Hello,

I just want to share some feedback on Backdrop CMS after exploring it for a while recently.

 

First I will tell a bit of my background so that you understand the context in which my judgement occurs.

I am not a developer or web designer. I am an artist but a tech savvy one. I can setup a hosting, a database and install a CMS. I have some basic understanding of CSS and HTML but I consider coding as a sort of emergency measure or a way to get some very specific functionality and I expect that a CMS allows me to create a site without writing a single line of code. At the moment I help to maintain five web sites belonging to my friends and relatives. These sites are either for freelance designers or small design studio businesses. To run them I have been using a very narrow specific CMS that is focused on displaying image galleries and it does it really well. But recently the need for more feature rich functionality became apparent and I started to explore WordPress, Joomla and Drupal. And I came here from Drupal.

 

So here are the things that I really like about Backdrop:

1. Structure inherited from Drupal. Though it takes an effort to understand it, I really enjoy the flexibility of the CMS. Creation of custom content types with fields and various displays types and ability to sort, filter and output it via views all seem to me very very powerful. The core is awesome!

2. I read and liked the Backdrop Philosophy and it seemed to me the development goes in the right direction compared to Drupal (where I quit once I saw a core update and read installation instructions ). I can see the difference in how the modules are installed and updated - much easier than in Drupal. Dependencies are managed in a very convenient way.

3. I really like the concept of layouts being a separate entity and not a rigid part of a theme. That seemed to me a pretty obvious idea but only here I found it brought to life.

4. I very much like how different sizes for a single image are supported in core via image styles and Adaptive Image module. Easy to setup and works very well. Considering that images are the most important and heavy content for the type of sites I am running, it is essential that they are rendered effectively.

 

Now the downsides and difficulties that I came across:

1. The major point is about modules. There are not many available at the moment (and I can understand that due to a short history of Backdrop). But in those that are present there are often quite a lot of issues with settings and functionality. Here is just an example. I was trying to create a gallery using views and Masonry Views module. The masonry layout basically worked but I couldn’t get how to control space between images (the "Gutter width" parameter doesn’t seem to work at all). With “Load images first”  turned off all images are displayed overlapping each other. I also couldn’t get rid of the white frame around the images and it doesn’t seem to be controlled by a theme. And there are many more smaller bugs and need for tweaks.

I was also unable to find any equivalent of Drupal Quick Tabs and I even couldn’t make standart views tabs work. So basically lack of fine tuned user friendly modules was a show stopper to me. It seems to me that using them properly requires quite a lot of extra coding from user side.

2. Searching for modules is very unintuitive. There should be a search by category at least.

3. Themes and module descriptions lack visuals/demos that would tell about its functionality. That is especially crucial for the themes as there should be at least some screenshots showing how they might look like. Also I often come across dead/broken links in modules/themes pages. It would be better to remove them as it makes a bad impression that modules are no longer supported or neglected. May be it worth to build in broken link report functionality. I understand that it may be difficult to track broken links while community is not very large yet.

4. I couldn’t find the way to use the same image file for different content types. I see there is an option to “choose from library” when inserting image into page or post body. But when using image field for custom content type it is only possible to upload image.

 

To sum up, my impression is that Backdrop CMS has a huge potential and goes in a right direction, but yet it is hard for me to practically build a site that would look and work the way I want.

It may appear that I am not from the audience this CMS is targeting at, but I thought my feedback may be helpful at some point.   

Accepted answer

This is really helpful feedback. I appreciate your taking the time to share it in the detailed format you did, with background about yourself as a user (also very helpful).

I would argue that you are exactly the kind of audience that Backdrop CMS is trying to reach. 

Personally, I've been trying to increase my teams contributions to Backdrop over the past few months. One of the things I like about the Backdrop CMS community right now is that if I report a problem or submit a pull request I often see concrete action taken within weeks, sometimes within days. Any feedback you submit will get noticed and much of it will result in actual changes. As the community grows, this may become more difficult. 

As a Backdrop CMS user, I'm impressed with the number of modules that are available and the slow but steady increase of ported modules from Drupal. I can think of at least 2-3 modules that I was looking for a few months ago which were not available for Backdrop CMS, but have since been ported from Drupal. I would like to think that my requests help motivate others to port these modules (along with their own needs). 

Points #2 and #3 are known issues that must be addressed and are being discussed. I think there are things that I could personally do to help with these issues and will try to put some more of my time in that direction. 

Here are some important ways that people like you can help move Backdrop CMS forward with relatively little work:

1) Continue to post feedback and questions in this forum. If you have questions, please post them here. If you find the answer on your own, answer your own question for the benefit of others. 

