[videoblogging] Re: Joomla versus Zend PHP for Web 2.0 community
It can get quite confusing. Not exactly comparing like for like, although the end results may be the same. Joomla is an existing opensource content management system, with a wide variety of extensions, and the ability for developers to use it like a framework and add their own functionality where needed, or hack existing functionality. Jooma is written in php and so needs a webserver with php a db like mysql on it, which most hosting options provide. Zend offer a range of products which enhance php. These include stuff that goes on the server to make the php run faster, development environment for php developers to use when writing the code, and a framework that provides many building blocks to make php development easier quicker. Id need to know which zend bits are being recommended to you to comment further, and Ive never used that stuff myself. Ruby on Rails is a framework that is quite popular these days. Using it will reduce your hosting options because you need a webserver thats got the right stuff installed. Unlike the other options, it doesnt use php at all. Any of the above should be capable of being used to create the site you desire, It will affect exactly what server you get, how well the site will scale up if it becomes very busy, and which developers are available to work on the project for you. But if done right the end-user shouldnt notice any difference, the key really is picking the right developer. As for cost, that is also difficult to say, the devil is in the detail. If Joomla is chosen then it may be possible that existing modules do most of what you need, in which case someone skilled with Joomla could probably create the site in a day or so, then spend a bit longer tweaking things, and then messing with the theme/looks of the site. If your functionality is more unique an an extension needs to be written, or Joomla changed extensively in some other way, then time costs will rapidly increase. Whether the developer has to support maintain the site, and think about issues of scaleability and futureproofing, will also affect cost. Personally I use drupal which is a content management system like Joomla, again written in php, with various extensions and the ability to use it as a framework to build something far more customized. From what you've said so far, Id say no, dont pay $15k, get someone to spend a day or 2 trying to build a site to your requirements using standard jooma or drupal, and then see where it fails you. Until you know quite how much custom coding will be needed to make your site do what you want, its hard to say what its really worth. Because we might only be talking about a day's work, or could be months work if you want something really unusual or have complex ideas for site theme/looks etc. At the end of the day its easy to spend huge amounts of money and not really get what you want, or spend very little and be really impressed. Th choice of technologies may be secondary to finding the right people to do the job, and being able to explain the required features in detail. Using something like Drupal or Joomla will give you the advantage that if our developer vanishes in the future, someone else should be able to takeover, wheras if someones written the code from scratch or using a framework, it may be a lot harder for another developer to work ot how your system runs. But thats not necessarily true, depends how well the original developer used a framework, used best practice when coding, and documented their work. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Dee Copeland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: My partners and I new to video blogging. We're getting RFPs for a Web 2.0 community that will have a blog, member management, video linking from Bliptv or Youtube, and property listing uploads. The suggestions by various developers were to use one of the following for programming: 1. Ruby on Rails 2. Joomla 3. ZEND PHP I wanted to use Bluehost or Hostmonster, but they don't support ZEND (from what I can find). Can you all help me clarify which to use? I'm pretty savvy on some of this stuff, but not really on the development end. I was leaning towards ROR because it's highly recommended by people in my tech community. I was also wondering if $15k is a lot to pay for someone developing on these platforms. --- DeeinAustin Http://www.TexasRealtyBlog.com
[videoblogging] Re: Joomla versus Zend PHP for Web 2.0 community
--- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Steve Watkins [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It can get quite confusing. Not exactly comparing like for like, although the end results may be the same. I think Steve has given an excellent response to the question. I am not a programmer or developer and came at this as a documentary film maker who needed something a bit more flexible than blogging software. I chose Joomla. If you want to see how I integrated the text and video, you can visit http://hestakaup.com. You can do a lot in Joomla without writing code and it is very easy to maintain. I run it on Dreamhost. Best, Stan Hirson http://hestakaup.com
Re: [videoblogging] Re: Joomla versus Zend PHP for Web 2.0 community
I'll be a contrarian here. We are developers and depending on what requirements you have, $15K is not at all expensive. A person may be able to set up a site in a day or two, but that is on the base code and server config. Are you also requiring custom design? That adds a few grand easily. And then customizing the design to the CMS? Another day or two is reasonable as these CMS you mentioned are not that easy to personalize outside of the built-in functions. Are you going to need training and support? Then add more time to develop a user manual. Most clients we work with would not be able to go to a message board for a CMS and get their questions answered. Hoe many user groups aka permission groups will be required? Each person can only belong to one group and it takes some serious planning sometimes to map that How much consultation will be required to develop your specifications? There are literally hundreds of options and questions that arise in development where the client gets to choose between A and B. Or wants C, when it doesn't exist until the developer writes some new code. This could easily be several days of time, involving a project manager and a programmer plus the people on the client side - who will require time to