Using Drupal 7 or developing a new system: What's better for a website relaunch with a community of 15.000 users?

Question

Hi,

I have to make a decision for our (eXma german) community webpage. We will relauching it with a new system.

There are two sites: The first is to develop a whole new system on e.g. Django and Python. The second is to use the new Drupal 7.

Personally I have a lot more experiences with Drupal 6 and now since I'm testing Drupal 7 on my local system, I think it's a very good system with a very good API to build a growing community page with some custom module developments. But the other side thinks it will be better to develop a whole new system based on Django / Python (because PHP is a bad language in their mind... but I think it's never mind) because Drupal does not scale as good as a system with python (but we have only 15000 users at the moment...) and a own system is better to manage because we know the code.

Can you help me to make a good decision? I prefere Drupal 7 with some own modules, we will develop. Because Drupal has a solid core of the central modules we will need for our community.

Answer 1

Go with what you feel comfortable with and what you feel nicer to maintain / extend. I'd choose Python for perfomance reasons (comparing to PHP), although proper system with opcode cache can speed things up a lot.

Answer 2

Drupal can be used as a very solid base upon which to build your site. It's well tested, has a variety of ready to use modules, and it is successfully used for busy sites.

It does have a relatively steep learning curve, but the documentation and community are excellent. However you mention you do have experience with Drupal 6, so the learning curve may not be that steep for you.

On the other hand, if you feel confident about it (and even not, it will be a great learning experience), developing it from scratch yourself will definitely be more comfortable when maintaining and understanding how it works. You will be, however, rediscovering the wheel in many occasions.