OSCMS 2007

by Julian Tschannen (modified: 2007 Mar 27)

During building of the eiffelroom site with Drupal I learned quite a lot about this CMS. First, it has a good API and a whole bunch of modules which help you build your site. Second, it does not provide everything I need.

Thanks to the first point, the second is not really a problem since I can build everything I need on top of the powerful framework. So, while I set up eiffelroom a bunch of modules emerged which I released back to the community.

Last week I presented some of the work I did at the OSCMS summit 2007 (Slides, 450KB PDF). Even though Yahoo's wireless and their beamer didn't like my laptop, there were enough people with laptops (mostly Macs) around so I could borrow one (not a Mac, but a PC). And even though the demo site didn't work correctly first - the configuration on my laptop differs from the hosting I used as a backup - everything went well.

It was an interesting experience to see the people only known through email and IRC. Also the hackfest - a gathering after OSCMS for a day of hacking - was a good place to talk to people and get some patches done.

The next Drupal conference is already planned for September 2007 in Barcelona, luckily right when I'm back in Switzerland.

Comments
  • Neal Lester (17 years ago 1/4/2007)

    Choosing Drupal

    Why did you choose Drupal over Xoops?

    • Julian Tschannen (17 years ago 3/4/2007)

      The most important reason was probably that I didn't now Xoops ;)

      But after a quick look at it I still think Drupal was the right choice:

      • Input format customization for Xoops seems not as powerful as the Drupal alternative. Mediawiki format and syntax highlighting make it easy for us to use this site since we are all used to it from the EiffelStudio wiki already as it works exactly the same here.
      • Clean URLs: This is especially important for search engines. Drupal supports it out of the box, but Xoops on the other hand has not even clean URLs on their homepage.
      • Plugin mechanism: Drupal's plugin mechanism is simple yet powerful as any module can alter behaviour of core modules and even other modules. The Xoops way (without looking at it really close) looks like the modules are more isolated and don't interact too much.

      But as I said, I don't know the inner workings of Xoops and after working with Drupal my opinion may be biased ;)

      (Do you know more about Xoops? Why do you propose it?)

      • Neal Lester (17 years ago 3/4/2007)

        Drupal vs. Xoops

        I find myself advising someone on the selection of a CMS for a web site. Xoops and Drupal seem like the top contenders for them. You gave Drupal a recommendation by using it; I was just wondering why.