make their decisions, once armed with information. How much security do you need? Joomla in particular is known as being very hackable and if your users/content are important, then this is a CMS that will need expert installation and monitoring. If it is your own site, and you are the only ones who will be in there for the most part, then the requirements are simpler. But when developing a commercial site for multiple users, you have many more considerations and you want a professional on your side IMO. If you have the luxury of time, you could try to do a test install and see what limitations you run into it. But you run the risk of having to throw all that work away if you quickly run into limitations. Better we think to find a developer who can tell you what the best CMS will be after spending some consult time with you to determine your must have and want to have requirements. I hope you find this helpful, and congrats to you for doing your research. That makes you several steps ahead of the typical client! Aloha, Rox On 5/21/07, Stan Hirson, Sarah Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Steve Watkins [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It can get quite confusing. Not exactly comparing like for like, although the end results may be the same. I think Steve has given an excellent response to the question. I am not a programmer or developer and came at this as a documentary film maker who needed something a bit more flexible than blogging software. I chose Joomla. If you want to see how I integrated the text and video, you can visit http://hestakaup.com. You can do a lot in Joomla without writing code and it is very easy to maintain. I run it on Dreamhost. Best, Stan Hirson http://hestakaup.com -- Roxanne Darling o ke kai means of the sea in hawaiian 808-384-5554 http://www.twitter.com/roxannedarling http://www.beachwalks.tv http://www.barefeetshop.com http://www.barefeetstudios.com
[videoblogging] Re: Joomla versus Zend PHP for Web 2.0 community
Sounds good to me. So much comes down to the experience level of the person who wants the site, from their technical skills to how far theyve got a detailed concrete spec of what they need. Im not much good with money, but I guess the issue of exactly how much something should cost is not just about the work involved, but the perceived value of whats delivered, any sort of standard industry rates (eg programmers cost $xxx per day), and what the customer can afford or expects to pay. Being in real estate I imagine Dee will have come across similar issues in that field. Different developers will price things differently but I imagine some may base it on who the customer is, theres probably a perception that theres loads of money in real estate, wheras some charity of personal thing could potentially be done for love time rather than oodles of cash. Then there is the old sayings about beware of stuff that seems to cheap. Develoeprs who are just starting, or just want to do little work and throw together something thats mostly a site like they've made 100 times before, could offer you a great price but the support may not me there. There are surely no shortage of customers who have had a bad time with developers inn the past, either through spiralling costs timescales or poor results, and there are also many frustrated developers who have been driven wild by the customer changing mind on the spec etc, or fallen out of love with the framework, language or opensource project that they base their work on. Personally Id suggest, if you have more money than time or techie abilities, I would continue your research for a bit longer, and then ideally find a developer who has made sites with extremely similar functionality in the past. If you can look in their portfolio and find a site that is close to what you want in key ways, and has ideally been running for quite a while, with a similar number of users to what you envisage for your site, you are onto a winner. A certain amount of extra cost is worth it if it provides reasonable assurance that they can deliver the results you want. Also if they've already done a site with the same functionality, you will be armed with knowledge that prevents them charging you too much for custom code that they've actually already done for another client. And yeah, certainly from the liited details on spec you gave, the graphics design theming cost could be a considerable chunk of the total, as most of the functionality you mention already exists, there isnt too much wheel reinventing to be done. Oh yeah and you likely wont get any once answer to questions about which system is better. It will depend on the develop as most usually specialise in one or 2 systems, languages etc, have chosen those for their own good reasons, and are likely to argue that the alternatives are inferior. So long as they dont make your site out of something really obscure that few other developers use, and their timescales costs are right for you, thats probably the most you can ensure, or risk getting dragged into eternal techie argumnts about my drupal being bigger than your joomla, ruby on rails blowing goats, or php being inferior. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Roxanne Darling [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'll be a contrarian here. We are developers and depending on what requirements you have, $15K is not at all expensive. A person may be able to set up a site in a day or two, but that is on the base code and server config. Are you also requiring custom design? That adds a few grand easily. And then customizing the design to the CMS? Another day or two is reasonable as these CMS you mentioned are not that easy to personalize outside of the built-in functions. Are you going to need training and support? Then add more time to develop a user manual. Most clients we work with would not be able to go to a message board for a CMS and get their questions answered. Hoe many user groups aka permission groups will be required? Each person can only belong to one group and it takes some serious planning sometimes to map that How much consultation will be required to develop your specifications? There are literally hundreds of options and questions that arise in development where the client gets to choose between A and B. Or wants C, when it doesn't exist until the developer writes some new code. This could easily be several days of time, involving a project manager and a programmer plus the people on the client side - who will require time to make their decisions, once armed with information. How much security do you need? Joomla in particular is known as being very hackable and if your users/content are important, then this is a CMS that will need expert installation and monitoring. If it is your own site, and you are the only ones who will be in there for the most part, then the requirements are simpler. But when developing a commercial
