OpenPublish vs ProsePoint
Thu, 16/07/2009 - 04:54
Hi,
I just wanted to post my experience using Open Publish and ProsePoint. The reason for the comparison is that both are opted for the publishing environment. There are however differences, and coming from a ProsePoint background working with OpenPublish is a little awkward to achieve the same level of output. After installing OpenPublish, I realized that it has no alternate to channels, or editions which are in ProsePoint. This is key, since scheduled publishing is a major aspect in content delivery.
OpenPublish utilizes Panels also, but ProsePoint's integration of panels in Editions is far more sophisticated. The lack of being able to add a taxonomy (channel in ProsePoint) term to a menu while setting up a content type is frustrating in OpenPublish. It is another step which could be avoided, out of the box that is.
The strength of OpenPublish is semantic web, provided by Calais, which is a drupal module. Another integrated feature seems to be the availability of adding meta data at the point of content creation, which can be added to ProsePoint via a module.
Using the channels and editions setup of ProsePoint, I found it hard see any practical use of OpenPublish, though it has some very good features and concepts, but not necessarily comparable to migrate away from ProsePoint. This is just short post on some of my key findings, from my own expectations of a CMS publishing scenario.
Fri, 17/07/2009 - 09:49
#2
modules
Apparenlty, gMap, Topic Hubs, and Calais are all modules that can be installed on any Drupal based system such as ProsePoint. The gMap module adds like a marker for example, on a map, as to where a node is located. It would be great for a social networking site in a large city, I can imagine. AS for topic hubs, they can only be administered or created by an admin or someone with the proper permissions.
OpenPublish has something similar to editons which they call 'package' but I could not see an equilvalent of 'composite layout' that exists in ProsePoint, which to me is crucial. Its a good project no doubt, but many of its features can be added to ProsePoint. I haven't given it a full dissection, only because once I realized I couldn't go beyond a certain point in terms of channels, and editions, I found no use for it in my current needs.
Fri, 21/08/2009 - 01:07
#3
I have been reviewing the
I have been reviewing the openpublish and prosepoint.
Looking at the files in openpublish it appears to be a standard drupal type installation. It has all the modules pre-selected, along with a couple of theme choices. This is appealing after you look at prosepoint. Prosepoint has a non-standard drupal installation. I do like the channels and editions (very much) as mentioned, but my concern would be how well these would all integrate with additions of other 3rd party drupal modules over time. Also, I would concerned about those features, if I need to move to a nice menus, extended taxonomy, tokens or something along those lines.
Since there are no drupal 3rd party contribution modules included with the prosepoint it would be a nice feature to have a recommended listing with clickons for immediate downloading. The OpenPublish is a fast install, and setup for a working site by having all those modules install simultaneously with the Drupal.
In a nutshell, I think the core for the prosepoint is well established. Now it would make sense to make more of it with 3rd party modules, especially SEO tools. Afterall, news and magazine sites are mostly about moving alot of information onto websites and disburse that information to the web.
Straight talk, I would probably go with the OpenPublish at this time, just because a complete installation is provided. Site builder doesn't have to research the heck out of the 3rd modules available for Drupal to build a competent site. The 3rd party modules, and implementing them with your site and other modules, with setups is very, very, very time consuming and tedious.
The TinyMCE is mentioned as a tight integration with prosepoint. I don't know how tight that is, but I can tell you my experience with TinyMCE has always been a royal pain in the old wazoo... I use FCKEditor now. I do prefer it over all other choices available at this time, but I am anxious for Drupal to finally, competently deal with a wysiwyg editor.
In order to prevent issues with users I only allow admin to use wysiwyg. All users on my sites are on filtered HTML for postings. If it is good enough for Drupal users it is good enough for my site, which have no where near the number of authenticated users.
Since there is more proprietary coding in the prosepoint it concerns me at some point the support and upgrades will not be applied on a timely basis in the future. I would prefer a prebuilt configuration of modules along with the standard Drupal package. I don't have aproblem with a composite grouping of modules for an application such as prosepoint, but I would like the option of being able to revert to a standard drupal installation. That may be the case now and I'm not aware of it.
