What are the advantages of using Drupal for a large scale website?
I want to understand the practical advantages of using the open source CMS, Drupal to build a large scale website (huge volumes of content). Please answer this question, if you have built similar websites with Drupal.
Answers (12)
ADMEC Institute -.
A School of Graphic-Web Design,Web Development,RIA,SEO,Flex,Animation,Visual Effects,AutoCAD,Revit,Video Editing
I don't have vast experience on drupal while I worked on joomla very well. I can say that drupal is getting better day by day as its inbuilt features n modules are being better.
You can surely start with drupal for this kind of requirement.
Thanks
Ravi Bhadauria
ADMEC Multimedia Institute
http://www.admecindia.co.in
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Robert N.
Information Technology & Business IT Services Consultant.
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Caveats: a] have not used Drupal in a while; b] this is slightly off-topic since it 'examines' motivations and project management issues.
Generalised answer #1: when looking at any project development which involves the creation and/or use of software there is a fairly broad rule which one should attempt to follow. Pick the software *after* one has done a full business case analysis *and* a full requirements specification: that way one can pick the tools and methods which best fit all of the requirements. Picking tools or methods before one has done such analysis and requirements almost always ends up with someone somewhere [during the implementation and deployment phase] trying to push a square peg into a round hole.
Generalised answer #2: Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress and many many other OSS and commercial tools *advertise* themselves as Content Management Systems when they are in fact nothing of the kind.
At best they are web publication and management systems. Unless and until one understands that rather important distinction one may well be picking such tools for the wrong reasons.
A true content management system is [or should be] an integral part of a business's internal knowledge management infrastructure - a system that integrates all digital content into a serious research and deployment suite, complete with structured and granular user access controls, indexing and search capabilities, and version controls with a complete audit trail that meets compliance requirements. Such systems will also deliver write once read-many times deployment requirements - including if necessary a "deploy to web" capability.
Drupal Joomla Wordpress etc can be very good at what they do; so long as one thoroughly understands what it is that they do actually do - which is not a full content management system.
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Drupal may be what you need for your specific situation, but my experience of very large content deployments is that before starting any large content deployment one also needs to have carried out some very detailed structural and metadata analysis of that content and developed effective ontologies and taxonomies for the content, otherwise one will constantly be attempting to "push" that content into the structures and organisational frameworks which are supported by whichever tool one has picked. Doing that is a very good way to limit damage or destroy usability for end users.
Which brings one to the final issue: one needs to have a very good analytical understanding of end user needs - and how to convert those needs into a workable user interface - an interface which adds to and improves the users' experience of the site. Failure to do that results in a very expensive project that does not deliver value for money - and may even lose money and do "public" damage.
Randy C.
(MA, MS); web architect & software engineer at Careytech Studios
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Below is a link to a video of a presentation on using open source CMS in government and sizable projects. The first speaker discusses the project that rebuilt the White House's website with Drupal, the second speaker focuses more about open source in general. The second half is the panel responding to related questions asked from the audience. The discussion is mostly along the lines of open source, and Drupal just happens to be the specific CMS used in the example. This is an 100 minute video, and I assume it addresses many of your questions.
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John K.
Entrepreneur, User Experience Expert, Designer, Social Media Addict and Creative Director at kohactive
Depends on the functional requirements of your project. If it's a content heavy website then I would look at WordPress. If you need more custom modules and functionality, perhaps Drupal or Joomla.
If you need more custom solutions and a scalable platform, I would recommend building a custom application in Rails, Python or Java/C#.
Roshan S.
Founder of 15+ Startups - Gloscon, Openkick, Reputa, Kosansh, Citiplots. Also a Technologist,Mentor, Investor & Speaker
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If you want to build lot more scalable and large website, use Ruby on Rails over Drupal.
Brijendra C.
Human Resources at Dodsal E & C Pte Ltd
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I have text on it
do email me
Pros for utilizing Drupal
-many modules currently available to customize your site
-many third party developers
-small learning curve
-minimal hardware requirements
Cons for utilizing Drupal
-prone to security breaches, constantly must update modules
-written in PHP
-mySQL
-does not scale well for very large heavy traffic sites
-performance
For very large high traffic sites where performance, security, robustness, and scalability are required; consider utilizing Plone CMS.
www.plone.org
This CMS supports clustering out of the box. It’s relatively easy for Users to create and update content. Cons are the steep learning curve for newbie developers and support staff. Installation is relatively simple. The difficulty is with custom Theming and applications.
Simple: You're starting with an existing background, instead of beginning from scratch. I like WordPress better, however. With either of these platforms you can create a custom designed website for half of the cost of what it would be without the CMS.
Betsy G.
PHP/Javascript Engineer
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You might want to compare Drupal with some of the other popular CMSs at The CMS Matrix.
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Wallace J.
Multimedia Producer, i3D Programmer, Acrobat 3D PDF, Android App, Virtual World & iTV Design, Kindle, Nook & Sony eBooks
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It's open source & free for commercial use. That's the main advantage of Drupal & Joomla
Well its easy UI and fast load time.
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Charlie B.
Popwerful website security scanning made EASY
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Drupal is a great system. I have used it myself to build business websites. Despite what some claim, it can scale incredibly well and has been run on sites with hundreds of thousands of visitors per month. My site built on Drupal is on a VPS and has handled more than 15k visits over a few hours on a single day, though that isn't my normal traffic
