The Dangers of Reviewing Open Source CMS
The April issue of Adobe Edge contains the article, Review of open source content management systems. The article provides an overview of what the author describes as "five of the top open source software (OSS) solutions". The five open source CMS included in the author's list are CMS Made Simple, Drupal, Joomla!, WordPress, and XOOPS. After reading the article, I found myself wondering how we "reviewers" can actually improve our reviews of open source CMS. More importantly, I've come to the realization that I can no longer claim to be non-biased in which CMS I believe is the best out there.
The author does a fine job in the article describing the similarities and differences between the CMS being reviewed. However, one of the issues I have in this article and many others I've read that review CMS is the big jumps in the conclusion:
Drupal, Joomla!, and XOOPS are best for building an e-commerce site because all three offer:
- Inventory management
- Support for third-party payment processing mechanisms (such as PayPal)
- Modules for shipping and sales tax calculators
- Shopping cart functionality
While it is true that Drupal, Joomla! and XOOPS can do e-commerce, none of these CMS can do that straight out of the box. I can just imagine a shop owner or design company trying Drupal, Joomla!, or XOOPS for the very first time and wondering, "how the heck do I get a shopping-cart into the CMS?". While the author does hint in the article that third-party modules are needed to make the e-commerce work, I think the author would have been better off better explaining that "some work is required" to get those features into the CMS.
I just can't help but think this is where open source loses many of their potential customers. When we oversell what a CMS can and cannot do for first time users, I think many of those customers "move on" before getting to know the CMS better. Reviews like these can get the hopes of first time users so high that after the intial install, they're disappointed in what they see in the CMS. Is it no wonder that people stick with shopping-cart only solutions like osCommerce and Magento? You tell me, am I out of line with my criticism of this review? In fairness to the author, she does also indicate that the point of her article was not to spell everything out for the reader, but to give "some sense of direction as you navigate the many options and determine the CMS that best suits your requirements".
After reading this article, I also have found myself admitting my own shortcomings. The author concludes that she agrees with Packt Publishing's 2007 award putting Drupal at the top of the list of best open source CMS.
I tend to agree with Packt Publishing's award. I think Drupal is the best overall CMS available — based on its high level of customization, flexibility, scalability, taxonomy, SSL support, e-commerce functionality, and extremely enthusiastic user community that develops modules and provides technical advice and support.
I was on Packt's panel of judges for that award. During my tenure as judge, I was fair and non-biased to which CMS should be ranked on top of the list. In the end I picked Drupal. Even now as I look out on the landscape of open source, I still don't see any overall open source CMS out there better than Drupal. But that experience sitting as a judge on the panel in the Summer of 2007 changed me. I fell in love with Drupal and Drupal's community of developers, advocates, and users.
I now have to admit to myself that it will be a very long time before I can review a CMS without using Drupal as my reference. If asked today to sit on a panel judging the best PHP-based CMS, I would have to excuse myself from that nomination. I can no longer judge or review a PHP-based CMS without showing my bias for Drupal. At the moment, my belief that Drupal is the best CMS out there has lost me my reputation of being non-biased in my own reviews. I say for this, damn you Drupal.
I think you're right on
I think you're right on with your criticism of the review. It's misleading to say that one CMS is better at eCommerce than another since none of them do it out of the box.
Really, the review should evaluate the flexibility of the system, which is what allows smooth integration with an e-commerce package, or any of the other permutations a Drupal (for example) site can morph into.
P.S. This is a nice implementation of TinyMCE, nice and light!
I Dunno
A shopping cart was my first dynamic website. I remember very well what I went through, knowing absolutely nothing. I really think if I had stumbled on that article back then, I would have looked into each system and based my choice on that research, not on the outcome of a short article.
I am still bitter because I put off trying Drupal for over a year because I read so often that it was too geeky. Blanket statements like that are what is dangerous.
About 2 years ago when I'd
About 2 years ago when I'd barely started using Drupal, I built 90% of a site for a small record label using oscommerce then scrapped it and redid the whole thing with Drupal 4.7 (this site was for pleasure, not for money). At least part of that was because adding any plugins to oscommerce required hand editing lines of code in a dozen different files.
So although I agree that reviewers should make it clear that modules are required. And Magento didn't exist when 4.7 was around, Drupal was a lot less work overall than a "shopping cart only" solution even two years ago.
On the wrong path
About two years ago, I picked osCommerce even though someone recommended Drupal (that would be the same anti above).
At the time, and from a usability point of view, I think I chose the right open source application. Initially, the shop owner just wanted to sell products and integrate his SMF forum with the site. For his users and his employees, osCommerce made sense.
From a site maintainer's point of view though, you're absolutely right that osCommerce is not a good choice. I was ready for the initial hand editing of the source code, but I was not ready for all the hand editing required for "patching" and maintaining the site. After using Drupal and not touching the "core", the maintenance model for osCommerce appears to me as outdated and simply stupid.
