Drupal Vs Joomla Vs Other CMS - Very High Traffic Websites...

Hi all,
I am a novice to Content Management. I have many doubts that I feel many other members here are already knowledgeable and clarify. I will be grateful if you can help by sharing your experiences.

To start with :-

I would like to know which is the best CMS for a very high traffic website. Lets say - 5,00,000 members (or even more) and many thousands of people being online at the same time.

My priorities (in the same order) for deciding the CMS :-
1) Should be a very good solution for a very high traffic websites
2) Should be able to assign a post to multiple categories. (Something like - associating many tags to a post and then put those tags in the menu items, so that all posts related to that tag word can be obtained by clicking on that menu item (tag))
3) Should be a combination of CMS + Blog + Forum
4) SEO options should be available either by default or through add ons.
5) Provides integration with a forum (preferably Vbulletin)
6) Good mailing list component (Preferably - the users should be able to select which mailing list they want to subscribe, instead of receiving all irrelevant mails to him)
7) Ability to create custom forms

After lots of research, here are my short-listed solutions (though you can add anymore to this list) :
- Drupal + Vbulletin
- Joomla + Vbulletin
- Plone
- MODx
- Vivvo
- Expression Engine
- Typo3 + Vbulletin
- Wordpress + Vbulletin
- MovableType + vBulletin
- SubDreamer + vBulletin
- phpfox + vBulletin

I am impressed with Drupal, but I have read some performance concerns with Drupal for high traffic websites. Also there is no proper Vbulletin integration solution available for Drupal. And I am little disappointed with lack of good Drupal themes, though this is not a major concern.

If any of you are running high traffic websites with any of these softwares or others, I would like to hear your experiences and suggestions.

* I don't mind paying for CMS if it's really good. I mean it need not necessarily be open source.
* Shared server is not a problem. I have a decent dedicated server.

Thanks in advance...

 

Hi there Suri.CMS

Love how neat your first post is.

I myself am a CMS newbie here.

Drupal will fulfill provided you can really tune up the performance of the Apache, SQL, Servers (memory, RAID configuration), network equipments like server load balancer, proxy engine and the likes and of course drupal itself. I don't think one would expect a 5.000.000 users and er.. is that 5 million or 5 hundred thousand? Anyway.. with thousands of people being online at the same time I doubt any of the free open source CMS can handle it well out of the box with no fine tuning on the supporting infrastructure..

Anyway if you're really into drupal you can join their High Performance group forum.. and ask more there.

As for Drupal integration with vBulletin. There's a module for it.. although it needs a little fixing. But it's nothing one could do by himself.. should he know PHP and MySQL.

 

Yes friend, I am aware of available 3 solutions for Drupal + vBulletin integration :-
vbdrupal.org/
drupal.org/project/drupalvb
theoverclocked.com/drupaltin

However they do not seem to be perfect for people like me with very limited knowledge of PHP & MySQL. :-(

Moreover, after we implement these bridges, what if they stop development of that bridge in future ? Then I fear the website cannot be upgraded to higher version of Drupal, as the bridge for that new version of Drupal and vBulletin is lacking.

 

Ah.. I new to the other two.. I only have tried Drupal vb... Thanks for the link.

Aye.. that'd be a major problem. Especially considering with each major upgrades you will also have to upgrade to the modules. But if we're talking about Drupal module in general.. it's open source software.. so it would depend on the community whether to contribute with each updates or not.. so it would be up to you.

But even if you only know.. as you said.. limited amount of PHP and MySQL knowledge the good thing is.. again.. it's open source software.. you can always ask for professional help.

Btw mate. Since you're planning to have thousands of users that'd mean you'd be spending some money on the tweaking and administration right? Why not ask for the integration as well? Maybe you could package it or something.. or are you planning to do it all by yourself?

Anyway.. just my 0.0000002 cents worth of thoughts.. ^________________^

Good day and have fun.

 

According to many people opinions, vbdrupal.org is the best bridge out of these three.

If we use bridges to integrate Drupal + vBulletin, first of all some Drupal modules are not at all compatible with the bridge. So you should forget using those modules. And it's a pain to find out which modules break the code.

Nope ! I am planning to do it myself. I will improve it further (or spend money in improving) after the website gains some good recognition and traffic.

The reason for taking so much care in selecting CMS - I alreday had a bad experience. I purchased a CMS, and it looked pretty good when traffic was low. After 2 years, now it's creating all sorts of performance problems with high traffic. Each page load is taking 20 seconds (or more) even on dedicated server. And now it's difficult for me to move all that content to different CMS. So I don't want to make the same mistake next time...

I am very optimistic and I always make the plans of making a website to at least take it to the top 100 websites of my country. That's why I don't want to end up in changing the CMS after getting all high traffic few years down the line.

 

Well.. I wish you the best of luck for your next website.

Anyway as for drupal ability I really don't question it's power to handle traffic and the amount of content it can handle.

After all.. as you might probably know since I see you've been doing lots of background research... a lot of big companies like SONY-BMG and Universities like Harvard and University of Calgary are going drupal..

Aaaaaaneeways just a tip.. for fine tuning Drupal you might want to use the Developer module before rolling out your drupal site. It lets you know exactly what is going on with Drupal, and other stuff to let you fine tune you Drupal.

And go check the high performance group.. you'll definitely get your answer there.

Btw.. what CMS is your website currently using?

 

Drupal for sure. But what web server you are hosting on, might be more important. Lighttpd kicks ass... youtube uses the techology for instance. And it's free.

