Here's a page from one of my upcoming books.
Comments/Discussion welcome.
Most helpful answers
I would say the case is different depending on whether you are on older Drupal (<=7) or modern Drupal (8+). It makes less sense to go to Backdrop if you've already successfully (many people attempt to migrate to D8 and then give up and come to Backdrop) migrated to D8+.
Also, have you read about the Stanford university case studies and the massive cost savings of migrating a complex D7 site to Backdrop instead of D8?
https://backdropcms.org/showcase/stanford-on-off-campus-learning-opportu...
Comments
Interesting. I would generally agree though it always depends on what functionality they want.
As soon as someone can't find a WordPress plugin that fits their needs, it becomes a fairly hard platform to create custom features for. Much harder than Backdrop.
I would say the case is different depending on whether you are on older Drupal (<=7) or modern Drupal (8+). It makes less sense to go to Backdrop if you've already successfully (many people attempt to migrate to D8 and then give up and come to Backdrop) migrated to D8+.
Also, have you read about the Stanford university case studies and the massive cost savings of migrating a complex D7 site to Backdrop instead of D8?
https://backdropcms.org/showcase/stanford-on-off-campus-learning-opportu...
Heya @yorkshirepudding,
Great suggestions!
Revised:
And also maybe people can help me with developing this page, which promotes the selection of Backdrop as a CMS? What do you think would motivate someone to do that? Has this been answered?
g.
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My opinion is influenced from the fact I started learning Drupal since its 4.7.x release, but I agree.
For a new site, I would use Backdrop, even in the case of small sites where the number of people who need higher permissions is limited. Backdrop is so modular that even adding modules that change what anonymous users can see is very easy.
Website development is done by a person or a team with certain skills and to achieve a certain goal. Furthermore, development is limited by the client's budget.
So far, there are at least three variables that determine the choice of CMS - the skills of the developer, the purpose of the site and the budget.
That is why I consider that ranking the different CMS in a universal ranking is useless, there is no way to say that one system is better than another without specifying under what conditions - skills, purpose and budget.
Backdrop CMS is an extremely powerful platform for the development of complex and functional websites within a limited budget and by people who would spend some of their time to understand how the system works, but it does not become their profession, they actually do something else - they design, create content, work to optimize the site for search engines or do other work for the organization itself, whose project is the site.
Drupal 8 and up is probably a wonderful system for people who have the necessary knowledge of its complex maintenance and have a generous budget.
Wordpress is a marketing colossus with a bloated code that is not better than Backdrop in any way except for having a large number of ready-made professionally designed themes.
This advantage is not valid for people who know or manage to learn how to build their own theme in Backdrop CMS and have knowledge of graphic design, which allows them to make this theme beautiful and effective.
From the point of view of functionality, reliability and possibilities for search engine optimization, all the advantages are on the side of Backdrop CMS.
The fact that the team of system developers is smaller, at the same time, I find it an advantage because the work is better coordinated and consistent in fulfilling its goals.
Hello @amilenkov,
Thanks for such an extensive reply. I agree with you on many points.
You touched on so many idea, it's really wonderful! I look forward to a constructive and interesting discussion with you.
OK, it seems to me that your position is the major determinants are:
- Skills of the developer
- Purpose of the site
- Budget
Q: Are you ranking these considerations in any way, or did you just list them as they came to you? Presumably, if you have a large enough budget then the skills of the developer are immaterial, seeing as you can hire in whatever talent(s) that are required, correct?
Q: Is not the purpose of the site the most important thing (what I believe)? After all, if you have infinite money and infinite talent - but no idea what you want - then the entire project is going to go nowhere. Yes, some websites (like books) are for vanity purposes and created only to serve the interests of the creator, but a significant number of websites are created to somehow address the needs and desires of an audience along the lines of an exchange of some kind. Your criteria seem to be missing that consideration - but maybe the notion of a consumer of the information (if it were to be considered a product) is implicit somewhere I missed.
Q: Do you consider time an important consideration? After all, once you have a clear idea of what you want, then you can presumably learn what needs to be learned (developing skills over time) over as long a duration as you need (trading time for money). But without a plan, you have no idea what you need to learn, or why.
Q: I wonder, Is the scale of the undertaking important enough to be a separate consideration? A one-page menu website is markedly different than Wikipedia, and perhaps a different approach is needed not just for the creation of that website, but also its ongoing maintenance? What about the notion of a team effort? Your comment seems to lean toward an individual effort, unless I am missing something.
