> A little background. I am a Django developer for almost 4 years. > Recently I submitted a proposal to undertake the web operation of a > community run orgnization. One vendor proposed Joomla and I have > proposed Django. Never mind, he says Joomla is a framework. That is > OK. What primarily differentiates the two proposals is that mine wants > to develop all modules in Django (and use available Django-based > softwate). While the other one wants to use Joomla as the base and and > claims it will write code to modify Joomla or develop new modules from > scratch. My proposal saves more money.
Thanks for this additional background. There's a difference between a team evaluating where to invest their time when deciding new technologies to support as part of their service and a client making a choice between vendors that are using different technologies to produce a project. You are essentially looking for a way to favorably compare your proposal to the proposal of the other vendor, correct? In that case, I think the Django/Drupal article would be sufficient because it tackles the core "platform" vs "cms" issue. > I personally think developers are used to a modern programming language. > It is about preference. This is meaningless to most clients, because that speaks to your business not theirs. You need to answer questions like: - Will your platform be flexible enough to support changing requirements? - Will the client be able to find maintainers if you get hit by a bus or are too busy to work on the site? - If the site is redesigned in 2-3 years, how difficult will it be to migrate the current content? - How easy will the site be to use for the content editors? - If 3rd party functionality is buggy or ceases to be maintained, how difficult will it be to fix/maintain internally? - Will the site be as easy to maintain, improve 2 years from now as it is now? - When a new version of your platform is released, how easy will the upgrade process be? These questions directly effect the viability of your proposal to your client in the long run. I think platforms in general come out better than CMSs in these areas (and Django in particular). Here is a general critique of CMS systems in general compared to frameworks: http://sunlightlabs.com/blog/2009/content-management-systems-just-dont-work/ V -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django users" group. To post to this group, send email to django-us...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to django-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/django-users?hl=en.
