Forwarded at the request of Benjamin Horst: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: James Benstead <[email protected]> Date: Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 7:27 PM Subject: Re: Libreoffice and Drupal Security To: David Nelson <[email protected]> Cc: [email protected], Benjamin Benjamin Horst <[email protected]>, Alex Giorgi-Coll <[email protected]>
Hi David et al, On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 6:27 PM, David Nelson <[email protected]>wrote: > Hi Greg, :-) > > Thanks a lot for your answers. There, in fact you did indeed tell me > what I was curious to know. I read through your report, too. I've been > monitoring the discussions on the list... Keith Williams, notably, is > arguing hard for Drupal. Me, I'm simply an observer of this > discussion, so anything I say will be simply uninvited butting-in. I > could recommend you to jump into this thread: > > http://www.libreoffice.org/lists/website/msg00300.html > > There are SilverStripe proponents citing notably the admin interface > and the initial configuration of Drupal as cons for its adoption. > Security is not what's at issue for them. They seem to feel that > Drupal's admin interface is not easy to use, notably for admins with > no Drupal experience. > While this is true of the default Drupal admin interface, it is possible to build any admin interface you like for Drupal. There are a number of "admin themes" that can be set to kick in when an administrator wants to make changes to their site: see http://mogdesign.eu/blog/10-drupal-administration-themes/ as an example. Secondly, a huge amount of UI/UX work has been put into D7 so that the admin interface is usable out of the box. This work was headed up by Mark Boulton (http://www.markboulton.co.uk/), largely in response to a 2008 University of Baltimore study which examined the out-of-the-box usability of Drupal 6: http://drupal.org/usability-test-university-baltimore-community-solutions Please let me know if you would like me to contact Mark Boulton - he is highly unlikely to want to join the discussion but I am happy to put questions to him directly. Thirdly, the usability of any specific D6 site is really down to the culture of the individual or team that builds that site. I would not claim to be a designer (our Creative Director, Alex Giorgi-Coll, is copied into this email) but I have a strong interest in UI/UX from my days teaching web skills to people with disabilities. codeloom prioritises the UI/UX of the sites we produce. > > They haven't seen a convincing demo site with sufficient content on it > to properly showcase Drupal. Also, they are worried about their lack > of experience with it, and that if things go wrong they'll have no-one > to turn to. If they could get some ongoing and reliable support from > some Drupal people, and if they could get a look at the backend of a > live, operational site of some consequence, I'd say that could help > swing things. > We're aiming to produce just such a site on http://codeloom.net - I'll let you know when this is live. In the meantime, have you seen Drupal Gardens at http://www.drupalgardens.com/? That may go some way to properly showcasing Drupal. As far as support goes, this will take time and therefore potentially money. One place to enquire is http://openflows.org/ - we're due to be working with them on an education project, so let me know if you'd like me to mention the potential LibreOffice Drupal site to them. > > They need a wiki and forums, and there are voices that want those as > add-on modules integrated with Drupal. Some people seem to think that > it's better to have a dedicated product for each (CMS, forums and > Wiki). If you can convince them Drupal has an integrated answer that > is more advantageous than separate products, you can win the day. > This is an interesting one - Drupal has wiki-like capabilities but my current position would be to use Mediawiki for a specific wiki. I'd be really interested to hear of any Drupal-specific solutions, though. > > Some people also seem to have doubts about the ease of theming with > Drupal templates... Plus how to handle special data types... > With regards to Drupal theming, it is a technical challenge, especially to graphic designers with little PHP/jQuery knowledge. The D6 theming system can be learnt and taught relatively easily though; there are great tutorial DVDs available from http://www.lullabot.com, for example. As for handling special data types, can you be a litte more specific? I'm relatively non-technical ;) J. > > I hope this helps you plan your attack... You might care to liaise > with Keith Williams about this? > > Of course, if I can be of any help, please do let me know. My own > experience has been with small, personal sites done with Zikula > (ex-PostNuke), which I can happily hack and theme. And, more recently > with WordPress. But I'm a complete outsider and recent observer of the > TDF/LibO project. However, I'm looking for an opportunity to get > involved. > > Suggestion: Drupal people are the only CMS guys to have actively taken > an interest in the TDF sites project, but beware of discussion about > WorPress/Pods/BuddyPress gaining momentum...? > > Hope this helps, and thanks for the info. Personally, I reckon Drupal > deserves to win the day... > > Good luck, and all the best, :-) > > David Nelson > -- E-mail to [email protected] for instructions on how to unsubscribe List archives are available at http://www.libreoffice.org/lists/website/ All messages you send to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
