Drupal

Anybody ever used Drupal for a CMS? Seems to have quite a few features & modules that FIRST teams could use for their websites, if they didn’t have time time or people to get a site up for their team.

Because I really hate doing unneccesary work, and I didn’t want another dysfunctional flash website from the freshman who worked on the website last year, I chose to use a CMS for our site. After doing some research and trying out several CMSs (including Drupal), I chose PostNuke. With the latest versions, PostNuke is definitley the most flexible system I have seen. Really anything is possible. Anyway, you probably shouldn’t just take anyone’s advice. Go to www.opensourcecms.com and try out one of a few dozen CMSs installed on that site. It really is a very useful tool. There are probably too many to look at right now, so I suggest you only really consider PostNuke, Mambo, Drupal, Geeklog, XOOPS, and e107.

I’ve played with Mambo and e107, and they left something of a bad taste in my mouth, as they were far too complicated to just guide people through… (“you post news articles by going to the control panel, clicking on modules, then …”)

Though definitely, once you get past the learning curve, they are quite powerful little buggers.

BTW: I can’t stand *nukes… they all have the same look to them. Mambo has that nuke feel, but at least you can muss with the templates enough to make it look different. Ever seen a *nuke site that you didn’t look at, and instantly think nuke?

I can’t speak for the other nukes, but with the latest templating schemes (Xanthia-included in the package, AutoTheme-a 3rd party addon), it is very easy to create almost any design. My team’s site currently has a standard 3 column (*nuke) look to it just because I think it really is a good design and it hasn’t become the standard for no reason.

Mambo is not the most oriented towards user contributions, its much less a community site and more a true CMS. Again, I definitley suggest you try more of them out.