Wait a few months for Drupal 7... I have a feeling you'll be much happier, as it is more like Wordpress on steroids, at least on the front-end. The back end is still pure Drupal bliss :D
Seriously though, your A & B assessments are spot on. My guess is you're going to have to dig deep into the guts of Active Directory and Exchange. Very worthwhile if you want to be an MS Network Administrator (which I was for 5 long years)...but in the end you might know more about the network than the entire IT staff and you can start taking support calls on it. ;)
Well...since the conversation is opening up a bit about the flavors of CMS'es ... ;) ... moderator...kibosh if it's too OT...
I started peeling back the layers of Drupal during my CMS comparisons and ran into 2 stumbling blocks...partly due to my lack of patience and unwillingness to commit to the endeavor and lack of time.
#1. Module dependencies. After finding a 'pre-packaged' installation, unpacking and connecting to a db, I started updating some of the modules. I started getting admin warnings that I needed update other modules first. I started breaking out in a cold sweat with vicious memories of Windows DLL's and Linux packages (one of the things I DON'T miss in Mac OSX BTW). I get frustrated enough with trying to wrangle updated modules as it is, but now I have to keep track of the dependancies? OK...yes, I understand the benefit of their distributed nature...but it was serious buzzkill...and a big reason I've moved to WP as a primary CMS.
#2. Flexibility. I was amazed at the flexibility that Drupal offers, but I found it to be a bit overwhelming and slowed down my 'creative' juices for aesthetics (ie design/layout). I felt like I had to put my 'engineer' hat on too often.
I think if I'd have started with a project that was less demanding, I'd have not gotten so frustrated. Plus, since I was so plugged into the Joomla way of doing things, I was having to 'unlearn' a number of things.
Anyways...Drupal's great and all...just relating my personal experience.
Kinda reminds me of an old Linux quote from back in the day when people would diss Linux for not being 'user-friendly'...
"Linux is user-friendly...it's just particular about who it's friends are".
They use Active Directory, and we authenticate to it using the LDAP authentication module. They also use Windows Integrated Authentication to give users a single sign-on experience. Pretty cool.
For document management... that's still being discussed. I just found the filedepot module, which looks promising. We're also evaluating Alfresco as a repository backend, with Drupal as the front-end. I'm not sure which way we'll go, but I'm (as always) rooting for "do it with drupal".
I've been using EE for a couple years now and highly recommend it. It's more of a build what you want framework than it is here's what you get "CMS" (a la Drupal, WP, etc.) Don't get me wrong, WP has its place in my tool kit. But if you're looking to "take it to the next level" then EE is the way to go. It's a proper full fledged CMS.
The upfront learning curve is somewhat steep. Don't start with too difficult a site (or two). But if you're committed to it then it will pay back nice powerful returns by site 4 or 5. Being able to make your dynamic scripts (e.g. jQuery) even more dynamic is when the fun really begins.
Yes, there is a higher up front cost. On the other hand, WP. Drupal, etc. hacks take time. EE is about taking your design, any design, and making ti fly.
I received a link to one of these articles from @bennyfactor on Twitter... looks like Exchange Web Services could have some of the magic that is needed, but it might be (a) prohibitively time consuming, and (b) a HUGE ordeal. Like most things Microsoft :-/
The problem is, there are so many more things against my adoption of SharePoint that I really, really want to avoid that. I'd more likely scrap all calendaring functionality on the Intranet than use Sharepoint to get that working... and, even in Sharepoint, calendar integration isn't the best... especially for certain group calendaring functions.
In EE, you have different content channels and they each have custom fields and field types. This makes it really flexible to basically do anything you can think of.
That, along with advanced user roles/permissions/access control out-of-the-box, is one of the things that makes Drupal shine... along with Drupal's amazing Views module.
As an example of its flexibility, I redesigned the entire front page of Life is a Prayer.com in about an hour last night, without a hitch, by creating a new view for it (no PHP necessary). And, Drupal is free as in beer :D
M$ did publish the protocol used for some of that functionality, but they're complex and more trouble than its worth to try re-implementing. Honestly, you're better off just using sharepoint to do what you want.
Thanks, I appreciate that! We just finished it like a week ago, and after many painful design processes earlier in our history, this one went really, really smoothly, so I think it's a keeper!
Well, in EE you don't really have to deal with PHP if you don't want to. Everything works off of their tag system, which is well documented, so even though I am a PHP developer, when I am working on a site it is usually through EE tags.
