IndyCMSSurvey

Dear Drupal development group,

We are writing on behalf of a working group within the Indymedia network which is tasked with researching content management systems. We are contacting you as part of a survey we are conducting of development teams of active CMS software projects.

Indymedia is a global network of websites which acts as a clearinghouse for independent media. We've been successfully deploying real world applications of user networks and user-generated content websites since 1999. There are over 100 IMC groups around the world who meet in real life and operate these websites.

Over the years, we have internally created a number of CMS projects with varying success. An overview of those projects can be found here: https://docs.indymedia.org/view/Devel/WebHome

In 2006, a conference of Indymedia developers was held in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Indymedia programmers from all over the world came together and met about the state of Indymedia CMS'es. A resolution was adopted that we should abandon our miscellaneous and scattered projects, find a mainstream open source CMS and dedicate all of our resources to customizing that software and contributing to that project.

The first step in that process is conducting a survey of active CMS software projects. As part of that, we are contacting each CMS developer team with this same email and survey. We are asking that anyone who is an active developer for a particular CMS project respond in part or completely to the questions listed below. The information and insight we get from your responses will help us find the perfect match for our development plans.

Some of the questions are simple and we already know ("what language does the CMS use?"). However, we believe we'll find value in getting answers like this from everyday developers on the project.

We thank you in advance for your time. When we find the right project match, we hope there will be a mutual exchange which will greatly benefit both Indymedia and the CMS software teams.

Signed, ryan, from the imc-cms working group imc-cms@lists.indymedia.org

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(survey begins) ----------

INDYMEDIA CMS DEVELOPERS SURVEY Please fill in as many questions as you can. When you are completed, you should email your responses to imc-cms@lists.indymedia.org

1) Survey Part 1 - Personal Details a) Your name?

Aotearoa IMC

b) Your geographic location?

Aotearoa / New Zealand

c) How long have you worked with Drupal and what work do you do with the project?

rather new, it is running http://indymedia.org.nz

d) Do you work on any other CMS projects?

nope, glimpsed at IndyCore, though.

2) Survey Part 2 - CMS Basics a) What programming language is Drupal written in?

PHP

b) What is the backend database used by Drupal?

MySQL

c) Are there other servers required (application server, Tomcat, etc)?

no

d) How do you describe the overall software design of Drupal?

looks clean and easy to extend. a good piece of PHP code.

e) Can you give details about real-world scaleability considerations for Drupal?

no

3) Survey Part 3 - CMS Functionality a) A core feature of our software is the ability for anonymous users to post media to appear on the site. Is this easily added to a site using Drupal?

looks like that. Drupal-internal logging is disabled, but still needs a check in code and database. only when submitting articles (not comments) the user has to be logged-in to use something else then anonymous as pseudonym.

b) Can you describe the site search functionality available?

not yet.

c) How is RSS/XML/RDF support included?

you can easily add blogrolls and alikes.

d) We would like to have one server per site which allows many instances of actual websites, each with different admin logins and different websites altogether. Is this easy to set up with Drupal?

yes.

e) Can you describe the multimedia support in the software? We allow users to upload and manipulate online all types of media - mpeg, mp3, ogg, jpg, pdf, etc.

it is possible...

f) Internationalization is very important to us. Many of our sites support 2-3 or more languages. Can you describe how this is accomplished in Drupal?

not yet.

g) What types of anti-abuse or anti-spam measures are in the code?

captcha as external module.

h) Is there a calendar included in the codebase?

as external module.

i) How do you describe how a user would edit a given piece of content on the website, or briefly describe the model used in this part of the functionality?

click publish button, choose article, edit, preview, submit.

j) How do you describe any type of user moderation system that is built into Drupal?

similar to dada?

k) What types of integration is there with P2P networks?

dunno

l) Another important feature for us is networking between the websites. If we want users from one website to have rights on another website in the network, how could we do this?

dunno

m) We are concerned with the ability to easily rsync pages from a website to other servers and setup a type of mirroring scheme. How would this be accomplished with Drupal?

dunno

4) Survery Part 4 - Miscellaneous a) What do you believe are the top selling points for Drupal?

clean code, large user base

b) From what you know about the Indymedia network, how well do you think IMC would mesh with the development community for the CMS?

dunno, as inviduals should be fine. there was an issue with an Indymedia group, but that was due to the group policy on the Drupal website.

c) What are the top 3 areas you believe the development team for the CMS needs to be improved?

dunno.

d) Where do you see Drupal in five years?

running on most webservers that do not support Python or Ruby.

Thank you for your time and consideration. Please return this survey to imc-cms@lists.indymedia.org