Communicopia

This is a very good compilation and comparison of the two popular CMS. Drupal is the way to go for now. Drupal 6 is hopefully going to be far superior and will leave a wide gap for joomla or others Regards http://mydrupal.com >> Drupal Developers Directory. Drupal Themes and Drupal Showcase.

It's nice to to be soft with Joomla fanatics, but recommending Joomla to those who merely want to manage pages on their websites means that clearly Drupal is the best CMS around despite some user-voting based awards saying Joomla is first. First in bullshit maybe. But let's wait and see version 1.5 competing against Drupal 6 :-) It would be nice if you could do a comparaison chart between those two versions at the end of the year. Cheers, James http://blog-money-wiki.com/blog/2007/10/is-drupal-the-best-cms-or-is-it-...

I have to admit my bias here. I've not really used Joomla. I have tried it but found it hard to get into, hard to organize content. Drupal just make a lot more sense to me right from the get-go, so I started with that and stuck with it so far. Recently I have been revisiting this decision. I know a lot of other people use Joomla, and wondered if I was missing something. Joomla looks better out of the box in many ways, but it has a very distinctive style which may not suit you. Drupal can be used out of the box because the templates are a bit more generic, but generic in a good way. What really matters though is capability after you have installed the requisite templates to do what you need to do. In the end, I feel that I know Drupal so why switch? If I were to use Joomla, I would have to spend time messing with templates. With Drupal it is optional, meaning this can wait.

Balanced article, and I think it hits some good spots. Overall, though, I would note that Drupal is difficult to customize by a semi-amateur user, i.e. somebody that is web-savvy but not a programmer. Joomla, on the flip is easy to customize by a web-savvy user, and there are a fair amount of easy to install components available. Forums, commenting, basic social networking, etc. However, if you really want a powerful CMS-driven site and if you can afford programming power, you'll have to choose Drupal.

I use Drupal and I can admit that creating a template for Drupal is hard. Also, if you intend to make your pages look different from each other, you're going to have to go the extra mile in Drupal. If you don't mind them all looking basically the same then you wont have a problem.

I've not used Joomla.

I've been using Joomla for years, and I eager for change. Drupal is my new friend. It's a really good CMS. Thanks!

I was trying to make a decision between the two. I have been using CMS Made Simple, but needed a little more since my site is growing.
I checked on the demo site for CMS's and both seem with restrictions that I was uncomfortable with.
I ended up choosing MODx CMS.
The two (temporary?) thumbs down with MODx is:

• Lack of good documentation - kind of scattered and not always current.
• *Lack of modules in comparison to Drupal/Joomla - Gallery2 module is not up to date.

Other than that, it is has been a pleasure to make my site on. Really flexible.
Thanks for the article.

Don't agree with

• Adding a visual theme to Drupal can be time consuming

opinion.
Adding new theme to drupal in few simple steps:
- extract theme archive (themename.tar.gz) to appropriate themes folder
- in admin area: activate new theme
- optional, - in admin area: configure new theme

Thank you so much for this article.
Thanks to this article, even a year after publishing, I took a deeper look into Drupal which made me realised that it's much more feature-filled (without making any purchases).

The ratings for Joomla! are massively inaccurate, I was taking a really long time to figure out why people like that CMS at all.. I installed Drupal, Mambo, Joomla, MODx to do a live comparison. Maybe I can write an article myself, haha.

At first I overlooked Drupal 6 after seeing a very minimalist layout. I thought it had less features. But I was wrong. Not all the modules are enabled on default. I got a breakthrough after reading your article and realising the features I've been looking for in Joomla for so long are already built into Drupal (e.g. Taxonomy, Book modules). And they are well-implemented.

MODx has some amazing features, but the development is getting shaky. The documentation is confusing (having a few versions for a certain module). Now I shall focus on using Drupal. Hopefully they make Drupal 6 even better. :)

Well done. Only I never ever understand why people come up with the idea of saying one is better then the other. They are BOTH good. But they are made for totally different things!

Joomla is a straight forward Open Source CMS if you need a straight forward content web site and are happy with a certain limitation on sections and subsections and need something that is set up fast and easily. It is expendable, but each extension will work on its own so with many extensions you end up having a "patchwork rug" of parallel installed applications.

Drupal can what Joomla does, only the initial learning curve might be higher - BUT: it is more then just a plain CMS like Joomla, it is a Web Application Framework and it's the right choice for you if a basic and good CMS is just not enough or if you need extra scalability both in size as in features. Drupal can be extended, in fact it really must be extended as just a core functionality is delivered upon first installation. However, extensions draw on a common API and INTERLOCK with each other, so extensions (called modules here) can extend each other, not only the Drupal core.

So one is Apples. One is Pears. Where's the point in this endless "who's better"?!!! It's: what's more suited for your needs!!!

Personally, I think Joomla is very user friendly. Easy to use, easy to install.
Drupal, on the other hand, is a bit harder for the end user but is a beauty for
developers due to its cleaner and more powerful code.

Ultimately, it really depends on what you need it for. Joomla would be great for
content site. And Drupal probably more for a community site. Drupal has in
SE friendly URLs, and blogging and even forum.