There is one thing that is very critical to these type of sites... How users can access data efficiently, how they are informed of content. It is not all about clicking on a menu, it is about how they are notified efficiently that certain information is avaliable on the site and having efficient mechanisms for users to move seamlessly through the site for getting the information. This is a very real concern if you have a site taking on 200+ articles per day, along with syndicated content.
SEO tools cannot be dismissed. I use OpenCalais on one site now, which is experimental. There are terms in Open Calias I consider non-applicable, but I also realize there is a process going on for dealing with semantic data exchange with tools like OpenCalais.
I plan to put up an OpenPublish site within the next day or two. I'll put up more thoughts after I've given it a go, if there are any persons interested.
Fri, 21/08/2009 - 09:06
#4
You say that ProsePoint is a
You say that ProsePoint is a non-standard Drupal installation, while you say that OpenPublish includes a lot of third-party modules and is therefore better to use. I think maybe you misunderstand what ProsePoint is, because OpenPublish and ProsePoint sound exactly the same from your description.
ProsePoint is a standard Drupal install profile with some third party modules. If you look in the profile directory you can see that there are a lot of third party modules integrated together. You've got 23 directories in the modules subfolder of the install profile, which are almost all standard Drupal modules, from imageapi to pathauto to token, views, workflow... the only one that is non-standard is the prosepoint directory, where all the prosepoint-specific customization lies. In that directory you have channels, the custom tinyMCE editor, images, and media. Other than that its pure Drupal all the way.
It is true that you will need to install some other modules to get the exact functionality that you want. I've installed 17 other modules: advanced_help, ajax_comments, backup_migrate, captcha, community_tags, feedapi and feedapi_mapper, globalredirect, google_analytics, googlenews, node_breadcrumb, openx, search404, shorten, tagadelic, tweet, and wp_comments. These have built up over time as I've found out what they do, or to fix aproblem I've come across. they are all 100% perfectly compatible with ProsePoint, just like all the other modules. The only problem so far is that feedapi doesn't automatically fetch new feed data with poormanscron, but that's a standard Drupal problem with those two modules, nothing to do with ProsePoint.
I don't see how using OpenPublish would be different. It sounds like it also comes with a bunch of pre-configured Drupal modules. But the OpenPublish authors are not going to be able to read everybody's mind, and a thorough site builder will still have to research (or maybe he already knows) some more modules to customize the site to his tastes, or the tastes of his client.
So far every single module I've used or tested has had 100% compatibility with ProsePoint, and I anticipate that it will remain that way forever. I can't say the same for OpenPublish, because I haven't used it, but I would assume the same would be true. The two are equivalent, and I don't think future compatibility ever be a serious issue.
Fri, 21/08/2009 - 10:53
#5
Modules
Just a quick note, in my experience so far, there is no such thing as an 'out of the box' solution based on Drupal which will satisfy everyone's needs all the time. I have gone through dozens of modules before narrowing it all down to about 13 or so must have modules which culminate all of my sites. As of current, any Drupal theme will work with ProsePoint.
If OpenPublish is a solution for publishing content, then it doesn't allow that the way a newspaper or magazine is ideally run with scheduling. Without having an introduction to ProsePoint you can do wonders with OpenPublish. Therefore, once having created something in ProsePoint, in relevance to publishing content on a regular basis, OpenPublish falls short many areas. It is great in its own light, but nothing like PP.
Fri, 21/08/2009 - 13:20
#6
Yeah, it seems like the main
Yeah, it seems like the main strength of ProsePoint is scheduling and editions, while the main strength of OpenPublish is social news. It all depends on what you want to do.
Fri, 21/08/2009 - 14:13
#7
I didn't say OpenPublish was
I didn't say OpenPublish was better. When I look at the prosepoint folders they appear to be identical to the standard drupal folder package.
Also, I wasn't trying to be unfair. I didn't have enough information either way to really say good or bad.
I have installed the OpenPublish on a test site as I mentioned. I plan to see what I can do with it. There are some module selections that I know are not "the best choice or maybe I should say a choice I would have made".
I am working on a news/blog site. The taxonomy is huge and with the introduction of the Calais tools it will be monstrous. I don't know if Channels and editions will be a best choice for users to access the data.
Anyway, I plan to give both a go to find the better choice for my application. I think either will do what I plan to do, but the amount of content on pages is inhibited with OpenPublish as compared to Prosepoint. You need lots of blocks and panels to put up lots of content for easy viewing.
