Archive for November, 2006

Drupal or Mambo?

Tuesday, November 21st, 2006

2 days ago, I call for a help from one of beloved friends while I’m working on Islam Message website to make it ready for production.

He is guru in designing websites, When he met me he suggested to go for Mambo as he knows it very well and he knows a good programmer to help us - for me I have no problem to program on drupal or mambo- and it’s a good idea to have more people who knows one CMS so we will avoid “Fire Fighters” (somebody knows everything and no body else knows).

It’s fine , and good. But wait a second, which is better , what is the right way ? most of arabic websites are using Mambo and Joomla. And introducing Drupal something like a challenge.

The large good websites most likely can or already being built using Drupal. Mambo has so many themes (which has nothing to effect on me since I have to build the own theme for the website)
Take a look at Spread FireFox it is built using Drupal.
This is one of the opinions  http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=21410

I’m a bit confused. So please post your comments.

Posted in Open | 1 Comment »

Drupal is a wonderful CMS, and good for Developers

Thursday, November 16th, 2006

I started using Drupal as PHP Content management System, to develop some website. And Day by day, I started to believe it’s wonderfull software for developers to build complicated software.

Here are some features that I like and is making the development on top of Drupal fast and nice:

  • Authentication is handled by Drupal , you don’t need to use any mechanism, it’s there you only need to see if global variable $user has uid or not.
  • Authorization is handled by Drupal, you define the authorization strings and check it anytime you want inside your code
    Ex: if ( user_access(’can delete the photo’)) delete_photo($photo_id);
  • In Drupal, if you are not a programmer , you will be lucky using Drupal. check this link . it contains the most important modules that can help you to build wonderful website.
  • In Drupal, if you are a programmer, and would like to develop you services. Module programming in Drupal is very easy and simple. check this tutorial in 10 minutes you will be a drupal module developer.
  • Templating in Drupal is just a php file to print the variables. but that helps you will reach to MVC model.
  • Drupal is simplifying the forms displays, and the validation is wonderful.

I’m working to develop a large website on top of drupal. and I will get back to you with more experience about Drupal.

Posted in Drupal, Tech | No Comments »