[Typo3] Re: re [typo3] typo3 vs plone. what are strenghts and weaknesses

Peter Kindström peter.kindstrom at abc.se
Sat Mar 26 22:47:06 CET 2005


Hi Robert

> How easy/difficult is it to learn
It is not to difficult to learn using it as an editor, but it
does not feel 100% logic to use. To edit a page:
 1. Choose a function in the left frame
 2. Choose page in the middle frame
 3. Edit page contents

But to edit the same page´s properties (named "Page header" by
the way) you do like this:
 A. Click on the page´s icon in the middle frame
 B. Choose Edit Page header in a context menu that pops up
 C. Edit page properties

It really should have been
 4. Choose the Properties tab
in the first example...

And to change the access rights to the page you do
 1. Choose (an other) function in the left frame
 2. Choose page in the middle frame
 3. Edit page access

This also should have been a tab
 4. Choose the Properties tab
in the first example.

Get it?


> How easy is it to adapt.
There are many modules/extension to choose from, but my
experience is that only about 10-25% can be used "out of the
box". You can get maybe about 75% to work quite easily by using
the manual and/or look in certain places in the admin part of
Typo3 (the backend). But sometims you have to spend quite a lot
of trial and error to get it woprking.
And finally I can´t get about 25% of the extensions to work at
all. :-(

What strikes me is that some rather easily documented (but
important) setups are not written down. Like that you have to do
the configuration:
  config.stat = 1
  config.stat_mysql = 1
to get the hit statistics module to work. When you install the
extension you get no documentation and no clue on how to set it
up or where to find the statistics. But when you find it, you
can get some help about it - but not on how to set it up...  :-(


> How stable is it, how stable are the modules.
Very stable, as far as I can tell. I think this is one of the
strengths of Typo3. And if you get the modules (extensions) to
work, they usually are stable too.


> How compatible are versions, how easy can I upgrade from one version to
> the other.

This is another good thing about Typo3. Backward compability is
important and is almost working 100% I think. And upgrading is
quite easy as long as you follow the documentation.


------------

All in all I think Typo3 is still a developers CMS. Programmers
control the development and try to make it user friendly. But
they are no usability gurus... yet!

But there are people trying to adress these things too and when
they get theor voices heard we´ll have a "killer application"!!!
 :-)


/Peter Kindström



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