With Joomla, the last time I looked, you can extend its capabilities to
include all this with modules and add-ons.

hi

I have NOT used drupal yet, and certainly look forward to doing so, HOWEVER

some your comments on joomla are misleading :
modules cost money : there are hundreds of free modules in joomla. and components. and mambots. certianly some cost money, and I've bought a few, but for the few dollars they cost they saved astonishing amount sof time.

URLs are not easy to read : install sh404sef component (or a few others, but 404 is the best). It will automatically transform all your URLs for content, and many common components have plugins built for it. i.e. events, community profiles etc

Multiple categoreis : true, but install the free component "deep pockets" and it does all that for you. SEO works as well with 404

I agree that the user permissioning is too inflexible, and the out of the box blogging is non existent (there are components, free and paid for that solve that)

All in all, I think you should revisit joomla and get a feel for all the free stuff available.

Now, drupal, the reason I have not used it yet, is because its home site looks too simple without showing me what the site can do. there isn't even a convincing demo. there are no links to the extensions that I am sure exist. what makes joomla seem so enticing is the easily viewed and searchable extensions list, with links to demos, user reviews etc.

I'll keep searching for more info on drupal, but if its' own site is anythign to go by, it cannot be as user friendly or extensible as joomla. that said, I know people who say that drupal is the next step for CMS developers, and they prefer it. joomla for its part has vast amounts of extensions that give a developer confidence that a job can be done.

This is perhaps the best comparison I have seen of Drupal Vs Joomla. I have used both in the past and feel the points made are very accurate, even through the new versions. Thank you for this. Now when clients ask for the differences between the two, I can point them here.

"Limited roles and permission allowances" are extended in Joomla by numerous free and inexpensive extensions. Still, it is a weak spot being addressed in Joomla 1.6.

"Modules cost you money" -- some do, most don't. So what? More options, more business models, more freedom, and a healthier more diverse developer ecosystem than Drupal. Same thing with dotnetnuke, Magento, etc. It's the future. The Joomla foundation, Drupal and Wordpress will get on board or die. (Or get forked and die.)

*"URLs are not search engine friendly (there is a purchaseable module)"--and several free ones. Plus, search engines don't care anymore. If you want pretty human readable URLS, Joomla does have built in SEF but it's not very good. Use an extension. Drupal is better on this point, but it's minor.

*"Out-of-the-box blogging functionality is mediocre" -- it's a CMS. Want to blog, get a blog. Drupal is also weak as a blog compared to systems built to be blogs because it's so much more.

Re. community building. Joomla does it very well with extensions and is widely used for this purpose.

Re. developer responsiveness. I've found it's generally very good with Joomla, especially when you paid your 10 euros for component X. With the $ comes professionalism and accountability. I've never been burned by a paid module. If paying anything bugs you because you're in it for fun and can't code your own stuff, or pay your way becuase you can make money developing sites, you're in the wrong place.

Bottom line: 9 out of 10 clients in the market for a quality low-cost CMS driven site want a slick intuitive interface. Joomla wins hands down. They also want designers/developers to be able to deploy rapidly. Joomla wins again, hands down. And they don't mind paying a few hundred bucks max. for all the extensions they could ever want if they need hot commercial stuff that comes with ongoing support and works the first time. Joomla wins again, hands down.

Drupal is well built but not in market-savvy ways. Pretty much all its success has to do with accidental branding: howard Dean. ANd then a rabid cottage industry of adoption among NGOs who just repeat "Drupal Drupal Drupal" to themselves as the free progressive yum yum of choice. And many of their sites are ugly and generic because it takes much time and skill to build them right. Meanwhile with Joomla you have a bazillion free and cheap standards compliant templates loaded with gizmos and eye candy that are easy to install and modify with great versatility nevermind the freakin' tables still stuck in the limited core content component. Joomla badly needs a CCK and it too is on the way. A commercial (inexpensive) version is already available and it's far easier to learn and use with much slicker looking results than Drupal's CCK.

Joomla also has the fun situation of 4+ major forks and 3pd extensions that work on 2, 3, and even 4 of them. Joomla 3pds may be an open source novelty in intentionally building software that will simultaneously work on multiple forks. Some significant lessons for the open source community might be learned from this in time. We'll see where it goes.

Good article,

However to be fair to Joomla! it should read;

Modules CAN cost you money

instead of

Modules cost you money

There is a lot of open source (free) stuff for Joomla!

regards,

Remi

Thank you for this Darrell. Before reading, I was siding with Drupal, and after reading, I'm siding with Drupal. I find it easy enough to use, but I'm interested in a sort of Drupal 101 (preferably not created by drupal, but by its users) to help me with basics and particularly for communicating those basics with others who need to understand in a very simple way what can and cannot be done with the modules and when editing the content within. Any thoughts?

Great article!

The main (only?) significant advantage of Joomla! is its administrative interface - it is more intuitive for non-technical users. However I would suggest Joomla! only for very basic/generic sites. As soon as you want to deeply customize the look and flow of things, or create significant new functionality that interacts with or customizes core data and functionality, you're far better off with Drupal.

