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How to Survive Gentrification of the Drupal Community

darrenmothersele.com

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Re: How to Survive Gentrification of the Drupal Community

#2
I think conversely that Drupal 8 is the swan song. Too late to the party. Everyone who was really unhappy with the spaghetti bowl of code in prior drupal versions has already moved on. Those who have not, are not interested in rebuilding their sites on a new platform. They just want Drupal 6 to keep working.

Drupal 8 is not a gentrified neighborhood, it's more like the ghost cities in China: clean, modern, well-designed -- and empty.

Re: How to Survive Gentrification of the Drupal Community

#3
post #2

I think conversely that Drupal 8 is the swan song. Too late to the party. Everyone who was really unhappy with the spaghetti bowl of code in prior drupal versions has already moved on. Those who have not, are not interested in rebuilding their sites on a new platform. They just want Drupal 6 to keep working. Drupal 8 is not a gentrified neighborhood, it's more like the ghost cities in China: clean, modern, well-desig…

Drupal 8 is not a gentrified neighborhood, it's more like the ghost cities in China: clean, modern, well-designed -- and empty.

I'm digging this analogy.

Re: How to Survive Gentrification of the Drupal Community

#4
post #2

I think conversely that Drupal 8 is the swan song. Too late to the party. Everyone who was really unhappy with the spaghetti bowl of code in prior drupal versions has already moved on. Those who have not, are not interested in rebuilding their sites on a new platform. They just want Drupal 6 to keep working. Drupal 8 is not a gentrified neighborhood, it's more like the ghost cities in China: clean, modern, well-desig…

What have they moved on to? I'm investigating CMS's for a client (an task I have entirely no experience with). Is Joomla any better? Or is the whole concept of CMS dying?

Re: How to Survive Gentrification of the Drupal Community

#5
post #4
post #2

I think conversely that Drupal 8 is the swan song. Too late to the party. Everyone who was really unhappy with the spaghetti bowl of code in prior drupal versions has already moved on. Those who have not, are not interested in rebuilding their sites on a new platform. They just want Drupal 6 to keep working. Drupal 8 is not a gentrified neighborhood, it's more like the ghost cities in China: clean, modern, well-desig…

What have they moved on to? I'm investigating CMS's for a client (an task I have entirely no experience with). Is Joomla any better? Or is the whole concept of CMS dying?

CMS is dying. We find it's easier to have a separate blog, shop, photo site etc than try to stick it all in Drupal.

After ditching our custom CMS software for Drupal, we find we spend more time making Drupal do what we need than just starting a site from scratch.

Re: How to Survive Gentrification of the Drupal Community

#6
post #2

I think conversely that Drupal 8 is the swan song. Too late to the party. Everyone who was really unhappy with the spaghetti bowl of code in prior drupal versions has already moved on. Those who have not, are not interested in rebuilding their sites on a new platform. They just want Drupal 6 to keep working. Drupal 8 is not a gentrified neighborhood, it's more like the ghost cities in China: clean, modern, well-desig…

Drupal 8 is not a gentrified neighborhood, it's more like the ghost cities in China: clean, modern, well-designed -- and empty. I'm digging this analogy.

I don't find Drupal 8 that nice. It still uses crappy render arrays ('#var_name' => 'value') ... really? Ugh.

It still has random errors, our module stopped working because of a cache corruption. How does that even make sense?

Clear cache is now needed to get twig changes to propagate. Man. That is so slow and so pointless.

Re: How to Survive Gentrification of the Drupal Community

#7
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What have they moved on to? I'm investigating CMS's for a client (an task I have entirely no experience with). Is Joomla any better? Or is the whole concept of CMS dying?

CMS is dying. We find it's easier to have a separate blog, shop, photo site etc than try to stick it all in Drupal. After ditching our custom CMS software for Drupal, we find we spend more time making Drupal do what we need than just starting a site from scratch.

Wordpress powers 1/4 of the internet...

Any company with a decently sized content (producing) team is going to need to use a CMS.

A lot of folks are also using Hubspot and Salesforce to create their sites...Gotta love vendor lock in.

Re: How to Survive Gentrification of the Drupal Community

#8
post #4
post #2

I think conversely that Drupal 8 is the swan song. Too late to the party. Everyone who was really unhappy with the spaghetti bowl of code in prior drupal versions has already moved on. Those who have not, are not interested in rebuilding their sites on a new platform. They just want Drupal 6 to keep working. Drupal 8 is not a gentrified neighborhood, it's more like the ghost cities in China: clean, modern, well-desig…

What have they moved on to? I'm investigating CMS's for a client (an task I have entirely no experience with). Is Joomla any better? Or is the whole concept of CMS dying?

More people are on wordpress than any other CMS, which is one data point in the decision but certainly does not mean it's "the best". But based on the wording of your question ("which have they moved on to"), this is probably the closest correct-ish answer.

Other than that, people have moved on to all sorts of CMS's:

* If you're looking for something in the spirit of Drupal (most configuration done via dashboard interface, very flexible content modeling), try ProcessWire (http://processwire.com/) (free/open-source)

* If you're looking for something more designer-friendly and have a budget for the project, Craft CMS (https://craftcms.com/) is very popular these days.

* Also designer-friendly and less complex than Craft (and less expensive), so it's better for simpler sites: Perch CMS (https://grabaperch.com/).

* For the most easy-to-use editing interface, I recommend Concrete5 (http://www.concrete5.org/) -- my personal favorite (free/open-source).

* If this is a super basic site though and you just want to use an off-the-shelf theme and let the client manage it as much as possible, you're probably best off with a hosted solution such as Weebly (http://www.weebly.com/) or Squarespace (http://squarespace.com/). These have monthly fees (but comparable to decent web hosting).

There's also 18 bajillion other options out there... welcome to the world of CMS's, where we had decision fatigue long before javascript made it cool ;)

Re: How to Survive Gentrification of the Drupal Community

#9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drupal 8 is not a gentrified neighborhood, it's more like the ghost cities in China: clean, modern, well-designed -- and empty. I'm digging this analogy.

I don't find Drupal 8 that nice. It still uses crappy render arrays ('#var_name' => 'value') ... really? Ugh. It still has random errors, our module stopped working because of a cache corruption. How does that even make sense? Clear cache is now needed to get twig changes to propagate. Man. That is so slow and so pointless.

I'm not familiar with Drupal at all, so I believe you. I just liked the analogy. :)

Re: How to Survive Gentrification of the Drupal Community

#10
post #4
post #2

I think conversely that Drupal 8 is the swan song. Too late to the party. Everyone who was really unhappy with the spaghetti bowl of code in prior drupal versions has already moved on. Those who have not, are not interested in rebuilding their sites on a new platform. They just want Drupal 6 to keep working. Drupal 8 is not a gentrified neighborhood, it's more like the ghost cities in China: clean, modern, well-desig…

What have they moved on to? I'm investigating CMS's for a client (an task I have entirely no experience with). Is Joomla any better? Or is the whole concept of CMS dying?

CMSs are dying and static sites are replacing them - there's absolutely no reason to run a complex backend when the entire site is supposed to hold some text and maybe a space for comments.

Things like Jekyll or Hexo are straightforward and easy to work with, but because static sites are really just tools to transform markdown into HTML, something like Metalsmith could probably even handle online shops.

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