CMS Platforms and front end integration strategy (Drupal 7, 8, WordPress, Joomla, Backdrop...)
(be gentle, I'm not sure if this is the sort of thing I'm supposed to post here, so pls let me know if I'm off the mark)
**I feel the need to discuss CMS platforms at a strategic level. **Anyone else?
Here's my feelings on this:
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Most people who have the luxury of choice have chosen Drupal 7 for CiviCRM. A lot of stuff works or works better on D7 and there's some connected goodies (like CiviCRM Views, webform etc) that really add value to CiviCRM.
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Most people who don't have the choice use WordPress because of its huge market share - either people think of CiviCRM as just another plugin on their website, or they choose WordPress because of familiarity.
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I've met a few people who use Joomla. They tell me they're used to quietened blank faces when they tell people that. While Joomla is still a very popular FLOSS CMS it's a select group who choose it.
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Drupal 8. Sounds like the logical next step from D7 (end of life Nov 2021). But it's actually a completely different beast; heavily abstracted technical architecture leaks through to the UI reducing user-friendliness. Maintenance costs are high; developers are much fewer than D7 (which is already far fewer than WP).
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Backdrop. Very little take up. Could get surge in interest as path of least resistance at end of D7 life?
What is the future for website integration?
CiviCRM provides lots of routes on public websites: booking forms, contribution forms, profiles, webhooks etc. but then organisations with budget to allow tend to move their CiviCRM off their website and access via proxy or such for security and stability.
CiviCRM's pages and forms are hard to customise or integrate in a website's style and often pull in huge quantities (number of requests and size) of CSS, js etc., damaging work that's done in keeping websites fast.
My working theory is that I'll end up with separate sites: one D8 one dedicated to CiviCRM used by staff and one something else (WP, or possibly another CMS, not even PHP) for front end website, and that integration will done by API work between the two. So that leads to seeing the CMS as providing a solid secure foundation, rather than needing it to manage any content. And in which case, do we need D8? How about something cleaner like Laravel, or something else minimal. And if we go this way, how can integration be more easily achieved?
But perhaps your take on this situation is quite different. I know there's a lot of work on getting CiviCRM+D8 working at the mo.
I'd be very interested in some form of discussion and awareness-raising about these strategic issues/near-future challenges.