Drupal Vs Joomla

I have been a Joomla convert for several years now and was wondering whether anyone considers Drupal a better CMS platform in terms of:

1. How easy is Drupal to get your head round and learn to use
2. Availability of add ons (components/modules etc)
3. Ease of adding shopping cart functionality
4. Quality of forum support
5. Ease of updating, maintaining sites for those with limited knowledge

cheers, Paul

 

Many years ago, I first used Drupal and then tested Joomla (but ditched it, rubbish, stuck with Drupal).

When I first started using Drupal, I found it quite easy, but there were some differences to other systems (instead of categories it had taxonomy and vocabulary). Drupal is even simpler now. To do things such as clean-URLs (so-called SEO-friendly URLs) out of the box is easy (the pathauto module makes it effortless). It has a great built in caching system. Easy to use admin interface. I found Joomla annoying and too basic (it required a lot more effort to customise).

Its modules repository speaks for itself - a vast array of addons.

There are several ecommerce modules, install the module and configure. Straightforward.

The forum on drupal.org? Very good. Or do you mean the forum module? Basic, but can be improved with readily available modules.

Updating? Point and click for updating modules and themes. It's all automatic. Updating core isn't as simple as with Wordpress (which allows point and click update to a new version). You either have to upload and extract the tarball (zip file) or you can use drush (if you have ssh access to your hosting). My preference is with drush as it's just one command and it will update to the latest version for you.

If I'm not using Drupal, then I go for Wordpress (if I need something very basic, but not too limiting). Otherwise, I'll cook up my own code to do whatever I need.

 

great post ryan_uk. You certainly make Drupal sound like something I will need to check out soon, if I can ever find the time. That's the problem really. I've been using Joomla for several years and know my way round it pretty well.

 

Oh, and I didn't mention - custom content types. Drupal comes with the Field module (used to be CCK) as part of core. This makes it easy to create new content types, without need to hand code anything and just use a point and click interface.

I think the beauty of Drupal is it's flexibility and the ease of that now (compared to six years ago).

 

In simple words: Joomla is good for simple content-oriented websites as long as Drupal is more like social-oriented and suitable for more complicated content structures.

 

I've been using Drupal for almost 4 years now and although I like it, I'm not really a Drupal fanboy.

So IMHO :
1. How easy is Drupal to get your head round and learn to use
- It is VERY hard to learn Drupal, There is no centralized configuration page. No centralized content creation page, it is the responsibility of you (the site developer) to make things easier for your user.
Never think of Drupal as a ready to use CMS, it is a "lego block" available for you to build your CMS.

2. Availability of add ons (components/modules etc)
- Tons of modules available to download for free, but not all of module is built with the same quality (code wise, usability wise), and not all of the module will be updated or fixed eventhough you submit bug / patch, it all in the hands of module developer, some dev is nice and listen to user, some dev is too busy to fix etc etc. so most of the time, if you need X function that available to X module but not working right = PAY someone to fix them for you.

3. Ease of adding shopping cart functionality
- Ubercart is very easy to install and configure for most e-commerce site, to fully customize it is another story. Drupal commerce is new and supposedly is easier if you want a fully customized shopping cart, but IMO it will take longer time to build and most of its supporting modules is still in dev state.

4. Quality of forum support
- It is the geek world, they talked code and code, very contrast to wordpress.org support forum. So if you like code and fluent in php, Drupal.org forum is your sanctuary.

5. Ease of updating, maintaining sites for those with limited knowledge
- maintaining drupal site is hard, Drupal it self is slow, you need advanced caching, varnish, memcached, etc etc.
- updating drupal to any major version change (eg 6 to 7) will BREAK things, you will need to sort it manually and it will vary from case to case.
- updating drupal from minor version (eg 7.6 to 7.7) most of the time will not break things, but updating contrib module is another story, some module will not break some module break some module destroy site.

In short, Drupal equips you with nuclear power, and with super power comes great responsibility (and headache).

 

Good post. I disagree about the "hard" part though as that has changed since the earlier versions and with 7 everything is a lot simpler, smoother, not really too dissimilar to the Wordpress experience (except Drupal can do more out of the box). I think some of your points are a bit misleading though as there is a central place for content to list it and to add content. Yes, you have the option of adding different types (especially if you make it), but the same goes for Wordpress (Pages and Posts, for example, which are even under two different sections) and other CMS. There is centralised configuration under /admin, which is just like Wordpress and many other CMS. Just like those, it has different sections under /admin depending upon what you are doing.