Q: You quite rightly stated that a large part of the appeal of WordPress is the numerous themes available that let someone with limited technical knowledge spin up an attractive website in (according to my experience) less than an hour. There used to be many, many themes available for Drupal - and many people willing to either create or tweak themes for Drupal. Not so much now. Why wouldn't that be a major determinant of success for any web-oriented technology seeing as it is a visual medium? Now - if you are going to say that Backdrop is an ideal M2M platform, we would be considering it against other technologies in that class, but we're considering CMS here, not inter-machine communications that generally pass structured data like JSON, EDI and XML back and forth. Yes, HTML and CSS are "semi structured" data and passed between machines, but my point here is the end consumer of the information being passed is typically a human, with their own eyes. Again, back to purpose.
Q: Finally (for this post) - what about legacy vs new? In your opinion, should or should that not be weighted as a consideration? I believe that even today there is legacy hardware and code powering several industries (travel, banking) that place serious constraints on choice of technology. I don't see that consideration in your criteria, but again, they may be implicit somewhere.
Looking forward to seeing your views!
g.
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P.S.: Have you heard of something called "Technology Debt"? If you have, I wonder how you feel about it with respect to Drupal?
@Graham Leach,
Thanks for the good rating given to my humble opinion. I will I look into it on several points in this commentary that are devoted to separate topics, and therefore I will number them.
1. Books on Backdrop CMS
I want to clarify that I ventured to offer this opinion because I was very happy about the announcement of an upcoming publication of a book which, as I understand from your post, will look at Backdrop CMS in the context of a comparison with Drupal and Wordpress.
The reason for this is the fact that I have observed that the literature, books, dedicated to Backdrop CMS is extremely scarce, and I consider this to be one of the main reasons for the slow spread of the system.
I appreciate the community's extraordinary efforts to post helpful information on the backdropcms.org site, but books written with an educational nature and purpose have an edge that cannot be achieved by a technical documentation.
The main feature of a textbook is the didactic construction of the narrative, in which the reader is led from the simple to the complex, as well as the preliminary idea of what the reader's level is.
It is also very important that different textbook authors follow different didactics and it is suitable for different categories of students, while technical documentation is much more unified and depersonalized.
Technical documentation cannot achieve such goals because it is by default aimed at all kinds of readers, and because it is written by professional developers, it is rarely popular and accessible to the novice user.
I started learning Drupal around 2012-2013, and in the process of learning I used several dozen books dedicated to Drupal, published by different publishers and authors. I've studied at least 20-30 different books on Drupal 5, 6, and 7, and I know from experience that when the same aspect of working with the system is explained by several different authors, the reader is much more successful in understanding how to use a tool or setting in the system .
I won't list Drupal books, but if anyone is interested in a Drupal bibliography, they can visit this link.
Unfortunately, in this regard, Backdrop CMS seriously and even dramatically lags behind, and in my opinion, this is among the most important reasons for its slow adoption by users.
Only two editions are listed on the Backdrop CMS site, the latest being Beginning Backdrop CMS by Todd Tomlinson and released in ... 2016!!!
Unfortunately, even this edition is of very little use today because Backdrop CMS has undergone very significant development since then, and if someone wants to learn how to use modern Backdrop CMS from this book, they will most likely quickly put the book down and forget about Backdrop CMS.
I have been working with Backdrop CMS since 2016 and today all my sites are with Backdrop CMS (active, created and administered by me to date are around 60 sites, for the whole time I have made over 200 sites with Drupal and later with Backdrop CMS). But I wouldn't have mastered Backdrop CMS if I hadn't previously studied Drupal for years, and mainly by reading a lot of books and of course searching on Google for questions that are not clear to me.
2. My competence
The thoughts I shared were the result of the joy of the announcement that a book on Backdrop CMS is in the works. I decided to respond to the query and share my thoughts, but I know for a fact that these are opinions of little professional competence and I ask that they be taken as such.
I am not a programmer and developer, rather I define myself as a graphic designer and copywriter. I also do search engine optimization. In my day job, I use Adobe Dreamweaver as a code editor tool for site development. I am well versed in HTML and CSS (without the cutting edge) and have only a general understanding of the programming process and a brief learning of basic PHP concepts. Most of my working day is spent not writing code, but working with Illustrator. Photoshop, but also with Google Adwords, as well as with a one of SEO platforms - SE Ranking.
I have my own business and I am passionate about entrepreneurship, but in practice I work as a freelancer and I am the only employee in my company.
I write all of this not because my personality is interesting, but because it creates a context to perceive the opinions I express, and because it all explains why Backdrop CMS is an invaluable tool for me.
Other people, with other needs and goals, would probably choose other platforms.