Re: [videoblogging] Re: Joomla versus Zend PHP for Web 2.0 community
I've used Joomla, and from the point of view of a relative novice, Joomla was a breeze to setup. I installed the bridge and created an SMF forum that sat quite nicely in the middle of the Joomla setup. The contacts were all in the same database so there was no need to have people sign up for the Joomla site and the forum, it was very easily integrated. The Community Builder add-in was a boon as well, as many people are developing (free and cheap) for this module. It is hackable, as I was hacked on Joomla and they got into all my sites through this hole (they were on the same server). However, once hacked I hired a Joomla security expert and for $50 solved this issue. It took him about 5 minutes to fix it, and if you are more adept than I, you can even find the answer on the forums. I think he had to create a file and place it on the server and turn editing off on a few files. Was not a big deal at all. Drupal would be another I'd suggest. Wish I knew more about the other two platforms you mentioned. I mean, I know Ruby is hot and people seem to adore it, but it's WAY over my head so I'll stay mum on it. Good luck! Robyn Tippins MyBlogLog.com | Sleepyblogger.com | Gamingandtech.com On 5/21/07, Steve Watkins [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Sounds good to me. So much comes down to the experience level of the person who wants the site, from their technical skills to how far theyve got a detailed concrete spec of what they need. Im not much good with money, but I guess the issue of exactly how much something should cost is not just about the work involved, but the perceived value of whats delivered, any sort of standard industry rates (eg programmers cost $xxx per day), and what the customer can afford or expects to pay. Being in real estate I imagine Dee will have come across similar issues in that field. Different developers will price things differently but I imagine some may base it on who the customer is, theres probably a perception that theres loads of money in real estate, wheras some charity of personal thing could potentially be done for love time rather than oodles of cash. Then there is the old sayings about beware of stuff that seems to cheap. Develoeprs who are just starting, or just want to do little work and throw together something thats mostly a site like they've made 100 times before, could offer you a great price but the support may not me there. There are surely no shortage of customers who have had a bad time with developers inn the past, either through spiralling costs timescales or poor results, and there are also many frustrated developers who have been driven wild by the customer changing mind on the spec etc, or fallen out of love with the framework, language or opensource project that they base their work on. Personally Id suggest, if you have more money than time or techie abilities, I would continue your research for a bit longer, and then ideally find a developer who has made sites with extremely similar functionality in the past. If you can look in their portfolio and find a site that is close to what you want in key ways, and has ideally been running for quite a while, with a similar number of users to what you envisage for your site, you are onto a winner. A certain amount of extra cost is worth it if it provides reasonable assurance that they can deliver the results you want. Also if they've already done a site with the same functionality, you will be armed with knowledge that prevents them charging you too much for custom code that they've actually already done for another client. And yeah, certainly from the liited details on spec you gave, the graphics design theming cost could be a considerable chunk of the total, as most of the functionality you mention already exists, there isnt too much wheel reinventing to be done. Oh yeah and you likely wont get any once answer to questions about which system is better. It will depend on the develop as most usually specialise in one or 2 systems, languages etc, have chosen those for their own good reasons, and are likely to argue that the alternatives are inferior. So long as they dont make your site out of something really obscure that few other developers use, and their timescales costs are right for you, thats probably the most you can ensure, or risk getting dragged into eternal techie argumnts about my drupal being bigger than your joomla, ruby on rails blowing goats, or php being inferior. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com videoblogging%40yahoogroups.com, Roxanne Darling [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'll be a contrarian here. We are developers and depending on what requirements you have, $15K is not at all expensive. A person may be able to set up a site in a day or two, but that is on the base code and server config. Are you also requiring custom design? That adds a few grand easily. And then customizing the design to the
[videoblogging] Re: Joomla versus Zend PHP for Web 2.0 community
around the 21/5/07 Stan Hirson, Sarah Jones mentioned about [videoblogging] Re: Joomla versus Zend PHP for Web 2.0 comm that: I am not a programmer or developer and came at this as a documentary film maker who needed something a bit more flexible than blogging software. I chose Joomla. If you want to see how I integrated the text and video, you can visit http://hestakaup.com.http://hestakaup.com. You can do a lot in Joomla without writing code and it is very easy to maintain. I run it on Dreamhost. I run some stuff on joomla, and work with others in some stuff on drupal. I prefer drupal only because it is fully open source. Joomla is open source but most of the modules (that Ive found anyway) cost $ and I don't have a budget. On the other hand I found joomla easier to get to a workable point, I never quite understood the drupal content model (stories, nodes etc) but that was from being in a hurry and not just spending a few hours going through it properly. I have found a lot of people with drupal skills, less with joomla, and most with joomla are making money while the drupal people I have worked with are all building social software sites for university backed research projects. Oh, and in my brief experience there seem to be many many more modules/plugins for drupal than joomla, drupal seems to have a much more active user/developer community. -- cheers Adrian Miles this email is bloggable [ ] ask first [ ] private [x] vogmae.net.au