If I had to choose an open source ecommerce solution today, I would be looking at Drupal, Joomla! and Magento. The article's mention of XOOPS for a shopping cart does peak my interest.
I think in reviewing the top
I think in reviewing the top 5 you might of missed out on DragonflyCMS It is the fastest CMS on the market. One of the most secure. Has Shop module available better than osc It has a shop module with shipping tax and all the good stuff, available at www.cmsdreams.co.uk for further info
Joomla! - osCommerce
I have to say that I only use Joomla! for 95% of the sites I do as a professional web developer. And that includes using a 3rd party shopping cart for store sites.
But I will always tell a customer that comes to me about developing an e-store that will have a ton of products to go with osCommerce simply because that platform is the e-store workhorse. Anything with about 100 items or less works great in Joomla! though, and I can get a much better "looking" site developed that way. Joomla! is simply better looking and more customizable.
The comment about potentials of a CMS is correct. No CMS does e-commerce out of the box, but the best ones can indeed be made into stores if the developer has done their research and is familiar with what they are doing. Evaluating CMS should always consider what can be plugged in.
Mark
Haven't we missed the main point?
Hi
Firstly, thanks alot for this article which attempts to bring some common sense in this PHP CMS mania.
But I am afraid that you missed the main point, all the CMS mentioned in the original article are written in PHP, this is a very important factor that which I mean neither you nor the author of the original article paid enough attention to.
PHP is a rather new interface language which as easy as it may seem to non programmers to learn and use, it is *new* which makes it more buggy, less stable and very unsafe not to mention its third party free addons and modules.
It is a matter of fact that every second day one finds security holes in those so called third party addons for exactly the same reasons just mentioned. Generally speaking, PHP is also known to kill CPU and requires extra server resources and thereby extra expenses.
I for one prefer using genuine Perl CMS, which has been out there for ages, because Perl has been challenged for many years, it requires less resources, it uses less CPU and most important it is much safer than PHP. Websites with additional needs for addons can always use the free, open source scripts "bank" from cpan.org
My choice for the best CMS is WebAPP .
GreenGo
More users using PHP apps?
When I sat as a judge on the Pact Publishing Open Source CMS award, the "Overall" Best CMS that made the finalist award were selected by users and not by the judges or Packt Publishing. So if you want more focus on other CMS...the users of non-PHP Web applications need to rally more.
I really don't like Perl vs PHP vs Ruby vs Python debates. All scripting languages have their pluses and minuses. Out of the four, I started with Perl/CGI for the Web and have done some Perl/Tk (pretty cool) applications for the desktop. Eventually, for the desktop I progressed to Python (cooler with Tk builtin), but I have to admit I haven't done much with Python for Web applications (used Trac, want to spend some time with Plone). Ruby is a scripting language I've wanted to learn, but haven't had the right opportunity to do so.
While I dabble with PHP, I'm not much of a PHP developer. However, to me PHP seems much more a natural fit for Web applications than either Perl or Python. I'm not saying PHP is better, just for whatever reason more attractive to developer wannabes like me. While there are some security/performance concerns with PHP, I feel many of the arguments against PHP are either dated or exaggerated.
In the end, I prefer to judge the application from that of the perspective of the user and not the developer. Which sort of puts this discussion on a sidebar (but still a very good discussion).
I'll take a look at WebApp in the near future. Thanks for your input!
Agree with your comments on no "out of the box" functionality
Hi
I still remember when I first installed Xoops as a complete internet novice (although a veteran of what I liked to call proper IT!). I was initially baffled by the lack of - well almost anything, and it took me a while to get used to how to create pages/install modules etc. Xoops have since made this even worse by removing some of the modules that were in my inital implementation from the core build.
Why don't CMS applications install with all of the commonly used modules inactive as a default? Can the amount of code really be that important in this day and age? Also they could learn from the way that Wordpress holds your hand when you first install it with dummy posts telling you what to do next etc.
Having spent the time to learn Xoops I do like it and don't think that I could be an impartial judge either!
Thanks for an interesting article.
Neil
This is just reinforces my
This is just reinforces my decision to go with drupal. I did install at least 10 different cms's on a reseller account i have to try them. The decision was difficult to say the least for a newbee like me. The flat file ones are fast, but the idea of not using a data base was bothering me...wondering what kind of mess that could turn into. Some of them were so easy, i was tempted, like xoops. I had a site put together in 2 hours, but the back end is clumsy and limited, with limited modules.
Drupal was a nightmare navigating the back end, so that looked like the best one to me. Why? because if it has so much crap in the control area, it just means you have more fine tuned control over it. Learning it has been a test of patience. I was not sure about my choice, until I had some exposure to the community and listened to a talk by Dries. Now my concern is moving more towards the load time of pages. I do see some work on cashe stuff. Searching out more on that is what led me here....So you have my 2 cents..
I have to say as a non-programmer, all cms stuff is impressive to me. Thanks, have fun...dave