Drupal Vs Joomla (where Joomla Fails and Major Drawbacks: A discussion )

[livingegg]

rickb I believe you can do all of that with Drupal - IF you are a developer.

[Asphyx]

mature, stable, well-documented code, version is 4.7 not 1.0.8,

Well if not for the split Joomla might be close to releasing 5.0 if not for the split with Mambo!
They ended with Mambo at 4.5.3 and if you add the .5 from the 1.5 to the 4.5.3 you would be at 5.0...
But to go by a version number at all is rediculous! I could start a project tomorrow and call it V5 and it would be no more mature than if I called it 1.0!

Drupal and Joomla both approach the same function in very different ways...
Drupal focuses on nuts and bolts and pretty much leaves all the output to the end user...
Unless your an experienced web developer and pretty much know how to make the site look exactly the way you want it to your going to get less than spectacular output in drupal!
Joomla/Mambo on the other hand spent more time on output which on one hand may have been bad to do since it tended to lock in how output was done and take away a lot of the flexability advanced users might need but on the other hand made it quite easy for inexperienced users to get a good look simply by editing one template file!  Joomla is now working towards giving the advanced users that flexability while retaining the standard look as a default so that inexperienced users can run it out of the box with a good result and advanced users can then tweak it using the new flexability being built in to make a more customized look.

One person mentioned Admin screens as a Joomla strength, but I still have to disagree. The user management screen of Joomla seems to assume you won't have more than a dozen or two users.

Well again a apple and an orange...
Yes Drupal has a much more advanced User ACL system...but it is also nearly impossible to integrate a forum such as invision or even phpbb with it! You are forced to use their own Drupal forum which if anyone has seen is just awful...
You get an advanced feature set but it is so advanced it is virtually impossible to integrate it with other login mechanisms!
You are forced to either rewrite the standalone program to work within Drupal or run it as a seperate environment.
Joomla has largely ignored the ACL system granted but that too is changing thanks to Hackwar and Joomla's use of a module based login allows much greater flexability in allowing you to change a single module that will set proper access for two (even three) different apps during one login. Instead of having to rip into the massive code of each extention you simply can rip the logon routines and set the proper variables, send the cookies and register all components with a single login.
There is also work being done to set Joomla login to a library function that should make this whole proccess easier. Once done custom access levels should be easy to implement.

And looking down the list of weaknesses of Joomla just about all those weaknesses are mentioned in the roadmap as a focus and some of them are even close to being fixed in the next release...

[DanielMD]

Neither are they compatible with Drupal, especially the mail feeds. One has to possess total control over the server and even more, to make it work with the listfeed. I personally failed. I understand, most academics (in humanities) can only operate their mail boxes, so fall pray to kind of panic neurosis when having to post publicly on an open forum - especially where there is no premoderation.

I thought there is a mai2forum hack to be used with SMF.

Well mail2forum is a phpBB plugin, as far as i know there is not hack for smf if you know differently then please post link it would be interesting to look at.

[livingegg]

This tutorial makes designing a custom template for Drupal look even easier to do than with Joomla!

http://support.bryght.com/articles/conv ... troduction

[Jenny]

This tutorial makes designing a custom template for Drupal look even easier to do than with Joomla!

http://support.bryght.com/articles/conv ... troduction

Have you completed the tutorial?  I did when I was looking at using Drupal but found that Joomla's templating was much easier to understand and implement.

[phoebe]

I spent three months trying to get Drupal to behave the way I wanted it to.  And that was before I even got around to trying to making it look right.  I even offered money to support an effort to get a decent PayPal subscription extension built.  I read the handbook, I asked questions on the forums and got cryptic answers which weren't always clear and assumed a lot of stuff on my part, but more often, no response at all.  Maybe my questions weren't interesting enough to the people there to bother with, I don't know.

But one day, as I struggled yet again to work through the multitudinous ways that Drupal handles admin for various extensions, I realized that even if I got it all straight, my community users (who are mostly used to text boxes to type in, and e-mail) were never going to use it. 