[videoblogging] Re: Joomla versus Zend PHP for Web 2.0 community
Theres tons of Joomla modules, many free ones, but certainly there are quite a lot of commercial ones out there too, especially media handling ones. Same with templates, there are way more Joomla templates out there than Drupal ones. So there may be more Joomla developers out there than Drupal ones, and maybe there are more commercial plugins because the market is perceived as much larger. Its also possible that commercial drupal options are more often custom solutions written for a single client, and are not then sold to the masses for $ like people are doing with some Joomla modules. I know some drupal modules are 'sponsored' by companies and then released back opensource to the community, which is good. The most annoying thing about the commercial Joomla modules is I couldnt find an easy way to filter them out of joomla.orgs list of addons, so many times Ive found an interesting-looking module that then turns out to have a license I dont love, but never mind. The nature of the modules available on Joomla and Drupal can sometimes differ in other ways. There are more Joomla modules for bridging to other existing apps, which is very good for people who want to glue together disparate web apps into one site. Drupal has a more puritan approach, with many of its modules focusing on providing more basic building blocks that people will use to make a functional site. Both approaches have their strengths and weaknesses, can often find much more choice of modules for mashing up Joomla with other web apps, sites, and services, at the expense of a clean elegant design, things can get messy behind the scenes. Whereas with drupal, things are setup to ensure that modules are more likely to work with eachother, eg by modules using the node system to store content, rather than using a totally seperate set of database tables or just being a basic bridge to a totally program, with just user tables shared. Both approaches will work really well for various different sorts of sites, I settled on Drupal as my preference because I assumed the possile messes created by using loads of different Joomla modules together, could eventually lead me into a nightmare dead-end, despite probably offering the ability to build interesting functionality more quickly than with drupal. All of these opensurce CMS systems, and indeed programming frameworks that arent a full CMS out of the box, worry me slightly in terms of scaleability and inefficient use of server resources, compared to totally custom code written from scratch and so (hopefully) optimised for the specific site in question. But unless you are likely to have insane amounts of users from day one, they are usually more than suffient for early versions of the site, and if things are a raving sucess you can always throw money at beefy servers and getting the site remade. Security is a mixed bag. On the one hand with a framework or CMS you've got other people to worry about finding fixing security flaws , all you have to do is keep the system up to date, and not make changes that break security. On the other hand, you lose 'security through obscurity'. The more popular Joomla or Drupal or whatever are, the more of a target they become. Most attacks are random, scripts searching for commonly exploitable versions of things running on servers. phpbb would be an example of opensource software thats free and has a very large user base, and so has been targeted a lot in the past, often made easy if people dont update to the latest version. I havent followed whether exploits in drupal or joomla have also been exploited so ruthlessly at times, if I had to guess Id say Joomla may be more of a target. See although Joomla and Drupal offer similar things in many ways, there is a definite difference in sorts of sites using them, and some of this is down to history. Some of Joomla's roots are more with what was sometimes called 'portal software', older popular systems of the time suck as phpnuke, postnuke and others. These were often addons/partnered with messageboard/forum software, and the pre-web 2.0 era of content management. Times have changed quite a bit but its still possible to see these origins are responsible for a lot of the differences betweek joomla and drupal, though Im not sure it actually matters or is useful to know this stuff, even though it loops back round and helps explain why there are a lot more themes available for Joomla than Drupal. I would guess for example that a lot more adolescents have installed Joomla than Drupal, and that gaming clans looking to knock up a quick community for their mates would have been more likely to use something like Joomla than drupal in the past, although these days they may use services someone else provides and not need their own site. Theres a rather nice Drupal book out. http://www.drupalbook.com/ Its called Pro Drupal Development, and a bulk of the contents is only needed if you want to touch drupal code, write modules etc. But
Re: [videoblogging] Re: Joomla versus Zend PHP for Web 2.0 community