We have developed a few open source add-ons for EE, and from that experience I can tell you that the experience level you need for extending EE is moderate. Nothing fancy, you just need a good understanding of functions and classes and how they work.
The thing is you can do an entire EE site and never touch a line of PHP. WP is all PHP. Not that it is hard PHP, but everything in EE is abstracted and pretty easy to pick up.
I think the main difference though is the loop. In EE, you have different content channels and they each have custom fields and field types. This makes it really flexible to basically do anything you can think of. I, personally, find that I have to bend the loop a little bit more to get it to handle different content types the way I want.
Well, there's an excellent resource for Twitter at Tweet Catholic – it's the most comprehensive, and easiest-to-use list of Catholics on Twitter (it's not comprehensive, but most of the big names are on there).
We use WP for some projects - it's clean, developer-friendly, and very customizable. I totally agree with your 5 reasons from your post too. WP rocks the house.
I can definitely understand your comment about the price. Usually we just include that price in our development costs and label it a win-win because of the time saved. On other projects, though, it can be prohibitively expensive when you aren't working with a budget that will accomodate it.
On the EE community, I'd say that it has really gained a lot of momentum in the past 6 months or so - mainly because of the release of EE2. It is also split up between CodeIgniter and ExpressionEngine guys, with a lot of overlap. We were at the EE/CI 2010 Conference in San Francisco earlier this year, and had a great time with the community. Not as big as the others you've mentioned, but like you said, very talented and very dedicated.
Those are sweet examples as well, I didn't know faithandfamilylive.com was an EE site.
I can't offer much here in the way of comparison. But I will say that I'm helping merge 13 intranets of a hospital system into one central Drupal site, because the company has decided that Drupal is the way to go. Included in that scope is (somehow) moving all the data from (literally) thousands of Sharepoint sites. So, while I certainly have my work cut out for me, still, I think this speaks to the versatility of Drupal. That's a major commitment from a big company to Drupal, if nothing else.
Hope I don't offend anyone, but I am not a big SharePoint fan.
I've built a couple portals back in my IT days (where everything was running on MS).
OK...here's a scenario that MIGHT be worthwhile...
If the Intranet is on:
1. A complete Windows environment. PCs>Servers. Preferably the latest servers and sharepoint editions (I stopped keeping track at 2007). It relies heavily on Active Directory.
2. Is all on a local LAN. I suppose some folks have had success accessing it from the Internet through a proxy server...sorry...I don't know what they call it anymore...
3. You heavily invest in end-user training. Frankly, I've never seen it work. Most folks don't get it and only scratch the surface in what it can do for them.
The problem is that Sharepoint was originally just developed for internal workgroups at MS and marketing got a hold of it and thought...hey!...enterprise document management! Big $$$.
Jeff...if you get roped into this one, you have my sympathy. I burned months on that stuff and in the end didn't have much end-user buy-in.
...ok...just looked at your dashboard mock-up. Nice. You can do something comparable with Sharepoint...but first you have to learn the MS way of doing things, and it ain't intuitive.
Like Anthony mentioned above, if there's an LDAP module for Drupal that would allow you to plug into the Active Directory with what you've got, that'd be the way to go.
1. EE is a bit pricey for the developer license. Plus, you'd probably want to get the multi-site features and other add-ons and like it's been mentioned...can reach around $400 all told. It's not a huge outlay, but was a factor.
2. Developer community. While I was impressed with the EE community, both the skill-level and the dedication, it just doesn't have the momentum that Drupal/WordPress/Joomla currently enjoy.
It was a really hard decision for me, and there's a chance I might review it again in 6-12 months. A couple of my favorite Catholic sites run on EE: www.ncregister.com and www.faithandfamilylive.com.
Wait a few months for Drupal 7... I have a feeling you'll be much happier, as it is more like Wordpress on steroids, at least on the front-end. The back end is still pure Drupal bliss :D
I might target a one-way sync for now (from Outlook to web), if I can get it scripted to work automatically... we'll see how it works.
Just walk - scratch that - run away. ;)
Seriously though, your A & B assessments are spot on. My guess is you're going to have to dig deep into the guts of Active Directory and Exchange. Very worthwhile if you want to be an MS Network Administrator (which I was for 5 long years)...but in the end you might know more about the network than the entire IT staff and you can start taking support calls on it. ;)
If you can get by with just creating a 'read-only' view of a calendar(s)...you could try sticking OWA in an iframe - here's a link that'll probably get you there: http://www.eggheadcafe.com/software/aspnet/31919360/exchange-public-cale...