 

what about IPB

 

Sent a PM to you.

I am already using IPB for a very successful forum, and it's a good one even for high traffic sites (not sure if it's better than vBulletin).

But this time, I don't want to use the forum alone (of course, IPB has blogging component and also their new CMS is getting released shortly, but I didn't like much). I need a full fledged CMS that includes forum, blogs (may be a Wiki also). I feel any forum software is of limited capability if we want to add more features to website in future. So I thought it's better to select an expandable CMS.

Yep, Drupal seems to be winning as of now with their caching and throttling mechanisms.

 

For various reasons, I have reduced my list to below ones. Any comments on these particular ones will be appreciated. I just mentioned the pros and cons I came across. Please excuse and correct me if I am wrong anywhere.

DRUPAL

Pros : Very expandable CMS. Good SEO capabilities. Seems good for high traffic websites with it's caching and throttling mechanisms.

Cons : Default forum is not good enough and no proper (official) integration available with other good forums like vBulletin / IPB.

PLONE

Pros : Seems that many high traffic websites are implemented using this. And CMS is rated high (mostly after Drupal & Joomla)

Cons : Have not seen too many sites implementing Plone / have not seen much user community buzz.

MODx

Pros : Seems to be very capable CMS with cool Ajax features.

Cons : Still in initial stages. Not very matured CMS to make a decision on this.

EXPRESSION ENGINE

Pros : Looks very capable with many features like forums, blogs, wiki by default.

Cons: Don't know how it behaves for high traffic websites. And don't know if integration is possible with 3 rd party forums like vBulletin.

WORDPRESS + VBULLETIN

Pros : Light weight. Good SEO capability.

Cons: Don't know if Wordpress + vBulletin integration is possible.

SUBDREAMER + VBULLETIN

Pros : Offers integration with vBulletin / IPB.

Cons: Don't know if it's really a capable & full-fledged CMS.

 

Expression Engine is very capable of running high traffic sites. It's the best CMS I've ever used. Yes you will be able to use VBulletin with ExpressionEngine, but depending on what you want to do, it will take some extra coding work. EE has their own forum software though that is top notch and integrates seemlessly with EE, why not use it?

 

Thanks friend, for the valuable feedback.

Good to know that. Can you provide some example high traffic sites using EE. Also I would like to know what special features in EE enable it to cope up with high traffic. (Similar to Drupal's caching & throttling features)

What I wanted is basic. Users should register only once and they should be able to login / logout anywhere (vBulletin or EE) with same id. Also I would like to show the RSS of vBulletin latest threads in the main page of EE.

I have seen their forum at their website. It's looking good at the outset. I really don't mind using it (instead of vBulletin) if it's really good.

As of now, my main concern is high traffic and few basic features like good mailing list management module, assigning same post to multiple categories, should be able to TAG the posts etc.

 

Umm, off the top of my head, here are a few I know of:

http://www.truthdig.com/
http://www.applematters.com/
http://www.colly.com/
http://www.ilounge.com/
http://www.cssdrive.com
http://veerle.duoh.com

They are pretty high traffic sites. There are tons of others and even some that the EE staff tells us that are really HUGE sites but they cannot publicly say that they are powered by EE.


As far that EE's ability to handle the traffic, you might want to check out the features page:

http://expressionengine.com/overview/features/

Really to many features for me to try and name here, but they do have data caching and throttling features.

I'm not 100% certain, but if you wanted to do this with VBulletin and have the same login id throughout the site, I think you'd have to tear into some custom code to do so. I have limited experience with the member templates/functions in EE, but I've heard that they are a little more difficult to deal with, which surprises me as the rest of EE I found very easy to understand.

Yes, EE has a mailing list module, you definitely can assign multiple categories to a post (I'm doing it right now on my CSS gallery site), and you can tag the posts, but it requires and extra module add on and I believe that's $39 dollars.

You can view all of the addons here: http://expressionengine.com/downloads/addons/

Solspace has some good ones as well: http://www.solspace.com

If you're interested in using EE, they have a Pre-Sales forum there at http://www.expressionengine.com/forums/. The members and staff there are great for answering any questions.

 

Thanks a lot for your time.

Do you have any idea whether EE has a Custom Field Form generator ?

 

Custom fields are one thing that ExpressionEngine does very well. You can have unlimited custom fields and you can essentially make a custom field for anything.

Check this page out: http://expressionengine.com/docs/cp/admin/weblog_administration/custom_fields_edit.html

 

I my humble opinion, Drupal is the best CMS for those who knows what they are doing. Especially if you are good at html, css, dhtml, javascript etc, you can easily configure Drupal. But Joomla is a bit better for those who are not sure what they are doing on the website.

Joomla gives you everything with an easy interface but it doesn't let you change everything so easily. Drupal has the advantage about this. But Joomla has many good templates. Drupal's problem is good themes a few.

 

do you guys suggest Joomla with Community builder Mods , is this would be fine for simple community site ..??
is there anyother CMS like Joomla who provides service like this ... sorry to interrupt your post.

 

Thanks for the link. Sounds interesting. Shall check the other features at their support forum.

 

i prefer to chose joomla, the Best PHP Open Source Content Management System.
* Flexible
* Simple
* Elegant
* Customizable
* Powerful

 

aaaaand by saying that I suppose you're saying that other CMS' are not as capable of doing those 5 things?

Anyway. Drupal just won the Overall Open Source CMS Award taking the number one position from Joomla. http://www.packtpub.com/article/drupal-wins-overall-2007-open-source-cms-award