I am running a couple of joomla sites: http://k9disc.com http://pawsitivevybe.com I've also administrated Drupal. I find Drupal to require more coding and programming skills, a better understanding of workflow and such, but I think that it is probably easier to administrate if you have the super geek skill set. On the other hand, Joomla is more user friendly to get set up and running, but you wind up with problems in getting exactly what you need done, done. I guess I am just repeating what Steve said here, really. The templates I am running on my sites are from Template Plazza ( http://templateplazza.com ), a template club that cost $30 for 6 months of access. I happen to like the look of them quite a bit, and made the decision to join the club on that alone. I also think that there are quite a few more usable modules out there for Joomla than Drupal, but I guess I could be wrong about that. I'll continue to paraphrase Steve where he mentions that the costs of development for Drupal seem to be in one off implementations (custom work) which cost serious dough, where as joomla seems to be a bit smaller scale on the costs, but nevertheless nickel and dime you. I have $30 invested in my 2 sites, and a whole bunch of time figuring out the ins and outs of the software. At this point in time, I can get a Joomla/SMF/Virtuemart (online store) site off the ground - if I have a decent internet connection - in just a few hours including basic content. It's quite simple. These 2 sites took 2 weeks to get running smoothly - creating images, writing stories, troubleshooting, and uploading content. This would have been about 3 days, I would guess, if I didn't have to wait 30 seconds for each page to load. Cheers, Ron Watson On the Web: http://pawsitivevybe.com http://k9disc.com http://k9disc.blip.tv On May 21, 2007, at 8:45 PM, Steve Watkins wrote: Theres tons of Joomla modules, many free ones, but certainly there are quite a lot of commercial ones out there too, especially media handling ones. Same with templates, there are way more Joomla templates out there than Drupal ones. So there may be more Joomla developers out there than Drupal ones, and maybe there are more commercial plugins because the market is perceived as much larger. Its also possible that commercial drupal options are more often custom solutions written for a single client, and are not then sold to the masses for $ like people are doing with some Joomla modules. I know some drupal modules are 'sponsored' by companies and then released back opensource to the community, which is good. The most annoying thing about the commercial Joomla modules is I couldnt find an easy way to filter them out of joomla.orgs list of addons, so many times Ive found an interesting-looking module that then turns out to have a license I dont love, but never mind. The nature of the modules available on Joomla and Drupal can sometimes differ in other ways. There are more Joomla modules for bridging to other existing apps, which is very good for people who want to glue together disparate web apps into one site. Drupal has a more puritan approach, with many of its modules focusing on providing more basic building blocks that people will use to make a functional site. Both approaches have their strengths and weaknesses, can often find much more choice of modules for mashing up Joomla with other web apps, sites, and services, at the expense of a clean elegant design, things can get messy behind the scenes. Whereas with drupal, things are setup to ensure that modules are more likely to work with eachother, eg by modules using the node system to store content, rather than using a totally seperate set of database tables or just being a basic bridge to a totally program, with just user tables shared. Both approaches will work really well for various different sorts of sites, I settled on Drupal as my preference because I assumed the possile messes created by using loads of different Joomla modules together, could eventually lead me into a nightmare dead-end, despite probably offering the ability to build interesting functionality more quickly than with drupal. All of these opensurce CMS systems, and indeed programming frameworks that arent a full CMS out of the box, worry me slightly in terms of scaleability and inefficient use of server resources, compared to totally custom code written from scratch and so (hopefully) optimised for the specific site in question. But unless you are likely to have insane amounts of users from day one, they are usually more than suffient for early versions of the site, and if things are a raving sucess you can always throw money at beefy servers and getting the site remade. Security is a mixed bag. On the one hand with a framework or CMS you've got other people to worry about finding fixing security flaws , all you have to do is keep the system up to
[videoblogging] Re: Joomla versus Zend PHP for Web 2.0 community
Ron, I'm digging your sites. I think Joomla is very cool and I hadn't really checked it out. It's way to go for a personal web 2.0 project that I had in mind. I agree with the community here that PHP or Ruby is the way to go for our commercial project. We plan on having hundreds or thousands of members and will sell the site if it becomes profitable. The surprise is that our Ruby bids are $40-90k (yikes!) compared to $15k for PHP. Those companies had extra fees and were assiging project managers. One even had an Engagement Manager that was paid $10k per month. Hmm. The poster who suggested that we focus on the developer and not necessarily the programming language is right. We may go with PHP bid because the developers seem to be skilled and on top of it. - DeeinAustin --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Ron Watson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am running a couple of joomla sites: http://k9disc.com http://pawsitivevybe.com I've also administrated Drupal. I find Drupal to require more coding and programming skills, a better understanding of workflow and such, but I think that it is probably easier to administrate if you have the super geek skill set. On the other hand, Joomla is more user friendly to get set up and running, but you wind up with problems in getting exactly what you need done, done. I guess I am just repeating what Steve said here, really. The templates I am running on my sites are from Template Plazza ( http://templateplazza.com ), a template club that cost $30 for 6 months of access. I happen to like the look of them quite a bit, and made the decision to join the club on that alone. I also think that there are quite a few more usable modules out there for Joomla than Drupal, but I guess I could be wrong about that. I'll continue to paraphrase Steve where he mentions that the costs of development for Drupal seem to be in one off implementations (custom work) which cost serious dough, where as joomla seems to be a bit smaller scale on the costs, but nevertheless nickel and dime you. I have $30 invested in my 2 sites, and a whole bunch of time figuring out the ins and outs of the software. At this point in time, I can get a Joomla/SMF/Virtuemart (online store) site off the ground - if I have a decent internet connection - in just a few hours including basic content. It's quite simple. These 2 sites took 2 weeks to get running smoothly - creating images, writing stories, troubleshooting, and uploading content. This would have been