Drupal vs Joomla?

CMS & WordPress
1

Hello,

Maybe this question has been asked many times…but here its again: Which is better ? Drupal or Joomla in the following terms:

  1. Ease of use (by client)
  2. Ease of customization (by developer)
  3. Premade plugins or modules library (for both developer or client)
  4. Custom plugin/module development (for developer)

Thanks.

2

Just because of its superiority in the points 2 and 4 (especially) I pick up drupal!!

3

Although Joomla! is often pegged for superior UX, I would have to disagree. Drupal can do real well in this department with a little bit of theming on the developers part.

For development itself, there really is no comparison. Drupal with CCK is just plain better than Joomla! with K2. In my experience Joomla! developers hit a wall and wind up migrating to a new project rather frequently while Drupal developers tend to stick with their platform and upgrade their sites when a new version comes along, etc.

4

I just started using joomla and I like it! Don’t know much about drupal but from what i can see joomla has more support

5

Hi,

Ya i also started both drupal and joomla and i like joomla so far. i can easily make its template. Judt don’t know yet how to create a different index page and different content pages. Also i did’nt like the style over riding thing in Joomla…i am not css guru…i just search what i need and use that in my pages. But in joomla i have to change everything this is where i don’t like it. For eg. i got this jquery corner and you just name the div and it will convert its corners to rounded. Where as in joomla the polls etc. are coming in a table with class and no id. How to get around that ?

I tried drupal and don’t still know how to do its templates. I think the cms should be simple in terms on templates. The template creation in both of the systems is not upto the mark.

Thanks.

6

Don’t like either of them, but if I had to pick, then Joomla, Drupal is just painful to use in just about every respect.

7

I also agree! Joomla is better than Drupal in every aspect, specifically the themeing part.

Thanks.

8

I have used drupal many times and then I started using joomla and after I started using joomla I have never used drupal. Joomla is one of the best content management systems out there in the market today.

9

Man, I have to make a point of visiting the CMS section of the site more often… It seems to be the place I spend 90% of my development time these days.

Ok, so this is just my opinion but I’ll have ago.

  1. Ease of use (by client) Drupal wins by a long shot… Most of the Joomla clients I have met, hire me to do updates on their site because they got lost in Joomla administration hell. Whereas if you create your users in Drupal properly and provide just enough administration control for the client to get the job done right, there’s no confusion. They navigate to the page in question, click edit, use tinytinyMCE with a limited palet of controls and update. I also give them control to administrate the menu system. It’s drag-n-drop so it’s not uncommon to visit a site after a couple of months to find that they’ve rearranged the architecture to better suite their needs. Other than that, I give them uploading abilities and content creation permissions and away they go. Nothing’s better than visiting a site you built 6 months ago to see that it’s been maintained regularly.

  2. Ease of customization (by developer) I’m biased… I’m a Drupal geek. I hated working with it 4 years ago but I had to learn it for a project and then I started devouring (reading) everything I could about it. About a year and a half ago I made a commitment to become a Drupal development Ninja. I’m not there yet. I can theme the hell out of it but I still have to work on my module building chops.

  3. Premade plugins or modules library (for both developer or client) Hard to say… I’ve found some absolutely unusable modules in Drupal’s module repository but I’ve also found some really powerful ones. Some install really easily and others require lots of hoops to jump through even though once you’re done setting them up they’re amazing (I’m looking at you Video module, SWF Tools and FFMPEG Wrapper).

  4. Custom plugin/module development (for developer) I can’t say for Joomla but I do appreciate how powerful Drupal’s module development API is. There is very little that can’t be done with the framework through the module API. That said, you do need to have a good understanding of how the core works and how to access the hooks and that’s where I’m at with it.

    Even though I’m obviously a fan, a downside to any of these frameworks is that the more modules you activate in a framework, the more taxing it becomes on the server’s memory because of aditional variable and arrays. I’m not sure about Joomla but in Drupal it is definitely a consideration and I usually strip unused modules from sites once we’re ready to deploy them. As a result you really have to know what you’re using and learn the ins and outs of each module you use but oh well, they do provide powerful foundations and for me have made the biggest change in the web business environment.

10

I don’t have much more idea about joomla,but i know very well about drupal, drupal is best for development, another thing drupal is SEO friendly…

11

ya…
There are many differences between joomla and drupal here some suggestions about this

1.Back-end admin functionality with the Drupal is not that good, while Joomla! is comparatively better.

  1. The Drupal codes are more professional and skilled and of a quality, while it lacks in the case of Joomla!.

  2. With Drupal, you are able to use the same log-in-details for every different site.

  3. SEO has always and will always remain the key concern of these open source software. Therefore, this point should be of utmost importance that Drupal has SEO friendly URLs, while with Joomla!, one needs a commercial component.

  4. While Joomla! makes use of the plug-ins for the additional functionality, but Drupal uses modules.

thanks

12

Good points ecmcircle,

I past administrative issues with Drupal will be reduced to nil now that Drupal 7 is out. I’m using it for a new website right now and I’m amazed at how much easier it is to configure and maintain compared to D6. For instance I checked my status report from the admin menu at the top and it told me that one of the modules had an update available. I ticked the update box and clicked update. The site downloaded the update and then told me that it needed to run the update script. I clicked ok, the site run the update and gave me a status report. It doesn’t get much better than that.

For SEO I start with the Node Words module and fine tune from there.

13

Here’s an article that might help: Drupal 7 vs Joomla 1.6: http://goo.gl/nVzwO