Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor, Rich Man, Poor Man, Beggar Man, Thief

In terms of Internet time, one can consider Joomla! as a young adult who is trying to figure out what he/she wants to do with the rest of their life and is having an identity crisis in the process.  The Joomla project on one hand wants to remain true to its Mission, Vision & Values.  On the other, it is currently engaging a professional PR Firm to increase it’s brand recognition. 

What Joomla! does not have that a number of other OSS projects do have is one or more commercial entities that provide them with “free” marketing and PR services.  Acquia, Automattic, redhat, Canonical (Ubuntu), Oracle (OpenOffice) come to mind here.

Now that I’ve stated the above, some of you will proceed directly to the comments form and delineate the many evils of commercial entities and the OSS projects that are “conspiring” with them.  Some will suffer from “Twitter Deprivation” and move on.  Others, thinking “What the hell is this idiot talking about?” will read on out of pure curiosity.  And some will simply read on with no malice aforethought!

Now I do not claim to be an expert regarding organizational models adopted by the various OSS projects, or any marketing and PR on their behalf (although I did suffer though a Marketing 101 course many years ago…I needed 3 credit-hours and the class schedule met my needs!).

What I do know is from the outside looking in and not having a clue about the inner workings of the Joomla Leadership Team (LT), Community Oversight Committee (CoC),  and Open Source Matters, Inc. (OSM), my perception is that in the race to capture the hearts and minds of the corporate and government worlds, Joomla is losing, or may have already lost. 

Now many may say that the Joomla project is OSS and, as such, they are not competing with their OSS brethren in this or any other arena.  And that may well be true.  But one can also say that neither are the Drupal and Wordpress projects.  The difference is that their commercial champions are.

To date, and absent any household-name, deep pocket benefactors, Joomla has had astounding success.  It has spawned thousands of small businesses who have in turn spawned many thousands of sites for small and medium businesses around the globe.  If one believes in statistics,  only Wordpress surpasses Joomla in the number of installed sites.  And this statistic is probably biased, as Wordpress has much more usage as a blogging engine rather than as a CMS.

In the meantime, OSS associated with strong commercial brand names have made impressive inroads into the corporate/government markets.  An example here is the use of Drupal as the platform for Whitehouse.gov and other US Government sites.  Does this mean Drupal is “better” than Joomla?  Not really, it just means the winning commercial bidder for the Whitehouse.gov contract used Drupal to fulfill the Government’s Request for Proposal (RFP) requirements for CMS features and capabilities. 

In conclusion, my opinion…

I am not by any means qualified to speak for the Joomla leadership and really do not care to do battle with the hordes over the leadership, organization or future direction of the Joomla project.  But what I do know is that Joomla really needs to decide what it wants to be as a grown-up and share this with the community.  And the project is big-time swimming upstream if its real intent is to compete with the commercial entities that are purveyors of Joomla’s OSS brethren.

Disclaimer: I have no financial or other interests in any of the open source or commercial entities referenced in this tome.  And I long ago gave up on software development as a source of income. 

On 15 January 2010, I installed the Drupal 7.0 Alpha 1 release on a Linux server used for testing here on my home network. The server uses the following LAMP configuration:

• Linux – Ubuntu 9.10
• Apache 2.2.12
• Mysql 5.1.37
• PHP 5.2.10

Installation

The installation was uneventful.  I noticed that it now requires that the following folders be present in the Drupal root.  If they are not present, the installer will not proceed until they are created.  One must leave the installer and create the folders via the operating system’s file management utility or command line interface.

• sites/defaults/files
• sites/defaults/private/files
• sites/default/private/temp

Other than that, and the much improved UI, my impression is that the Drupal 7 Installer isn’t a big departure from those of previous releases.

New Features

The Drupal 7.0 Alpha 1 core contains a number of new features.  The subsequent text summarizes those that were, in my opinion, the most significant.

User Interface

The most visible change in Drupal 7 compared to previous releases is the redesigned Administrator UI.  The administration backend has a new default theme called Seven, which looks good with Firefox and Chrome, but needs some tweaking to render correctly in IE8.

