My employer (a large prestigious concern is all I'll say) is looking at getting a CMS to manage many of its websites. I am tasked with providing a developer's perspecttive. The sites will mostly be sites geared toward providing information with some community content (blogs, forums) and very little in the way of transactions. The emphasis is not ecommerce.

In any event, they recently sent me on Fatwire training and I found its templating system, overall architecture and developer tools among the most horrible things I've seen in some time. The training itself was poorly written and poorly executed. There was a rather strong whiff of both amateurishness and kluge-iness that I found rather at odds with it 75,000/CPU price tag.

Still -- I look at their client list: New York Times, Business Week, several big government, education and medical sites -- and wonder, is it just me?

So I realize that only rarely do the Open Source and Commercial CMS twains meet, but if there is anyone out there with some Content Server experience who would like to tell us all as much as they can BOTH pro and con vis-a-vis Fatwire, I know I would be much obliged. This kind of discussion seems particularly appropriate now as more and more large enterprises are looking at, and using, Drupal.

Comments

Caleb G2’s picture

But Drupal is satisfying the likes of Sony, MTV, TheOnion and many more. Some links to some Drupal site (not nearly an exhaustive list, but still good enough to get an idea):

http://skunkworks.highervisibilitywebsites.com/drupal-sites-some-of-the-...

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brooklynwebguy’s picture

I appreciate the list Caleb G. although I don't find it exceedingly impressive. It is clear however that more and more outfits are finding Drupal worthy and useful on a large scale.

But I need to make an informed recommendation and don't really have time to learn Fatwire intimately enough to make a judgment. I'd like to know if my first negative impression -- both of the product and the company -- find resonance with more seasoned hands and also generally what potential advantages (or disadvantages) would come with choosing Fatwire instead of one of the better-architected open source systems like Drupal or Plone.

Caleb G2’s picture

To show a variety of sites. Drupal is no doubt being used for something as "big" as whatever client you are talking to, but you'll have to evaluate your needs and see what works for you.

No doubt the universe will continue to travel its path either way.

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Turnkey hosting for radically pre-configured Drupal installations

sepeck’s picture

You may have better luck asking about Fatwire experience on a more generic site such as SitePoint. SitePoint is a more diverse audience with a broader range of experience so the compare and contrast may have more staunch advocates :)

-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain

-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

NYJavaGuy’s picture

I've been using OpenMarket/divine/Fatwire for some years now. The tags are a bit clumsy, but they're ok once you learn them. The architecture is actually quite nice once you understand caching. You can shoot yourself in the foot if you do it wrong like I did at first. As for the company, it's much better now than it was with divine. I can actually get someone to call me back now. As for open-source CMS - I've only just looked at Drupal and had only a little exposure to Plone and things like phpNuke. If you've got just a few simple pages and not a lot of traffic, they will probably be easier and faster than a commercial product, but I've heard from some friends that they're missing a lot of the features.

sepeck’s picture

Heard from some friends Drupal is missing some features? Could you perhaps mention what these features might be?

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

alexis’s picture

Well, then let them go the commercial route. Most CMS's take some time to get used to.

Drupal can handle many tasks, it's extensible and quite solid under heavy load. There are plenty of sites with huge traffic using Drupal without a problem, you can search for them in Drupal.org.

Though, many big clients feel safer by paying another company, if yours want to do that, well, it's their money. But at the techie level Drupal is quite good.

Cheers.

Alexis Bellido
Aprende a usar Drupal en menos de 48 horas

theodric’s picture

Your experience with their training course matches mine and I completely agree with you about the architecture and complete lack of dev tools. Just wait until you need to use the documentation or start looking for code examples :)

I recommend watching their product pitch on what the product can "apparantly" do whilst pretending you know nothing about its architecture and you will then understand why big companies choose it. The feature set looks very impressive and wide ranging. That is until you start using them in anger.

I don't have experience with other commerical products so they may all be the same i.e. look great on the outside

brooklynwebguy’s picture

Their emphasis is on what they call the 'business user', that is, content authors and managers. It seems that they are always improving this interface, while developer complexity is resolved via very expensive consulting. Then, with a crack salesforce pitching the business user ui to authors and managers, they land a couple marquee clients like the NY Times and Business Week. This, in turn, creates a bandwagon effect.

Still, it could be that in enterprises where scaling problems would be critical, a big-ass, established Java solution like Fatwire is essential. Can anyone here see Drupal running a huge, heavily-trafficked news site like the NY Times or Business Week or a commerce site like Best Buy (another Fatwire client)? I'm not asking that rhetorically. I am curious if anyone knows what Drupal's limits are in the commerical/large institution sphere and if and how they can be resolved in production. I would prefer hearing from folks who can speak to the issue in technical terms, rather than being directed to allegedly impressive sites that are running Drupal.

spjsche’s picture

Have a read of the following

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/ibm/library/i-osource1/index.html?...

It might answer some of your questions.

xpereta’s picture

See this page in the handbook, having a ever increasing feature set comes with a price. Not that it's a bad decision but something to take into account when choosing a platform.

See this page in the handbook:

http://drupal.org/node/65922

Content translation and localization is another area that is still lacking in Drupal IMHO, despite several efforts we are not there yet. While the current solutions may suit most projects, make sure that the current localization features suit your scenario.

green monkey’s picture

prehaps this is a bit too simple of an answer

But $75k would go a very long way in customizing Drupal, to fit your "precise" needs. As for the big names I remember a very old picture.

When PC compatibles first came out, most of the big companies, still bought the Big name brands, even if they got less and paid more ... sometimes as much as $1,000 more per machine. When I asked my friend at D&B why? He told me..... its simple - if I buy your computer and it dies, I could get fired... but if I buy an IBM and it breaks, I just tell my Boss - gee boss - I don't know what to say - its IBM. A lot of people think a higher price tag means better support and long term safety. As we know, this is rarely the case. In this case I'm betting Drupal has a larger labor pool to pull from.

Tmanagement’s picture

Interesting to see that this question is comming along all the time. Why would open source be worse than any expensive product? In my opinion it is better to ask the same question the other way around. Open source is often developed with a developer in mind where is the commercial packages are designed with profits in mind. On basic rule in marketing is: it is not what you sell but how you sell it.

And as jwells put, suppose that some adjustments must be made 75k is alot of money.

TommyWillB’s picture

This 2007 conversation was good to read.

Does anyone have any more recent pros/cons feedback to contribute?

Thanks

boyfly’s picture

The company I work for launched a new site in 2008 with Fatwire. My guess is that there really wasn't anyone involved in the decision making process that knew anything about CMS's, so the advertised features of Fatwire is what drove their decision. I don't have direct interaction with the software, but I help build and update tools that are integrated into it. The people I work with who do use Fatwire directly are not happy with it.

One thing they complain about is the content approval process that is in place. It takes hours to approve new content for publishing when it should take minutes. This may be due to the way the software was set up, but it was done the way Fatwire recommended so I don't think it was our company's fault.

The admin side of Fatwire is very simple (plain, not easy) and maybe even old-school compared to what you can get with open source CMS's such as Drupal and Wordpress. For the money that is paid I have been very unimpressed with what I have seen.

sp_key’s picture

Indeed a good read.
I hope brooklynwebguy will come back at some point to share his experiences :)