — Mac the Web (not verified)

Drupal & Joomla vs. something simpler

I totally agree with the main article about the code quality of Drupal. And I'm in the process of switching a community site from Wordpress to Drupal for just that reason. But even Drupal is total overkill for most sites.

More power = more complexity. Drupal is very powerful. Drupal has a huge potential for overwhelm built in. Come on, nodes and taxonomies can take a bit to wrap your head around.

For the average website, most people would be much better off with something much simpler like Website Baker or CMS Made Simple.

Grab a template. Drop in a half dozen tags. Edit a couple of lines in a config file and the site is up and running. Administration is simple and easy to learn, requiring a half hour to a couple of hours depending on the user's fear level.

An experienced web designer could enable a site in less than an hour (on top of the design time). The trickiest part is setting file permission on the server, which is true of most PHP installations.

Wed, 2006-06-07 16:35 — a passing drifter (not verified)

drupal it is

i was just evaluating joombla, and it clearly wins the eye candy contest hands down, the installer is great, no editing text files etc but once you start using the admin interface, the eye candy over powers you and you have to start looking at every button twice just to figure out where to go next drupal seems to be much easier to whip up a page or two, and edit menus, and the admin pages are so much faster without, buttons icons, hover graphics, dropdown menus etc it could do with a wysiwyg editor by default, but then who wants end users, submitting pages full of formatting tags that break your site layout and whats more, even after reading the manual, i still don't know what taxanomey is let alone how to spell it, i guess i will figure that bit out over time
Wed, 2006-06-07 22:41 — Arancaytar

Another convert

After briefly "brushing" with this CMS a year ago, I finally decided to give it a try when it seemed as though a site I had been spending months on trying to code from scratch would fit very well into this architecture. That was a month ago. Since then, I have realized the full awesome power that lies behind this system whose initially simple interface turned me off all that time ago. Although it is made for blogging or community discussion, it can be extended and modified to power nearly any website. I just abandoned yet another website I spent months of PHP code on, and started to implement it in Drupal. Instant bliss. The url alias combined with the node engine acts almost like a virtual file system. A seamless transition between the actual files on the site and the url aliases in Drupal. I daresay this is the equivalent of Unix for CMS systems: A simple, almost minimalistic philosophy, and it can be extended to do anything that one could ever think of.
Mon, 2006-05-29 12:51 — a passing drifter (not verified)

After researching all night

After researching all night (couln't sleep) between Drupal & Joomla, I've come to some conclusions: I definitely think that drupal looks like a superior system overall: faster, cleaner coding; search-engine & user friendly pages; and better cross-indexing. However, I think this CMS has to mature a bit more in terms of userability, especially for people who aren't serious developers. It's lack of a descent e-commerce system is probably one of its bigger flaws, also with an easy way to make easy templetes. I feel if it could mature a bit more in these areas, it would flourish, Drupal is still in the domain of developers and I think it will stay this way unless a serious effort is made to make it more 'consumer-friendly'. It has the feeling of a private club right now, with a sense of elitism that this is the best thing out there (which it may be). Joomla is definitely more slick looking (eye candy), but it seems to be more mature as far as develpment of modules, and the way to go I think if you're not making a giant web site and not a professional web developer-- you just want it done. But be prepared, because Drupal will be THE standard soon. I would go with Drupal if it wasn't for the fact that I have everything set up on Godaddy.com (Drupal doesn't like to work there), the lack of (good) ecommerce on Drupal, the confusing terminology of Drupal (taxonomy?!?--just keep it simple). For now I will be using Joomla with all its flaws, but keeping a sharp on Drupal.
Mon, 2006-05-29 13:07 — Nick Lewis

Best of luck. A couple of

Best of luck. A couple of notes: Drupal has a vastly superior template and theming system. I don't know where people have gotten this idea that mambo/joomla is to work with from the design perspective -- its just flat wrong. True, there's lots more prefabricated mambo/joomla template -- however, if you want to design something original, and or intricate, you'll find mambos tablehappy design to get in the way.

 

Mon, 2006-05-29 03:25 — Jonny C. (not verified)

Joomla vs. Mambo

Hey, I just want to say thanks to everyone for replying, your discussion has been a great help. I am a new website designer, but I've always been on top of technology and what's new. I've spent a great deal of time looking into Joomla's latest version. If you integrate some Search Engine Optimization, along with image resizing or the Gallery2 Component it just adds to the greatness for designers. Drupal, on the other hand, is a lot faster and has an easier to understand Administration panel for large sites. Since I am new, I only know of the newest version of Joomla. V1.0.8. Opinions can differ from where you step into the projects much like the stock market reference I believe Nick Lewis made. In stocks, if we looked at google 3 years ago, it would be much different than it is now. Same with Open Source projects, code from 3 years ago (or even 3 months) is different than recent releases I'm sure. As a biased newcomer, I prefer Joomla. Mostly because Joomla templates are easier create. As soon as I figure out how to create Drupal templates, I may migrate to Drupal if someone comes out with a video explaining template creation in Drupal.
Sat, 2006-05-27 04:24 — a passing drifter (not verified)

Joomla vs Drupal

Hello, I am a designer and not much of a programer. I would be hip to learning things like CMS with W.A.M.P's, but do I need to spend the next 3 to five years studying PHP to get the most of Drupal? I actually was going to go with Joomla for a large project coming up (I would have some programer types on board) but now I am going to take a serious look at Drupal. Has anything been done to enhance the lacking emcommerce (mentioned here already) in Drupal since this thread began? Also is there a way to seperate the logic from the structure? Kind of like an external stylesheet??? I need: A.) Slick looks (I can do that if it is mod friendly and hopefully CSS friendly) B.) Secure and Stable C.) Going to be around for the long haul D.) I don't need to get a PHD in computer programing to make it happen. Thanks, Many informative posts! Peace ~:O Ken Krueger http://www.kiwi9.com
Mon, 2006-05-01 16:23 — CHRIS (not verified)

Can Drupal's layout be customized with ANY design?

