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1. Evaluation of Drupal

This is an evaluation of Drupal against GnomeWeb/CmsRequirements, at the test site http://gnomedotorg.ourproject.org/drupal/. Feedback is welcomed, especially from people with Drupal admin experience.

1.1. Test

Only testers going through the whole GnomeWeb/CmsRequirements/CmsTest can add their points. You can add your comments on the evaluations made.

Ranks: 0 Not supported - 1 Partially possible - 2 Possible but complex - 3 Possible and easy

Task

Greg

Jeff

Joachim

Quim

?

?

?

Comments

Publish static pages

2 - First attempt says 'Page not found'. 2nd attempt appears as news item on the front page.

Sayamindu: This has probably something to do with enabling the pathauto module and with the fact the mod_redirect is not enabled. The page is available at http://gnomedotorg.ourproject.org/drupal/index.php?q=node/5. This was fixed when I disabled pathauto and recreated the page. The appearance as news item can be disabled by unchecking Promoted to front page in the Publish Settings of the edit form. Joachim: Thanks. I figured out the 'promoted' thing but it's not very clear.

Publish news

3

Define friendly URL of a page, including subdirectories

0

Sayamindu: The setup at ourproject.org seems to have mod_redirect disabled, so I can't enable clean URLs atm

Publish images in a page

2

Sayamindu: The normal way to add an inline image is to click on the Add image button (graphical) just below the large text area where the actual content is put in. Attaching an image file is another possible process, but it won't suit our needs

Publish attached files in a page

Publish podcasts / screencasts

Sayamindu: two seperate modules have been enabled for this, video for screencasts (it can use Cortado if required) and audio (this thing uses a flash based player)

Integrate aggregated feeds in a page

Pre-publish a page making it available only to users with editing permissions

Customization of forms for different content types (i.e. case studies)

Set feeds for new content

Track and diff of all changes made

Sayamindu: The diff module has not been ported to 4.7x series of Drupal (if you want, I can try to port it)

Notify that a page has been updated

Revert changes

Display when a page was last updated

Create localizations in the GNOME supported languages

Get language settings from browser

Edit interface strings in all languages

Content as PO files or at least XML import/export

Set links between different versions of the same page

Control version system to detect outdated pages

Visualization of status of translations

Create and edit menus and submenus

Assign pages to menu entires

Stablish relations between pages

Create an automatic sitemap

Sayamindu: I have installed a google sitemap module for this

Assign keywords to pages

Customize homepage to make it look like the mockups

Sayamindu: Needs a new theme

Customize theme to make it look like the mockups

Set different templates for different sections

Search performance (probably to be tested in a big website)

Search results per type of content

Index content in the server not produced by the CMS

Sayamindu: Can http://drupal.org/project/nutch help??

Create new accounts and assign permissions

Set permissions policies

Set permissions at a page/section level

Check documentation for help

Activate caching system

Check statistics

Backup database

Sayamindu: mysqldump

Upgrade new version

Additional comments:

1.2. CMS Platform

1.3. Security

Drupal developers seem to take security seriously as the post at http://drupal.org/node/36526 indicates. There have been cases of break in-s at major Drupal powered websites (IIRC, SpreadFireFox was one of them). However, as far as my personal experience goes (there was a time when I was managing around 4/5 drupal powered sites simultaneously), I have not experienced any major security related issues. One just needs to subscribe to the drupal announcement list and upgrade whenever there is a security related release. My only major gripe is that they don't release any patch (in *.diff format, that is) - that would have made my life much easier.

Drupal has support for user authentication, and the ACL system works fine for most scenarios (You can different classes of users, who can have permissions over different aspects of the site). Details are athttp://drupal.org/handbook/modules/user

That's more of an apache related issue - right ??

Theres a module to define secured areas like administration. See http://drupal.org/node/65632 -- StefanAuditor

Releases are made regularly, and the response to vulnerabilities is pretty fast. The issue here is not really upstream, it is more the ability of GNOME sysadmins to quickly and promptly be able to apply these patches. The Drupal project has a security mailing list to help keep us informed as issues arise

1.4. URLs

Drupal can take advantage of Apache's mod_rewrite engine to have support for clean URLs. Example

A module to do this is also available http://drupal.org/project/pathauto. Thanks to Tom Chance for pointing it out.

1.5. I18N

Drupal is localisable - but I have no first hand experience - feel free to populate this section

There is a module for Internationalization. See http://drupal.org/project/i18n -- StefanAuditor

1.6. Authoring

There are multiple input filters and editors. See http://drupal.org/project/Modules/category/63 -- StefanAuditor

There is some kind of workflow integrated in core. Additionally you may define your own by using http://drupal.org/project/workflow -- StefanAuditor

See http://drupal.org/project/scheduler -- StefanAuditor

There are different possibilities to do that. See http://drupal.org/project/Modules/category/74 -- StefanAuditor

This is possible too. -- StefanAuditor

Some kind of revision-system is integrated, theres also a module to show diff http://drupal.org/project/diff -- StefanAuditor

See http://drupal.org/node/17497 -- StefanAuditor

1.7. Markup

This is more of a theme issue. See http://drupal.org/node/44661 for more on this.

Above two issues are probable addressed viaTaxonomy and the related modules. - Could also be done with the menu module, or ook pages -- RowanKerr

Have a look at http://drupal.org/project/site_map -- StefanAuditor

1.9. Feeds

Drupal generates feeds for almost all content it provides. There is module with a centralized view on all feeds http://drupal.org/project/syndication

Check http://drupal.org/handbook/modules/aggregator

1.10. Theming

Drupal is themable - and it supports a number of theme engines. We ported the Box Grey theme to look like the older version of www.gnu.org.in and it took us around one hour to do so.

Drupal offers several different theming engines (http://drupal.org/node/509).

PHPTemplate in particular is very powerful b/c it allows overloading. Each module defines overloadable functions by labeling the function with the "theme_" prefix. These "theme_" functions can be overloaded by defining an equivalent "phptemplate_" function which provides callbacks. Once you create a callback function (there are several defined by default), you can simply create a template file with the node/field/view prefix and PHPTemplate will use the newly created template to display the content.

1.11. Issues - Comments

Just thought I would share some of the issues and experiences I have had with drupal on FootNotes over the last few years. - LukeStroven

Session lifetime is easy adjustable via .htaccess or php.ini. See http://php.net/session for this. -- StefanAuditor

- There are solutions being discussed to improve caching performance in the next version of Drupal. Code freeze is in September. -- RowanKerr

There's a nice AntiSpam module, which work for every note-type and uses learning algorythms. See http://drupal.org/project/spam for this. -- StefanAuditor

- The administration area has been redesigned and will be more task-oriented and clearly organized in the next version. -- RowanKerr


2024-10-23 11:10