Drupal Sucks

The author is entitled to his opinion, but it is seriously misinformed. In haste he’s drawn up a huge variety of assumptions about Drupal and its operation that could easily be put to rest with a little bit of time with the system and it’s fantastic community of developers and other professionals working with it every day.

I think it’s equal to argue that you can do anything useful with Rails without downloading additional code to assist, whether it’s more gems, code snippets, and other things. Try doing anything but the 10 minute blog tutorial without knowing anything about Rails and see how productive you are. At the end of that exercise, someone who hasn’t spent the time to learn the framework could very well argue that Rails sucks. But that would be an equally ill-formed opinion.

My point is that these frameworks help with productivity because you invest the time to become familiar with them. Such a framework will always have shortcomings and bugaboos. The truth is tens of thousands of people are doing incredible things with Drupal every day, both as a framework and a CMS, and have found the ways around the things you list as limitations.

You should try Concrete5. Both user-friendly AND powerful.

I agree Drupal is not a good choice for a large website project, it isn’t even a good choice for a small website project.

I would recommend any developer to stop wasting time with Drupal, its terribly designed and not user friendly.

Sure it’s possible to make a user friendly interface for anyone to manage content with Drupal, but in order to do that you have to spend way more time modifying the ridiculously long code in Drupal, rather than starting with a more simple CMS that gives you more flexibility.

Yeah, that statement about themes is absolutely false. They are not stored in the template.

I’m about to blow ur mind

function node_views_default_views() {
$view = new stdClass();
$view->name = 'frontpage';
$view->description = t('The basic front page view.');
$view->page = true;
$view->url = 'frontpage';
$view->page_title = '';
$view->page_type = 'teaser';
$view->use_pager = true;
$view->nodes_per_page = variable_get('default_nodes_main', 10);
$view->block = false;
$view->menu = false;
$view->breadcrumb_no_home = true;
$view->sort = array (
array (
'tablename' => 'node',
'field' => 'sticky',
'sortorder' => 'DESC',
'options' => '',
),
array (
'tablename' => 'node',
'field' => 'created',
'sortorder' => 'DESC',
'options' => '',
),
);
$view->argument = array (
array (
'type' => 'node_feed',
'argdefault' => '2',
'title' => '',
'options' => '',
'wildcard' => '',
'wildcard_substitution' => '',
),
);
$view->field = array (
);
$view->filter = array (
array (
'tablename' => 'node',
'field' => 'promote',
'operator' => '=',
'options' => '',
'value' => '1',
),
array (
'tablename' => 'node',
'field' => 'status',
'operator' => '=',
'options' => '',
'value' => '1',
),
);
$views[$view->name] = $view;
return $views;
}


omagawd, a view in code

do you even try to google anything before starting a rant?

In fact, Drupal doesn’t suck, which is better than you could say for this author, who puts his byline to such brazenly misinformed piffle.

The author obviously didn’t research the topic at all before writing this idiotic screed! e.g. Drupal “views” are certainly not “templates” by any stretch of the imagination, and in fact, Drupal templates are stored in the file system. I’ll stop there, and leave this idiot to check his facts.

Thanks for your post, it has really opened up a great discussion. However, many of your criticisms of Drupal can be said of Ruby on Rails as well. It is very easy in Rails to have very inefficient queries if you don’t use memoization or if you use model relationships without thinking such as HABTM, etc.

Drupal may not use PHP OOP constructs per se, but it demonstrates OOP concepts. The Node is one of the best examples as it uses the concept of Polymorphism to tailor the Node into things such as Polls, articles, forums, etc (A big advantage over Joomla in my opinion and allows for better ACL & makes things like Organic Groups so powerful). The use of hooks demonstrates Encapsulation, and allows for clean Module writing.

I program in Rails, raw PHP, and within Drupal. The thing about coding your CMS or your own App from scratch is that you are your own support. Coding around a CMS such as Drupal, is that your problems are probably problems that have been solved or there is already an awesome module that handles the work for you. This drastically increases productivity, and when you have a client breathing down your neck, delivery time is crucial.

The argument of “why not just code your own CMS” is weak. It reminds me of the people who say, “why not write your own framework” or even “why not just write your own programming language”. No need to reinvent the wheel, unless there is strong reason to do so. The creation of Rails is a great example of how DHH popularized how a web app should be written, with MVC, metaprogramming, and now RESTful architecture. Unless you are offering a new philosophy & new architecture that offers something of value, I wouldn’t waste my time. The Ruby language is awesome because it offered new philosophies and compiled some cool features from Perl, Lisp, etc. But coding something just to do what something else already does, doesn’t really support Object Oriented Programming philosophy anyways (reusable code, etc.)

But believe me, Rails has a TON of horrible points too (and you complain about Drupal’s backwards compatibility??? Rails is notorious for not being backwards compatible with old code & gems. I’ve had so much code break because of a new Rails version). There are teams writing CMS’s in Ruby and I have yet to see anything on par with Drupal in terms of community and extensions, so I doubt writing something on my own in Rails, DJango, or CakePHP to do content management would be at all useful.

Keep in mind Drupal is a CMS. So for doing Content Management, it is one of the best. Rails is a general web framework, so I would use that to code something like Digg, Twitter, or a Facebook App. Two totally different things in my opinion.

If you want barebones effective Drupal. Drupal Core + Views + CCK. Very powerful stuff. Then throw on top custom PHP in Blocks or Pages and you can do some crazy stuff.

Anyways, thanks for the discussion!

I was just interviewed for Drupal position, the employer wanted me to show him some code, which I’ll happily agree too. Also this isn’t the first time I’ve toyed with Drupal, but after seeing CODE BLOCKs, I feel pretty horrid about Drupal. Managing code in a database is retarded.