about 3 days, I would guess, if I didn't have to wait 30 seconds for each page to load. Cheers, Ron Watson On the Web: http://pawsitivevybe.com http://k9disc.com http://k9disc.blip.tv On May 21, 2007, at 8:45 PM, Steve Watkins wrote: Theres tons of Joomla modules, many free ones, but certainly there are quite a lot of commercial ones out there too, especially media handling ones. Same with templates, there are way more Joomla templates out there than Drupal ones. So there may be more Joomla developers out there than Drupal ones, and maybe there are more commercial plugins because the market is perceived as much larger. Its also possible that commercial drupal options are more often custom solutions written for a single client, and are not then sold to the masses for $ like people are doing with some Joomla modules. I know some drupal modules are 'sponsored' by companies and then released back opensource to the community, which is good. The most annoying thing about the commercial Joomla modules is I couldnt find an easy way to filter them out of joomla.orgs list of addons, so many times Ive found an interesting-looking module that then turns out to have a license I dont love, but never mind. The nature of the modules available on Joomla and Drupal can sometimes differ in other ways. There are more Joomla modules for bridging to other existing apps, which is very good for people who want to glue together disparate web apps into one site. Drupal has a more puritan approach, with many of its modules focusing on providing more basic building blocks that people will use to make a functional site. Both approaches have their strengths and weaknesses, can often find much more choice of modules for mashing up Joomla with other web apps, sites, and services, at the expense of a clean elegant design, things can get messy behind the scenes. Whereas with drupal, things are setup to ensure that modules are more likely to work with eachother, eg by modules using the node system to store content, rather than using a totally seperate set of database tables or just being a basic bridge to a totally program, with just user tables shared. Both approaches will work really well for various different sorts of sites, I settled on Drupal as my preference because I assumed the possile messes created by using
Re: [videoblogging] Re: Joomla versus Zend PHP for Web 2.0 community
You guys are doing a great job of making my points for me! :-) 1) The very fact that you can research all of this and get it going means you are a techie; client here is not. 2) I'd prefer it if you had certain key phrases in bold, like: I have $30 invested in my 2 sites, and a whole bunch of time figuring out the ins and outs of the software.*** What is your time worth to work for someone else who wants a commercial application? As a client, how many corners does it take to have a developer who only wants the job done so s/he can leave you? 3) No one has mentioned Expression Expression, which we think is the ideal software for a multi-user, RSS-based, CMS - based on high levels of security, ease of customization (for a developer, not a client), extensive integration with its many modules (including a wiki and a forum), a very active support and extensions forum, and so many more features. The software costs a few hundred bucks, and that's a definite hurdle for many do-it-yourselfers. But if you are building a commercial application to make the client a lot of money, $200 is utterly insignificant however the security, stability, and scalability of the platform is not. http://www.expressionengine.com/ 4) Templates are nice unless the client wants to change the colors, or column widths, or any other little details. This seemingly simple task can be a real challenge, depending how well the template's CSS is written and documented. It can take considerable time customizing these things, while EE allows you to write your own CSS to get exactly what you want. Lean, mean, flexible code! 5) A lot of this boils down to a distinction between a personal web site built by a tech-savvy person and a commercial web-based application for a third party. Those are two different development and pricing structures IMO. Back to working on a proposal here myself... Aloha, Rox P.S. Dee: please let us know if you found this discussion helpful. On 5/21/07, Ron Watson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am running a couple of joomla sites: http://k9disc.com http://pawsitivevybe.com I've also administrated Drupal. I find Drupal to require more coding and programming skills, a better understanding of workflow and such, but I think that it is probably easier to administrate if you have the super geek skill set. On the other hand, Joomla is more user friendly to get set up and running, but you wind up with problems in getting exactly what you need done, done. I guess I am just repeating what Steve said here, really. The templates I am running on my sites are from Template Plazza ( http://templateplazza.com ), a template club that cost $30 for 6 months of access. I happen to like the look of them quite a bit, and made the decision to join the club on that alone. I also think that there are quite a few more usable modules out there for Joomla than Drupal, but I guess I could be wrong about that. I'll continue to paraphrase Steve where he mentions that the costs of development for Drupal seem to be in one off implementations (custom work) which cost serious dough, where as joomla seems to be a bit smaller scale on the costs, but nevertheless nickel and dime you. I have $30 invested in my 2 sites, and a whole bunch of time figuring out the ins and outs of the software. At this point in time, I can get a Joomla/SMF/Virtuemart (online store) site off the ground - if I have a decent internet connection - in just a few hours including basic content. It's quite simple. These 2 sites took 2 weeks to get running smoothly - creating images, writing stories, troubleshooting, and uploading content. This would have been about 3 days, I would guess, if I didn't have to wait 30 seconds for each page to load. Cheers, Ron Watson On the Web: http://pawsitivevybe.com http://k9disc.com http://k9disc.blip.tv On May 21, 2007, at 8:45 PM, Steve Watkins wrote: Theres tons of Joomla modules, many free ones, but certainly there are quite a lot of commercial ones out there too, especially media handling ones. Same with templates, there are way more Joomla templates out there than Drupal ones. So there may be more Joomla developers out there than Drupal ones, and maybe there are more commercial plugins because the market is perceived as much larger. Its also possible that commercial drupal options are more often custom solutions written for a single client, and are not then sold to the masses for $ like people are doing with some Joomla modules. I know some drupal modules are 'sponsored' by companies and then released back opensource to the community, which is good. The most annoying thing about the commercial Joomla modules is I couldnt find an easy way to filter them out of joomla.orgs list of addons, so many times Ive found an interesting-looking module that then turns out to have a license I dont love, but
