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 don't think 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
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