The new UI has a top horizontal menu containing links to various management functional areas, along with a configurable “shortcut bar” that can be customized by the user.

In addition, there is a configurable “dashboard” page that the administrator can use to organize administrative tasks and track site information.

For the most part, I found the new UI well organized and easy to navigate.  I may be biased here as I am one of what seems to be a small minority that thought the Drupal 6 UI was not really all that difficult to understaqnd and navigate.

There was one change I thought was really not needed:

• Using “People” as the label on the tab that opens the configuration panel that manages “Users.” 

One rationale I’ve heard for this is that it is done to make a distinction between administrators and other users (anonymous, registered, etc.). To me this is going a bit too far as the IT industry has historically used the term user to identify people who have access to a particular software application.  For example, one can characterize an administrator as nothing more than a “User with Benefits.”

Update Manager - Automated Installation

Drupal is finally on par with Joomla!, Wordpress and a number of other CMSs in this area.  I tested this feature by installing the Drupal 7 development version of the popular Views module via its download URL at Drupal.org.   No need to download it to my PC and then upload it to the server and do a tar to extract the files.  Better yet, for those who do not have shell access to their servers, no more downloading to their PC,  extracting the files locally, and then uploading the expanded files to the server.

Custom Fields

The Drupal core now supports the addition and management of custom fields.  Custom fields can be added to content types, along with other entities such as users and taxonomies.  This includes both text and image fields.

            

Image Handling

The Drupal core now supports native image handling including as cropping and scaling.

Under the Hood

There are also a number of “under the hood” updates and improvements.

Theme Development

There are a number of changes to the theming which I am still digesting.  Hopefully, this will be the  the subject of a blog entry here in the not too distant future.

Odds and Ends

One thing I noticed is that there is no longer a distinction between “Core – optional’”and “Core - required” modules.  The required modules (Block, Filter, Node, System, User)  are no longer shown on the Modules page.  I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader as to why this is a good thing!

Conclusions

Alpha1 is a much more polished release than the development snapshot I wrote about a few months back.  However, as with any Alpha 1 release, many rough edges still exist. 

Disclaimer

Any errors or inconsistencies in the above are no doubt due to oversights and/or technical ignorance on my part.  The authoritative source for information regarding Drupal 7 is Drupal.org.

On 15 September 2009, I downloaded and installed the Drupal 7.0, Unstable 9 development snapshot of the upcoming Drupal 7.x release.  I did two installs: one on my desktop and one on the Linux server used for testing here on my home network. 

The desktop runs Vista Ultimate 64-bit, SP1 and uses WampServer as its LAMP environment.  The configuration includes:

• Apache 2.2.11
• PHP 5.3 or PHP 5.2.8
• Mysql 5.1.30.

The server runs Ubuntu Linux 9.04.  The LAMP configuration includes:

• Apache 2.2.11
• PHP 5.2.6
• Mysql 5.0.75.

Installation

I did not notice much of a change between the Drupal 6 and Drupal 7 installation procedures.  One thing I did notice was the changes in the terminology to create a more user friendly experience. 

Other than the usual Linux file ownership and permission inconsistencies I encounter when installing applications on the Ubuntu Linux server, installation in both environments was uneventful.  PHP did run of of memory during the install on the server, but that was not really a Drupal 7 problem.  I upped the PHP memory allocation from the default 16M to 128M and that fixed the problem.  I need to check this later and determine what the real PHP memory requirement for a Drupal 7 install is.  I'm sure it's much less than 128M.

Administration

Drupal 7 introduces a number of changes in the administrative backend.  The most obvious change is that if you are logged in as the administrator, a menu appears at the top of each page that contains links to the various administrative functional areas. 

If you have ever inadvertently destroyed your public theme as I have, you really learn to appreciate Drupal's option of having a separate administrative theme.  Prior to Drupal 7, I typically used the Garland theme for administration.  I was happy to see that Drupal 7 includes a one-column, fluid width theme called Seven that is tailored for use with the administrative backend. 