2) Post issues in Github if you are having trouble with existing contrib modules. Post a request for better documentation, information about problems you are having with the module, and/or specific bugs that you have found. I believe that the contrib space needs more user feedback of the type you have already provided. Thanks. 

Note: there are quite a few modules seeking maintainers for Backdrop. I suspect that some people might step forward if they see users posting bugs and feature requests. It's motivating to see that users are interested in the modules, using them, and providing feedback on their experiences. 

Thanks much for this feedback. 

Most helpful answers

 A little late to this thread, but I'll add my 2¢.

I was also unable to find any equivalent of Drupal Quick Tabs 

Since Quick Tabs was a Drupal module that staff from the University of Colorado helped write and maintained years ago and one we widely implemented across 1000+ sites, I thought I should add a different perspective on that specific module.

Several years ago we found that the approach that Quick Tabs used for tabs had serious accessibility/WCAG compliance issues. While https://www.drupal.org/project/quicktabs/issues/1132502 was fixed, other issues like https://www.drupal.org/project/quicktabs/issues/2658318 were never even responded to.  After our own accessibility review and conversations with the other Quick Tab project maintainer, we determined it would be easier to write something new, introduce that to our users and deprecate Quick Tabs over time than it would be to update Quick Tabs in a way that every use case would programmatically update correctly.

The University of Colorado's solution accessible tab functionality was Expandables (https://www.colorado.edu/webcentral/tutorial/v2/expandable-content-0).  We didn't share that as a contrib module, but the source is available at https://github.com/CuBoulder/express/tree/dev/modules/custom/cu_expandable

So basically lack of fine tuned user friendly modules was a show stopper to me. 

This is really a matter of perspective. It kills me that Drupal's Redirect module still has this data deleting bug https://www.drupal.org/project/redirect/issues/1396446 after 6+ years it was reported. Because Redirect is in Backdrop core, checking to see if this was still an issue with Backdrop was one of the first things I checked and was glad to see this was fixed.

I've actually been surprisingly happy with the quality of the Backdrop projects we've evaluated, but we may be looking at different projects and aspects of the projects.  I was glad to see that maintainers of some projects are following Backdrop's 80% rule and removing less popular features in an attempt to offer the features used by the most users in more polished, stable and well-documented releases.

If you used on of this features, the Backdorp port may seem less usable, but from a security perspective, this means less code that only a few people are looking at.  Less un-reviewed, unmaintained code means a smaller attack vector for an npm/event-stream style exploits.

There is a podcast of an interview with someone working in K-12 who talks about why they are moving to Backdrop what happens to the selection of modules in a project when the core project stops meeting different organization's needs.  I can't find it right now, but I'm guessing someone else knows the URL.

The gist is that as these contributors move on to other projects, the features the community used to be able to easily find stop being maintained. Bugs stop getting fixed. New features stop being added. Infrastructure issues languish in backlogs.

From where I sit, this is already happening with Drupal 7.  D7's amazingly long usable life has left a facade of user-friendly functionality, but when you did into projects you often find that the maintainers have moved on.  

I am going to respond just to your first point. Some practicalities.

  • Masonry Views: I wonder if you need to clear your JS cache each time you change the gutter. I haven't used it but seems like it's all JS controlling things.
  • Quicktabs: this is a complicated module to port because configuration is different in Backdrop and ctools can't be used like it is in Drupal. But still worth porting.
  • Views tabs: I find confusing each time too but eventually figure out. Maybe this video would help https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoSnUO9KB00

Thank you all for the responses. I just wanted to note that despite critic that is present in my feedback I am positive about Backdrop and would like to encourage dev community to go on with it.

Regarding modules quality I didn't mean they are all bad, and obviously I can't judge of how good they are coded. I was viewing it just from a customer point. I was finding bugs and customisation capabilities often were not enough to solve my problem. For instance, if I can't control space between images in a gallery module, or can't center it in layout block, or control a frame around image etc. etc. that may mean that it doesn't solves my problem and I will have to seek for another solution. Those things may seem not important to programmers but they are very important for customers.

By the way, Drupal has almost the same problem regarding modules (here I mean Drupal 8). When I was looking for a lightbox module in Drupal I could only find one that worked (Colorbox). Other similar modules just didn't work or haven't been ported to D8 or were abandoned by their maintainers. This is a huge contrast to what you see in Joomla, not to say in Wordpress (I know this not a fair comparison right now) where you can find dozens of modules for a particular task. It seems to me important, while there are not many modules present, to get them into shape and polish so that they can offer a good solution.

At the same time I have already had a positive experience with Backdrop when I reported bugs for Featherlight module and Peter Anderson, module maintainer, was very quick to react and fixed several issues. I appreciate that very much!

