Submitted by Bryan on

I know I'm a week behind about this, but I just came across the link via Gadgetopia:  Open-source PHP applications that changed the world.  The CMS related applications that were determined world changers are listed below.

When you split the list into three sections, you get the feeling that PHP-Nuke, ezPublish, and osCommerce have been around for a very long time.  More importantly, you begin to think that it is time for Gallery, Drupal, and MediaWiki to either be seen as mature applications or for those applications to finally grow up.

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Aging Drupal and MediaWiki

Anonymous's picture

I am amazed that Drupal is two years older than Wordpress.  Wordpress from a user interface point of view seems much more polished than Drupal.  Your point that Drupal and MediaWiki should be more "mature" is a good one.  Neither Drupal or MediaWiki is at a point where I would say are "finished" products...they still seem to be missing something (perhaps the lack of a rich text editor has something to do with it).

Given that PHP-Nuke and osCommerce are quickly becoming has beens when it comes to projects, I wonder if Drupal and MediaWiki are on the same path?

Aging Drupal

HarryB's picture

I seriously doubt Drupal is on the way out...but I've been wrong many times before!

Drupal does indeed lack the eye-candy present in the user interface. But on the other hand, the administrative panels and the content entry screens are quite straightforward. I personally think one has to look past the eye-candy and consider the overall features and functionality a package brings to the table before forming opinions.

Although it is not built into the core, Drupal does indeed have rich text editor capability. There are add-on modules for Tiny MCE and FCKeditor.

As old as you feel

Bryan's picture

I'm in agreement with what Harry B says...I too doubt that Drupal is on the way out. While I agree, with Anonymous that there are some issues that both Drupal and MediaWiki need to address in regards to UI (some talk in Drupal 7 planning that it would contain an RTE in the core) that wasn't really my point.

I really just wanted to point out that MediaWiki, Gallery, and/or Drupal are no longer newcomers (Wordpress is even youngerthan Drupal). It's sort of a wake-up call for those involved with those applications that they've finally hit their 30s on their way to their 40s. Still a lot of good work ahead, but the clock is ticking for a newbie to come along and get a little more glory (just as Magento has taken the spotlight off of osCommerce).

What separates Drupal from some older open source projects (in my opinion) is that Drupal has a very active development community (in both core and contributed modules). Some projects are dependent on only a few core developers and are almost blind from seeing the strength in getting more involved. To be honest, as big as the Drupal community has gotten...I'm amazed by just how personal Drupal's developers are. It's a credit to the Drupal community to continue to feel so young despite its relative aging.