plone vs drupal at Greenpeace UK

[Steve McMahon]

Wouldn't it be much better to integrate with an external list server
(e.g., Mailman) than to try to reproduce the functionality (including
bounce processing, confirmations, personalization, digesting and queue
management) inside Plone? Wouldn't we rather have those functions
loosely coupled?

Alexander Limi wrote:

> On Mon, 03 Jul 2006 10:33:57 -0700, Nate Aune <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
>> Alec's listen product can be setup to create new lists "on the fly" as
>> described in the README:
>> https://svn.plone.org/svn/collective/listen/trunk/README.txt
>
> The current suggestion is to give some of the bigger projects mailing
> lists on plone.org in this way, work out any problems, and then deploy
> it for all projects, maybe even including Plone itself.
>
> There are a lot of unknowns still, it needs a lot of testing before we
> can switch to it, obviously. But it is the holy grail of forum/mailing
> list integration. :)

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[Alexander Limi]

On Tue, 04 Jul 2006 13:57:07 -0700, Steve McMahon  
<[hidden email]> wrote:

> Wouldn't it be much better to integrate with an external list server  
> (e.g., Mailman) than to try to reproduce the functionality (including  
> bounce processing, confirmations, personalization, digesting and queue  
> management) inside Plone? Wouldn't we rather have those functions  
> loosely coupled?

Have you ever *used* Mailman? ;)

Until the mythical Mailman 3 rewrite happens, it's not much of a loss.  
Right now, the single most unusable tool I have to deal with on a  
day-to-day basis is Mailman. Its bounce processing sucks, its blocking  
abilities suck, the list management options are horrendous and pretty much  
unusable. Oh, and the code is so dense that even if it's Python, it's  
impossible to change anything.

What do we miss out on again? :)


--
_____________________________________________________________________

      Alexander Limi · Chief Architect · Plone Solutions · Norway

  Consulting · Training · Development · http://www.plonesolutions.com
_____________________________________________________________________

       Plone Co-Founder · http://plone.org · Connecting Content
   Plone Foundation · http://plone.org/foundation · Protecting Plone


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[Ben Mason-2]

We use MailBoxer within Plone successfully. Maybe that's worth looking at. It's not as comprehensive as Mailman, but depending on your needs, it might just be all you need.

Ben

> Have you ever *used* Mailman? ;)
>
> Until the mythical Mailman 3 rewrite happens, it's not much of a loss.
> Right now, the single most unusable tool I have to deal with on a
> day-to-day basis is Mailman. Its bounce processing sucks, its blocking
> abilities suck, the list management options are horrendous and pretty
> much
> unusable. Oh, and the code is so dense that even if it's Python, it's
> impossible to change anything.
>
> What do we miss out on again? :)
>
>
> --
> _____________________________________________________________________
>
>       Alexander Limi · Chief Architect · Plone Solutions · Norway
>
>   Consulting · Training · Development · http://www.plonesolutions.com
> _____________________________________________________________________
>
>        Plone Co-Founder · http://plone.org · Connecting Content
>    Plone Foundation · http://plone.org/foundation · Protecting Plone
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> NGO mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/ngo

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[Steve McMahon]

Hi Limi (note I've taken this off list),

Yes, I use Mailman, managing an install that's handling something over
100 lists. And, I won't defend its interface. But, for the rest, what
are you comparing it with? Last I looked (which was in the 2.x series),
Mailboxer had lifted some of Mailman's bounce detection code, but
required manual management of the bounces and had next-to no filtering
capabilities.

But, my real point was: do we really want to suck all this (mail
reception, filtering, bounce processing, confirmation, aggregation,
digesting ...) into the Zope/Plone instance, or would it be better to be
loosely coupled with external components?

