Usability for content editors: Drupal or PHP framework?
- by Jim
Greetings:
I am going to develop a basic Web site that supports some custom content types, is multilingual, and has content moderation workflow for a restricted group of content editors. This seems like an obvious choice for Drupal, except... the content editors will have little computer experience.
In my opinion, that is a show-stopper for Drupal. For example, placing arbitrary inline images in content is a task that WordPress does well. I find Drupal's alternatives (IMCE, img_assist, etc.) clunky and not well integrated, and that will be a problem for this group of content editors.
Also, none of the Drupal content workflow modules I tried seemed well-integrated; they all had a "tacked on" feel to them. As an admin I can understand why an "Accessible content" menu item (via Module Grants module) is necessary to view draft content (fixed in D7 but I can't wait for all the modules to be ported), but I'm pretty sure it'll confuse the content editors.
An alternative is to use a PHP framework. I've read a few threads suggesting that it will take roughly the same amount of time using a good framework as it will to bend Drupal to my willing... maybe wishful thinking? I'm looking at Symfony, which gives me a basic auto-generated back-end, but which I believe I can customize to my heart's content.
How do you make Drupal accessible to non-savvy content editors? If you recommend a PHP framework, which one?
TIA!