I'm a pretty experienced web designer, at least as far as design, HTML, CSS, and Flash go. I've designed probably 30+ websites of varying sizes, but none have needed an extensive level of user-control until now. So this is the first time I've turned to CMS instead of the old update-HTML-via-FTP method. I'm a fairly quick learner and am willing to give this a shot, as I know FTP is no longer the way to go. Drupal sounds good, but I need to know if it can be customized fully with my own design. I am not interested in a "standardized" template as my big focus is my actual design. So I create a layout in Photoshop -- and this layout COULD be fairly standard but may also be a little more "original", if you will -- and I code it to look exactly like my Photoshop layout. HTML, CSS, and Flash, all pretty specifically written to keep my exact Photoshop design intact. Is this method possible with Drupal? Can I create my tables/HTML/CSS/Flash as a regular .html file (as I always have), and then use that as a template for a whole Drupal-driven site? Or am I more limited in the kind of templating this system allows? How much of my existing methods can I keep doing, or how much will I have to change/learn/adjust to PHP, etc? I'm not familiar with PHP and would like my sites to LOOK exactly like I'm used to making them, with the underlying functionality of Drupal's management. Is this possible? Thank you!!
Wed, 2006-05-03 11:53 — SEan (not verified)

the view from a designer

The place to start creating drupal sites that look like real webpages is with the Wireframe http://drupal.org/node/50703 template running under the PHPTemplate engine. The layout and css is pure and basic, the perfect launch point to create your own layout and css. With the other templates you have to spend hours/days decoding their css and php layout.
Tue, 2006-05-02 04:54 — Nick Lewis

Hmmm... well, to tell you

Hmmm... well, to tell you the truth, I often use drupal even when building static HTML sites, because the menus, and templates make my life 20 times easier. PHPtemplate is so far as I know, the easiest, most powerful, and least constraining templating system in the CMS market. 

That said, you'll have to learn some PHP to use. But, learning PHPtemplate is more than worth the time. It ends up saving hours upon hours in the end.  

Sat, 2006-03-25 11:08 — Kodam (not verified)

"...Drupal on the other hand feels like a Ferrari..." ^^

I guess Mambo is better for some websites, drupal for others. I have only used Drupal so far, but IMHO Drupal is more used for community websites and Mambo for content websites, which is of course just general difference and doesn't prevent you to use it vice versa.

Mambo is designed as a simple, not-so-flexible, quick-to-use application for commercial CMSes. It's not designed to be that customisable. Therefore, themes are easier to write, and there's more of a market for them.

First you need to know what you want, than decide on which CMS will fit best.

.:. KDM .:.

Tue, 2006-03-07 16:52 — Harry Slaughter (not verified)

Ain't that the truth!

If you took Mambo's marketing along with some of its eye candy and slapped it onto Drupal greatness, the OSS CMS game would be over.

Sat, 2006-02-25 00:45 — Jeroen (not verified)

Tableless content

I'm looking for a new CMS for my personal site. I'm a designer and don't have timeyet to learn PHP. CSS and XHTML is no prob. First I looked at Joomla and some other CMS-ses but found out that they all use tables to display there content. Drupal is different, it looks like the generated code is compliance with no unnecessary use of tables. But my question is: how flexible is it when you don't code PHP yourself? Drupal looks somewhat like a programmers CMS: only txt links, no icons, no tinyMCE, not for a designer?
Fri, 2006-03-03 03:12 — alaken

In any CMS worth its salt,

In any CMS worth its salt, there will be some amount of separation between content (your articles, blog postings, cat photos, band's music etc) and presentation (the HTML that defines the page structure and the CSS that gives it "look and feel") The way the content gets shoved into the HTML and CSS presentation is by means of a templating system. All decent CMS have a templating system - Drupal does as well but it's called the "theming" system.

The point is that there are templates/themes that generate flawless modern table-free CSS2 layout in Drupal or Joomla - and there are also templates/themes that generate old crufty table-filled markup. I can't speak to the flexibility of Joomla's templating system b/c I've never used it, but Drupal's theming system is structured to make it easy to create themes that use state-of-the-art semantic markup and CSS layout. (And the core drupal programming takes pains to generate lean, clean markup that will work in any theme.)

Drupal theming initially may take a little more work to wrap your head around than some simpler systems, but once you've got it it's amazingly robust and flexible. If you don't want to deal with any PHP at all, there may be CMS systems that are simpler for a designer to template. And if the functionality of your personal site is modest, you may not need all the power that Drupal can provide.

That said, there are some extremely good-looking themes available (see here for screenshots) and any of them can be customized to a certain degree just by editing CSS.

The drupal community is very active and helpful (on drupal.org and sites like this) and I have seen many non-programmers go from a timid start to really tearing into it with the community's help. Also - the first book on drupal was released recently and it is very well-written, and has great chapter on understanding and customizing themes:

Finally, let me set you straight on your last point: you can certainly use images for links when/if you need to; using CSS you can do great things with icons (look at the current design of this site); and drupal DOES include great tinyMCE integration.