Steve

Alexander Limi wrote:

> On Tue, 04 Jul 2006 13:57:07 -0700, Steve McMahon <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
>> Wouldn't it be much better to integrate with an external list server
>> (e.g., Mailman) than to try to reproduce the functionality (including
>> bounce processing, confirmations, personalization, digesting and queue
>> management) inside Plone? Wouldn't we rather have those functions
>> loosely coupled?
>
> Have you ever *used* Mailman? ;)
>
> Until the mythical Mailman 3 rewrite happens, it's not much of a loss.
> Right now, the single most unusable tool I have to deal with on a
> day-to-day basis is Mailman. Its bounce processing sucks, its blocking
> abilities suck, the list management options are horrendous and pretty
> much unusable. Oh, and the code is so dense that even if it's Python,
> it's impossible to change anything.
>
> What do we miss out on again? :)
>
>

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[Sisi Nutt]

Hi Steve,

I'm sorry if your latest message was supposed to be for Limi's eyes
only, but since it was sent to the list, I want to answer you anyway.

You seem to share the same concerns about moving away from mailman as my
sys admin. And while I don't want to knock your (or his) concerns (I
think they are partly valid, esp. with regards to scalability), I want
to address why the NGO community needs listen from a less technical
perspective, as this is the NGO list after all

For groups such as mine (Friends of the Earth International), the so
called digital divide is a major political issue. When we first tried to
move people away from email lists to a more transparent and manageable
forum style way of having discussions, they rebelled. Personally I don't
blame them. Why would anyone want to use a forum rather than their email
when they are on a dial up connection?

However, the email lists are chaotic. If you are out in the field for a
couple of weeks, coming back to the office and trying to keep up with
all the campaign email discussions of all the various lists can be a
nightmare.

My dream was to have the email archives readable like a forum. Not only
readable, but also able to allow people to answer from our extranet. I
asked Kapil about it at the last Plone conference in Vienna, but he
thought it was not possible. I then (through Jon Stahl and Christian
from UNEP) found out about listen.

Mailman does not have this forum view functionality. There is no reason,
imho, why it should develop it either. But for the NGO community using
Plone, that functionality is a goldmine. No one who seriously works with
groups in the south believes that broadband is about to be available
everywhere. So offline online solutions are essential for good
communication in a world wide network.

If we were to rely on Mailman as an external component for our mailing
list needs, we would loose control of what we wanted in a mailing list.
As Alex said, it's the holy grail.

I hesitate to say this because I have not got in touch with Alec
Mitchell yet, but I would like to write a funding proposal to help with
the development of listen (and Mailboxer?).
If anyone is interested in some co funding please let me know. I was
planning on submitting something to The Mellon Foundation.

Cheers,
sisi

Steve McMahon wrote:

> Hi Limi (note I've taken this off list),
>
> Yes, I use Mailman, managing an install that's handling something over
> 100 lists. And, I won't defend its interface. But, for the rest, what
> are you comparing it with? Last I looked (which was in the 2.x series),
> Mailboxer had lifted some of Mailman's bounce detection code, but
> required manual management of the bounces and had next-to no filtering
> capabilities.
>
> But, my real point was: do we really want to suck all this (mail
> reception, filtering, bounce processing, confirmation, aggregation,
> digesting ...) into the Zope/Plone instance, or would it be better to be
> loosely coupled with external components?
>
> Steve
>
> Alexander Limi wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 04 Jul 2006 13:57:07 -0700, Steve McMahon <[hidden email]> wrote:
>>
>>> Wouldn't it be much better to integrate with an external list server
>>> (e.g., Mailman) than to try to reproduce the functionality (including
>>> bounce processing, confirmations, personalization, digesting and
>>> queue management) inside Plone? Wouldn't we rather have those
>>> functions loosely coupled?
>>
>>
>> Have you ever *used* Mailman? ;)
>>
>> Until the mythical Mailman 3 rewrite happens, it's not much of a loss.
>> Right now, the single most unusable tool I have to deal with on a
>> day-to-day basis is Mailman. Its bounce processing sucks, its blocking
>> abilities suck, the list management options are horrendous and pretty
>> much unusable. Oh, and the code is so dense that even if it's Python,
>> it's impossible to change anything.
>>
>> What do we miss out on again? :)
>>
>>
>

