People who are ranting about PHP should know that it still powers a significant portion of the internet. The nodejs, deno and bun are an evolving space. If you want to take that train, that is definitely a good idea as it is HOT and popular now. But not everyone wants to you know.
PHP is one of those "boring technologies". Mature, slow paced and reliable tech. It has fixed a lot of the real issues which made it a meme language. If you are writing JS in the front, PHP is very similar and easy to pick up.
For people who are looking for a more mature and slow moving area, they could just fall back to PHP. Or try Laravel which adds some hotness to it.
According to metric information at (https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/pl-php), about 80% of the known public internet where we know the back-end language uses PHP. About 25% of the internet is WordPress. So... ~55% of the internet is PHP non-WordPress. These aren't the best numbers but try to disprove them.
I think there are fair points/questions raised in this piece, but some of them don't really make sense or there are a few gaping contradictions:
- Drupal is also moving towards no/low code (albeit in a slower way, as is always the way with Drupal). Layout Builder is in core and is getting steadily better. Acquia has its own Site Studio solution for this (wether or not that is a good thing for the project is certainly debatable).
- I agree that Drupal does too much and there are probably too many slightly different (maybe even conflicting) ways of doing any given thing. Arguing this is bad makes no sense to me. Yes, you need to make the right choices when deciding what to go with, but this is true for every ecosystem and for the same reasons. How many different FE/JS frameworks does one have to be proficient with these days? Everyone in every field has chosen the losing horse at some point and that will continue to happen everywhere.
- Using Drupal 7 content-type editing UI screenshots in June 2022 to illustrate how "bad" Drupal is in 2022 is simply dishonest.
- Most of the 3rd party service providers (Mailchimp, Typeform, Disqus) listed as better alternatives to what Drupal offers also have integrations with Drupal. Not sure what the point here is; refer to the 2nd point I made above.
- I do agree with the point about finding talent to work on/with PHP and Drupal specifically - but how is this different from any other technology? There's always talent shortage in any given field for a varying degree of reasons. This is just PHP-shaming. Also, why would he care about developer talent/proficiency with other technology if at the end of the day he recommends building sites with a SaaS? That's for site-builders, not developers.
- Is a Google trends graph for Drupal an argument? At most I think it would be fair to assume Drupal is probably a known-quantity in the agency space and doesn't grab much headline-space nowadays also because of that. I agree you're probably better off using a SaaS alternative if what you're building is a simple CMS-type website for smaller clients. The adoption of Drupal by bigger (ie, enterprise-level) clients is what I've been personally witnessing for the last 4+ years.
Hi rantmode ! I wrote the article shared above. Let me answer your points.
1. Drupal Layout Builder > Indeed. The problem lays deep in Drupal's modular architecture, making it almost impossible to create a simple (in terms of UX) page builder with Drupal. I do not see Drupal fighting with Webflow, WeWeb or any other page builder there. Drupal ingest too much complexity.
2. Using Drupal 7 UI screenshots > I confess, clickbait on my side. Drupal 10 UI with tons of modules is still way more complicated to use than Content Stack.
3. The point about Drupal modules is not the same as for FE/JS Frameworks. The audience is not the same. On one side we have end-users that will prefer the simplicity of Mailchimp vs Simple News module. So what you're saying is that there is no point, as Mailchimp is integrated with Drupal. I'm returning you the question, if almost each module in Drupal is worse than it's SaaS equivalent, and you simply integrate Drupal with it, why using Drupal at all? At the end if your Drupal is only a content storage with CRUD, you have hundreds of better solutions (Hygraph, Xano, Content Stack, Prepr, etc...)
4. On ressources shortage. It's very different. A good PHP developer is not a good Drupal developer. Drupal's Learning curve is steep. But when you use any SaaS headless CMS you don't have to know it's internals. You simply build your front-end in any framework you're familiar with and connect it through GraphQL. Therefore any front-end developer will be ok, while with Drupal you'll need to specifically loook for experienced Drupal developer.
5. Google trends is not an argument, I regret that slippery slope I've taken. You can spank me.
I'm getting the feeling that your opinions (such as mine) come from dealing with many of the issues you've encountered when working with Drupal.
My opinion is it's far from being perfect, but is much better now than it was with Drupal 7.