So, I went back to the drawing board and came back to look at Joomla again, which I'd initially rejected for its less flexible content categorization.  With a little lateral thinking, I realized that I could work within that structure to achieve what I wanted.  I found masses of third party extensions, most of them excellent quality.  I found hundreds of templates and was able to pay a minimal amount for an excellent CSS-based, SEO optimized, accessibility compliant template that I could customize to suit us.  In a few weeks I was able to get the whole site to the same stage it had taken me months to reach with Drupal, and in a much less painful way.  I no longer felt like I was pulling teeth all day long to get it to work.

Are there problems, frustrations, drawbacks with Joomla?  Yes, of course, and sometimes I get frustrated, thinking there must be a way to do something that seems intuitive and yet it doesn't seem to be there.  But luckily, the handbooks here are well-organized, the newbie tutorials really clear, and the community very willing and helpful.  Sometimes I have had to put in little hacks which will probably be a headache when it comes to upgrading.  I'm willing to live with those minor annoyances.

I'm still adding features and content, and still developing the site to the point where I will be able to migrate our entire community later on in the year.  At this stage, I can't imagine going back to Drupal for any reason.  My experience with the software and the community was not something I enjoyed.

Perhaps that reflects on me more than the software, and of course, YMMV.  But if we're sharing experiences with the two CMSes, that's mine for what it's worth.

[teamsand]

Asphyx  said

nearly impossible to integrate a forum such as invision or even phpbb with it! You are forced to use their own Drupal forum which if anyone has seen is just awful

I dont really agree with that, there is a forum mod ( flatforum) that works very well for the default one, you can see it in use here http://gallery.menalto.com/forum and after using a lot of forums ive come to really like how it works. There is also a phpbb mod that is far from impossible just search drupal for it and there even an invision+drupal site here http://vbdrupal.com/ , most everyother forum has been integrated into drupal much the same as other cms systems.One of the things that bothered me with forums is actaully joomla support for smf which if you bothered to read the fine print is not  true open-source.

[Jenny]

SMF's relationship with Open Source isn't in "fine print".  It actually in a generously sized font directly linked from their homepage on the About Page: http://www.simplemachines.org/about/.  They go in depth into SMF and Open Source.  You are making it sound like SMF is trying to dupe people and in no way are they doing that.

[DanielMD]

Joomla has many forum integrations, and it is very easy to integrate any php forum software, i personally don't think Drupal forum system is as good as SMF, SMF has an open license it is simply not one of the OSI recommended licenses.

[DanielMD]

This tutorial makes designing a custom template for Drupal look even easier to do than with Joomla!

http://support.bryght.com/articles/conv ... troduction

Just read the tutorial, and i can say that doing themes in joomla is much easier than with drupal. If you have otehr tutorials it would be much nicer... read this comment on drupal forum:

I wrote a simple and
kzeng - May 18, 2006 - 16:26

I wrote a simple and pragmatic theme tutorial in Chinese. I will translate it into English soon.

Why don't
clarknova - May 18, 2006 - 20:55

Why don't you publish it in Chinese? I'm sure it will be more easy to understand even for people who don't know Chinese, than the current manual.

I have to agree with the person that replied

[livingegg]

No, I havn't actually completed the drupal template tutorial. But I understood it and found it extremely efficient and easy to follow. Its a very concise explanation of what I ended up doing for a joomla template - most importantly the part about hardcoding in php variables used by the CMS. Ultimately I figured this out with joomla, but in all the tutorials I did for joomla it was never just stated directly, but rather I was walked through various processes and insertions that didnt necessarily meet my specific needs, while the essential points about what i was doing were never clearly explained. At least that was my experience with the joomla tutorials i had to work with at the time - not necessarily any fault of the Joomla! development team - its just that i have found most of the joomla TEMPLATING tutorials to be very indirect and fuzzy, doing a poor job of communicating the fundamental mechanics of what is happening.

Obviously it's not productive for me to complain about joomla, because I am using it for a couple of my sites. I am using it though, because it seems my best alternative, not at all my first choice. I am not a developer - but I don't need to be a developer to see that joomla code is extremely bloated and slow relative to drupal. Joomla package comes with 1400+ files, drupal comes with a couple hundred. And I have a hard time believing that all that extra bloat is due only to extra modules, mambots, etc. Joomla lags badly even with a fresh installation, no content, and a new server. I have found the community here to be relatively active (although not nearly as active as over at SMF - those were the most productive forums i've ever found), and no doubt I would be laughed at and chased away from the drupal forums because I am a poor programmer.