--
# sisi nutt # web campaigner
# Friends of the Earth International
# PO Box 19199 # 1000 GD Amsterdam # The Netherlands
# Tel [phone]  # Fax [phone]  # http://www.foei.org

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[Martin Aspeli-2]

Hi Sisi & co,


> My dream was to have the email archives readable like a forum. Not only
> readable, but also able to allow people to answer from our extranet. I
> asked Kapil about it at the last Plone conference in Vienna, but he
> thought it was not possible. I then (through Jon Stahl and Christian
> from UNEP) found out about listen.

This is not just important to you - it's important to anyone who's too
busy or in possession of a life to follow mailing lists constantly and
reconstruct conversations abstractly from mailing list posts.

In other words, we want to see something like listen speak to the UI of
something like Ploneboard. For Plone's lists, or, at least, for the
mailing lists of some "important" third party products and projects,
this would be a dream.

I'd also trust few people more than I would Alec with funding money. I
have no idea what his commitments are like these days, but I know he's
interested in working on listen and getting to completion and polish.

Martin

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[Melody Winkle]

>From the side of the CMS evaluation itself, the CM Pros organization is
trying to get a "CMSML" project going:
  http://www.cmprofessionals.org/resources/cmsml/

It's volunteer-based and slow-moving, but the idea is that there could be
a standard set of criteria for evaluating systems.  I think the hardest
part is that the simple checklist system doesn't tell you enough - you
need paragraphs describing how things actually work, and honest people
keeping the information current.

For example, there are a couple implementations of this CMSML at:
  http://tools.hartman-communicatie.nl/
  http://www.cmsreview.com/Features/Compare.html

>From just a quick look, you see the difficulty of getting this sort of
project off the ground, but it still might be worth filling out more of
the Plone entries.  I'd expect especially the cmsrview site would be
getting some amount of use.

And then this (or parts of it) could be a basis for more information on
the plone.org site.  If anybody thinks this is a good idea, I'd be happy
to get an update on the CMSML project and ask Bob Doyle about procedures
for updating the cmsreview site (of course we'd need to have somebody
agree to work on the updates - I could help in small amounts, but couldn't
do it all).

-Melody


On Sun, 2 Jul 2006, Nate Aune wrote:

>> Thought y'all might be interested to see the results of GPs' recent
>> evaluation of Plone vs. Drupal (vs Planet2, an in-house OpenACS solution).
>>
>> http://importantprojects.com/archives/000084.php
>>
>> Plone lost narrowly to Drupal. I  offered some extensive comments to Rob
>> Purdie, who ran the process (and is a friend).  I think they misjudged
>> Plone on a few key points, my comments on those are below.
>>
>> Nonetheless, their requirements are a VERY interesting read to get a sense
>> of what a typical large NGO might be looking for in a CMS.
>
> I think some sort of "FAQ for CMS evaluators" on plone.net would go a long
> way to avoiding these misconceptions about Plone. There is a *lot* of power
> lurking under the hood of Plone + add-on products, but you don't get this
> sense in browsing plone.org and reading the mailing lists. Or maybe you do,
> but you have to look in 10 different sources to gather all the information
> you need to make a decision.
>
> We need to provide a comprehensive overview of what Plone offers, and your
> feedback to Rob Purdie below is a good start. I think if this were to be
> generalized and slap a few screenshots/screencasts in there, it would give
> evaluators a jump-start for considering Plone in their CMS evaluation
> process.
>
> The mockup that Limi posted at http://plone.org/ploneorg_frontpage is good
> because it gives a quick-jump overview of what Plone offers. But I think it's
> still too simple for people who are seriously considering Plone. If this
> overview had links to more in-depth information, then it would be a much more
> valuable resource.
>
> For example, for the "Pluggable Authentication" heading under the "Standards
> Compliant" tab, a link to a page with more information about PlonePAS and
> howtos for connecting it with LDAP and Active Directory would go a long way.
> As it is now, the evaluator has to hunt for this info, rather than having it
> easily accessible/digestible.
>
>> Also it's interesting to note how hard the Drupal community worked this
>> process:
>> http://groups.drupal.org/node/411
>> http://groups.drupal.org/node/458
>
> This also shows how the Drupal community is perhaps more transparent because
> the list archives are easily read through-the-web and don't require
> subscribing to the mailing list in order to post. Compare these Drupal list
> archive pages to the Plone NGO-list archive pages:
> http://lists.plone.org/pipermail/ngo/
> which are more friendly and inviting discussion?
>
> We might want to consider using listen (http://plone.org/products/listen)
> which allows for mailing lists to be archived on a Plone site, which means
> they are searchable using the Plone search tool, and members can subscribe
> and respond to the lists through-the-web.
>
> Nate
>
>> Very interesting food for thought.
>>
>> Here's the feedback I offered to Rob Purdie:
>>
>> ===============
>>
>> System scability: Plone A- , Drupal A.
>> -- Not sure what that means to you, but Plone (well, Zope actually) has
>> built-in multi-server clustering support and can scale almost infinitely in
>> terms of traffic.  Drupal, AFAIK, does not.  Plus, it has the smartest
>> caching technology out there (CacheFu) which dramatically speeds up
>> performance.
>>
>> RSS Feeds:  Plone A, Drupal A+
>> -- Again, not sure why Plone would rate lower.  Everything in Plone
>> produces RSS, and you can construct RSS feeds for anything you can search
>> for, which AFAIK is actually MORE flexible than Drupal.
>>
>> Be able to include HTML in any field of the CMS: Plone B-, Drupal A+
>> -- I don't know what this means, but I think this is a pretty weak
>> requirement.  The whole point of a CMS is to separate formatting from
>> content.  Plone allows you to insert arbitrary HTML into page bodies.  You
>> can override styles locally if you want to configure Plone to allow that.
>> Perhaps the evaluators didn't realize this -- Plone doesn't really
>> advertise it.  You certainly don't want to insert arbitrary HTML into
>> metadata fields.
>> Global Login: Plone B, Drupal B+
>> -- Not sure what this means at GP, but Plone unlike Drupal, has a pluggable
>> authentication system that can authenticate users against prety much
>> anything.   A single outlier rating made the difference.
>>
>> reuse/leverage content: Plone F-, Drupal F-
>> -- I know this was constructed for Planet2, but perhaps you weren't aware
>> that Plone, using the PloneRSS product, can import content via an RSS feed
>> and transform it into first-class content objects.  That probably rates
>> better than an F-, doncha think?
>>
>>
>> Product database:  Plone B, Drupal A
>> -- If you're talking about full-on e-commerce support in the CMS, Plone is
>> definitely weaker there.  But if you're talking about custom content types,
>> I can't see how you one could rate Plone significantly lower than Drupal.
>> Plone's Archtypes system for creating custom content types is second to
>> none.  Fields can be maintained through the web.  Validation, UI and more
>> are all specified in a single schema.
>>
>> Cross-browser support:  Plone A, Drupal A+
>> -- What is this based on?  Plone is the most validatable,
>> standards-compliant package out there.  There was only one outlying rating
>> on this, otherwise both would hvae gotten A+ across the board.
>>
>> E-newsletter distribution: Plone C, Drupal A+
>> -- You're giving Drupal an A+ because of CiviMail?  Beta quality "developer
>> only" code?  Relying on any CMS for email newsletter distribution is pretty
>> dodgy, IMHO.  A serious organization like GP should be using a powerful
>> hosted email newsetter distrbution tool such as WhatCounts, Vertical
>> Response, etc. that offers serious deliverability, bounce management, etc.
>> Plone plays nicely with these tools.  A single outlier rating accounts for
>> nearly all of the difference.
>>
>> extensibility: Plone A, Drupal A+.
>>  -- Not sure what this is based on.  But to argue that Plone is any less
>> extensible than Drupal is simply not true.
>>
>> I'm surprised that GP didn't consider support for multi-lingual content as
>> a requirement.  Plone is of course very, very strong here.
>>
>> I'm also surprised GP didn't really consider versioning support.  Plone is
>> also very strong here.
>>
>> ==============
>> best,
>> jon
>>
>> -----------------------------
>> Jon Stahl, Program Manager
>> ONE/Northwest - Online Networking for the Environment
>> [hidden email]  http://www.onenw.org
>> 206.286.1235x15  skype: jonstahl  y!: jondstahl
>>
>> Want a piece of my mind? Check out my blog at:
>> http://blogs.onenw.org/jon
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>
>
> --
> Nate Aune - [hidden email]
> http://www.jazkarta.com  (open source technology solutions)
> http://www.nateaune.com  (blog, photos, music)
>
>
>
>
>
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[Dylan Jay-3]

