Drupal 6 vs. Joomla 1.5 (2009)

Joomla! may be "easier" to learn, but it is not "easy" by any means.

The big problem any noob will have is the architecture. As noted above, "modules" does not mean extensions or plug-ins as they are elsewhere in CMS land. A J! module is a container for particular kinds of content.

The big thing for new folk to remember is that in Joomla!, architecture comes FIRST. The fundamental unit is not content, but organization: the MENU. Menus first - THEN what goes in them.

You can't just start typing away in Article Manager and have stuff pop up on your homepage. You need to assign it to a menu. And section, too - if you publish the article but forget to publish the section, it won't show up.

If you remember that J! needs to know WHERE content goes before it can process that content, you're off to a good start.

There's also much online help, altho specific solutions are harder to find than beginning-to-end tutorials. The Absolute Beginner's Guide is your rite of initiation - most forum folk will ask you to complete it before posting for help.

Joomla = Volkswagen Golf
Drupal = Mercedes (but looks like Opel)

The massively greater popularity of Joomla is why Joomla wins out.
The number of extension appearing is staggering.
The number of users contributing to the forums in massive.
The number of developers working on it are miles more than Drupal.

If the world were starting from scratch you would not chose to learn English. The spelling is crazy, just learning to read and write is hard. But it does have its good points. There are no accents to have to write and type. The verbs are easy to use.
The main positive is so many people speak it.

Billions of people speak English and there are over a million words to chose from. Because so many people are using it and so many ideas are expressed in it, English becomes a big asset when you want to communicate throughout the world.

Same with Joomla.
It would appear that J!1.6 which is likely fully online by the year end (2009) and will overcome some of the defects in the CMS.
I would always plump for Joomla, warts and all.

I use Windows - I HATE Microsoft because of that dumb browser IE and the extra work and stress it gives me. But if you want some software you will always find decent software that works with Windows.

You want some decent software to add to your website - you have a huge number to chose from in Joomla. I can live with the routine of create the section, create the category, create the menu item and then publish the article.

Terminology

Joomla's terminology is complicated to newbies. A blog in Joomla terms is a title, a teaser, and a body. "Dynamic-content" are articles in Joomla words (not Flash or AJAX). Modules are blocks in web terms (and Drupal too).

Granular access control

Unlike other CMS's (like WordPress or Drupal), Joomla is the only major CMS which doesn't have granular access control (which will be added in Joomla 1.6, the community behind it says).

As a developer I find they are both rather limited, slow, resource hogs that take longer to develop with and result in an inferior site than using a framework.

Drupal is very simple and extremely effecient. I started a drupal website and joomla site a year ago hosted on the same server. When i checked Google's webmaster tool it showed me that the drupal's site has better speed than the joomla's one. And their contents were not very different either. I definitely think that drupal rocks.

Hi all,

After spending quite a bit of time using Joomla and Drupal, I have reached the following conclusions.

1. Joomla is great if you need a simple site that displays content and has minimal user interactivity. You can setup a site in no time, apply a great looking template, and you have a professional looking website. Its when you need to add stuff that things get a little complicated. You soon realise that Joomla has a few limitations, such as categories, predefined template positions, and user permissions, and like all CMS's, the more you add the slower your site.

2. Drupal - a nuclear reactor posing as a battery. Drupal requires so much more from you than Joomla, but what it gives you in return is staggering. You can use Drupal as a framework for pretty much anything you need. It has unlimited categories for your articles, unlimited user types, extensive and customizable user permissions, and even gives you the ability to create new template positions within your content area thanks to the cck, views and panel modules. It performs fast, has brilliant CSS and JavaScript caching options, and great SEO. Just don't be afraid to learn, Drupal will certainly reward you for your efforts.

My site first I made in joomla, later changed to Drupal. At present in Drupal 7.8. I read many comments that drupal is hard to learn and joomla is easy. I dont think so. I could learn basics of Drupal in a day or two. I dont use many modules, it is a simple site only with basic page, book pages, gallery formatter module and light box for images, youtube embed videos etc. embeding video is very easy in drupal, in default html mode, just paste the embed code. Any scripts, iframe, html can be pasted. I have audio embedded in music section. But I feel front page load time is high,, may be because of the image banner in Danland theme. I feel look and beauty of templates are better in joomla. Drupal forum sometimes it is difficult to get replies, even one fellow replied me, if I want faster reply, I have to find someone with payment. This kind of reply is not good from open source forum. I am facing one problem after upgrading to D7.7 and 7.8. Mysql size is increasing automatically. Every time I have to empty caches,temp files through phpmyadmin or ask the hosting people to solve it. They also replied it is a problem with Drupal which injecting something to database. Can anyone help?
I was thinking to migrate http://vision4life.in from drupal 7.8 to Joomla 1.7, if possible. Searched a lot, but could not find a solution. Can anyone give a correct reply whether it is good for me to migrate from Drupal to Joomla?