By drupalancers on

Bear with us - hopefully this is something useful contributed to an old debate.

We've had one question more than any other over the last few months - should we opt for Drupal or Joomla. With each one having strong pros and cons, it always seemed to be a "well - that really depends...." sort of answer.

To help us and our clients, we worked up a matrix of the advantages and disadvantages: Click here to see the chart

Any and all comments welcome.

Comments

mfer’s picture

mfer commented

For drupal services (companies that can help one with drupal) check out http://drupal.org/drupal-services. A special note needs to be given to this group of companies as they not only provide drupal services but have contributed to drupal.

Who is the only commercial off the shelf developer for drupal? There is only one?

drupalancers’s picture

drupalancers commented

I've added the Drupal.org link to the chart.

In terms of template shops - theres only CMSLounge as far as I know.

If there are any more, email me at support@drupalancers.com and we'll be happy to list them too.

I know there are lots of designers, but off-the-shelf themes really help keep costs down for small companies.

www.Drupalancers.com. Hire Drupal Experts in a Business-Friendly Environment.

sepeck’s picture

sepeck commented

I've never heard of http://drupalyellowpages.com. Has anyone else? It completely fails to mention several of the companies that are major contributors in the Drupal community.

I find it interesting that the site completely fails to mention the Drupal-services link and the people on this site who provide Drupal services (noted in their profile - http://drupal.org/profile/drupal-services) and the Paid Drupal Services forum which is also a source of job postings, instead directing traffic to it's own options.

Doing a whois lookup on Yellow Pages, Lancers and Alledia is also interesting. Perhaps in the services link they could clarify the relationship between Alledia, Drupal Lancers and Drupal Yellow Pages? If you are going to try and provide a 'comparative analysis' then you need to be clear about potential conflicts of interest. The Alledia site itself appears to be a commercial supplier of Joomla services and Drupal Yellow Pages appears to not be Drupal install though I freely admit I could be wrong on that.

The template theme section comments seems to be a little confused.

The rest of the analysis is interesting for some people.

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

drupalancers’s picture

drupalancers commented

Hi Steven

The Drupal.org user list had also been added.

As it says on the chart:
1) its a work in progress and may have mistakes which we're happy to correct.
2) We do Joomla and Drupal. Sometimes its hard to decide which is the best choice, so we needed a comparison.

DrupalYellowPages.com is a voluntary sign-up: all are welcome. We've announced all the sites on the forum (in the developer section) making it clear who we are. Feel free to email me about any questions you have.

www.Drupalancers.com. Hire Drupal Experts in a Business-Friendly Environment.

sepeck’s picture

sepeck commented

Something I completely missed. Your documentation comparison is apples and oranges. You compare Joomla's api site vs our handbook. Not the same thing. You should compare Drupal's api site against Joomla's api with our handbook having an honorable mention or something. http://api.drupal.org/ is Drupal's api site. The next release will of api module will leave you stunned.

Also I am curious, what is the criteria for theme commercial developer? You mean sites like Joomla's mass marketing theme's or design studios for Drupal themes?

As I said. Some people will find it interesting. I still think you should have a note somewhere indicating the lancer and yellow pages are related efforts. I have nothing for or against them and I am sure some will find them useful tools, just sort of a full disclosure type thing.

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

keesje’s picture

keesje commented

Drupal Yellow Pages is a joomla site, no hard feelings against joomla, but I can imagine it being a reason for Drupal minded developers not to sign up here.

BryanSD’s picture

BryanSD commented

Thanks for the chart. I found it to be one of the few non-bias, but not dry, comparison tables I've come across for Drupal and Joomla. It even gave me some good inspiration to write about it in my own blog.

By the way, which Shopping Cart for Joomla did you use in your chart? The last I checked most of the carts were extensions of osCommerce forks. Just curious for future reference.

Bryan
CMSReport

Dries’s picture

Dries commented

http://cmsreport.com/node/543

drupalancers’s picture

drupalancers commented

Thanks for the replies all. I'll put together a list of "further reading" and I'll definitely add this CMS Report to the link.

The API documentation has also been added.

In terms of the templates, theres a lot of people who have a budget of $500 to $1000 for a personal or small business. That can obviously stretch much further if they can buy a good pre-existing template for $50 and spend the rest of the money on functionality or hiring someone to help them. Just pointing out a gap in the market with Drupal...

www.Drupalancers.com. Hire Drupal Experts in a Business-Friendly Environment.

BryanSD’s picture

BryanSD commented

Thanks Dries. I would have said thanks earlier, but believe it or not...this is the first time I've stopped by Drupal.org in a week. Work and family has kept me busy this past few weeks.

What I've found interesting is that despite all the Drupal and Joomla comparisons that are made, the two CMS communities don't really appear to see each other as competitors. While those from Drupal or Joomla seem to be more than ready to promote their own CMS, I haven't seen each other throw a lot of negativity toward the other CMS. Not trying to make any point here except I find it interesting...