Martin Aspeli wrote:

> Jon Stahl wrote:
>> Thought y'all might be interested to see the results of GPs' recent
>> evaluation of Plone vs. Drupal (vs Planet2, an in-house OpenACS
>> solution).
>>  
>> http://importantprojects.com/archives/000084.php
>>  
>> Plone lost narrowly to Drupal. I  offered some extensive comments to
>> Rob Purdie, who ran the process (and is a friend).  I think they
>> misjudged Plone on a few key points, my comments on those are below.
>
> So do I :)
>
>> Nonetheless, their requirements are a VERY interesting read to get a
>> sense of what a typical large NGO might be looking for in a CMS.
>>  
>> Also it's interesting to note how hard the Drupal community worked
>> this process:
>> http://groups.drupal.org/node/411
>> http://groups.drupal.org/node/458
>
> Love those URLs :)
>
> What's interesting is that we didn't know about this. I'd have loved to
> have a discussion with them on plone-users or IRC, but I guess they
> never went there. That's a pity, given some of their (probably
> understandable) misconceptions.

Notice they have a Drupal marketing group.

I'm going to be doing things about plone marketing in australia. Drupal
and Joomla are much larger here. Where do I go to find out the best ways
of doing that?
We're leaving the marketing to the integrators it seems.







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[Dylan Jay-3]

Martin Aspeli wrote:

> Duane Raymond wrote:
>> Actually - as I also know Rob (who project managed the GP
>> requirements process) I tried to get a few Plone networks to
>> respond.  I both emailed ZEA Partners and the ZopeUK Association
>> lead 3-4 weeks before the presentation happened - and on the
>> issue of GP UK bid I heard nothing back as to if someone acted on
>> it (someone obviously did - but I don't know if it came via one
>> of those networks) - all despite chasing several times.
>
> If that's the case, it is indeed a shame. My point was more general,
> though - if organisations want to evaluate Plone, you don't (only) have
> to go out and find a vendor who's willing to make a bid; with a list of
> requirements as detailed as the one they had, they could've engaged with
> the whole community via the mailing lists and probably got a more
> balanced response back - if anything, it would've made them better
> informed buyers of the final product.

I agree with your sentiment but organisations like still like to deal
with people not lists. We need to support the people who are on the
ground, which is the integrators


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[Karl Horak]

>PS - Perhaps we should have regular Plone NGO meetings (physical)
>in various countries  and chats (virtual) to organise for the
>next time.  I'm up for organising one London/Oxford UK

I concur and suggest that an NGO component be placed on the agenda of this June's New Orleans Regional Symposium.  

[Alexander Limi]

On Wed, 09 Apr 2008 10:39:52 -0700, Dylan Jay  
<[hidden email]> wrote:

> I'm going to be doing things about plone marketing in australia. Drupal  
> and Joomla are much larger here. Where do I go to find out the best ways  
> of doing that?
> We're leaving the marketing to the integrators it seems.

Use the evangelism list. :)

--
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