If page building is all you want a CMS for, you're right: Drupal isn't for you; there are better alternatives. Doesn't mean it's dying.
Having the possibility of integrating with 3rd party services via installing a module is better than having to wire up your product/codebase to work with it. Many SaaS services also offer this, Drupal is not different.
I agree that a PHP Dev isn't a Drupal Dev and vice-versa (even though there's a very significant overlap). The learning curve for Drupal isn't steep if you only focus on learning what any of the simpler SaaS CMSs you mentioned offer. I argue it might even be lower and better documented. It does get steeper when you have to develop for Drupal - but then again, that's not something you can or have to do for a SaaS. Those products have learning curves of their own as well.
I've used Webflow before and liked it, but when the client started asking for some custom stuff, Webflow couldn't cut it either. Every tool has its limitations.
I have worked with Drupal as a backend with REST APIs for exposing data in multiple frontends and the experience was fine - probably not ideal and yes, it did require Drupal knowledge - but not different of what you'd expect trying to wire a FE app to consume/use JSON/GraphQL (which, by the way, is making its way into Drupal, too) from any other source.
Also, there's a significant point that neither of us has addressed, that I think is worth mentioning: what happens if/when one of those hot SaaS products goes bust because it didn't gain traction? Do you own the codebase? Can you quickly and simply migrate to another platform? Can you host it yourself? My guess is you're back to the same kind of predicaments you'd find in Drupal all the same. With the added bonus of now also having to find someone with experience and expertise to help migrate away from that even "nichier" product - might prove even harder to find talent than with Drupal.
I understand the complaints about Drupal, but it's all rather relative. Drupal is a glass that's 25% full. If you concentrate on the missing 75%, well, you'll just complain. But the 25% has been great for my projects. It's been a good foundation. I can usually find a module that does much of what I need and then I just jump in and help.
This kind of "X is dying" is just mean and negative.
Same with joomla I guess[1]? What I have done in the past with Joomla 3 has now become Hugo static site only. It is so much better for my use case. No one I know needs a full-blown cms. Selling people that they can edit their own website largely fell flat, because they paid me to do it in the end every time. Also, Joomla needed an update every month or so because of security issues was bad because often plugins would randomly break.
Joomla and Drupal both have their strong points, but nowadays most people will just install WordPress with a 1-click installer and add some plugin/theme that does whatever WordPress doesn't do out of the box.
It's nothing new and both project will stay alive, although with minimal updates. I mean, phpFusion is still alive after all these years -- just with a much smaller user base.
Eventually, I suspect, WordPress will go the same way and we'll have another shiny hammer, that makes every problem look like a nail.
While I would argue Drupal may be dying, Joomla is truly dead. I don't know a single remaining Joomla consulting agency that has more than 1 employee. At least full-time Drupal shops are still a thing.
I ditched Drupal for a Node.js based setup during the 7 to 8 migration. The writing of Drupal's decline was on the wall at that time and in hindsight switching was a good decision.
While I agree with the conclusion there are many reasons for the decline of Drupal:
- the main reason people give up on Drupal 8/9/10 is that it's complex and has a lot of bugs. Some issues are going on for +5 years with no solution in sight, e.g. https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal/issues/2752443
- the old Drupal had a huge community because it was comparatively simple, for instance the hook system that is based on a convention of function names: Name your function something_alter_hook then it gets called automatically in the core. Use another hacky function if you want to determine the order when it's called :)
- now there's an abundance of classes, interfaces, design patterns and a custom ORM. You still have the old hooks system that often acts as glue between the old Drupal and the new OOP layer.
- super complicated "config system": There's a way of exporting the running "configuration" of a site (core and 3rd party modules) to YAML. So you can version control the config and transfer it between a development and live site. However this comes with many gotchas and apart from simple cases you almost always will run into some kind of problem.
- slow adoption of Drupal 8/9 (https://www.thedroptimes.com/9105/why-drupal-7-still-popular). Drupal 7 is dead for years now but still the majority of Drupal sites are running this version with no intent of migrating. This leads to a decline of the developer community and to ...
- low quality of third party modules. There are many good modules but there are also many modules that never reached beta status. It is the norm to have to work with something that's labeled "alpha".
- bad documentation. Many times the official docs are just skeletons with the obligatory remark "tbd".