Really finally, check out the kind of design-friendly sites that can be built in drupal.

and good luck!

Tue, 2007-06-19 13:28 — themegarden.org (not verified)

http://themes.drupal.org/

http://themes.drupal.org/ site was closed a months ago (with release of drupal 5), but there is an alternative: Drupal Theme Garden

Sat, 2006-02-11 01:08 — Anonymous (not verified)

Drupal v Joomla

I've installed and used both Mambo/Joomla and Drupal for different clients who needed different things. For someone who wants a quick site, wants to choose from a bunch of templates, wants an easy and friendly forum, and doesn't need subcategorization of their data, I install Joomla. It's incredibly fast to get people going. If I'm dealing with a client who has lots of data and it needs to be organized in a very particular way, I'll choose Drupal. NOTHING beats the taxonomy system at Drupal. But on the other hand, NOTHING is more painful than Drupal's theme systems. So before I recommend Drupal for a site, I make it very clear that the data will be easy, but we'll have to spend a bunch of time getting the site to look the way they want it to. So there you have it, beauty v. brains. Different strokes for different folks, etc. If Drupal gets an easier templating system or wizard, I would probably go with Drupal entirely. As it is now, I do 1 Drupal site for every 5 Joomlas. If Joomla ever gets a reasonable taxonomy system, I'll probably do 100% Joomla just as a desperate attempt to keep my sanity and stop trying to stay on top of both of these excellent products. We live in a great time when 2 such fabulous pieces of software are available to anyone for free and are constantly being improved by communities of smart people.
Thu, 2006-05-25 09:41 — jeff (not verified)

need a mambo problem solver and webmaster

hi, just had my intern save a copy of our mambo site and do some work after that...no problem...when he returned this am he received the following error message...we need this fixed asap and would like to work with a webmaster that can direct the intern or myself on building the site from here. at the moment we have about 180 listings in the data base and need to add more but are stuck...and beyond that we are looking at categorizing our listings, adding amazon affiliation, e-commerce, online classes, and a community building software (zaadz.com)...but we need to get this problem fixed so we can complete the additions.... Here is the error message: DB function failed with error number 1054 Unknown column 'c.access'in 'on clause' SQL=SELECT c.*, g.name AS groupname, cc.name, u.name AS editor, f.content_id AS frontpage, s.title AS section_name, v.name AS author FROM mos_content AS c, mos_categories AS cc, mos_sections AS s LEFT JOIN mos_groups AS g ON g.id = c.access LEFT JOIN mos_users AS u ON u.id = c.checked_out LEFT JOIN mos_users AS v ON v.id = c.created_by LEFT JOIN mos_content_frontpage AS f ON f.content_id = c.id WHERE c.state >= 0 AND c.catid=cc.id AND cc.section=s.id AND s.scope='content' AND c.sectionid='5' ORDER BY cc.ordering, cc.title, c.ordering LIMIT 0,10 Thank you for any help or direction you can offer... Best, Jeff
Tue, 2006-01-31 14:46 — Alan (not verified)

ecommerce, ecommerce, ecommerce

I LOVE Drupal, except for one thing - but that one thing has caused me so many headaches that I am now testing out Mambo - ecommerce. Drupal's ecommerce package is simply awful. I know, I know, if you don't like it write a better one, but it's just too much work for me. I actually DID write a hack to handle geographic shipping costs by weight - absolutely essential for any ecommerce package, and a glaring omission - only to run into other showstopping problems. For example, no product attributes. This means you can't offer packaging options or add-ons without creating entirely separate products, and this particular drawback is going to result in my losing a client unless I either hack it again, or try Mambo out (because I see that this is included in mambo's features list). My problem with doing too much hacking of Drupal is that they are currently working on the 4.7 release and I know that as soon as that comes out all my work will be obsolete and I will either have to redo it or hope that in that time someone will have written a better ecommerce package from the ground up. It's annoying because it's the ONLY thing I don't like about Drupal, but it's enough to cause me not to use it. Anyone wanting a commercial site that does anything with ecommerce beyond a simple 1-product-1-price setup is going to have serious problems. If Mambo's package works better and the rest of it doesn't completely suck then I may switch to them until Drupal is more viable. I'd love to stick with Drupal and help it to get where it needs to be but I don't have the time...
Sun, 2007-12-02 18:51 — a passing drifter (not verified)

ubercart might suit you

ubercart might suit you better

Mon, 2006-01-23 04:16 — Terri (not verified)

Drupal or something else?

