Today I spent the day hacking on the WordPress site for BarCampSaigon. I'm no expert on WordPress but trying to hack a theme with it makes me appreciate Drupal so much more. WordPress does have an "API" or at least some documented functions which are used internally which can also be used by developers but it's certainly not designed with developers in mind. Wordpress is great for bloggers. Drupal is great for developers and users who need something more than a blog will have to choose between working with Drupal or fighting against WordPress. :-)

Due to two recent conferences, BarCamp Hanoi and the opening of DrupalVietnam.org, I put together a presentation called "The Business Case for Drupal in Vietnam". I'll blog about those two events later.

I targeted two main groups: outsourcing companies based in Vietnam who want to attract more clients abroad, and any software development shop in Vietnam who is deciding what technology to use to develop websites. There is a third group, who are those companies with simpler website needs who perhaps only need one website and are not in the business of making websites.

I go over a number of common concerns that customers outside of Vietnam might have which Vietnamese companies might not expect. One point is being vendor agnostic when developing what is essentially a CMS. I make a strong point that one should never fall to the temptation of developing your own in-house CMS and as a consumer, you should stay far away from such "bespoke" solutions in the modern age where content management frameworks such as Drupal exist. I also think Drupal represents a strong brand name that is not well-known yet in Vietnam, but we all know how much Vietnamese people love brands.

On the supply side, I talk about why Drupal is a decent choice for Vietnamese developers, similar to any web developer. But the main recent news is that there is finally Drupal training being made available in Vietnam, much like for Joomla, and that PHP is widely known in Vietnam not just because there are books on it in the Vietnamese language, and that there is now a core Drupal community in Vietnam represented by DrupalVietnam.org (which I somehow became vice president of).

In general, I say go with your strengths. If web development is not your strength, then hire someone proper to do it for you while you focus on your core business. If web development is your business, make better use of your developers by using a CMS.

Anyways, here's the presentation.