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Comment by Jgrubb | Hacker News Reader

I get how you feel about Drupal, but can you please name a better CMS offering?

I've been working with Drupal for 7 years now and have worked with lots of other frameworks and langs in that time. I've had a hot/cold relationship with Drupal for the whole time, and have lately (since D8) had a substantial thaw with my attitude toward Drupal. It's nice because in the last several years of hating it but getting to know it really well, I've come out on the other side being able to get things done in very little time.

So back to the original question - what would recommend instead (and frameworks don't count)? It's got to be something that a non programmer can build their project with.

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Drupal is not really a CMS, it is more of a framework to build a CMS with.

I agree it has gotten better on many fronts since the old days but plenty of my old reservations against drupal still (surprisingly, I expected those would be major focal points for improvement) hold today.

> It's got to be something that a non programmer can build their project with.

That's a huge restriction, and in fact, if a non-programmer can build a project on a self hosted platform then you're essentially asking for trouble with respect to security and future maintenance. I don't really believe such a system could be made if it is at the same time required to be secure and reasonably scalable, unless it is hosted and kept up-to-date and secure by another party.

The fact that wordpress.com is raking in the money is an indication that for simple websites this is definitely a market opportunity, and given the frequency with which self-hosted wordpress sites get hacked the 'non programmer' restriction would seem to be the cause of a bit of a problem. It's like asking for a car that can be constructed by a non-mechanic.

> It's like asking for a car that can be constructed by a non-mechanic.

I think that's a good analogy actually, but that's the market. Honestly, I think to try and move into the market that WP has so tidily sewn up would be a waste of time and energy so Drupal has aimed for the higher end of the market - large institutions and companies with content mgmt needs. Also, in my (admittedly biased) perspective, Drupal provides vastly more interesting work opportunities than Wordpress ever could. That's why I chose to invest my time in learning it all those years ago.

> if a non-programmer can build a project on a self hosted platform then you're essentially asking for trouble with respect to security and future maintenance

Granted, but programmers are at least as likely to spawn security holes by being given a more powerful weapon. Relatively simple things like XSS and SQLi can be taken care of for a user who's not touching the code while they build their project. The strong params feature in Rails was a result of a gaping security hole in what I would consider to be the bellwether of good framework design. Mistakes are made.

So you still haven't named a better alternative ;)

In my opinion, I sort of agree - Drupal is the worst CMS, except for all the rest of them.

I know plenty of valid alternatives but your 'non programmer' restriction is kind of severe. That said, I'm not actually familiar with any non-programmers that do manage to install drupal to the point that it works but can not program enough to add some functionality (and usually in a dangerous way...).

An extremely customizable cms for non-programmers as far as I know does not exist, including drupal, so we don't actually agree, it's just that you've limited the scope to the point where there is only the one alternative left and that alternative suits your particular use case.

Agreed that drupal is a more interesting environment than wordpress, many of the same restrictions and gripes apply to both platforms and drupal seems to attract the occasional wordpress user because of increased flexibility.

Not getting into the for/against Drupal thing, but I wonder what percentage of Drupal admin users are non programmers. I've built a lot of Drupal sites and exactly zero non programmers have ever done anything more than use pre-existing fields.

I will say that I think it's a noble goal to allow non programmers to build something powerful, but in my experience it translates to programmers being able to build features insanely quickly rather than handing that power over to non programmers. Maybe it's different in other sectors.

I haven't seen any non-programmers do this either. What I have seen is the programmers for certain drupal systems ending up cleaning up vast messes made with drupals extensive customization abilities because the people making the changes did not foresee the effect these changes would have on the application as a whole.

There is a whole eco-system around drupal of consultants who know just a little bit more than their clients to get them back out of the trouble they're in.

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