I recommend installing Ampps locally and test out many CMS (and a lot of other scripts) to see what you feel most comfortable with and allows you to do what you want easily. (I don't mean configure a whole site, just test the functions that are most important to you.) Each one has their pros and cons, weaknesses, etc. Even one that is good and simple will give you headaches. (For example, OpenCart has great functionality for products, but also a headache when it comes to customising finer details, finding a module that works with the current version, etc. It's usually easier though if your customers are just in the USA, e.g. setting up accurate delivery prices and options.)

Check this list:

http://www.ampps.com/apps

 

Interesting hidden facts are discovered in the discussions and thus every one is trying to explore it more , I personally like the Drupal and thus it looks something easy to handle.

 

My opinion is Drupal is far better than Joomla!. Whoever has written at least one line of code in both systems, understands the difference…

1) The concepts of coding are in a different level than Joomla. The framework is a real framework and we are expecting to become the most powerful framework behind a CMS with the use of Symphony at Drupal 8.

2) Regarding modules, we speak here for the most complete concept that exists out there for modules of a CMS. I don't need anymore to compromise with Joomla's plug n' play components. In Joomla if a component has 8/10 of the features you need you are really screwed up. You need to rebuild the component from scratch to achieve all the 10 features that you need. In Drupal you never tell your client that this feature is not supported by the system! In Drupal everything is a result of recipes. You install the module A, B and D and you have your new feature!

3) In terms of procedures, there is no comparison between the "Joomla extension directory" and the drupal.org. In d.o there are automatons both in uploading your modules and downloading them. There is also a built in use of GIT! All the decisions are made by the community. I remind you the recent discussion if d.o should have social links at the footer!! (http://drupal.org/node/1715618). On the other hand, I still don't know who is making the decisions on how Joomla goes.

4) Documentation of Drupal is far far ahead of Joomla's one. And generally I love the fact that you can find everything in drupal.org.

5) About Security, I guess no-one can debate on it that Drupal is the most secure CMS than joomla or WP. Most Gov sites has been used it and the best example i can give you this site, http://www.whitehouse.gov/

So i love Drupal And hope it helps to understand you why Drupal is better than Joomla.

 

1. Drupal is harder to learn then Joomla, it offers how ever a more flexible framework and so opportunities.
2. There are plenty of free modules which are from high quality to build a descent website. With modules as CCK and Views you can create many things which in Joomla required many modules.
3. Ubercart and Commerce, cant compare it with Joomla because I never used Joomla for a shoppingcart before.
4. Great support I think even better then Joomla, Drupal offers a forum plus there is drupal.stackexchange.com too.
5. Ryan_uk covered this part perfect I think.

I use Wordpress for easy and simple websites or blogs for higher requirements I use Drupal. I have some experience with Joomla but I do not use it for new websites. The userbase from the three systems tells also a lot. Search for websites which are build with those three systems, Drupal and Wordpress have some interesting websites Joomla not really.

 

Hello, interesting thread with interesting replies
I have been coding on Drupal the last 2 years. I am not so much experienced I'd say but here's what I think.

Drupal as a CMS is fine itself and secure enough I'd say. But what happens if you need to develop a whole site on it and thus code some extra modules which doesnt exist in the community or you cannot trust every one of them ?

- I don't like Drupal's documentation. It is limited and new programmers may find it hard seperating the right for the wrong thing.
- There are some things that could be improved in future to make programming stuff more flexible, easy.
- I like the whole hook hierarchy system.

On the other hand I have seen some Joomla and I feel its easier to code on it. Its been on the stage longer and more popular over the years than Drupal. Between those 2 I would choose Drupal for one only reason:

Its high security level. You can just search for Drupal and Joomla exploits in the exploit db and see my point. So firstly, security then the rest.

Of course, if I have to build something simple and quickly I would use WP too.

 

I think drupal is CMS platform in php. It helps developer more. It's nice think that all views are very well.

 

I have tried about 3 times a total of 30-40 hrs to use Joomla I hate that program, hated it from the start and hated it to the finish.. Buggy trash IMO

Drupal I have always liked.

I found Drupal easy to learn, it is laid out nice so stuff is easy to find and use. Their is a lot of stuff though so it can take some time to figure the bulk of it out.

There is tons of great modules for Drupal.

Ubercart is very nice IMO. One of the best ecommerce solutions I have worked with.

The Drupal community is one of the best opensorce communities I know. Their is just a lot of really friendly and knowledgeable people involved in Drupal.

This was the draw back of Drupal for me. The updates within a version were not that bad but the updates between versions were a huge pain.. Mostly for the themes and modules.