Hi all, I'm making my first website ever, with a few hours of help from a generous friend who knows some about web programming - but nothing yet about CMS. This is all so new for me - a week ago I didn't even know what a URL was. But now I've made a website. And I need a content management system to manage what will end up being a massive database of members, all of whom need user access to modify their own profiles, etc. etc. I have 124 members in 1 week, but expect thousands eventually. So I've read a bit online, and I want to decide whether I should use Joomla or Drupal. I've known next to nothing (nothing, really) about this until so very recently, but am a very quick learner. I want to do the best thing for the long run, but also need to get this up in the next 2 weeks (I will take all the time it takes to do this in the next 2 weeks). Which should I choose? And I was going to use Dadabik to manage the database tables. Help!
Mon, 2006-01-23 21:10 — Nick Lewis

Terri,  I got my start with

Terri,  I got my start with drupal under similar circumstances: a quick growing organization, and me knowing nothing about CMS, programming, or the like. Go with drupal, Joomla/Mambo's community management tools are a joke. Never heard of your database tool -- however, if it supports mysql you're good to go. And yes, long run decision is going with drupal.
Sat, 2006-01-21 16:06 — modem (not verified)

difficult to choose

hi, I'm looking for a CMS to use for my website. Until now, I've been using phpBB2 plus, the extended version of the phpBB2 forum. It works fine, but the people using it want something more easy, something more transparent. It's true that it's difficult to manage simple content using phpBB2 plus, so I'm looking for an alternative. At first, I had my eye on Typo3. You can do anything you want with Typo3, and the extension repository makes it easily extendable. However, it's far too complex for a simple webmaster like me. After reading some reviews, I turned to Joomla (I haven't installed it yet). It looks easy to use and modifiable, so I thought it was the right choice. A couple of days ago, though, a friend of mine showed me his Drupal-site: easy to manage, easy to navigate and attractive. So now I am in doubt what to use. After reading all this, I'd rather go for Drupal, but I still have a few questions. I want a forum, Joomla seems to work well with Simple Machines Forum, so here's question number one: Is there a forum that works well with Drupal (and, most of all, is there synchronization between the user databases of the site and the forum)? Second, the site needs some kind of photo album, and Joomla seems to work with Gallery2 and Coppermine. Is there a Drupal alternative? Third, does Drupal support file publishing (for example, pdf's)? And last (but not least), does Drupal have the possibility of "Junior admins" (term form phpBB2): users that can manage the content of only a small section of the site, but do not have any other admin rights. And, if so, is there an easy-to-use graphical interface for these users. So, all you Drupal-freaks out there, try to convince me ;-)
Fri, 2006-03-03 00:35 — Anonymous (not verified)

well i DO use Drupal... and

well i DO use Drupal... and i "mostly" like it... but it has issues..

and their forum is a big issue.. if you are used to phpBB... you aren't going to like Drupal - their forum is a joke

Fri, 2006-03-03 02:42 — Nick Lewis

I'll agree with you there...

Yeah, as rabid of a supporter I am of drupal, I'll say that if you want a forum, use phpBB. At least for now, there are some big changes to drupal forums in the works... a drupal forum module that takes on phpBB isn't very far off...
Sun, 2006-01-29 13:42 — Anonymous (not verified)

Yes, yes, yes

Drupal has all you need. It has its own forum, its own gallery (plus gallery2 module), integrated upload module (file publishing), user roles, and more, more,... so much more....
Mon, 2006-01-30 06:54 — Trevor (not verified)

Yes, but can I pull my PHPBB2 database into Drupal?

Is there a way to move an existing user base and all accompanying data out of PHPBB2 and into a Drupal forum?
Thu, 2006-01-19 20:51 — Román (not verified)

Categories/templates vs. Documentation

I've been using both systems: Mambo/Joomla and Drupal. I've built my home page with drupal, but I tend to sell pages built with M./J. The reason is that I ussually sell newspaper-like pages, so I found the sections/categories system of Mambo more useful than drupal's taxonomy module, although the taxonomies are more flexible. Also since I'm a developer, not a designer, I choose the CMS more used by designers, so I can pick form a large pool of templates. But as a developer, there is a feature that puts drupal waaaay over Mambo and Joomla: Drupal's documentation and handbooks. Mambo, besides having an ugly code style, has 0 docs. Whenever you want to know how to use any of joomla's APIs you have to investigate, try and discover. With drupal you just go to http://drupaldocs.org/, and there you find everything. That feature makes me wish and try to use drupal for all my projects.

Thu, 2006-01-19 21:18 — Nick Lewis

Bingo -- the documenation

Bingo -- the documenation also has a way of training every single core developer on the big picture that is drupal. Thus -- better long term decisions have been made in drupal consistantly. That, and Dries drupal's founder -- is legendary for his longview when it comes to big decisions.

Joomla is screwed, frankly because their lack of API (e.g. everyone making decisions being on the same page) has lead to decisions which tied their hands behind their back -- and they would be -- in my opinion -- better to start over from scratch, porting code block by block, documenting it, debating it, ect. Until they do that, the developers are going to drupal; for all of the discussions they have about "how do we attract developers", I've heard little acknowledgement of this reality: good developers always pick the past of least resistance. And undocumented code is about as resistant of a path as you can have.

Thu, 2006-01-19 13:23 — brucen (not verified)

Nice article

After reading this I have to say I am glad to have chosen Drupal for my project. I was after a package that would allow my site to grow, had multiple categories to post article to. Originally it was a toss up between Drupal & Joomla. There were quite a few things about Joomla that I didn't like and a few things that I did. You see I run a VBulletin forum and Joomla had a bridge already built. Drupal however had no way of "attaching" to my forum and no-one at Drupal was remotely interested (what's wrong with the Drupal one" was the stock answer. However, someone came up with a way of joining the 2 (VB & Drupal) together and that convinced me to go ahead with it. I will say however that I find the forums over at Drupal a bit daunting for newbies. Some of the "seasoned" users can be quite harsh in their answers. But still, I am learning a fair bit from just looking and reading. Still a long way to go with my site which I am supposed to be launching on Feb 1.....if I can just muddle my way through Drupal... Cheers Bruce
Sun, 2006-01-08 14:18 — Anonymous (not verified)

Drupal Blogging?

