Over the course of 3 months, long-date PHP consultant and trainer Doug Vann met with Six Feet Up CTO and Python expert Calvin Hendryx-Parker to explore and compare their experiences working with the enterprise-grade content management systems Drupal 8 and Plone 5.
Doug and Calvin both have 10+ years of working experience in the area of content management development, and both have assisted large corporations, customize, deploy, maintain and support Drupal or Plone-powered websites and intranets.
Together, they reviewed and discussed how their CMS of choice fared in the following areas:
Installation and Deployment
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How long does it take to find and download a distribution?
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How easy is it to configure your computer to run the distribution?
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How simple is the installation/deployment process?
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Is there easy-to-find and easy-to-follow documentation to guide inexperienced users?
Out of the Box Experience
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Is the U.I. intuitive, how long to get used to it?
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What features come with the out-of-the-box distribution? what is badly missing?
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How "fast" does the site respond with no content?
Adding Products/Modules
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How long for non-technical people to be ready to enter content?
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How "fast" does the site respond with thousands, millions of items?
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Is it easy for an administrator to manage users, permissions, workflows, and notifications?
Adding/Editing Content
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Given a feature that requires an add-on, is the product easy to find?
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How long does it take to install a new add-on? How many new add-ons?
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If an add-on is out of date, what to do?
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Are the add-ons easy to use, documented, and tested?
Customizations
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What is the rate for 1h of development?
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How easy is it to find developers?
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What level of expertise does source customization require?
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Is there good and easy to find documentation about it?
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How does framework extension work?
Multisite Management
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How is it achieved?
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How easy is it to add a subsite?
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How are vanity URLs managed?
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How is content syndication working?
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What is the search story like?
Marketing Automation Tools
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Integration with social media
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Integration with 3rd party systems like Hubspot
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Tracking
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Lead generation
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Marketing Automation tools
Localization
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GUI localization
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Content localization
Theming
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How many pre-made themes can I download, and how easy are they to install?
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Is theme customization though the U.I. available and easy?
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How to build a theme from scratch?
Upgrades and Migrations
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How long does it take to migrate customized code vs. create it?
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How is data migrated?
Hosting
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What are the minimum hardware requirements for each CMS?
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How much does it typically cost per month per instance for professional on-site hosting
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How many companies have expertise and proficiency in hosting this CMS?
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What are my "cloud" options? How hard is it to deploy and how cheap does it get?
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What are the solution stack requirements? How is the documentation about it?
Performance
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What are my caching and proxy caching options?
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How much of it can be made through the U.I.?
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How easy is it to implement clusters for high-availability and load balancing?
Security
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What is the history in terms of security cracks and how critical were they?
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How much maintenance time has to be spent to keep the security up to date?
IP and Community
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Who owns the trademark?
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How many contributors out there? Who are the top ones?
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How long has the platform been around?
Summary
- Pros and cons of each system
- Plone 5 or Drupal 8: which to choose?
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