[imc-cms] CMS Survey

[agent humble]

> ---------- (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 at lists.indymedia.org
>
> 1) Survey Part 1 - Personal Details
>    a) Your name?

Scott Nelson

>
>    b) Your geographic location?

Vancouver, Canada

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

Implementation of Drupal websites for non-profits and political projects, for 
the past year.

>
>    d) Do you work on any other CMS projects?

Mediawiki

>
> 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)?

Depends on what other services (eg. Jabber) you wish to integrate.

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

Fun  (getting better all the time)  ;-)

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

Obviously important but I don't know too much about scalability.

> 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?
>

Yes.

>    b) Can you describe the site search functionality available?
>

Fairly strong IMHO.

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

Built-in. Every node type has a feed.

>    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, it's made for multiple-site installs. Makes administration of security 
updates (important!) much easier.

>
>    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.

Very strong, through the installation of additional third-party (non-core) 
modules.

>
>    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?

Through a set of modules which support the translation of the Drupal interface 
via uploading of dictionary (.PO) files. Node content is tagged with language 
descriptor so that Drupal knows which language to display. Drupal can be set 
to automatically detect the browsers setting and display that language or 
users can set it in their profile. Much work being done in this area. 

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

Core code allows access control for various groups of users. Third party 
modules include captchas and modules that identify spam based on a metric 
that includes keywords and number of links, etc.

>    h) Is there a calendar included in the codebase?

Not in core but lots of third party modules for event data (incl. iCal feeds.)

>
>    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?

User is presented with a web form that they either type their content into or 
paste from another application. If a wysiwyg editor has been installed (three 
to choose from) they can edit directly in their browser. They can attach 
files to the node which will appear in a list under the story. 

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

Pretty decent. You can setup all sorts of workflow models. If you delete a 
user their content gets attributed to "anonymous".

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

Very little that I know of. 

>
>    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?
>

Through: sharing of user databases or through a commonly-installed identity 
framework (eg. OpenID)

>    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?

Good question but someone must be doing it ;-)

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

Very modular.
Strong community.

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

Quite well.

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

P2P support and redundancy (load balancing across geographically disparate 
servers).

>    d) Where do you see Drupal in five years?

Well... I would say ruling the world but I know there are lots of other great 
projects out there. I only started working with Drupal last year but I 
wouldn't be surprised if I'm still working with it in five years (although 
that's a very long time in Internet years).

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