IBM developerWorks has recently introduced a new tutorial series guiding its audience in building a web site using open source resources. This step-by-step guide is dedicated to assisting web developers in their journey, from design to deployment.
Purpose of the New Tutorial Series
IBM envisions a collaborative platform for the fictitious International Business Council. The website’s functionalities reflect several groupware-oriented services which coincide with the offerings of a familiar tech giant based in Redmond, Washington.
To clarify, IBM’s project page outlines the need for the web site to support:
- Document storage
- Discussion groups
- Specialized workgroups
- Conference scheduling
- Session descriptions and expiration
On the other hand, Microsoft’s SharePoint offers collaborative solutions, enabling users to craft and manage their websites throughout an organization.
IBM’s Choice of Framework
Finding the right foundation is crucial for any website project. IBM weighed multiple open source contenders including Mambo, Typo3, Ruby on Rails, Movable Type, WordPress, and TextPattern. Yet, in the end, the choice was clear: Drupal. Joomla was conspicuously absent from the evaluation, probably since it evolved from Mambo.
Beyond being the backbone of the Spread Firefox website, Drupal has recently announced a training initiative in India, a tidbit that may be of interest to our Indian readers.
Why Drupal?
Being younger than most CMSs doesn’t stop Drupal from standing out. Here’s why IBM vouched for it:
- Quality and Community: IBM felt that Drupal’s codebase was not just solid, but also supported by an active developer community.
- Modularity: Drupal offers extensibility. Many essential features are available as modules which integrate smoothly with the site’s core functions.
- Scalability: Drupal stands out for its scalability features. This framework can handle growth from a handful of users to a massive enterprise user base, with a unique ‘throttle’ feature to manage high traffic scenarios.
- Learnability: Despite having its own learning curve, mastering Drupal is seen as less challenging than other CMSs. The flexibility of using PHP to shift between business logic and presentation layers also made it attractive.
What’s Next in the Series?
With Drupal as the chosen framework, IBM will move to design and other critical facets in the subsequent series. Given IBM’s stature in the tech domain, developers keen on crafting a collaborative portal via open source tech can anticipate valuable insights.