Here's a link to a guy trying suck the calendar into ICS: http://blog.jonudell.net/2008/05/28/in-search-of-an-ics-publishing-compo...
Well...since the conversation is opening up a bit about the flavors of CMS'es ... ;) ... moderator...kibosh if it's too OT...
I started peeling back the layers of Drupal during my CMS comparisons and ran into 2 stumbling blocks...partly due to my lack of patience and unwillingness to commit to the endeavor and lack of time.
#1. Module dependencies. After finding a 'pre-packaged' installation, unpacking and connecting to a db, I started updating some of the modules. I started getting admin warnings that I needed update other modules first. I started breaking out in a cold sweat with vicious memories of Windows DLL's and Linux packages (one of the things I DON'T miss in Mac OSX BTW). I get frustrated enough with trying to wrangle updated modules as it is, but now I have to keep track of the dependancies? OK...yes, I understand the benefit of their distributed nature...but it was serious buzzkill...and a big reason I've moved to WP as a primary CMS.
#2. Flexibility. I was amazed at the flexibility that Drupal offers, but I found it to be a bit overwhelming and slowed down my 'creative' juices for aesthetics (ie design/layout). I felt like I had to put my 'engineer' hat on too often.
I think if I'd have started with a project that was less demanding, I'd have not gotten so frustrated. Plus, since I was so plugged into the Joomla way of doing things, I was having to 'unlearn' a number of things.
Anyways...Drupal's great and all...just relating my personal experience.
Kinda reminds me of an old Linux quote from back in the day when people would diss Linux for not being 'user-friendly'...
"Linux is user-friendly...it's just particular about who it's friends are".
Yep, it's going to keep me busy for awhile.
They use Active Directory, and we authenticate to it using the LDAP authentication module. They also use Windows Integrated Authentication to give users a single sign-on experience. Pretty cool.
For document management... that's still being discussed. I just found the filedepot module, which looks promising. We're also evaluating Alfresco as a repository backend, with Drupal as the front-end. I'm not sure which way we'll go, but I'm (as always) rooting for "do it with drupal".
I've been using EE for a couple years now and highly recommend it. It's more of a build what you want framework than it is here's what you get "CMS" (a la Drupal, WP, etc.) Don't get me wrong, WP has its place in my tool kit. But if you're looking to "take it to the next level" then EE is the way to go. It's a proper full fledged CMS.
The upfront learning curve is somewhat steep. Don't start with too difficult a site (or two). But if you're committed to it then it will pay back nice powerful returns by site 4 or 5. Being able to make your dynamic scripts (e.g. jQuery) even more dynamic is when the fun really begins.
Yes, there is a higher up front cost. On the other hand, WP. Drupal, etc. hacks take time. EE is about taking your design, any design, and making ti fly.
I received a link to one of these articles from @bennyfactor on Twitter... looks like Exchange Web Services could have some of the magic that is needed, but it might be (a) prohibitively time consuming, and (b) a HUGE ordeal. Like most things Microsoft :-/
The problem is, there are so many more things against my adoption of SharePoint that I really, really want to avoid that. I'd more likely scrap all calendaring functionality on the Intranet than use Sharepoint to get that working... and, even in Sharepoint, calendar integration isn't the best... especially for certain group calendaring functions.
That, along with advanced user roles/permissions/access control out-of-the-box, is one of the things that makes Drupal shine... along with Drupal's amazing Views module.
As an example of its flexibility, I redesigned the entire front page of Life is a Prayer.com in about an hour last night, without a hitch, by creating a new view for it (no PHP necessary). And, Drupal is free as in beer :D
M$ did publish the protocol used for some of that functionality, but they're complex and more trouble than its worth to try re-implementing. Honestly, you're better off just using sharepoint to do what you want.
Thanks, I appreciate that! We just finished it like a week ago, and after many painful design processes earlier in our history, this one went really, really smoothly, so I think it's a keeper!
Well, in EE you don't really have to deal with PHP if you don't want to. Everything works off of their tag system, which is well documented, so even though I am a PHP developer, when I am working on a site it is usually through EE tags.
We have developed a few open source add-ons for EE, and from that experience I can tell you that the experience level you need for extending EE is moderate. Nothing fancy, you just need a good understanding of functions and classes and how they work.
The thing is you can do an entire EE site and never touch a line of PHP. WP is all PHP. Not that it is hard PHP, but everything in EE is abstracted and pretty easy to pick up.
