[TYPO3-UG US] Drupal vs. TYPO3

[Christopher Torgalson]

Hi,

On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 11:26 AM, Zachary Davis, Cast Iron Coding LLC
<zach at castironcoding.com> wrote:
> We regularly get clients who have been told by their colleagues,
> acquaintances, etc that they should be looking at Drupal for their CMS
> needs, and we end up trying to convince them that TYPO3 is a better fit.
> I expect this happens to the rest of you as well on occasion.
>
> I'm sure that there are some things that Drupal does better than TYPO3
> and some things that TYPO3 does better than Drupal, and I'd like to make
> a list of these items so I can help my clients make educated decisions.
> What are some of the things that you think TYPO3 does really well in
> relation to Drupal and vice versa?

Both systems have lots A quick list off the top of my head from the
developer's point of view...:


Drupal strengths:

* (Relative) simplicity of development (YMMV!)
* Built-in community-related features (compare to the potentially huge
setup times with sr feuser register...)
* Built-in news publishing (i.e. 'stories' content type)
* Very nice custom content creation capability (i.e. CCK)
* Very nice custom db queries (i.e. Views)
* Ease of module development/better API docs (i.e. it's easier to code
a basic module)
* [Possibility of making a] totally accessible admin area


Drupal's weaknesses:

* INSANE default html (i.e. in blocks and--especially!--views)
* Blocks interface
* Inflexible layout engine (note: you *can* make anything you want,
but there's nothing like the ease and flexibility of TYPO3's
many-content-elements-per-page paradigm)
* Manual module installation
* Too many core updates!


TYPO3 strengths:

* Flexibility of layouts (not Drupal's stupid, inflexible,
hard-to-manage content/blocks system)
* Typoscript (!) (Drupal has nothing this flexible)
* Permissions (Drupal has no way to set permissions per db-field link TYPO3)
* Page Tree/List module (Drupal has only an analogue of the List
module, and there's no real way to get an overview of the structure of
a site)
* Sophistication of extension development (i.e. it's easier to code a
complex extension)
* GIFBUILDER (though I think imagecache actions may be competitive...)
* HMENU/TMENU (Drupal's menus simply have nothing like this kind of power)
* TSconfig (i.e. a Super-configurable BE)
* Extension manager
* Better (content-level!) caching


TYPO3 weaknesses:

* Complexity (YMMV here too)
* Forms templating (e.g. I will NOT recommend TYPO3 to any client who
needs an online registration system without a damned good
reason...customizing the forms in sr feuser register and other similar
extensions involves a prohibitively large amount of labour...)
* Totally inaccessible BE


I could go on...

-- 
Christopher Torgalson
http://www.typo3apprentice.com/