Huh, it's been years since I thought about Drupal. I actually got my first major start in the tech field developing Drupal solutions for various organizations and companies. I remember the war room we put together for upgrading our clients, and all the testing we did to make sure the dozens of modules and themes would work correctly.
I always thought Drupal was great because it allowed less-technical folks to really build an interactive web application without having to write any code. We occasionally had to dive into some PHP or JavaScript, but in general we built great websites without having to do much "custom" coding beyond the themes.
Perhaps I used the wrong term. I really meant for those who are more operationally focused than development. IE you don't need to write code to get a nice Drupal website. I think it's always been the case that if you wanted to get it up in the first place, you needed to know a bit about MySQL, Apache config, and potentially PHP config. Again I haven't touched Drupal in a long time, but sounds like some of those were replaced with newer technologies like Docker, which are still more operationally focused.
Readit News
PHP is one of those "boring technologies". Mature, slow paced and reliable tech. It has fixed a lot of the real issues which made it a meme language. If you are writing JS in the front, PHP is very similar and easy to pick up.
For people who are looking for a more mature and slow moving area, they could just fall back to PHP. Or try Laravel which adds some hotness to it.
I think there are fair points/questions raised in this piece, but some of them don't really make sense or there are a few gaping contradictions:
- Drupal is also moving towards no/low code (albeit in a slower way, as is always the way with Drupal). Layout Builder is in core and is getting steadily better. Acquia has its own Site Studio solution for this (wether or not that is a good thing for the project is certainly debatable).
- I agree that Drupal does too much and there are probably too many slightly different (maybe even conflicting) ways of doing any given thing. Arguing this is bad makes no sense to me. Yes, you need to make the right choices when deciding what to go with, but this is true for every ecosystem and for the same reasons. How many different FE/JS frameworks does one have to be proficient with these days? Everyone in every field has chosen the losing horse at some point and that will continue to happen everywhere.
- Using Drupal 7 content-type editing UI screenshots in June 2022 to illustrate how "bad" Drupal is in 2022 is simply dishonest.
- Most of the 3rd party service providers (Mailchimp, Typeform, Disqus) listed as better alternatives to what Drupal offers also have integrations with Drupal. Not sure what the point here is; refer to the 2nd point I made above.
- I do agree with the point about finding talent to work on/with PHP and Drupal specifically - but how is this different from any other technology? There's always talent shortage in any given field for a varying degree of reasons. This is just PHP-shaming. Also, why would he care about developer talent/proficiency with other technology if at the end of the day he recommends building sites with a SaaS? That's for site-builders, not developers.
- Is a Google trends graph for Drupal an argument? At most I think it would be fair to assume Drupal is probably a known-quantity in the agency space and doesn't grab much headline-space nowadays also because of that. I agree you're probably better off using a SaaS alternative if what you're building is a simple CMS-type website for smaller clients. The adoption of Drupal by bigger (ie, enterprise-level) clients is what I've been personally witnessing for the last 4+ years.
1. Drupal Layout Builder > Indeed. The problem lays deep in Drupal's modular architecture, making it almost impossible to create a simple (in terms of UX) page builder with Drupal. I do not see Drupal fighting with Webflow, WeWeb or any other page builder there. Drupal ingest too much complexity.
2. Using Drupal 7 UI screenshots > I confess, clickbait on my side. Drupal 10 UI with tons of modules is still way more complicated to use than Content Stack.
3. The point about Drupal modules is not the same as for FE/JS Frameworks. The audience is not the same. On one side we have end-users that will prefer the simplicity of Mailchimp vs Simple News module. So what you're saying is that there is no point, as Mailchimp is integrated with Drupal. I'm returning you the question, if almost each module in Drupal is worse than it's SaaS equivalent, and you simply integrate Drupal with it, why using Drupal at all? At the end if your Drupal is only a content storage with CRUD, you have hundreds of better solutions (Hygraph, Xano, Content Stack, Prepr, etc...)
4. On ressources shortage. It's very different. A good PHP developer is not a good Drupal developer. Drupal's Learning curve is steep. But when you use any SaaS headless CMS you don't have to know it's internals. You simply build your front-end in any framework you're familiar with and connect it through GraphQL. Therefore any front-end developer will be ok, while with Drupal you'll need to specifically loook for experienced Drupal developer.