Re: [videoblogging] Re: Joomla versus Zend PHP for Web 2.0 community
2) I'd prefer it if you had certain key phrases in bold, like: I have $30 invested in my 2 sites, and a whole bunch of time figuring out the ins and outs of the software.*** What is your time worth to work for someone else who wants a commercial application? As a client, how many corners does it take to have a developer who only wants the job done so s/he can leave you? The time involved was to set up and configure the site. I had to learn how to set up an apache emulator (xampp) then I learned a bit about MySQL. Then I had to learn a whole bunch of stuff about the administrator interface and workflow. It was pretty brutal. My buddy, Gary Isse, from http://garyisse.com was thinking about it, but he decided it was easier for him to hand code another version than it was to move to joomla. I understand his argument, for sure, but could not make that decision myself. I could teach someone to administer Joomla in a few hours. As far as techie goes, I fit, but consider myself an advanced user, really, and not a programmer, which is why I gravitated towards Joomla. It was quite easy for me to understand. Much less techie than Drupal, and the other CMSs that I looked into. I agree though... If you are doing anything substantial and have capital investment, skip Joomla. It's not worth the savings in dollars, and is probably not robust enough for an enterprise solution. I've heard great things about Plone though, and seen some nice implementations, but I do not have the technical skills to implement it. Good luck with the project. Cheers, Ron Watson On the Web: http://pawsitivevybe.com http://k9disc.com http://k9disc.blip.tv On May 21, 2007, at 10:44 PM, Roxanne Darling wrote: You guys are doing a great job of making my points for me! :-) 1) The very fact that you can research all of this and get it going means you are a techie; client here is not. 2) I'd prefer it if you had certain key phrases in bold, like: I have $30 invested in my 2 sites, and a whole bunch of time figuring out the ins and outs of the software.*** What is your time worth to work for someone else who wants a commercial application? As a client, how many corners does it take to have a developer who only wants the job done so s/he can leave you? 3) No one has mentioned Expression Expression, which we think is the ideal software for a multi-user, RSS-based, CMS - based on high levels of security, ease of customization (for a developer, not a client), extensive integration with its many modules (including a wiki and a forum), a very active support and extensions forum, and so many more features. The software costs a few hundred bucks, and that's a definite hurdle for many do-it-yourselfers. But if you are building a commercial application to make the client a lot of money, $200 is utterly insignificant however the security, stability, and scalability of the platform is not. http://www.expressionengine.com/ 4) Templates are nice unless the client wants to change the colors, or column widths, or any other little details. This seemingly simple task can be a real challenge, depending how well the template's CSS is written and documented. It can take considerable time customizing these things, while EE allows you to write your own CSS to get exactly what you want. Lean, mean, flexible code! 5) A lot of this boils down to a distinction between a personal web site built by a tech-savvy person and a commercial web-based application for a third party. Those are two different development and pricing structures IMO. Back to working on a proposal here myself... Aloha, Rox P.S. Dee: please let us know if you found this discussion helpful. On 5/21/07, Ron Watson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am running a couple of joomla sites: http://k9disc.com http://pawsitivevybe.com I've also administrated Drupal. I find Drupal to require more coding and programming skills, a better understanding of workflow and such, but I think that it is probably easier to administrate if you have the super geek skill set. On the other hand, Joomla is more user friendly to get set up and running, but you wind up with problems in getting exactly what you need done, done. I guess I am just repeating what Steve said here, really. The templates I am running on my sites are from Template Plazza ( http://templateplazza.com ), a template club that cost $30 for 6 months of access. I happen to like the look of them quite a bit, and made the decision to join the club on that alone. I also think that there are quite a few more usable modules out there for Joomla than Drupal, but I guess I could be wrong about that. I'll continue to paraphrase Steve where he mentions that the costs of development for Drupal seem to be in one off implementations (custom work) which cost serious dough, where as joomla seems to be a bit smaller
[videoblogging] Re: Joomla versus Zend PHP for Web 2.0 community
