[TYPO3-english] choosing typo3

[Andreas Becker]

On Sat, Mar 27, 2010 at 3:50 AM, Dmitry Dulepov <dmitry.dulepov at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi!
>
> Andreas Becker wrote:
> > The most interesting part is that most of those who now are using TYPO3
> used
> > Joomla or Drupal before.
>
> And vice versa... Just to be fair.
>

This might be true in Germany but not here as TYPO3 is nearly unknown here.
South East Asia is simply Joomla Playground and people get tired of always
renewing their templates and waiting for developers being available again to
modify their websites. Same appears to Drupal. Some customers came to us
because of the fear that the new Version of Drupal will break their complete
sites and they realized that TYPO3 has never broken anything since 3.6 or
even 3.5. Also they realized that their sites - especially those made with
Joomla - have to much sql injection and other security problems and that
their sites are more down than up. Especially now in recession people are
looking for ways to do part of the works or even everything by themselves
without to depend to any developers. And exactly here was Joomla and Drupal
were big as people did not think about security at all. They clicked and had
their templates. They downloaded a skin and their site looked nice. They did
not worry at the beginning to rework the complete CMS and Template after a
new Version or Scurity update of Joomla or Drupal. They did this before the
same way like they knew it from setting up Websites with HTML or Flash. You
wanna change something ok renew everything.

Meanwhile the word has been spread that a CMS can be much much more and
actually reduce your workload. People don't want to loose their content with
every new update or security fix. They want to update the extensions with a
click and switch back immediately to a former version if problems occur even
without knowledge of PHP or even programming at all. They want to modify
their templates with some few clicks. Move around content into different
mixed columns so that their website looks more like a magazine. All of this
is possible with TYPO3 and Joomla and Drupal fail completely. Modex is
actually the only one which is a bit similar but here many other major
benefits of a CMS are missing.

Our experience is indeed that people who want a flexible and easy to handle
website switch to TYPO3. Programmers which don't like Typoscript (most of
them even don't know what it is! or have ever tried it) go to Drupal and
made Joomla before. Especially now after the release of WEC Starter Package
and Busy Noggins Starter Package Everyone - even non programmers can handle
TYPO3 websites and it is getting even more and more easier, while in Joomla
and Drupal you really depend on Developers who know PHP or SMARTY or what
else. I would say that TYPO3 is empowering people to do it by themselves (if
they are using the framework for templavoila)  and they get independent of
developers - while in Drupal, Joomla and also the TYPO3 standard templating
sites are empowering Developers to make Customers depended on them.

i.e.
We tested Drupal, Joomla, TYPO3 standard templating from scratch, TYPO3
standarding template Package from Mediatech, wec_starter Package, Ron Halls
Package, with students from University to find out more why they are using
or not using a CMS, Everyone had to setup a website with these Packages and
modify a template as well as ad some basic features and build up a site
structure which was flexible enough to move apply changes in position of
content and sites later on.

TYPO3 standard templating form scratch failed completly - sorry to say this,
but most gave up just after they had the Dummy Package installed and tried
to get a template working. - They did not like that they had to read lots of
stuff about how to do this and often it was not very understandable for them
to.

The mediatech Package was liked by many. It had a very easy to understand
description from Gregs website and sites where up and running in no time.
But when they had to get the different column settings running it failed. To
complicated to apply nice multi columns like in a newspaper or seen on many
common websites. It might change with JOEYs IRRE stuff but to be honest
until now I doubt it.

Joomla (well we are in a Joomla world here) was at the beginning the big
favorite. But only at the beginning. People had sites up and running with a
nice looking template in nearly no time but than the problems started when
they had to modify the templates and finally it failed totally to setup a
flexible column setting which the customer could use by himself.

Drupal was also one of the favorites but failed the same like Joomla before
when people had to modify templates and to make it flexible so that actually
the customer can choose and set it up in columns by himself.

Rons Package was one of the easiest to setup and the students liked the way
they were now able to apply skins. But still they had problems to get the
TYPOscript Parts running.

The wec_starter Package was the absolute winner in all disciplines. This is
why I have since 2 weeks every day new students in my office popping up who
want to learn more about TYPO3. When you ask the students they'll tell you
that the wec Package is the easiest and the best documented CMS at all. In
really no time the students had complete websites running which really
looked sometimes like newspaper settings. Some of them started even to
collaborate with each other so one was developing a template which was than
used by others and another group buildup an extension (realty) and inserted
demo content and with using .t3d import export feature at the end everybody
had the realty stuff also working in his own site in no time. No one had
problem with Jesus inside. They figured immediately out how to deactivate
the wec_about and how to change the wordings and extensions, i.e. the
jobboard. What they also liked was the "Feature" Settings in wec config.
With a click they were able to activate and deactivate complete branches.

To be fair we need to share another experience we made while doing this CMS
experiment. There were some programming "Gurus" under the students and they
- but only them liked the standard templating methode and digged deeper in
the code and also they liked Drupal more than the wec_starter package. In
their opinon the wec_starter package was no programming anymore and they did
not like this. Most graphic and design people liked most the wec_starter
Package - actually the skins - but they had problems to get some HTML parts
into the TYPOscripts of the skins.

Go out and test yourself. It would be interesting to hear from your
experiences too.

Andi














>
> --
> Dmitry Dulepov
> TYPO3 expert / TYPO3 security team member Read more @
> http://dmitry-dulepov.com/
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