For an individual who is a designer, not a programmer, and is looking for a snappy, easy to use, fully customizable, compliant, lightweight, and open source cms - joomla so far is the *closest* one i've found - although it certainly falls short on being snappy and lightweight, especially compared to something like drupal.

The thing that worries me most though is that of all the threads i've found talking about the slow speed and heaviness of joomla - i've mostly found the joomla team denying such claims completely and suggesting more patches hacks and modifications - instead of stating that they intend to actually make joomla code cleaner and faster. The mentality seems to be frantically putting out fires  - which is inevitable suicide - which i think is very unfortunate, and will surely produce a lot of people like me who plan on using joomla only until something better comes along.

[DanielMD]

...and will surely produce a lot of people like me who plan on using joomla only until something better comes along.

I personally think joomla is the most well balanced CMS system, it has a low entry point, hundreds of good themes, hundreds of modules/components/plugins a very active dev community and THE most supportive user community along with a large amount of good 3PDs.

Note to ALL: Mambots are DEAD, we now call them Plugins!

The philosophy of both projects is very different, so you have to pick a school of thought and go with it, Drupal is a more generic CMS system for programmers, it is more flexible than Joomla, Joomla uses much more the power of integration, you can integrate almost anything into joomla (wordpress, SMF, phpBB, etc... very easily), Drupal philosophy is well we can do a better bloging system than wordpress, or a better wiki and they create a generic version of a wiki, or blog, Joomla can do that, but it is much easier to integrate third party component software like that and simply plug it in and have it working, it's a snap.

I must say that the joomla templating system does not work like the drupal system... i will latter write something indeph about this, so you cannot really fully compare them. I think Joomla Theme documentation needs to improve and it will, but compared to Drupal manual i think we are doing pretty well in the documentation front and it will only get better with time.

But just compare how many themes there are for Drupal vs Joomla (i would say the ration is 1:20, probably much more). I think most people have come to the conclusion that Joomla theme creation is easier than other systems, and having just done that Drupal tutorial I have the proof that doing themes in Joomla is easier than Drupal, heck it is easier than in most other CMS systems.

The thing that worries me most though is that of all the threads i've found talking about the slow speed and heaviness of joomla - i've mostly found the joomla team denying such claims completely and suggesting more patches hacks and modifications - instead of stating that they intend to actually make joomla code cleaner and faster. The mentality seems to be frantically putting out fires  - which is inevitable suicide - which i think is very unfortunate, and will surely produce a lot of people like me who plan on using joomla only until something better comes along.

I have yet to find a Joomla site slow, and ppl will prefer a well designed slow site than a badly designed fast site, it is reported in many usability studies. There are many factors that can afect speed.

The Joomla code was refactored in 1.5 so i guess wend that version comes out you hopefully find faster code, now saying this about  the devs: "instead of stating that they intend to actually make joomla code cleaner and faster" is moking the hard work they are doing, they refactored almost 100% of the Jooomla 1.0 code, to make it cleaner and faster, is has been a HUGE effort.

"...a lot of people like me who plan on using joomla only until something better comes along."

I personally think that the Joomla evolution has been great, and i think the project will continue to be the most well balanced CMS in future versions, but you are right ppl will use it until something better comes along… I personally think that something better is the next version of Joomla

[dhorn]

There is also a phpbb mod that is far from impossible just search drupal for it and there even an invision+drupal site here http://vbdrupal.com/ , most everyother forum has been integrated into drupal much the same as other cms systems.

These points need some clarification:

• vbDrupal integrates Drupal with vBulletin (as its name suggests), not Invision Power Board. And watch out, it's not standard Drupal, it's a Drupal fork that is incompatible with some modules.
• The phpBB integration with Drupal is not as easy as you make it out to be. The project is here: http://drupal.org/node/32818 and it specifically states: "This is probably one of the most difficult modules to install and maintain. I strongly recommend Drupal's built-in forum if you do not have specific requirements that dictate you use phpBB instead." Perhaps you have had better luck with it...