Also, if you look at some of their functions it gets more retarded, for example:


4.6 – 5 -user_authenticate($name, $pass)
6 - user_authenticate($form_values = array())
7 -user_authenticate($name, $password)


It gets pretty retarded between versions, somebody thought it would be a good idea to change the function parameters in 6 and 7, and change it back to the normal usage. This simple example screams bad development all over.

I’ll stick with Ruby on Rails and not Drupal with seven cups of coffee.

- I think this article was written by a developper
- All developpers I know, they hate other developpers’code
- I think many developpers assume they know how rules the matrix
- I know developpers are not skilled at making user friendly interfaces
- I see more and more content managers people having experience with Drupal, they dont with your own home made cms
- I agree Drupal is no more than a web content management system. Dont use it to build web apps. Frameworks are perfect for this.
- I like Drupal because I can build evoluated website prototypes (not apps) without any help from a developper
- Home made cms are usually lighter, more friendly, faster,… but ususally, they are not extendable, not well secured,… the support, maintenance, evolution depend on the exact team who build it…
- It is very important to choose the right tool for the right project, depending on specs, evolutivity, security issues,…
- I cannot believe a developper on his own can build the same kind of a tool that is maintained by thousands developpers community

DRUPAL ROCKS !

Drupal does suck, but to suggest Ruby on Rails as a solution is just trading one kind of brokenness for another. Ruby’s performance on the interpreter level sucks, then add the bloated rails framework on top of that and it’s a disaster waiting to happen. If you’re site is more than just a hobby or a proof of concept, stay away from Rails as well as Droople.

Wordpress is the best alternative to drupal. It has it’s own internal problems with spaghetti code, but at least there’s much less code to deal with and it’s a bit easier to understand the internals, mainly because there is less code. Besides, wordpress looks nice, works great, and is easy to learn right out of the box. It’s also a piece of cake to convert it from a blogging app to a straightforward CMS.

If you’re going to end up even looking at the code (and you will have to by necessity if you use Droople or Rails), you may as well just save yourself some time and just change a few lines of wordpress code and just get on with your life.

http://www.graphicdesignblog.co.uk/wordpress-as-a-cms-content-management-system/

http://www.noupe.com/wordpress/powerful-cms-using-wordpress.html

I’ve read most of the comments here and while I tried to wrap my head around Drupal, I figured that the trouble of learning it is not worth it. Especially if you want to build a community site. A forum based system seems much easier and more standardized that users are more likely to adapt to it than a complicated CMS.

However, the biggest reason I think people get frustrated with Drupal is NOT that it’s hard to learn or anything of that kind. In fact, I think it’s EASY to do certain things with Drupal quickly. The hard part is building a site you want exactly the way you want and that seems to require a lot of customization within the framework. The unified administration interface of Drupal makes that a lot harder.

To me, getting a unique community website is about putting several components together and making them seem part of the whole deal: blogs, articles, reviews, news updates, forums, albums, galleries etc. Thing is most CMSes try to unify all these aspects into one solution. Most of them end up being complex and bloated and Drupal seems to be no exception to that rule. As a result, it makes it harder to build something out of a CMS that actually looks UNIQUE and DIFFERENT. Of all the time I spent tweaking around with Drupal, I never felt that I could make it fit into my needs with lesser effort. It seems I was fighting the software to make it work the way I want it. In the end, I figured that the added effort was not worth it.

As an analogy, I’d say Drupal is a wild beast that requires a lot of taming and controlling before you can get it to dance to your tunes. Whether it’s worth it or not depends on your own requirements and patience.

I have had a very negative experience with Drupal as well. I could go on an on with the details, but don’t have time. I’ll just leave it at that these two things stuck out like a sore thumb:

1) Drupal is not suitable if you want to create anything that hasn’t been created before. In other words, it’s not useful if you are creating something of value. Drupal fanboys reply to criticisms that it’s too complicated by insisting that it’s too powerful and flexible for the person who says so. Unfortunately, Drupal fails here even more than it fails in simplicity. The tiniest change can require tapping into core and that means having to repeat yourself when an upgrade comes.

Unless vanilla Drupal, plus CORE modules are sufficient for you, best make something from scratch. It will be easier in the long run, even if you factor in the time required to make your code secure (which isn’t as hard as people insist it is). I’ve had a few really good Drupal programmers concede this point to me. I’ve been told it’s my fault for “having too many customizations.” Nothing of value is going to be off the shelf and if off the shelf is sufficient for you, then something easier to use like Joomla or Wordpress or Concrete 5 would be a better choice.

2) The community. People who’s livelihood rests on wielding this one hammer (Drupal) against all the screws, pieces of pressboard and antique china the internet has to offer. They insist that everything is possible in Drupal. It’s their mantra, but all that really means is anything is possible in PHP (not really, but I’d let that less preposterous claim slide). There’s great hostility to creativity, wanting to do things in a way that is user-friendly or attractive or using non-standard ajax or javascript. I met quite a few Drupal coders I liked, don’t get me wrong, but asking if anyone has had experience doing something in Drupal on the forums always resulted in “why would you want to do that?” Drupal makes sense only to Drupal developers and are hostile to all criticism, even if it’s valid and constructive. (I’ve seen quite a few non-derogatory posts get deleted that should’ve have been).

Rails is better. MIT license. Or roll out your own PHP CMS using Zend. Or use Django. Or join the Concrete5 community and help them improve their damn good CMS. Or if it’s simple enough, use Wordpress (fun to make plugins for). You can’t make your own web apps in Drupal (I think many Drupal programmers would admit that, but countless Drupal users insist you can and will waste your money trying to make it for you and failing miserably).