Textpattern, Nucleus, or Drupal?

kejonn · 2006-08-28 21:50:01

Hi everyone, been looking through the forums here – as well as those on drupal.org and nucleuscms.org – to try to get some answers without just coming out point blank and asking. So now I’m to the point of asking :).

I’ve been using PHP-Fusion for one of my websites for close to a year now and while it does much of what I want it to do, it really doesn’t offer the best blogging ability. There are some projects to improve this but there are some inflexibilities in the theming that I dislike as well so I’ve decided to look at other options. That is how I came to this site.

In my quest to find alternatives, I’ve narrowed my choices down to the three listed above. I looked at ModX and really like what I saw but it is too far from usable right now for what I have in mind. So please do not ask if I’ve looked at Joomla, e107, Brand X CMS, etc. because I have.

That being said, here are some of the things I’d like for now and the future of my site:

(1) the ability to allow users to have their own blogs. I know all three offer this but how successfully does Textpattern implement this via the appropriate plugin(s)?
(2) forums – I know only Drupal has an integrated solution but punbb or SMF will suit me if the bridge is good.
(3) fairly simple to code on extras/mods/plugins/etc – from time to time I may write custom scripts to add functionality to my site. By simple I don’t mean the coding itself but how easy it is to integrate with the framework.
(4) the ability to handle a large membership (not existing but potential).
(5) fairly simple theming/skinning. In other words, I’d like to be able to look at the underlying (X)HTML and CSS of templates and port them over to the CMS/CMF I am using without a struggle. PHP-Fusion was an easy system to do so but very inflexible when it came to certain design aspects.

Right now that’s it. More will come as I go but I can almost predict that much of what I will want to add will need to be custom written regardless of whether I choose Nucleus, TXP, or Drupal.

I’ve been looking for some posts in here about social networking and community driven sites and I suppose that is the best short description of what I want. I know Drupal can do this and probably offers the best capability of these 3 but I’ve seen some other issues with it that make me hesitant: larger learning curve, hungrier on resources (I will be starting off on a shared hosting plan). And I also know that both Nucleus and Textpattern may fall short of what I want to do but I want to get user opinion before I just bury myself into Drupal.

I do know that hcgtv has worked with both Nucleus and Texpattern so perhaps he can give me a comparison/rundown on the capabilities of the two. I did notice that even he categorizes Nucleus as a blog on his CMS site while Textpattern and Drupal are placed in the CMS section (PHPXref.com).

Any thoughts would be welcome. My present site that I want to change can be found here: Finding Believers. The site already has the basic functionality I want but I’d really like a better blogging ability as well as multi-user blogs AND a more flexible layout capability. Oh, and just so you don’t think I’m a beginner looking for simple pre-made, “out of the box” website solutions, I coded the calendar addon script for that site and its a very popular mod for PHP-Fusion right now. IOW, I do know enough PHP and HTML to get me by ;).

hcgtv · 2006-08-28 23:59:19

Hi,

Let me see if I can shed some light or further muddy the waters:

1. Nucleus is better for multi-blogs, you create a blog and then assign team members to it. When a team member signs on, they only get access to their blog. Categories are per blog and image uploads are kept in a separate directory per member. The only problem comes with templates, giving a user access to templates means they have access to all templates. Jeff MacMichael took Nucleus and created a true multi-blog solution called blogcadia, I’ve been testing it and it works rather well.

2. Nucleus bridges with PunBB via a plugin, new members created in Nucleus are created in PunBB. Articles entered on Nucleus are fed to PunBB where commenting can take place. You can click on hcgtv in my sig to see it in action.

3. Plugins are a toss up, I think both Textpattern and Nucleus are equally powerful in that regard.

4. Since Textpattern is a CMS, membership goes towards Nucleus, since it’s a true blog app.

5. Skins/Templates are easy to create in both Nucleus and Textpattern. It’s very easy to port XHTML templates once you have a good handle on the inner workings. I ported quite a few skins to Nucleus and I plan on doing the same for Textpattern. Ease of adding a skin goes towards Nucleus, upload a directory containing an XML file with it’s associated CSS and images, then install it in the admin area.

Now let’s muddy the waters a bit. Why am I running Textpattern if Nucleus has all these wonderful features? Simple, I like that Textpattern is a CMS that can be made to act as a blog, where Nucleus is a blog that can be made to act like a CMS.

Looking towards the future: Textpattern will need a better permission system on the backend so we can give users their own blogs. As soon as PunBB 1.3 comes out, we can start coding the bridge to Textpattern. Team Textpattern, are you there?

So to answer your question, Nucleus for now, Textpattern for the future ;)

kejonn · 2006-08-29 12:04:49

Thanks hcgtv! Sorry to “call you out” in the post but I know you’ve worked with both TXP and Nucleus – you’re on both forums AND punbb. I’m somewhat at the stage of making a run at one system and was trying to get a feel where to invest my time without it being a waste of time. I was all set to dig into Drupal but I wasn’t looking forward to it. Not that I’m not up to the challenge but I sincerely feel that if I can get there with something that is easier to learn and use, I’ll save much more time and effort. Plus – and I know this may be odd – I like being associated with “underdogs” and Nucleus and TXP are compared to Drupal. No offense to anyone, but its true.

Again, thanks. I think I’m going to get more serious now with perhaps Nucleus and test the waters.

Last edited by kejonn (2006-08-29 12:05:40)

Textpattern CMS

Textpattern CMS support forum

#1 2006-08-28 21:50:01

Textpattern, Nucleus, or Drupal?

#2 2006-08-28 23:59:19

Re: Textpattern, Nucleus, or Drupal?

#3 2006-08-29 12:04:49

Re: Textpattern, Nucleus, or Drupal?

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