[stingrey]

The thing that worries me most though is that of all the threads i've found talking about the slow speed and heaviness of joomla - i've mostly found the joomla team denying such claims completely and suggesting more patches hacks and modifications - instead of stating that they intend to actually make joomla code cleaner and faster. The mentality seems to be frantically putting out fires  - which is inevitable suicide - which i think is very unfortunate, and will surely produce a lot of people like me who plan on using joomla only until something better comes along.

As already previously stated Joomla! code has been seriously overhauled in 1.5 moving Joomla! away from its largely procedural basis to a more Object Oriented approach.
This of course will not be totally completed in 1.5 because the output rendering layer has not been modified (towards an MVC approach), which is a target for 2.0

It should also be noted that severe overhauling of the code is not an easy enterprise, takes time and comes at a certain price of backward compatability - however the aim has been to maintain as much BC as possible.

The code rewriting within 1.5 represents the largest rewrite of the Joomla! codebase ever, probably greater then even what occured when Mambo went from 4.0 to 4.5.0 - which itself marked a major milestone in the codebase.



A simple way to see the overhaul then download and scan through 1.5.x nightly:
http://dev.joomla.org/content/view/17/60/#nightly

[dhorn]

Well mail2forum is a phpBB plugin, as far as i know there is not hack for smf if you know differently then please post link it would be interesting to look at.

Does mail2forum (http://www.mail2forum.com/) actually work with the phpBB component for Joomla??

[Imago]

Actually what i meant was the Drupal Listhandler

http://drupal.org/project/listhandler

I have installed SMF in a subfolder of Drupal - hence the confusion.

[livingegg]

RE:

The Joomla code was refactored in 1.5 so i guess wend that version comes out you hopefully find faster code, now saying this about  the devs: "instead of stating that they intend to actually make joomla code cleaner and faster" is moking the hard work they are doing, they refactored almost 100% of the Jooomla 1.0 code, to make it cleaner and faster, is has been a HUGE effort.

and

As already previously stated Joomla! code has been seriously overhauled in 1.5 moving Joomla! away from its largely procedural basis to a more Object Oriented approach.
This of course will not be totally completed in 1.5 because the output rendering layer has not been modified (towards an MVC approach), which is a target for 2.0

I was looking over the roadmap last night and it didn't mention anything about overhauling the code to create a more object oriented approach - until I read your posts I did not know that this was even on the horizon for 1.5. I was not trying to criticise the hard work and countless hours that the developers have already put into this project, I was trying to say that [until now] I could find nothing to indicate to my satisfaction that joomla was supposed to be headed in that direction, or that it was even the smallest priority. However if what you say is true then i'd most likely stay with joomla! indefinitely and continue to learn and contribute to this very active community.

Thanks for clearing that up though. I will definitely check out some of the nightly builds, and report any bugs I find.

[stingrey]

I was looking over the roadmap last night and it didn't mention anything about overhauling the code to create a more object oriented approach - until I read your posts I did not know that this was even on the horizon for 1.5.

You are correct in saying that this is not specifically stated on the Roadmap.  This is because it was undertaken as incidental and essential to achieving the other objectives that are listed on the Roadmap and laying a proper foundation for later versions.

Thanks for clearing that up though. I will definitely check out some of the nightly builds, and report any bugs I find.

That will be much appreciated as it will greatly assist the team as we endeavour to move through the Development cycle.

[bluesaze]

From the Drupal website IBM focuses on Drupal for new developerWorks series.

So things that the article said about Joomla/Mambo.

The easy installation seemed to get us to a point where almost all the function we needed was available and ready to be themed. However, as with many CMSs, the templating is limited to a tag system that leaves you at the mercy of the quality of the markup that is substituted for the tags. This is fine if the markup is valid, semantically structured, and adequately sprinkled with CSS ID and class attributes to aid styling. If it isn't, then you can find yourself delving into the guts of the application to figure out how to correct the generated output.

Mambo also offered limited session management, although it was still more than other CMSs offer.

The development path seemed confusing, and the future of this solution was not certain to us. Mambo's development track is divided into several solutions. Miro is a commercial product and Joomla seems to be a new CMS spawned from Mambo. Mambo still exists and its current development path seems to be more stable.