I am sorry to be a dunce, but is this site using Drupal?
Mon, 2006-01-09 03:04 — Nick Lewis

Drupal Blogging?

Its not a stupid question. And yes, this site does run on drupal.
Fri, 2006-01-06 15:54 — gennaro (not verified)

What about Typo3?

I see a lot of new praise for Drupal, and it seems the concensus is that it is the hidden gem being overshadowed by a flashy but shallower joomla/mambo. I was leaning towards using Drupal for an advanced ecomerce/community/elearning site. But then I came accross Typo3. It seems very impressive! How come nobody is raving about it like joomla or drupal? Am I missing something? So what if it has a steep learning curve, if two weeks down the road you have a kick-ass power-house it is worth it. Any feedback would help my decision! Gennaro.
Fri, 2006-01-06 17:53 — Nick Lewis

What about Typo3?

To tell you the truth, I don't have any direct experience with typo3. However, it sounds like your dealing with a rather complex set of requirements. My understanding is that typo3 excels for simple websites, such as a corporate website, or small publication. If I were you, I'd bite the bullet and start climbing the drupal learning curve. An investment in learning Drupal now could pay off big time down the road. I always think its best to always take the longview when dealing with open source CMS's. Here's some data to help you take that long view: http://nicklewis.smartcampaigns.com/node/713
Wed, 2006-02-08 19:14 — Jan (not verified)

TYPO3 Discussion Board

We have a new TYPO3 demo site available:

http://www.typo3board.com/

TYPO3 Discussion Board
Tue, 2006-01-24 08:12 — Gunnar Langemark (not verified)

Typo3 is not for the faint at heart

Typo3 is hell to learn.

It can do everything. It is just hard.

Drupal is a hike in the park compared.

Just my 2c 

Thu, 2007-01-11 10:03 — Arancaytar

So basically:

Is Joomla to Drupal like Drupal is to TYPO3?

Ease of use for non-developers versus raw power for someone who has mastered the API?

Thu, 2006-01-05 01:27 — Anonymous (not verified)

drupal vs. xoops

I have looked at all of these packages; since I'm a newbie I find myself really going on a thin-sliced, intuitive decision. Which has better karma... But then Joomla and Mambo failed early although they were the packages that first grabbed my attention: full osCommerce integration, Simple Machines Forum and others... but I found a bunch of little bugs in Joomla, and then I started reading about the bloody fork they've gone through. A lot of ego and bad blood. Then I tried Xoops, which installed without a hitch. Refreshing. But I thought I'd look around a bit more... The next one that got me excited was Xaraya, which seems just kick ass but difficult... a really extensible, flexible system that will take a lot of time to get. But according to this, it seems that other people aren't interested in learning it either. It doesn't have hardly any modules at all. The hype is dying. Not a good sign... don't want to invest time into a technology that isn't going to fly. I ruled out TYPO3 because it looks gigantic; PHPNuke because it's busted, Plone because I want to run in PHP, etc, PostNuke because the code is ugly, Ruby on Rails because I don't know what the heck I'm doing yet. So that leaves Xoops and Drupal. Xoops, although perhaps more rigid (it's a fork of PHPNuke too) installs like a dream, has a big, modest and helpful user base, a lot of features and modules, CSS templates, Dreamweaver extensions, and just feels tried, trusted and reliable. A Ford V8 perhaps. Drupal on the other hand feels like a Ferrari, but sold a la carte... like, here's your engine, but you're going to have to come up with the body and wheels yourself. Is this an accurate assessment?
Mon, 2006-10-09 02:25 — Tony (not verified)

Fair Assessment..ish

Hi, yeah, looks liek you've really gone into these different projects, and as a bypasser noticed the bad blood effect over at Mambo/Joomla - not a good environment to be dropping in and trying to get some help me thinks.

Really depends what you are looking for; the new osc (when it eventually gets here) will be a truly world beating e-commerce system, one that will put the vast majority of commercial projects to shame, but if e-commerce is not your bag, you cant go far wrong with Xoops, although personally i feel that Drupal wont take very long to get that all important community going to offer greater support for those just starting out....

Fri, 2006-01-06 18:10 — Nick Lewis

XOOPs, Mambo /Joomla, and Drupal

Hmmmmm... I'd say its less of a expensive car vs. practical car metaphor, and more of an oil paints, vs. water colors metaphor. In otherwords, with both tools it always comes down to the effort and time you put into them. I think your assessment of Joomla!/Mambo is quite astute. Those platforms have a lot of legacy issues, and I straight refuse to do projects using them. If I was forced to learn how Mambo's code works, I'd shove a pencil in my ear, the reason being that if I'm going to feel pain, I might as well go all the way. I'm quite curious about what is happening with XOOPs. I've yet to see any evidence that their platform will handle everything that Drupal 4.7 (now in BETA) will handle -- but my mind is open. FYI, if you're looking for an automated installer, I would recommend Civicspace. Civicspace IS Drupal 4.6.5 + additional modules, themes, and template engines + an automatic database, and configuration script + a full fledged CRM package. Civicspace is highly recommended. I'd even go so far as to say I'd suggest the Civicspace version of drupal over the base version offered at drupal.org. This site runs on a Civicspace fork, btw. http://civicspacelabs.org/home/developers/download 
Sat, 2006-07-08 05:06 — a passing drifter (not verified)