I think the main difference though is the loop. In EE, you have different content channels and they each have custom fields and field types. This makes it really flexible to basically do anything you can think of. I, personally, find that I have to bend the loop a little bit more to get it to handle different content types the way I want.
I translated this article into Russian. Do you mind?
Now that I've gotten comfortable hacking functions.php, 'the loop', and WP template tags...how would you compare it to working in EE.
I'm not a strong PHP coder (I usually have to hunt for examples or tutorials), so I'm wondering what the learning curve is like for EE.
Hey, great job on your company site. Sites like yours really make EE shine.
That's one heck of a consolidation project!
Curious, are you hooking into an Active Directory or Novell network via LDAP for authentication?
Also...how does Drupal handle the document management aspect? Does everything get sucked into a MySQL db?
Wow, there it is! This is pretty fantastic, thanks!
Well, there's an excellent resource for Twitter at Tweet Catholic – it's the most comprehensive, and easiest-to-use list of Catholics on Twitter (it's not comprehensive, but most of the big names are on there).
We use WP for some projects - it's clean, developer-friendly, and very customizable. I totally agree with your 5 reasons from your post too. WP rocks the house.
I can definitely understand your comment about the price. Usually we just include that price in our development costs and label it a win-win because of the time saved. On other projects, though, it can be prohibitively expensive when you aren't working with a budget that will accomodate it.
On the EE community, I'd say that it has really gained a lot of momentum in the past 6 months or so - mainly because of the release of EE2. It is also split up between CodeIgniter and ExpressionEngine guys, with a lot of overlap. We were at the EE/CI 2010 Conference in San Francisco earlier this year, and had a great time with the community. Not as big as the others you've mentioned, but like you said, very talented and very dedicated.
Those are sweet examples as well, I didn't know faithandfamilylive.com was an EE site.
I can't offer much here in the way of comparison. But I will say that I'm helping merge 13 intranets of a hospital system into one central Drupal site, because the company has decided that Drupal is the way to go. Included in that scope is (somehow) moving all the data from (literally) thousands of Sharepoint sites. So, while I certainly have my work cut out for me, still, I think this speaks to the versatility of Drupal. That's a major commitment from a big company to Drupal, if nothing else.
Check out the FSSP's new vocational video!
http://vimeo.com/14474135
or
http://gloria.tv/?media=95133
Hope I don't offend anyone, but I am not a big SharePoint fan.
I've built a couple portals back in my IT days (where everything was running on MS).
OK...here's a scenario that MIGHT be worthwhile...
If the Intranet is on:
1. A complete Windows environment. PCs>Servers. Preferably the latest servers and sharepoint editions (I stopped keeping track at 2007). It relies heavily on Active Directory.
2. Is all on a local LAN. I suppose some folks have had success accessing it from the Internet through a proxy server...sorry...I don't know what they call it anymore...
3. You heavily invest in end-user training. Frankly, I've never seen it work. Most folks don't get it and only scratch the surface in what it can do for them.
The problem is that Sharepoint was originally just developed for internal workgroups at MS and marketing got a hold of it and thought...hey!...enterprise document management! Big $$$.
Jeff...if you get roped into this one, you have my sympathy. I burned months on that stuff and in the end didn't have much end-user buy-in.
...ok...just looked at your dashboard mock-up. Nice. You can do something comparable with Sharepoint...but first you have to learn the MS way of doing things, and it ain't intuitive.
Like Anthony mentioned above, if there's an LDAP module for Drupal that would allow you to plug into the Active Directory with what you've got, that'd be the way to go.
I took a pretty close look at it and REALLY liked what I saw. I was also impressed with some of the sites built from it.
2 things held me back though (if anyone is interested...I've moved from Joomla to WordPress: http://www.catholictechtalk.com/blog/40-5-reasons-why-i-switched-from-jo...)
1. EE is a bit pricey for the developer license. Plus, you'd probably want to get the multi-site features and other add-ons and like it's been mentioned...can reach around $400 all told. It's not a huge outlay, but was a factor.
2. Developer community. While I was impressed with the EE community, both the skill-level and the dedication, it just doesn't have the momentum that Drupal/WordPress/Joomla currently enjoy.
It was a really hard decision for me, and there's a chance I might review it again in 6-12 months. A couple of my favorite Catholic sites run on EE: www.ncregister.com and www.faithandfamilylive.com.
Hope to hear others experiences with it.
True... and one issue I'm leery about is vendor lock-in/data portability.