Mambo was very appealing from the ease of install and the UI, but the development track at the time was fractured and didn't give us any confidence of support

[bsnodgrass]

I have been using Joomla for about a year now, and love every min of it... That said, I have been looking into several CMS's for a major project I have been working on (I am prob going to be using 3 or 4 of them).  I have looked into pretty much every major CMS out there, and for what I want to do, Joomla seems to be number 1.  I NEED multi-site capability (the whole premise of the project), and Joomla isn't that hard to modify (I did it already actually).  The main reason Joomla seems #1 is the fact that it's easy to administrate.  I am also going to be using Drupal and Xoops for other parts of the site, but Joomla will be the flagship of it.  I am waiting for 1.5 to come out to take the project into full gear, and get it online.  Once that gets going, I will get the Joomla end up, and then the Drupal and Xoops.  I really like the way Joomla handled the Multi-site mod (as I only needed to modify 3 lines of 5 files, and add 1 file + site configs).  And the way I coded it really didn't open any security holes as far as I could tell (As in if you type in aaa.www.com you get site a no matter what).

Multisite (with single sign on) is a key functionality I am looking for... are you planning to release your code or work with Joomla Developers on it?

--bob

[ircmaxell]

My code was designed for multiple independant sites on a single codebase (with each site having it's own set of certian files like config.php, templates, modules, etc)...

[bsnodgrass]

My code was designed for multiple independant sites on a single codebase (with each site having it's own set of certian files like config.php, templates, modules, etc)...

That still sounds like it would be useful... even if I would have to get single sign on programmed.  Beats managing multiple code bases!!

-- Bob

[reapr]

I went through the comparison process a couple of months ago when joomla was still mambo.  The finalists for me were drupal, mambo, moveable type, and xoops. 

The joomla release came out about in the middle of the decision making process and the thing that eventually convinced me was the excitement in the community here. 

I don't mind putting time into customizing and drupal was very attractive because I had the same impression that the core code was significantly cleaner and met standards better.  Although I'm willing to work on customization, I'm not trained for it. I needed the most supportive community I could find to get anywhere.  I wondered for a while how well I would do implementing drupal and then asking questions here 

I will say myself I narrowed it down to Drupal and Joomal.  After looking at how SE spiders index my site I decided Drupal was superior. Then there was Open-Sef and Joomla and I was a convert.  The other thing is that I found Joomla easier to work with.

Anyone else find something better for overall usability please let us know.

[compass]

No, I havn't actually completed the drupal template tutorial. But I understood it and found it extremely efficient and easy to follow. Its a very concise explanation of what I ended up doing for a joomla template - most importantly the part about hardcoding in php variables used by the CMS. Ultimately I figured this out with joomla, but in all the tutorials I did for joomla it was never just stated directly, but rather I was walked through various processes and insertions that didnt necessarily meet my specific needs, while the essential points about what i was doing were never clearly explained. At least that was my experience with the joomla tutorials i had to work with at the time - not necessarily any fault of the Joomla! development team - its just that i have found most of the joomla TEMPLATING tutorials to be very indirect and fuzzy, doing a poor job of communicating the fundamental mechanics of what is happening.

The thing that worries me most though is that of all the threads i've found talking about the slow speed and heaviness of joomla - i've mostly found the joomla team denying such claims completely and suggesting more patches hacks and modifications - instead of stating that they intend to actually make joomla code cleaner and faster. The mentality seems to be frantically putting out fires  - which is inevitable suicide - which i think is very unfortunate, and will surely produce a lot of people like me who plan on using joomla only until something better comes along.

Read this one?
http://dev.joomla.org/content/view/1136/79/

Its my understanding that cleaner code is exactly what 1.5 is all about....

[reapr]

I am still a convert to Joomla.  I think the indexing and SE's tell the truth when you use the right components.  It apears Drupal is dying...

[Jenny]

If the posts in this thread do not stay on topic posts will be deleted or the thread will be locked. 

The topic is "DRUPAL VS JOOMLA" meaning if you have something to add that directly correlates to how Drupal and Joomla compare to each other then do so. 