If interested, I will readily provide feedback or bug report or new module requests based on my goals and preferences.

Comments

Thanks for this. Re the good, yep agreed, we did some good things, and we're still working on improving what exists, but we're still a small group. 

Re the bad: we have ported a ridiculous number of modules in this short time, but agreed, of course, the numbers will still be much less than Drupal. But I think the team is (reasonably) responsive to port requests (https://github.com/backdrop-ops/contrib/issues), and there is a D7 to Backdrop (Coder Upgrade https://github.com/backdrop-contrib/coder_upgrade) module that helps with this as well. Post an issue for the tabs module and we'll see if we can help. For existing modules with issues, of course post those on the module issue queue. 

I'm not particularly aware of previous complaints that our contrib modules are poor quality. You may be right, but I havent heard that. I hesitate to say youve been unlucky, but maybe? I've ported at least 50 modules so far, and usually with working tests for quality control.

About point 2 and 3, yes, yes, yes, yes. This is something that is a recurring concern and we have several issues mentioning this, but it is not simple unfortunately. We need a way to tag projects, a way to read those tags from GitHub to our main site at BackdropCMS.org, then a way to filter projects by tag. Working on it.

Finally, the image library is a very recent addition, in our last release. This didnt exist on Drupal either. And we have an issue for adding the browser to the image fields on content as well.

Either way, thanks for the feedback. Again, we're working on it. Slowly.

 

This is really helpful feedback. I appreciate your taking the time to share it in the detailed format you did, with background about yourself as a user (also very helpful).

I would argue that you are exactly the kind of audience that Backdrop CMS is trying to reach. 

Personally, I've been trying to increase my teams contributions to Backdrop over the past few months. One of the things I like about the Backdrop CMS community right now is that if I report a problem or submit a pull request I often see concrete action taken within weeks, sometimes within days. Any feedback you submit will get noticed and much of it will result in actual changes. As the community grows, this may become more difficult. 

As a Backdrop CMS user, I'm impressed with the number of modules that are available and the slow but steady increase of ported modules from Drupal. I can think of at least 2-3 modules that I was looking for a few months ago which were not available for Backdrop CMS, but have since been ported from Drupal. I would like to think that my requests help motivate others to port these modules (along with their own needs). 

Points #2 and #3 are known issues that must be addressed and are being discussed. I think there are things that I could personally do to help with these issues and will try to put some more of my time in that direction. 

Here are some important ways that people like you can help move Backdrop CMS forward with relatively little work:

1) Continue to post feedback and questions in this forum. If you have questions, please post them here. If you find the answer on your own, answer your own question for the benefit of others. 

2) Post issues in Github if you are having trouble with existing contrib modules. Post a request for better documentation, information about problems you are having with the module, and/or specific bugs that you have found. I believe that the contrib space needs more user feedback of the type you have already provided. Thanks. 

Note: there are quite a few modules seeking maintainers for Backdrop. I suspect that some people might step forward if they see users posting bugs and feature requests. It's motivating to see that users are interested in the modules, using them, and providing feedback on their experiences. 

Thanks much for this feedback. 

Thank you all for the responses. I just wanted to note that despite critic that is present in my feedback I am positive about Backdrop and would like to encourage dev community to go on with it.

Regarding modules quality I didn't mean they are all bad, and obviously I can't judge of how good they are coded. I was viewing it just from a customer point. I was finding bugs and customisation capabilities often were not enough to solve my problem. For instance, if I can't control space between images in a gallery module, or can't center it in layout block, or control a frame around image etc. etc. that may mean that it doesn't solves my problem and I will have to seek for another solution. Those things may seem not important to programmers but they are very important for customers.

By the way, Drupal has almost the same problem regarding modules (here I mean Drupal 8). When I was looking for a lightbox module in Drupal I could only find one that worked (Colorbox). Other similar modules just didn't work or haven't been ported to D8 or were abandoned by their maintainers. This is a huge contrast to what you see in Joomla, not to say in Wordpress (I know this not a fair comparison right now) where you can find dozens of modules for a particular task. It seems to me important, while there are not many modules present, to get them into shape and polish so that they can offer a good solution.

At the same time I have already had a positive experience with Backdrop when I reported bugs for Featherlight module and Peter Anderson, module maintainer, was very quick to react and fixed several issues. I appreciate that very much!

If interested, I will readily provide feedback or bug report or new module requests based on my goals and preferences.

I am going to respond just to your first point. Some practicalities.

