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What's best, a spoon or a fork?
It's good to be in a crossroad, this is the way to improve. Learning some other stuff is a lot of work and a pain in the ass, but hey, we all know this is not easy. Both changing to other system and sticking with XOOPS are good choices if you do it for the right reasons.
I'm quitting and staying at the same time:
CMS world is so #OOPS# complex at this time that no single CMS can do all stuff efficiently. If you are a freelance, bad news, you probably will need to understand more than one CMS. I've been comparing Joomla, Drupal, Xaraya and XOOPS these days, reading some manuals...and these are my two cents:
Bad news, the holy grail of CMS does not exist. I've used XOOPS for years, and now I know it enough to see clearly its strenghts and flaws, but all other systems have other strenghts and flaws. Keep reading.
· Joomla: No Joomla at this moment, thanks. Some weird login problems in control panel, it damages it's image. Permission system too basic. Some customers won't need anyway, but who knows when one of those customers will tell you: "I had an idea and...". I'm not impressed, although it shows potential. Doesn't use Smarty.
· Drupal: Interesting concepts, multidimensional classification of documents is a great idea when you plan to have hundreds of documents. Seems a bit more heavy in my XAMPP distribution than XOOPS. Can use Smarty. Navigation in Drupal sites, such as Firefox extensions site, it's now well sorted from a usability perspective. It makes me suspect that organizing navigation when you have many documents is a serious problem, but not sure about that.
· Xaraya. Monster among monsters. I finally understood some weird concepts. It's for very advanced users. Xaraya is a killer. It has the potencial to be "the final solution". But is way too much for simple sites. Requires too much work for some stuff, not suitable for fast, simple projects. Professionals should only look at it for very complex projects, as requires too much time. The "hook" concept is absolutely amazing.
· XOOPS. Solid group-permissions system. Simple structure. Uses Smarty and God bless the one that had the idea of including it into the XOOPS core. Control panel is terribly ugly, but it works.
Most intensive use for me has been in scientific congresses. News for the scientific Content + TinyD (clonable version, thanks GiJoe) for the general info demonstrated to be a winner combination. A simple blog for news and advices, my personal hacked Contact module including DuGris' Captcha, and you're done.
Modules are black boxes between them, there's no communication at all. This is a problem for sophisticated projects, but it is a source of order and organization in sites that need to have everything well separated and defined... such as a scientific congress.
More to say about the new people in town:
I can say at this moment that the sites i've done for congresses should have been a total bluff if I used Joomla, this nice new guy. In a scientific congress you need lots of groups with different contents and permissions: Scientific committee, head of the scientific committee, local organizing, chair, secretary, administration, logistics, participants, invited speakers, press agency...
Look here for an example: www.sinestesia2007.info
These are my two cents. My next project is a seven-headed monster and I'll try Xaraya. But I'm being contacted for another congress next year, and I'll be using XOOPS. XOOPS is good for some things and not good for others.
Just use what you need. Need a spoon? Use a spoon. Need a fork? Use a fork. Piroman, use SMF if this is what you need. If someday you need the features XOOPS offer, just come back to XOOPS.