problems with installing civicspace on shared hosting

I really hope that I am placing my question in the right place, if not - please forgive me, but after second night without sleep, the brain is not any longer the same... I do want to start using CMS with my websites and I want to start with my own one. I researched the net for something suitable and after first of all installing Mambo and playing with it a little I found out that in the long run I'm probably going to have problems with it (inserting certain modules was breaking the pages' layout). After looking at the generated via templates code - frames and tables and more tables - I started to get disappointed. Although, I am a beginner I fairly quickly became a fan of CSS and a clean code. Then I started to find out more and more about joomla, the mambo-joomla split, why, when, etc, etc and somehow I landed on this webpage. And I couldn't stop reading... It's 6am and I am trying hard to install civicspace (as I have a very strong feeling that drupal is going to be the right thing for me) on my shared hosting account. I couldn't do anything about CURL, but all other prerequirements were OK. Unfortunately during the setup (step 3 - database setup - I set up databases via MyPHPAdmin and they do get populated) I am getting this (when the progress bar hits about 50-60%): Fatal error: Table 'lch.cs_phplist_admin' doesn't exist query: INSERT INTO cs_phplist_admin VALUES (1,'admin','admin','','2002-05-24 16:06:33','2002-05-24 16:06:33','','1172624057','2002-05-24',1,0) in /home/myname/public_html/lch/includes/database.mysql.inc on line 66 Now, I know PHP a little, but probably not enough. Please tell what I need to do to get it fixed as I just can't wait to have Drupal/civicspace installed on my host. Regards, Jay
Sat, 2006-07-08 06:48 — Nick Lewis

Heh. Well, I can’t stress

Heh. Well, I can't stress enough how important a fresh mind is to this sort of problem solving. So, in general, I wouldn't approach something like this with an up-all-night-its-f#cking-six-and-i'm-staring-at-a-computer-screen sort of mind. Most likely you've made an error that the people who write documentation didn't forsee. Oddly, with code, it seems experience is a hinderence to writing technical instructions. For example, the instructions take for granted that you know what a "bash script" is. (trust me, those scripts are not a "bash" in any sense of the word). Now... this error is strange because most problem problems would not get to the insert portion of the script before generating an error. Did you use PHPadmin soley to create an empty database, and did you make sure to create (or find out the name and password) for a mysql user to connect to the database? Help me understand where you are at -- if my questions caused you to react with a "yeah... duh... OF COURSE", than let me know. Otherwise, I can promise you are probably only missing a few key concepts, and you will soon figure out that there is a reason so many professional programmers are idiots :-)
Sun, 2006-01-01 16:23 — Anonymous (not verified)

Mambo Vs. Drupal:

Mambo is the best. - Integrated WYSIWYG editor - Not few templates, like for Drupal - Not few components - Not few modules Stupid people are using Drupal and other stupid soft.
Wed, 2006-02-22 07:22 — Stupid (not verified)

Here's a stupid CMS trick for you ...

Of course I'm stupid, but so far the comments here have been the most helpful guide to picking my way through the CMS jungle online.

FWIW, here's my stupid situation: I'm building web apps using RoR and I want a CMS to bolt on the front of 'em to do things like news item management, workflow, extranet admin, and various I don't feel like reinventing.

There are no real ruby CMSes at this time. There's a page full of requirements for same on the ruby wiki. There's a 9-month-old thing called railfrog that won't mature any time soon. And there's a bunch of vague allusions to making cmses called rubish, rcms, and similar that haven't had any development in a long time.

There's a ruby interface to midgard, which is too damn long in the tooth to compete.

There's a bunch of java CMSes, best of which is probably Nukes, which could be scripted in jruby. But none of em seem to work well and they all perform like dogs. Small lame dogs who have nutrition issues.

Which brings me here. There is supposed to be a ruby bridge to php called ruby-in-php, but as far as I can tell it's vapour. Still I'm confident I can integrate well enough either via SWIG or just a javascript-level critter like DWR ...

If I can figure out which PHP CMS is the most adequate. So far drupal seems to get the most raves, and I'm going to evaluate civicspace properly now I know what the heck it is.

Have already chucked mambo in the bin. Yeah, it doesn't look too bad unless you compare it with ajaxified cmses like Alahup. But it's really just for the small-potatoes sites as far as I can see. I need to expose admin facilities to channel partners ... which is actually making me think seriously about plone.

Now, seeing as how I'm stupid, perhaps you'll kindly share your wisdom about how I have mambo all wrong and can use it to save the day.

Please.

Wed, 2006-02-15 22:41 — Anonymous (not verified)

Sounds like you only know

Sounds like you only know Mambo and are quite frustated that no one is using that and offering you a job. -Sid
Mon, 2006-01-02 23:24 — Nick Lewis

Mambo Vs. Drupal:

I'd imagine there are stupid people using all sorts of stuff... what's your point?
Sat, 2005-12-31 17:16 — Drahcir (not verified)

Mambo Vs. Drupal:

I have spent the last 3 years with xoops CMS and have been looking around recently, just to make sure Ive not lost sight of what's around. There is one major distinction between on the one hand CMS's like xoops, mambo, joomla and then the other hand, drupal. The first group major well with 'ease of use', quick install, big library of themes and modules, etc. There is also a propensity to attract users who want a 'flashy' website suited to gamers, home pages and small content users. In contrast, I find drupal to be more suited to the website that requires serious information organisation and professional layouts, robust security and well structured code. The features of drupal will not appeal to the 'geek' or amature, but for the webmaster who really knows what he wants in terms of structured content. Nearly all the CMS's Ive tried have a similar structure of categories that have a linear hireachy. This is all very pleasant and easy to implement untill you have content that needs to have inter-relations with cross categories. Then your really stumped. So here's my assessment; Most content management systems dont actually MANAGE content at all well, they display it beautifully, but lack relational organisation tools. Drupal on the other hand singularly handles the management of content in a superior and more fluid structure that enables huge amounts of data to be classified and retrieved by the user. If you want to build a professional content retrieval site, then drupal is the platform of choice. In addition SEO is easier to manage and maintain than any other system I've used to date. My only criticism of Drupal is that they have tried to draw the distinction in organisation philosophy to tightly by using the language of 'information science' namely alpha-taxonomy. For the first time user not initiated in information science lingo, this is clearly off-putting and potentially confusing. Last comment ... if you have a need for an efficient information repository with extensible options for user retrieval... use drupal. If you want a nice pretty site with lots of gizmos, use the others.
Fri, 2006-01-06 18:19 — Nick Lewis

Mambo Vs. Drupal:

Well put -- though I disagree with the implication that drupal sites aren't pretty, or lack gizmos. On the contrary a look at Drupal's available modules seems to indicate that Drupal is the most gizmo friendly of all CMS's. Also, there are some very sexy drupal sites. The first two that come to mind are: http://urlgreyhot.com/personalhttp://www.terminus1525.ca/
Mon, 2005-12-26 22:10 — Anonymous (not verified)

Mambo Vs. Drupal:

This was a really useful comparison, one that I hadn't seen beforehand doing a lot of research on the various options - there are so many out there. I gotten down to Mambo, Drupal, TYPO3, and Joomla but hadn't see much about search engine friendliness. ;-) I've installed Drupal, Mambo, TYPO3 and Joomla via Fantastico and tried each for a bit. Mambo did fine on the install as did TYPO3. Joomla ran better right out of the box - Drupal said it installed 4.6.3 via Fantastico, but it is having its PHP 5 issues. I see there is a patch, but no instructions on installing it. To attract users, it needs to be easy to do. The Drupal site says 4.6.x is PHP 5 compatible, but it doesn't seem that it is fully. I had about given up on Drupal. After reading this though, I am going to try to find how to do the patch or install 4.6.5 and try it. So, thank you for this discussion. I'm looking at more now... A key to getting users is ease of use... :-)
Fri, 2006-02-10 23:12 — Anonymous (not verified)

perhaps avoid drupal via fantastico

I was spending more time than I liked swearing at drupal and found that *several* people having similar problems were warned away from using fantastico scripts to maintain a drupal install.  I've had security-related headaches (where the ISP and fantastico are not fast about upgrading the available patch), the fantastico script has broken upgrades, fantastico doesn't play nice with many modules and customizations I've added, etc.

Instead, best practice is to set up and manage drupal yourself if you can. 

Thought you'd appreciate the warning.  I had a dozen snarled-up-nastily drupal blogs to untangle before I got this warning and it has been a serious pain in the asterisk to figure out how to gracefully bring them back to something I control completely.

Sun, 2006-01-29 11:36 — Heine (not verified)

Change the theme

Drupal core is PHP 5 compatible. The xtemplate theme engine breaks down own PHP 5.1.x however. Is that what you experienced? This can be solved by switching to another included theme. See this entry in the troubleshooting faq for a howto.
Mon, 2005-12-26 23:24 — Nick Lewis

Mambo Vs. Drupal:

That's what I like to here. FYI -- you might want to try Drupal 4.7 beta2 instead. Its fully PHP 5 compatible. It also has some rather cool enhancements that I think make it worth trying out for a beginner. The only trouble with it at this point is that most modules remain uncompatible due to a giant change in the forms_api. Its a bit of a pain in the ass, but I fully understand the rationale for making the painful change. Their philosophy seems to be "let's get this over with so that our platform can be even stronger for years to come". No complaints about that here.
Wed, 2005-11-09 03:23 — Anonymous (not verified)

drupal for dummies?

With all the hype i decided to install drupal and have a play around. At first sight it was very overwhelming. It took about a week to get the gist of things but i still have a lot of problems trying to customize my site. I've searched for basic tutorials and looked at the handbook, and there doesn't appear to be any clear cut help features like that of wordpress to help achieve what i want in order to fully appreciate the power of drupal. Perhaps i'm looking in the wrong place or just a thicko.
Wed, 2005-11-09 04:46 — Nick Lewis

drupal for dummies?

Well... whadya wanna do? Me thinks I may have the secrets you seek. All you need to do is ask.
Mon, 2005-10-24 22:45 — Wish-Idda GoneDrupal (not verified)

After extensive CMS research

After extensive CMS research and several prototype sites for a substantial conversion, I finally selected Mambo a couple of years ago over Drupal due to a couple of important features that Mambo offered at the time.  Would you believe those features just disappeared in subsequent releases and "security fixes."  Not even release notes warning of the removal -- just "poof!"  I have a love hate relationship with Mambo, and if I had to do it again, I'd go with Drupal. 
Mon, 2005-10-31 00:27 — Nick Lewis

Condolences... You are right

Condolences... You are right though -- the chief drawback to drupal has always been its lack of native e-commerece support. However, like I said, CMS's are like stocks, not cars. The existing set of features is less important than the long term health of the development and user communities; in addition to the quality of the core's code.
Fri, 2005-10-07 17:48 — stranger than fiction (not verified)

Mambo - CMS for dummies (like me)?