Thanks for the responses
Fri, 21/08/2009 - 14:34
#8
I'm interested to see what
I'm interested to see what you come up with. Please share the URLs and maybe a short writeup when you find out something interesting.
Fri, 21/08/2009 - 19:17
#9
Don't you think it would be
Don't you think it would be worthwhile for prosepoint to have a suggested list of 3rd party contributed modules.
I think, because it is represented as more of a jump-start package it would be natural for people to expect more in the way of how the site will function.
I strongly defend this. The best way to really learn to use Drupal is by working with the modules on sites. Getting a flow for how things work, and what module terminology means is important to the learning process.
It is also a good way to do things, because when you upload a package like acquia or openpublish you get modules that are supposed to work well on a site. Users also can inquire and ask support questions regarding the package and those inter-relationships among modules and what they do.
I realize ProsePoint may have been designed as a specific purpose application. There are so many people coming now to use Drupal for building sites it makes sense to me for Prosepoint to broaden it's influence,.
Mon, 24/08/2009 - 10:17
#10
A belated reply.
Hi,
Sorry for my late participation in this thread. I really really should keep up with my own forum :)
ProsePoint is 99% percent compatible with Drupal modules. I won't say 100% because there is no such thing as absolute certainty since I don't control what other modules other people write or use. However, ProsePoint is as compatible with Drupal modules as Drupal itself (heck, sometimes even some Drupal modules aren't compatible with each other).
If you peruse the forum, you'll find instances where other people have used Drupal modules and they have worked with ProsePoint. I think someone even got Domain Access working with ProsePoint, and Domain Access sounds like quite an intrusive module - see http://www.prosepoint.org/node/205. This website is Ubercart on top of ProsePoint, and Ubercart is also quite a large chunk of functionality.
However, let me make a statement about Drupal compatibility ... if you find a Drupal module that doesn't work with ProsePoint, let me know and I'll investigate. If ProsePoint is at fault and not following Drupal conventions, I'll fix ProsePoint. If your other module is at fault for not following Drupal conventions, then I'll point them out to you. Either way, you'll get your compatibility.
> In a nutshell, I think the core for the prosepoint is well established. Now it
> would make sense to make more of it with 3rd party modules, especially SEO tools.
I agree. Unfortunately, I'm underresourced (and overworked :). ProsePoint development is coming out of time I squeeze out of my normal schedule whilst doing other development work.
> Since there is more proprietary coding in the prosepoint
There is NO PROPRIETARY CODE in ProsePoint. The code repository is hosted on Launchpad. It is totally free and open source (subject to the usual GPL and other open source license restrictions).
> it concerns me at
> some point the support and upgrades will not be applied on a timely basis in the future.
You'll always have this issue no matter who your 'vendor' is. It's not specific to ProsePoint.
But if you track the history of ProsePoint releases, you'll see that I've issued very prompt security-related releases when called for.
> When I look at the prosepoint folders they appear to be identical to the standard drupal folder package.
Yes, this is to facilitate 99% Drupal compatibility. I'm just keeping with the Drupal convention of placing ProsePoint modules in the 'profiles' subdirectory.
> Don't you think it would be worthwhile for prosepoint to have a suggested
> list of 3rd party contributed modules.
Yes, I agree it's worthwhile. Unfortunately, again, I haven't had the time to do this. If others wish to write something like this up, I'd very gladly post it up.
For the most part, I agree with your reasoning, though maybe our conclusions differ slightly. If you would like to discuss more about any of these issues, please ask (though maybe a separate thread may be warranted depending on the subtopic(s)).
I hadn't heard of OpenPublish until this post, so I went to check it out. It does seem to have some good features. The Topic Hubs seem to be its strongest point, but I'm not sure how they work. How I wish they would work is that they automatically scour the web site and the greater web and collect all the information about a particular topic that is available. Then they allow people to view all information about that topic and discuss it or something. That Google Maps integration also looks nifty. But I'm not sure if it actually works that way. Also the topic hubs seem to be easily redundant - there's two gaza topic hubs, two Obama topic hubs. if users themselves can create topic hubs this would happen a lot.
Channels and editions are also essential for me operating my two sites, and I can't imagine publishing content without them. I do like some of the social news features. Perhaps similar features can be integrated into ProsePoint at some time in the future.