Please tell me what CMS is better, and why: Drupal or Joomla ?
The word “best” has no context.
Both are tools, with strengths and weaknesses. It is erroneous to do what many do, which is become a “joomla shop” or “drupal shop,” it is by definition “every problem looks like a nail” thinking. And, by the way, that’s strengths and weaknesses …in solving some pressing USER PROBLEM.
And I wish I didn’t have to write that …but apparently I do.
Unbeknownst to the development community, by and large, is the letters C.M.S. stand for something. And it is not Isolate Development From Application. (See, the initials come out totally different).
The most popular way the CMS is used is so developers don’t have to do updates. Essentially a playpen set up so clients can do updates without damaging layout or code, that is also not what a CMS was for. And handing off an empty shell so clients can fill in the text is definitely not what these systems were supposed to be for.
Neither is any good as a management system because neither is out-of-box compatible with the ideas of management.
However, Drupal was supposed to be for sophisticated workflow management. That would mean a user group with editor role, style and content guide reinforcement and project management. Drupal can handle a more sophisticated information architecture (don’t worry, chances are you’ll never see that term again). Since 19 out of 20 of the shops installing these things don’t even know what that means, let’s move on to what they do care about.
Drupal is granular but has a steep learning curve. Joomla is easier to skin and get modules up and running. Entirely and exclusively programmer centric, nary a user or site purpose in sight, but that’s the dismal reality.
When you’re talking about slapping up brochureware, for hit-and-run billable, my guess is you’ll want to start looking at joomla.
That is actually up to you. If you can give time you can learn both for the same purpose. But personally I found Joomla much easier and Joomla 1.5.x is better and easy to handle.
I saw that joomla has a lot of beautiful templates, that drupal doesn’t have. I heard that joomla is more used that drupal, but in the same time drupal si more powerful. That si what I heard, I guess I will start to see what is with joomla.
Drupal seems to have a huge support system. I’m always running across the Drupal developer forums or documentation pages when I search for solutions.
However, I have not used either of them beyond poking at the demos so I don’t really have an opinion yet on this. I suggest that you look closely at the specs for each one first and then try out the demos. You really won’t know which is “better” for you until you try it out for yourself.
I like Joomla because has a lot of nice templates. The themes from drupal are very common and very simple, but drupal has a good admin :).
i prefer joomla because the ease,the templates, and the support.
I would like to prefer you to go for Joomla as it is very simple to manage with compare to Drupal. Also it has got variety of plugins and components.
i do think that joomla is much easier than drupal. besides it seems to me joomla is more popular as well.
Mate, I am in the development field where we have worked on both CMS and I found much more easier then Drupal for developers and also my 95% of client is very happy with using Joomla and feeling comfort with it.
I’d say Drupal is fine for that too.
But people should, if you ever want to progress past the hit-and-run brochureware you talk about.
Many designers tend to gravitate toward Joomla as it’s easier to theme out of the box. However when developing more complex sites it is these same designers that tend to hit the wall rather quickly.
Drupal, while it might take you a little longer at first (we’re talking hours, not months), offers much more flexibility and scalability. For example, modules such as CCK and Views allow you to create and display custom contact types that simply aren’t available in Joomla. In addition, the menu system in Joomla is rather limited (I can’t remember how deep it could go as it’s been a while since I gave up with the system). Finally, Drupal offers very good user access controls which can come in handy even with a small team to update.
Where Drupal falls behind is definitely in the fact that it was created by developers and not designers. The admin UI is a little clunky at first, and although theming actually gives you more control, the control comes from the added complexity built in from the start.
As for the popularity, according to builtwith.com Drupal actually far surpasses that of Joomla. From my own work it seems that Joomla is something of a product without a niche. Small php sites have Wordpress, large php sites have Drupal, and Joomla doesn’t really have anything.
The alleged argument for Drupal is it is more flexible and is more scalable. The truth of the matter is Drupal is only scalable if the site in question can use lots of caching, which is ironic as Drupal is promoted as being ideal for community sites, social networks, Digg like stuff, etc all of which are less than ideal for caching, which leaves you trying to scale Drupals baseline performance, which when compared to all the other options large sites have (Django, RoR, one of the PHP frameworks,etc) frankly sucks. Saying that Drupal’s caching is superior to Joomla’s…
It is more flexible than Joomla, but in reality the majority of websites can be covered by a pretty standard set of functionality and that flexibility is not needed (and for those sites that do go beyond the norm Drupal (or indeed any CMS is not the answer)).
Overall I’d go with Joomla, it’s easier to use, easier to theme and easier to understand.
Oh yes, wiggsfly is mistaken when he says there is no equivalent of CCK in Joomla, there are several modules K2, FlexiContent, JseBlod CCK, etc.
I am really impressed with Drupal 7’s admin panel. It goes a good long way to reducing the suck of the admin interface.
Agreed. It’s a fantastic improvement. They’ve done away with Drupal’s Achilles’ Heel!
If i were you,i think i like wordpress,it is powerful, but if you are good at php,i think use joomla or drupal,which one is good is due to yourself.