5. Google trends is not an argument, I regret that slippery slope I've taken. You can spank me.
I'm getting the feeling that your opinions (such as mine) come from dealing with many of the issues you've encountered when working with Drupal.
My opinion is it's far from being perfect, but is much better now than it was with Drupal 7.
If page building is all you want a CMS for, you're right: Drupal isn't for you; there are better alternatives. Doesn't mean it's dying.
Having the possibility of integrating with 3rd party services via installing a module is better than having to wire up your product/codebase to work with it. Many SaaS services also offer this, Drupal is not different.
I agree that a PHP Dev isn't a Drupal Dev and vice-versa (even though there's a very significant overlap). The learning curve for Drupal isn't steep if you only focus on learning what any of the simpler SaaS CMSs you mentioned offer. I argue it might even be lower and better documented. It does get steeper when you have to develop for Drupal - but then again, that's not something you can or have to do for a SaaS. Those products have learning curves of their own as well.
I've used Webflow before and liked it, but when the client started asking for some custom stuff, Webflow couldn't cut it either. Every tool has its limitations.
I have worked with Drupal as a backend with REST APIs for exposing data in multiple frontends and the experience was fine - probably not ideal and yes, it did require Drupal knowledge - but not different of what you'd expect trying to wire a FE app to consume/use JSON/GraphQL (which, by the way, is making its way into Drupal, too) from any other source.
Also, there's a significant point that neither of us has addressed, that I think is worth mentioning: what happens if/when one of those hot SaaS products goes bust because it didn't gain traction? Do you own the codebase? Can you quickly and simply migrate to another platform? Can you host it yourself? My guess is you're back to the same kind of predicaments you'd find in Drupal all the same. With the added bonus of now also having to find someone with experience and expertise to help migrate away from that even "nichier" product - might prove even harder to find talent than with Drupal.
Again: fair points raised; worth discussing; Drupal isn't dying.
I understand the complaints about Drupal, but it's all rather relative. Drupal is a glass that's 25% full. If you concentrate on the missing 75%, well, you'll just complain. But the 25% has been great for my projects. It's been a good foundation. I can usually find a module that does much of what I need and then I just jump in and help.
This kind of "X is dying" is just mean and negative.
[1] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=DE&q=j...
It's nothing new and both project will stay alive, although with minimal updates. I mean, phpFusion is still alive after all these years -- just with a much smaller user base.
Eventually, I suspect, WordPress will go the same way and we'll have another shiny hammer, that makes every problem look like a nail.
"You can everything with Wordpress, there is always a module for any feature you might need."
Conclusion: Wordpress is dying too?
- the main reason people give up on Drupal 8/9/10 is that it's complex and has a lot of bugs. Some issues are going on for +5 years with no solution in sight, e.g. https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal/issues/2752443
- the old Drupal had a huge community because it was comparatively simple, for instance the hook system that is based on a convention of function names: Name your function something_alter_hook then it gets called automatically in the core. Use another hacky function if you want to determine the order when it's called :)
- now there's an abundance of classes, interfaces, design patterns and a custom ORM. You still have the old hooks system that often acts as glue between the old Drupal and the new OOP layer.
- super complicated "config system": There's a way of exporting the running "configuration" of a site (core and 3rd party modules) to YAML. So you can version control the config and transfer it between a development and live site. However this comes with many gotchas and apart from simple cases you almost always will run into some kind of problem.
- slow adoption of Drupal 8/9 (https://www.thedroptimes.com/9105/why-drupal-7-still-popular). Drupal 7 is dead for years now but still the majority of Drupal sites are running this version with no intent of migrating. This leads to a decline of the developer community and to ...
- low quality of third party modules. There are many good modules but there are also many modules that never reached beta status. It is the norm to have to work with something that's labeled "alpha".
- bad documentation. Many times the official docs are just skeletons with the obligatory remark "tbd".
I always thought Drupal was great because it allowed less-technical folks to really build an interactive web application without having to write any code. We occasionally had to dive into some PHP or JavaScript, but in general we built great websites without having to do much "custom" coding beyond the themes.
Jeff Geerling's series on trying to upgrade his fairly basic blog to Drupal 8 showed what Drupal has become.