I use Mambo, which is pretty slick and simple to use.  I've also used a number of Mambo add-ins, which have (on the whole) been pretty good.  Currently though I'm looking for a Blog plug-in that allows people to comment like this one - I haven't found one yet.

I think the bottom line is that Mambo is great, so long as you are happy to live within the constraints it imposes.

Fri, 2005-10-14 16:37 — stranger (not verified)

If you're looking for a

If you're looking for a comment module for Mambo like this one, try AKO  Comment.I love both Drupal and Mambo, a think that each benefits different markets, having different needs.  Bottom line.... Drupal needs a better e-comerce platform (much stronger than the one it currently has.)
Tue, 2005-10-04 01:59 — Jonathan (not verified)

Try 'em both

Why don't you try them both? You can see full potential of both CMS if you experienced them first hand. Unlike Mazda and Toyota, you won't be spending $ for an Open Source CMS. You might say time is gold for you to use it out just testing but this is the best way to unleash their potentials.
Tue, 2005-10-04 17:39 — Nick Lewis

"Why don't you try them

"Why don't you try them both?" My answer to this hypothetical question is simple: because most people won't have the time -- and they will already have to learn how to use one system. Mambo and drupal are apples and oranges in terms of user interface as well.
Sun, 2005-09-25 13:41 — stranger (not verified)

DRUPAL vs MAMBO

Just "shopping" for the last 2-3 days myself. I have worked through the live Demo at the Mambo site. CMS seems a really cool way to go. However, I see that there are bazillions more templates out there with Mambo vs Drupal. Other drop ins too. For instance. Ican build Templates utilizing a mambo plugin in Dreamweaver. That really makes life easier. Is there anything like that around fr Drupal?

Perhaps I am maling too big an issue of it, and if so, that understanding will come. But for now, the Mambo Community seems to offer more answers, to a noob's fledgling questions.

Thanks for answers

Wed, 2006-01-11 12:52 — Ramdak (not verified)

Using Dreamweaver for drupal theming

There happens to be a handbook page on this: http://drupal.org/node/18146
Sun, 2005-09-25 22:04 — Nick Lewis

A quick word of warning about Mambo's templating system....

Its really, really, really, rigid. Your basically stuck with table based layouts, and those dreamweaver plugins hardly make your job easier. I will say this -- I can do just about anything with CSS, that is besides one thing: making Mambo search engine friendly, and pure CSS. Stay away from Mambo, do not be tricked. It looks easier right now, but it is easier in the same way as using {font} tags, and {background} tags in HTML is "easier". It seems to save time right now, because you won't have to learn anything new -- however, in the long run, it will cost you enormously in terms of overall flexiability. Feel free to contact me if you'd like to talk about this in specific detail.
Mon, 2005-08-15 01:33 — Gunny@drupal.org (not verified)

Well written. I havent tried

Well written. I havent tried Mambo (so i cant comment on it), but looking at this post, i feel that it is the job of the indivial web designers to convince the customer that drupal is suitable for their requirement. Drupal is the first and foremost cms i have used so far. I am happy with it and always working for ways to present it in for the business community.
Fri, 2005-07-29 19:13 — Boris Mann (not verified)

Please do help us market

The Drupal Docs team is always looking for members, especially for the marketing sub-team. Changes to text anywhere on the Drupal.org website can be submitted and reviewed collaboratively. You can sign up for the Docs mailing list. You can find out more about the teams in the handbook. Thanks for your comments -- remember, open source doesn't stop at code: let's do open source marketing!
Fri, 2005-07-29 11:00 — Steve Dondley (not verified)

http://www.communicateordie.com

I've picked up on this, too. Mambo packages itself much more slickly. However, marketing to the elite might not be such a bad thing in the word-of-mouth world of open source software. It's the elite developers who make many of the decisions for clients. If you appeal to them, they will sell the product for you.
Tue, 2005-08-16 22:21 — poppaluv (not verified)

not targetted to the elite

I wouldn't say Drupal is marketed in a targetted way for the "elite". It just happens that those of us who want better features that have much more potential to make great products for our customers eventually figure out that Drupal is the better solution. Sites like this one do help in that discovery. When I was first looking for a CMS to use, Mambo grabbed my attention with it's better marketting, impressive feature lists, and even it's kinda cool administration interface. After a couple weeks of working with it to try to build what I wanted, I realized I couldn't do half of the things I initially thought would be possible. After further research, I found Drupal and centric communities and software like CivicSpace. Once I realized the potentials of this beautifully indegrated system with it's deep architecture, I was totally hooked.
Fri, 2005-07-29 03:36 — tas (not verified)

Think about the internet porn market, though

Using terminlogy which invokes visions of asscracks is sure to get them. In fact, if Drupal changed their website name to "Community Fisting", I betcha there would be no competitor CMS packages left.
Tue, 2005-08-16 16:50 — stranger (not verified)

HAHAHA ASSCRACKS!!

I think your article is brillant. You are so right about the image of an asscrack and shit build up. I haven't used Mambo nor Drupal, but I'm "shopping" as you said, and yes, at first look of about 10 projects, I had selected mambo as my CMS engine. Now, I don't know... I'm reading a lot of articles favoring Drupal, so I'm kind of at a loss. Maybe I'll end up downloading both and playing around with them to see where I'm at. Max

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