Switch to Drupal [closed]

Question

Currently I manage a website written entirely in html5, php, javascript and css3 with a mysql database. The site resides on a dedicated server with CentOS and Plesk is used for management. I thought I'd switch to a CMS like Drupal and continue to use the current mysql database in order to speed up the expansion of the project. The site is a portal that will sustain a traffic of about 5000 registered users monthly and any visitors (the latter, however, can not perform operations if the consultation pages). Is this an optimal solution?

Any advice is welcome.

Thanks

Answer 1

Updated: October 20, 2014

From the little information available in the comment below, I would think Drupal will be just fine for the website. I would simply steer clear of using something like WordPress in such a case. In short, whenever registered users will see different content from visitors, WordPress is just not the right tool (it's a publishing platform, not something to manage user dashboards or user specific content for non-editors of such content).

In addition, Drupal's out of the box user management functionality, among other things, makes it very good for such websites. Drupal also has extensive caching if you need it (and if you don't you can just skip that bit altogether).

You can also use any of the other plethora of CMS out there, but Drupal can certainly be used to accomplish (and sustain and grow) what you seem to be after.

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To be clear, Matteo, you really cannot use the same MySQL database unless your database structure can somehow be mapped to Drupal's (and there's a very good chance that is going to be a tedious and painful task).

Different CMS' serve different purposes. What does your website do - how much data do you move between pages? Can you use some kind of caching? How heavy are your pages? Are users registered users or just site visitors?

Drupal is extremely powerful, but it has a learning curve if you're going to get use out of it.

Answer 2

I used to be a big fan of Mambo (which became Joomla). I believe the Joomla platform to be quite similar to Drupal, but, the last time I looked at Drupal was 10 years ago.

When I'm doing an open source CMS, my new favorite is WordPress. The WordPress code-base can be dowloaded and installed to your own host (just like Drupal and Joomla).. or, you can go with a hosted solution provided by wordpress.com.

The customizations that are possible are endless - thanks not only to the very active and broad community that has produced a wide array of plugins that are free / freemuim.. but I find it is also a well documented and thoughtfully laid out system. It is easy for me to tinker with and improve upon.

The core WordPress team has developed some great plugins, too (JetPack) that makes connecting it to social media a breeze. Also check out the BuddyPress plugin if you're wanting to host your own social community.