Im not sure the the overall advice here is that you should go for php or Ruby rather than a CMS. At the end of the day drupal and joomla are php, just that lots of people have already written most of what you need I php, rather than getting someone to write a php site from scratch. I dont know what to make of the large difference in price between ruby and php developers. One of Ruby on Rails appeals is that it makes it easy to write clean stuff, and php is also well known as a language that is relatively easy to start messing with. So its not like Ruby is superior in ways that mean it should cost more to develop with than php does. The differences in price may reflect other differences with the approach and profesionalism of the developers, or raise questions about excessive profiteering, or reflect underestimation of task size by cheaper offers, or may reflect wider trends I dont know about ith developer costs, dont tell me that hype about Ruby has translated into inflated developer costs, ugh if thats true Because at the end of the day its what the developer of choice does with these systems, and what you ask for, that will affect the user experience, far more than whether its Ruby or php. At the end of the day these are the server technologies, the user is still getting html javasript css etc in their browser to create the site. RoR came along at the same time as some web 2 and ajax stuff and so showcases some nice elements of this stuff, but the same can be achieved in many other langauges and frameworks. Ive no idea what these choices mean to eventual site resell value. Potential purchasers may be more confortable if the site is based on existing CMS, rather than a unique system made by developers they may have no access to. Where will the value in your site come from? The actual community domain name may be more important than the infrastructure. The basic ideas and the building blocks to make them happen, are relatively easy to imitate these days. So Id also recommend that you dont spend too much money without having more certainly for assuming you'll get large numbers of users - thousands of peoples dreams have been wrecked by this miscalculation. Meanwhile the lucky ones, whether by design or chance, end up with problems at the other end of the scale, failure of the site to scale up to massive demand. Chance would be a fine thing, I fully expect the 3 drupal sites Im working on to be underwhelmed by the lack of the ever-elusive 'contributing members' who are needed to make such sites tick. Certainly I gain more faith that my Drupal Joomla scaleability worries are silly, from the ever increasing list of large sometimes corporate sites that are built using Drupal or Joomla. I think I was just reading that Ozzy.com is drupal powered. Aha yes, here we are: http://realneo.us/Drupal-sites-doing-heavy-lifting Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Dee Copeland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ron, I'm digging your sites. I think Joomla is very cool and I hadn't really checked it out. It's way to go for a personal web 2.0 project that I had in mind. I agree with the community here that PHP or Ruby is the way to go for our commercial project. We plan on having hundreds or thousands of members and will sell the site if it becomes profitable. The surprise is that our Ruby bids are $40-90k (yikes!) compared to $15k for PHP. Those companies had extra fees and were assiging project managers. One even had an Engagement Manager that was paid $10k per month. Hmm. The poster who suggested that we focus on the developer and not necessarily the programming language is right. We may go with PHP bid because the developers seem to be skilled and on top of it. - DeeinAustin --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Ron Watson k9disc@ wrote: I am running a couple of joomla sites: http://k9disc.com http://pawsitivevybe.com I've also administrated Drupal. I find Drupal to require more coding and programming skills, a better understanding of workflow and such, but I think that it is probably easier to administrate if you have the super geek skill set. On the other hand, Joomla is more user friendly to get set up and running, but you wind up with problems in getting exactly what you need done, done. I guess I am just repeating what Steve said here, really. The templates I am running on my sites are from Template Plazza ( http://templateplazza.com ), a template club that cost $30 for 6 months of access. I happen to like the look of them quite a bit, and made the decision to join the club on that alone. I also think that there are quite a few more usable modules out there for Joomla than Drupal, but I guess I could be wrong about that. I'll continue to paraphrase Steve where he mentions that the costs of development for Drupal seem to be in one off implementations (custom work) which cost serious
Re: [videoblogging] Re: Joomla versus Zend PHP for Web 2.0 community
Joomla and Drupal are CMSes, written in PHP. You may want to read up on Drupal having teething troubles with MySQL and the way their tables are structured, considering huge changes to the system, hitting a wall in the process. Joomla is no better. It's a great system to play around with, but it's painful to see their 'templates' looking just like each other. And none of these systems can really do a site that is based on static pages, which are a big boon on a heavy traffic website. Expressions Engine (old pMachine www.pmachine.com) is a very well structured software, but a pain in the butt to customize to a point where cruft-free URLs work and the system is intuitive. Yes they have forums and wiki integrated into the base code, but these wiki and forums are half-baked at best. (The best forum software bar none is PunBB -- www.punbb.com -- should you ever need one, not even SMF comes close). Ruby on Rails in a hot new technology that has gotten a good deal of media blather in the Web 2.0 age and is just about as hyped as the term itself. It structures your coding. Something you can easily accomplish with Java, PHP, Perl, or any other language. The bigger issue is performance. ROR is just not at the same level of performance that PHP can accomplish, especially with Zend or eAccelerator type caches installed (latter is free and easily installed). It is much easier to find developers for PHP, and probably cheaper. The biggest site I have run, with about 25,000 visitors every hour at its peak, was based on a Movable Type (www.movabletype.org) platform with RightFields plugin. MovableTYpe itself is CGI, which I was not crazy about, but we grew to a traffic stage where we couldn't live with dynamic pages (however well designed) and MT gave us an excellent mix of static and dynamic (it spews out regular HTML pages). My point: it is easy to get caught up in this selection of technology. From starting up several businesses, some with huge traffic, some not, here's my simple advice: LAPP makes a good chocie (Linux, Apache, PostgreSQL, PHP) as it is very cheaply available, is proven to work for many hugely successful sites, and is easy to find developers/experts for. What you should instead focus on is to build a website/service that will attract people. If your traffic proves to be a burden for your infrastructure, trust me, it'll be a lovely problem to have :) Erick