With Drupal there is a learning curve - I would say it takes a good 6 months for a developer to really get rocking on it. If you've never done Drupal development before, you need to account for that ramp time. Also if you are hiring a developer to make you a Drupal site, PHP experience is not enough - make sure they have significant Drupal experience, or anticipate double the amount of dev time.

Once you've ramped up with Drupal you can produce sophisticated sites quickly, and you've got a REALLY powerful and well-thought-out framework and some great modules at your fingertips - the sky's the limit.

Great Comparison Darrell,

My experience....

I have used Joomla and know it fairly well, I had fully customized my Joomla site to suit my needs but the latest version 1.5 constantly threw random DB errors at me, searching the Joomla forums I discovered many others were having the same problems but the issues were never resolved, Plus the site would take ages to load, anything up to 40 - 50 seconds.
So I reverted to an earlier version of Joomla 1.0.15, and customized it the exact same way as before, No more random DB errors which was good but the site would still load very slowly, modules were having problems, conflicting with each other even though they were the right versions for my Joomla they just would not do what they promised.

I must note here that I had tried all the speed tips for Joomla on both versions with no significant results, my users were getting fed up waiting on pages to load that I made a drastic decision and decide to move to Drupal...

I have made my Drupal site look the exact same way as before but now my site loads instantly, users are telling me how fast the page loads are now compared to before, I have not had a single random db error and everything is running as peachy as I would like.

Granted it does take twice as long to deal with little things as there just is not enough documentation for Drupal as I would like but I am very happy so far (as are the users of my site) and am enjoying a relative hassle free CMS.

You do not have support for free (GPL) modules, support is voluntary. So you can not bee "frustrating".

But feel free to help us, commit code or donate money to the developers!

Bellyacher are "frustrating".

I work for a company that uses Joomla exclusively on all of its sites. This isn't my personal choice, I just work there. I am the Joomla developer and have completed over 80 sites in the past two years. I have messed around with Drupal here and there in the past and am always excited when I get to use it.

However, I can say that Drupal is easily better than Joomla. It really isn't an apples to pears comparison either. That's letting Joomla off the hook too easily.

Some inaccuracies in the article I found about Joomla:

• More intuitive administration user interface--Not necessairly. Only since 1.5 has Joomla improved its UI on the backend and even then it has its problems. Try editing a template file, then backing out of it to edit a module. It literally takes you three clicks just to get out of the template section. You could easily point out dozens of nuances like this about the UI that should be a no-brainer. For a daily user, these nuances add up and drive you crazy.
• Lots of polished modules for things like calendars, polls, etc.--Polished? HAHA I laughed out loud when I read that statement. Are you serious? That statement can only be said by a non-experienced outsider who happened to discover the Joomla Extensions Directory. The numbers look great from the outside, but under the hood they're termites. This is the biggest weakness of Joomla and the open source community. Anyone can submit an extension, whether it works or not. Great standard guys. Great standard. Joomla might have thousands of extensions, but try finding one that works for you. You could easily weed out 4/5 of the Joomla extensions and throw them out completely. If you use Joomla, you better know PHP because you will need it to hack your extensions. I know this from years of experience.
• Large community of developers (more than Drupal) for helping with setup and development--I wouldn't necessarily equate the higher number of developers in the community to a better product or better support. If that were true, Microsoft would have a great reputation with Vista. After all, they have tens of thousands of employees in both support and programming. It's a bad premise to make in this article. Also, I don't mean to sound like a jerk or anything, but many of the developers you might come across simply cannot communicate in English. Even the Joomla blogs often contain spelling and grammar errors. C'mon Joomla, you can do better than that.

Another reason that wasn't mentioned is that while Drupal has some really big names behind it (with great design), Joomla has nothing to show for. It took them years to redesign joomla.org, and the backend of Joomla still looks horid and outdated. Joomla needs solid designers behind their product if they expect to be taken seriously in the marketplace.

Joomla relies heavily on the fact that it is open source, however, within the Joomla model the greatest weaknesses of open source reveal themselves. The system works, fine. I'll give them that. But when it comes to extensions, you have an instant junkyard of code. It took them years just to fix the search on their own site. I had to use Google to search on Joomla.org for years. To me, this is inexcusable when Google search is not that difficult to implement.

I can't, in any case, recommend Joomla to anyone. And this is coming from an experienced Joomla expert. Jump into Drupal and you won't be sorry down the road. Look at it as a long-term investment.

Zikula is a middle point between a CMS and a Web Framework, then it's the ideal platform to meet User and Developer needs! This is my preferred open-source project, and has the advantage over Drupal and Joomla, we just need to tell the world :-D check it and you'll be fascinated with the quality of this code, its flexibility and it maturity ;-)

Both the article and the comments have been very helpful!

I prefer Drupal because of its immense flexibility. Drupal is great for social networking, although not always that evident. That's why I bundled my thought together as a tutorial ebook: Drupal 6:Ultimate Community Site Guide. This will give you a site like rawvegandating.com (D5) and drupalfun.com (D6).

If you are interested in the modules used, you can take a peak at the table of contents.

Greetings,

Dorien

Because Joomla too much better than Drupal I guess.