For me, Backdrop CMS is the best CMS I know (I also have experience in administration of Wordpress sites created by other developers for my clients, but I would not start work on a new Wordpress site - working with Wordpress is very unpleasant and incomparable more inefficient than the one with Backdrop CMS, and since the reign of block editors began in Wordpress things have gotten many times worse - these sites are heavy, with huge bloated code, extremely inconvenient to optimize for search engines except for people who do not understand how to optimize , and rely on this work to be magically done by some promising miracles addon SEO modules. In practice, they are of very little use.
3. Answer your questions
Having described above my positions and interest in the topic, I am now ready to answer your questions.
3.1 - Skills of the developer, Purpose of the site, Budget and which determinant comes first.
I didn't mean to rank them in importance, just point them out. It is probably true that the budget is more important because it allows freedom in the choice of the developer, but on the other hand, a smart developer can achieve better results with a small budget than another with a generous budget. But there is a third party in this equation – the client or manager who connects the budget to the developer.
This third party, let's call it the Principal - if he knows what he wants, he will find a suitable person and with a modest budget, if he does not have a clear business plan and does not know what he wants to achieve, then neither a generous budget nor a qualified developer would matter.
That's why I personally have one rule - I don't work with not smart enough customers, even when they have generous budgets. It's probably a personal thing - I'm not so interested in what they're going to pay me, I'm interested in the work itself and I'm happy when the site does well even when the pay is meager.
3.2 Do you consider time an important consideration
Yes, development times are an important factor and working with Backdrop CMS is faster and easier for someone who knows how to work with the system. This determinant escaped my notice when I wrote my comment.
3.3 Is the scale of the undertaking important
Sure, but that's a derivative of the budget. Small budgets necessarily imply limited sites in terms of volume and capabilities. However, such sites are 100% sufficient for small and medium-sized businesses and most non-governmental organizations.
3.4 Backdrop CMS as M2M platform
It's an interesting idea, but I'm not qualified to comment on it. I develop sites for living people, and their visual appeal and usability are of paramount importance in this case.
3.5 What about legacy vs new?
This is also a topic I am not competent to comment on. I can only express a personal preference. One of the reasons I like FOSS is preserving the legacy and building on existing knowledge.
Perhaps I should share my opinion that the failure of new versions (expressed in a progressively decreasing market share) of Drupal is rooted precisely in the fact that Drupal has always been a commercial project hidden behind a FOSS mask.
The reason is that commercial products necessarily violate the legacy because innovations and changes in the way of work, the need for retraining is a serious source of profit for this type of project.
Backdrop CMS' commitment to open source and free software principles is also among the most important reasons I like Backdrop CMS.
* * *
In addition, writing and publishing books is also very difficult to realize as a non-commercial project, and this is probably the reason why there are no books on Backdrop CMS or they are scarce.
I am trying to solve a similar project (via Backdrop and Ubercart) here in my country (since I am also involved in book publishing and prepress).
And it seems to me that I see a solution in e-publishing books as an e-edition and buying them as a download directly from the author's site without the intermediary of traditional publishers and commercial book distribution networks.
So far, there are at least three variables that determine the choice of CMS - the skills of the developer, the purpose of the site and the budget.
I belief, this just nailed it. ;-)
There are already many ranking attempts out there, but they usually disregard these important criteria for decisions. And that's what I usually find problematic with these rankings.
A new book about Backdrop? Hey, that sounds exciting!
So much has happened in Backdrop CMS development in the past years. Most publications are way behind. And there are few, anyway.
Website development is done by a person or a team with certain skills and to achieve a certain goal. Furthermore, development is limited by the client's budget.
So far, there are at least three variables that determine the choice of CMS - the skills of the developer, the purpose of the site and the budget.
That is why I consider that ranking the different CMS in a universal ranking is useless, there is no way to say that one system is better than another without specifying under what conditions - skills, purpose and budget.
Backdrop CMS is an extremely powerful platform for the development of complex and functional websites within a limited budget and by people who would spend some of their time to understand how the system works, but it does not become their profession, they actually do something else - they design, create content, work to optimize the site for search engines or do other work for the organization itself, whose project is the site.
Drupal 8 and up is probably a wonderful system for people who have the necessary knowledge of its complex maintenance and have a generous budget.
Wordpress is a marketing colossus with a bloated code that is not better than Backdrop in any way except for having a large number of ready-made professionally designed themes.
This advantage is not valid for people who know or manage to learn how to build their own theme in Backdrop CMS and have knowledge of graphic design, which allows them to make this theme beautiful and effective.
From the point of view of functionality, reliability and possibilities for search engine optimization, all the advantages are on the side of Backdrop CMS.
The fact that the team of system developers is smaller, at the same time, I find it an advantage because the work is better coordinated and consistent in fulfilling its goals.