Consideration in this is appreciated.

Edit:

Quote from: eyezberg on Today at 11:57:07 AM
..
[maybe these last posts should be split into a new discussion about: "Should 1.5 be backward compatible or not", I might even set up a poll for this - in fact, I am going to now on joomla.fr ..

Surely everyone can use the search function and find an appropriate already existing thread for that stomped into the ground, flog the dead horse subject. 

Just a note to all:  if you feel a thread has veered off topic, and think it should be split or brought back on topic - report the thread/post to a Moderator (nice little link at the bottom of each post) and say the topic is getting off topic, and should most likely be split or brought back on topic.  I know it sounds like a new idea, but I know I sure appreciate it when someone brings a thread that needs attention to my attention.


Now back to the regularly scheduled flogging of the dead horse at hand- "Drupal vs. Joomla"


Other posts have been split to this thread: http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,78756.0.html

[bluesaze]

Trying to keep the conversation as simple as possible and summarizing.

Joomla is better because
              It 1000% more User Friendly, Easier to install and work with. Drupal is a pain in the butt.
              Templating is far easier in Joomla. You can see more slick personal websites developed in joomla than for Drupal.
              Larger Community if in doubt look here and here
              Larger Community means more tutorials and help.

Drupal is better because
              It is one rock solid base with clean code. (Joomla currently is a total mess).
              WebDesigner Friendly i.e pure XHTML/CSS/Tabless Designed Websites. (Joomla throws up a lot of tables in the code).
              Better ACL, Session Management (Drupals Taxonomy node based system out classes Joomla by 1000 times).
              Clean SEF. (Joomla requires an external module).

Drupal seems to be mostly used by larger companies who can spend some time and effort developing and customising Drupal. Joomla user base consists mostly of single users. (I could be wrong on this so don't flame me)

What needs to be done to get the edge over Drupal.
      1. Cleaner Code (We are getting there Slowly with 1.5)
      2. Better SEF (Got to wait a long time for this. Its not there in 1.5 So better make use of that External Plugin)
      3. ACL (Progressive Enhancements were there on the roadmap. Cant see it anymore ?)
      4. Since we are moving towards 1.5 why is there such a stress on backward compatibility
        Why not provide support for the Older 1.0.x  series parallel to the 1.5.x series Drupal does this why cant we?
      5. Please Please get rid of those Tables. (When ever I explore the forum for discussion related to this I see a lot of people avoiding this issue most people are satisfied by making statements like "Tabless doesn't mean its accessible" or "You can still validate your site even if it has tables" or People start discussing workarounds. Why not kill two birds with the same stone i.e Remove the tables in 1.5 and support the 1.0.x series parallely and give people the choice. It is also one of the main reasons most Web Designers/Developers reject Joomla. Developing/Designing websites which are tabless has become the de facto trend on the Net).


With the emerging trends in Web development/Design (Ex. Web 2.0, Ajax, etc) Where does joomla stand?

[brad]

Also: http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traff ... joomla.org

FYI 1.5 is feature complete
Roadmap: http://dev.joomla.org/content/view/23/61/

I know I am going to regret even posting in this thread..... I mean whats next, compare Joomla! with sharepoint? Joomla! and Drupal are different, Joomla! is striving to be a framework. Comparing the two is pointless, it's like comparing a boat to a car.... Drupal is not our 'enemy'....

[quote="Elpie"]One message is coming through very clearly - people that 6 months ago were moving from Joomla or Mambo to Drupal are now moving on to other alternatives.[/quote]
Can you give us a link from an independant site to back that up?

[bluesaze]

Also: http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traff ... joomla.org

Hello brad I posted the same link except its from a Ajaxified version of Alexa called http://www.alexaholic.com/

FYI 1.5 is feature complete
Roadmap: http://dev.joomla.org/content/view/23/61/
I know I am going to regret even posting in this thread.....

Ya I know Too Bad. I guess the next series would be in a long time in coming. I guess People will have to do with Hacking the core or look for workarounds others will have to settel for a alternative CMS (Drupal) or which ever suits their needs.

[brad]

Whatever works for you... I've used other products to do the job that Joomla! can't do, no big deal.