Hi Folks, I'm happy to chime in here as the token Drupal guy. We've certainly found that Drupal has been an effective solution for us over the past several years. We've been relatively successful in bending it and smooshing it up against lots of different kinds of backend systems for integration. We've also found it's templating and theming support to be very flexible and able to support whatever designs we might think of.
That being said, we do use WordPress as our preferred platform for our blog, and have found it to be an extremely effective tool for that purpose. I'll admit to not being as much of a WordPress expert as many others on this list likely are, and I suspect given enough time, we'd find an adequate number of folks who have had good experiences with both solutions. Truth is, they're both really great open-source platforms that will most likely support much of what you're looking for. It strikes me that your specific questions about traffic, customizations, security and upgrades in the big picture will be well supported by either platform... and both platforms will offer their own special set of challenges. Both platforms continue to have active developer communities, both have really useful sets of module and plugin support, both have a good set of companies that can support your museum should you find yourself needing significant help. Really good signs for a healthy product that will stand a good chance of success. If I can veer off into opinion a bit more, I would suggest that the locus of users for WordPress is probably centered more around a blog style site so its probably a safe bet that that community will support that aspect of tools better over the long run. I would also suggest that the locus of users for Drupal tends more towards sites that require integration with datasets, the support of functional requirements or web apps... in my opinion, it's probably a safe bet that the Drupal community will continue to support those areas well. I should also add that these are not the only two platforms that would perform well like this, but these are certainly two good choices and two that we've used specifically at the IMA. In my experience, both sites can be made easy to use, and both can be difficult depending on what your trying to accomplish. We've had success running Drupal sites with literally hundreds of non-technical authors using it daily never really noticing that they were authoring webpages in Drupal. Hope this helps you! Bottom line, I think you've narrowed the field down to two excellent choices. Rob On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 7:27 PM, Bruce Wyman <bwyman at denverartmuseum.org>wrote: > We've done a half-dozen smaller sites in wordpress and I've flirted > with the idea using wordpress for our primary site (www) but we've > never gotten to actual implementation. > > Gerald's observation in this thread is a good one -- drupal started > with the goal of being a comprehensive CMS and has worked it's way > down the food chain, wordpress the reverse. However, I think the > developer community around wordpress have decreased the pain point in > wp playing as a grownup substantially. > > We started using wp because the back-end is surprisingly friendly for > the average user. I always found an extra layer of abstraction in > drupal that made simple things not straightforward and I always found > my mental model expecting something slightly different than what > drupal delivered. Admittedly, that was usually because I was trying > to do something simple and dirty and drupal was the over-powered tool > for the simple task (oh, but what an awesome tool at the end of the > day). > > Drupal also generally struck me as something made by developers for > developers, wordpress seemed to err on the side of users & designers. > I know that the next major rev of Drupal will be going through a > major overhaul of the back-end, I'm looking forward to the > improvements. > > I think both systems have incredibly rich user communities > surrounding them and more often than not, we can find a plugin that's > close to some sort of functionality that we need / want and we can > modify from there. Even luckier, there's a rich developer community > for wordpress around Denver and we know the original developer (Matt) > so we have something of a fallback position if we got really serious > and got stuck along the way. > > I think drupal's being used for the larger sites that I know of (IMA > redesign, Balboa Park Collaborative, to name a few) and I think your > choice depends on familiarity, scope of project, and programming > skills. > > -bw. > -- > > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= > Bruce Wyman, Director of Technology > Denver Art Museum / 100 W 14th Ave. Pkwy, Denver, CO 80204 > office: 720.913.0159 / fax: 720.913.0002 > <bwyman at denverartmuseum.org> > _______________________________________________ > You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer > Network (http://www.mcn.edu) > > To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l at mcn.edu > > To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: > http://toronto.mediatrope.com/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l > > The MCN-L archives can be found at: > http://toronto.mediatrope.com/pipermail/mcn-l/ > > imamuseum.org made the following annotations > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > WINTER NIGHTS FILM | Safety Last! with One Week | Don?t miss this > once-a-year Toby event: 1920s silent film comedies set to a score by Carl > Davis, performed by the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra | FRI Feb 26 | > Purchase Tickets > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > > NOTICE: > > Tue Feb 23 2010 18:04:51 > > > > This email message is for the sole use of the intended > recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. 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