Question

I have some community running Drupal 6. Drupal 6 have great numbers of modules for what I need, plus word “Community plumbing”.

I’ve tried PHP frameworks like Yii, but I dont like PHP-CLI, because I feel that not well integrated with the PHP itself. So, I stay with Drupal 6 with lots of hacks.

But Drupal now become more “CMS”, more “Enterprise” (just like lots of Java CMS).

With Drupal 7, out of the box, it easier to make a newspaper site, but to me, it more difficult to tailored to my needs, it more magic, and also slower.

The word “Community plumbing” has been replaced with “Open Source CMS”, with statement “Use Drupal to build everything from personal blogs to enterprise applications”. This is scares me as community-based application developer.

Django looks promising, but Rails have much more open source kick-ass app avaiable.

I dont know anything about Drupal 8. I dont know what to do for my next development.

Answer 1

It sounds like you are looking to move from a CMS to a framework. I am not going to give advise on frameworks here, since there are numerous topics on SO that cover this already.

A few things you should realize, coming from Drupal, moving to a (RAD)framework are the following:

• Drupal is not OO, has its own ways of using PHP (hooks, template overrides) and such. Expect the experience to be very different. Your Drupal-gained-knowledge may come in handy, but is often of little use in framework-land where OO is the alpha and omega. 🙂
• Drupal takes a lot from your hands. By installing some module, you have a new feature. With frameworks you are all on your own in this. You should select a framework that works with gems, packages or modules itself if you want to stand on shoulders of others peoples work. The main difference between these libraries and Drupal modules, is that you will have to implement and integrate the libs yourself. I consider that a very good thing, since it makes no assumptions up front and allows you to build exactly what you had in mind, yet having the same experience as Drupal-modules: many things are already done for you.
• You know PHP. You probably don’t know Python or Ruby as well. That means PHP-based frameworks have an advantage for you. But read various posts on SO about the downsides of PHP used in Frameworks to see some reasons why learning a new language and environemnt is not all that bad.

All in all, I think you will be surprised byt the increase in development-efficiency when coming from Drupal into a framework.