Re: [gentoo-user] Difficulty setting up apache, php and joomla

[Mick]

On Sunday 26 Mar 2017 17:20:09 Peter Humphrey wrote:
> On Sunday 26 Mar 2017 09:45:09 Michael Orlitzky wrote:
> > On 03/26/2017 04:28 AM, Peter Humphrey wrote:
> > > Pelican looks interesting; I may follow it up. I didn't say this before
> > > (one thing at a time, eh?) but I need to build a site that another
> > > choirman can take over from me at some time. That seems to rule out
> > > anything that smacks of script writing, because as far as I know,
> > > nobody else has the slightest interest in computers, never mind
> > > programming.
> > >
> > > I notice that no-one has mentioned WordPress. I had a look at it, but
> > > was
> > > scared off by the Gentoo devs' waving around of garlic and crosses.
> >
> > Choosing a CMS is a textbook example of "pick your poison." We usually
> > go with either Wordpress or Drupal.
> >
> > The design of Drupal is much better, technically. Every feature is part
> > of a "module" that you can turn off. The API is well-documented, and
> > it's easy to write new modules. A "content type" in Drupal is a thin
> > abstraction over a database table, and you can build pretty much
> > anything you want by creating the right content type and then creating a
> > "view" to display it how you want.
> >
> > The end result can be nicer for end users; for example, you can give
> > them a button to create a new employee, or a newsletter, or a blog
> > entry... and each one of those content types will have separate fields
> > and a separate UI. The trade-off is that nothing works out-of-the-box in
> > Drupal, and it will take you two weeks to get all of that set up.
> >
> > With Wordpress, you get a nice, clean, easy-to-use site in about five
> > minutes. If that site will work for you -- i.e. if all you need is
> > pages, menu items, a contact form, and whatever else you can get from
> > pre-existing plugins -- do that!
> >
> > Wordpress is made for non-technical users but I don't mean that in a bad
> > way. I've been doing Wordpress updates on some sites for over five
> > years, and it's never crashed and made me stop what I was doing to fix
> > it. Plugin updates are similarly easy, but I can echo what Mick said:
> > you need to pay attention to the update notifications, and they come
> > frequently.
> >
> > All CMSes have terrible security records, so the fact that Wordpress
> > gets hacked all the time shouldn't lead you to believe that another CMS
> > would fare any better. You can make any CMS a lot more secure in two
> >
> > simple ways:
> >    1. Always update ASAP.
> >    2. Don't make your website writable by the anonymous web user.
> >
> > The second one means that you will have to update over SSH, at least as
> > long as you maintain the site, but severely limits the damage that a
> > hacker can do with a tiny exploit.
>
> Interesting. Another contributor, another opinion. :-)
>
> I already have books on WordPress and Joomla, and I've just ordered one on
> Drupal. Then I can take my time experimenting and comparing.
>
> Thanks again to all. I'm certainly learning today.

Michael O. is spot on.  Drupal 8 is more of a framework for developing 
websites.  Wordpress is less of a development workhorse, but will give you an 
acceptable website relatively effortlessly.  This is one of the reasons many 
people use it for blog sites.

Two quick points on the ease of maintenance between CMS':

Some ISPs offer a GUI-fied update facility for Wordpress, whereby you click a 
button and the latest core installation and modules are updated for you.  I 
have also seen this with Drupal, but less frequently and the version offered 
by the ISP may not be the latest one.  So with Drupal, updates have always 
been a manual exercise for me.  Drush, a CLI tool, simplifies Drupal 
maintenance for those who are not limited to point & click computer 
operations.

Depending on your website development needs you may need more than one site.  
A production site and a development site is a typical minimum requirement. 
More active sites have prod/pre-prod/dev/testing versions.  This means you 
will be exporting database content and importing it from one site to another.  
Unlike Drupal where exporting and importing database dumps is a straight 
forward activity, with Wordpress you will need to change some of the database 
content manually before you import it.  This is because Wordpress uses 
serialised PHP arrays and hard-codes URLs in the database cells and its 
upgrade.php scripts do not deal auto-magically with database migration.  There 
are 3rd party scripts and plugins to deal with this, but it is an additional 
step and a manual exercise:

https://interconnectit.com/blog/2009/10/07/migrating-a-wordpresswpmubuddypress-website/

If you only have one production version on a single domain/webroot this 
problem does not apply, but I raise it here because you mentioned you may be 
foisting the responsibility for this website on someone else, less technically 
competent than yourself.

This may be getting rather [OT] for this mailing list, so I'm happy to share 
lessons learned or answer specific questions off site.
-- 
Regards,
Mick