 

One often heard criticism of Drupal is that its administrative backend navigation is less than straightforward and the terminology is too abstract and/or contains too much technical jargon. 

Drupal 7 has made a number of terminology changes and reallocation of functions to categories to make the administrative backend.  The changes are too numerous to delineate here, but comparing the new administrative backend view to that of Drupal 6 shown below, it's obvious that a lot of time and effort has been put in to make the Drupal 7 administration a bit more user friendly, more intuitive and easier to navigate.  To really appreciate all the changes, one must really install Drupal 7 and work their way through the administrative backend.  It is still far from perfect, but it is a big step forward. 

Core Modules

A list of the Drupal 7 optional core modules are shown on the right.  Modules that are new in Drupal 7 are outlined in green.  The Drupal 6 optional core modules are shown on the left.  Those which are not present in Drupal 7 are outlined in red.

What's New in Drupal 7 Core

I guess the biggest news for Drupal 7  is the incorporation of basic Content Construction Kit (CCK) functions in the core (Field, Field UI and File modules).

The Image module incorporates a more sophisticated image manipulation function than previous releases. 

The SimpleTest module provides a framework for unit and functional testing.

The Toolbar module provides the UI for the new top horizontal administration menu.

What's Gone in Drupal 7 Core

The BlogAPI module is gone.   I was initially a  bit disappointed to see it go as I use Windows Live Writer (WLW) quite a bit.  However, it will still be available as a  3rd-party module.

The same goes for the Ping module.  The growth of social networking has resulted in a number of 3rd-party modules that provide this capability plus more.

The Throttle module is also gone in Drupal 7. 

One other thing I noticed is that there is no longer a distinction between "Core - required" and "Core - Optional" modules.   In Drupal 6 and earlier, the Block, Filter, Node, System and User modules were classified as "Core-Required." 

Theme Development

I haven't quite digested all the changes in the theme system; however, at first glance there appears to be a number of  changes needed to upgrade a Drupal 6 theme to one that is compatible with Drupal 7.  You can read about the changes here. 

The goal of these changes is to make Drupal easier to theme.  I guess I'll find out about that soon enough.

Conclusions

From a user point of view, the big change is in the Administration UI, which is a good thing.  I know there there are numerous changes under the hood that make Drupal 7 faster and more reliable than its predecessors.  However, I feel that Drupal still has a bit more work to do in the UI and ease of use areas.  

Disclaimer

Any errors or inconsistencies in the above are no doubt due to oversights and/or technical ignorance on my part.  The authoritative source for information regarding Drupal 7 is Drupal.org.

Top ten reasons why Drupal and Joomla! suck:

1. They are way too easy to install and configure.
2. They are excellent at managing content.
3. One does not have to give anyone their credit card information to download them.
4. They have way too many 3rd party extensions, especially Joomla.
5. They have communities that are way too large and, on the whole, much too friendly and helpful.
6. They are easy to write templates/theme for (although some may give Joomla! the edge here).
7. They have forums where users can ask and answer questions.
8. They have semi-decent documentation
9. They have created a service industry around them, e.g., selling templates, themes and extensions, building web sites, providing ongoing operations and maintenance support, etc.
10. They have provided shining examples of the benefits of open source software development.

I found this today on the Joomla! Forum and thought it was worth passing on...

A comparison of the capabilities and features of the latest releases (as of September 2008) of Joomla 1.5, Drupal 6, and Wordpress 2 with respect to 1) functionality -- multi-user publishing, layout and design, search engine optimization (SEO), mobile device support, and internationalization/localization; 2) extensibility -- the general climate and quality of third-party extension development for each platform; 3) support; 4) specific kinds of websites -- media/publishing sites, community/social sites, eCommerce sites. This is a helpful breakdown when it comes to deciding which platform is the best fit for a specific purpose.

You can view or download a PDF version of the comparison at NewLocalMedia.org.