-Bryan
P.S. Currently trying out Firefox 3, Alpha 1.
CMSReport

ibot’s picture

ibot commented

Seems to me like an advertisment Post, i tryed to register at the linked page to see the chart, but than there was the message saying that i cannot view it because of my subscription profile.
@mods: please delete this thread

mfer’s picture

mfer commented

The subscription is new. It wasn't there when this was initially posted.

--
Matt
www.mattfarina.com
www.innovatingtomorrow.net
www.geeksandgod.com

Michelle’s picture

Michelle
she/her
Primary language English
Location Wisconsin, USA
commented

This thread is nearly a year old. I don't see any reason to go back and delete old posts because the information they refer to has changed.

Michelle

--------------------------------------
See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.

BryanSD’s picture

BryanSD commented

It looks like they had a change in URL. Try: http://www.alledia.com/blog/general-cms-issues/joomla-and-drupal-%11-whi... .

Bryan
CMSReport

WorldFallz’s picture

WorldFallz commented

I'm fairly new to the whole OS CMS revolution (and therefore have no past history or hard and fast allegiance to color my judgement) and have had the chance to bring up two sites recently-- one drupal and one joomla. Here's some random notes from my recent experience....

  • In choosing a CMS for my first project, a corporate intranet & documentation site, I researched pretty much all the major players over at CMS Matrix.
  • The 3 that made the top cut for installation and testing were: drupal, joomla, and plone.
  • Plone was dropped pretty quickly simply due to the dust over at the community site. The extra complexity of the application server piece didn't help much either.
  • I have to admit, the eye candy of joomla caught my attention pretty quickly. However, it really didn't take long to figure out joomla just didn't have the complex permissioning and workflow abilities that I would need for a corporate intranet.
  • I managed to get a prototype of the site up pretty quickly. I've got some 70+ folders in my modules directory and a heavily customized zen based theme.
  • The learning curve was STEEP, no question. But once I "got it" I hit very few stumbling blocks and usually had my questions answered in issues queues or the forum in a very reasonable time. I even managed to contribute back a rewritten version of TOC module with js functionality and a driver file for the search_attachments module. I did however buy the very excellent Pro Drupal Development book. Money WELL spent.
  • Users love the site. And the few times I've had requests for customizations not already available, I managed make the change very quickly. Usually within the day.
  • My second project, a family based genealogy type site I had to base on joomla. Why? One word-- forums. This was going to be a heavily forum based site and the drupal forums or bridged solutions simply didn't stack up to the readily available native joomla fireboard forum. Also, I was attracted to the community builder module. Yes, it's nothing that can't be duplicated with drupal, but the idea of just installing a single module and turning it on was enticing.
  • I have only a few modules loaded on the site, but nearly every one of them was problematic, in one way or another, from the get go. I spent hours and hours simply trying to get modules to do what they say they did or what they should do. Most of that time was spent researching and researching. As a newb to PHP coding also, I found the joomla code harder to understand and change than drupal code. I'm no professional coder, just a hacker, but for me it was just easier to work on drupal code than joomla code-- I have no idea why.
  • I don't know why, but it just seems harder to find troubleshooting info for joomla modules. In drupal it's simple-- head to the issues queue for a particular module. In joomla, some developers use the tracker page of the download site, some use the forums at joomla.org, some use their own private websites.
  • All in all, I found the troubleshooting and getting help with joomla or modules much slower and more difficult than with drupal. I'm not bashing-- I'm just describing my empirical experience. Someone else's experience may differ. YMMV.
  • All and all, I'm pleased with the way the site turned out. It took a lot more effort for way less functionality than my drupal site, but I am happy with the result. Only time will tell if users are. It's not live yet.
  • One little pet peeve of mine that irked me greatly and, in fact, continues to irk me, is the pay code industry that has sprung up around joomla. Seems like a great deal of important functionality has to be bought--often times a free module would offer just enough functionality to pique interest, then you'd have to purchase code to get full functionality. SEF urls come immediately to mind (where the pay version is a product of one of the core developers). I know GPL and OpenSource does not mean free-- and the modules are usually very reasonably priced. But you add up enough $20-$50 modules and it becomes a financial investment. Not really the domain of hobby or non-profit sites. Don't get me wrong (or flame me)-- community builder and fireboard forums are completely free and amazingly complex offerings-- but I just kept "feeling" that I was being nickle and dimed. For whatever reason, this has not happened with drupal which seems to derive it's industry from value-added services and not code.
  • For future projects-- I'm investing my time and effort into drupal wherever possible. For whatever reasons, it just a better fit for me and my skills. I'm even planning to completely redo the family site in drupal as a learning experience.

So there you have it, some impressions from a newbie. Totally unscientific-- don't bother flaming.

lysakowski’s picture

lysakowski commented

Important functionality is missing from Joomla core, and being held hostage for large Nickels and Dimes by iJoomla and related commercial add-on sites. I hate the IonCube Bandits. A lot a marginal code is being locked down and sold, really limiting the entire open source approach.