  • Masonry Views: I wonder if you need to clear your JS cache each time you change the gutter. I haven't used it but seems like it's all JS controlling things.
  • Quicktabs: this is a complicated module to port because configuration is different in Backdrop and ctools can't be used like it is in Drupal. But still worth porting.
  • Views tabs: I find confusing each time too but eventually figure out. Maybe this video would help https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoSnUO9KB00

Thank you for your response. The video you sent me was very helpful and by following it step by step I made the view tabs work! It turned out that I was setting paths in a wrong way (I was doing it the way it works in Drupal 8). 

I understand about Quicktabs, but all I can say that it would be very helpful for my purposes. :)

Masonry View. I am not sure I understand how to clear JS cache. When something isn't working I clear browser cache and Configuration - Development - Performance - Clear All Caches. I have tried to change the Gutter and was clearing cache each time and I noticed that it really changes the appearance but those changes seem random to me. For instance, when I enter 5 pix gutter it looks wider than when I enter 20 pix.

Right now this module seem to me like a most potent to use for creation of nice modern gallery and if you are interested, I can continue providing feedback and feature requests. For me making a good looking and well performing gallery is a question of using the CMS or not, so I would willingly contribute as much as I can.

 

 

 A little late to this thread, but I'll add my 2¢.

I was also unable to find any equivalent of Drupal Quick Tabs 

Since Quick Tabs was a Drupal module that staff from the University of Colorado helped write and maintained years ago and one we widely implemented across 1000+ sites, I thought I should add a different perspective on that specific module.

Several years ago we found that the approach that Quick Tabs used for tabs had serious accessibility/WCAG compliance issues. While https://www.drupal.org/project/quicktabs/issues/1132502 was fixed, other issues like https://www.drupal.org/project/quicktabs/issues/2658318 were never even responded to.  After our own accessibility review and conversations with the other Quick Tab project maintainer, we determined it would be easier to write something new, introduce that to our users and deprecate Quick Tabs over time than it would be to update Quick Tabs in a way that every use case would programmatically update correctly.

The University of Colorado's solution accessible tab functionality was Expandables (https://www.colorado.edu/webcentral/tutorial/v2/expandable-content-0).  We didn't share that as a contrib module, but the source is available at https://github.com/CuBoulder/express/tree/dev/modules/custom/cu_expandable

So basically lack of fine tuned user friendly modules was a show stopper to me. 

This is really a matter of perspective. It kills me that Drupal's Redirect module still has this data deleting bug https://www.drupal.org/project/redirect/issues/1396446 after 6+ years it was reported. Because Redirect is in Backdrop core, checking to see if this was still an issue with Backdrop was one of the first things I checked and was glad to see this was fixed.

I've actually been surprisingly happy with the quality of the Backdrop projects we've evaluated, but we may be looking at different projects and aspects of the projects.  I was glad to see that maintainers of some projects are following Backdrop's 80% rule and removing less popular features in an attempt to offer the features used by the most users in more polished, stable and well-documented releases.

If you used on of this features, the Backdorp port may seem less usable, but from a security perspective, this means less code that only a few people are looking at.  Less un-reviewed, unmaintained code means a smaller attack vector for an npm/event-stream style exploits.

There is a podcast of an interview with someone working in K-12 who talks about why they are moving to Backdrop what happens to the selection of modules in a project when the core project stops meeting different organization's needs.  I can't find it right now, but I'm guessing someone else knows the URL.

The gist is that as these contributors move on to other projects, the features the community used to be able to easily find stop being maintained. Bugs stop getting fixed. New features stop being added. Infrastructure issues languish in backlogs.

From where I sit, this is already happening with Drupal 7.  D7's amazingly long usable life has left a facade of user-friendly functionality, but when you did into projects you often find that the maintainers have moved on.  

After our own accessibility review and conversations with the other Quick Tab project maintainer, we determined it would be easier to write something new, introduce that to our users and deprecate Quick Tabs over time than it would be to update Quick Tabs in a way that every use case would programmatically update correctly.

I mentioned Quick Tabs just as a module that may do a certain  task for me. In particular I needed a way to quickly switch between two different content blocks formed by views. So it may appear that there are other means to do that or other module I am not aware of. Standard views tabs can do this but, as far as I know, they reload the whole page and in my case this is not a very convenient solution. In the end for a user like me it doesn't really matter the origin of the module. I just thought that in most cases porting is  a faster and cheaper way to get it work, but I see now that this is not always true.

 

One more observation to add to my feedback here. When I started to learn those 3 most popular CMS (WordPress, Joomla, Drupal) I was first hooked by Joomla because they had a very comprehensive and easy to follow learning video series linked right from the joomla.org frontpage. Backdrop/Drupal has quite steep learning curve at start. I think that having a similar video training (a kind of "Backdrop for Dummies") would help a newcomer to get through the initial difficulties and lead him to understanding the advantage of the Backdrop structure and workflow and eventually become another Backdrop user.