Do you think it's time to switch from Joomla ?

Hi and welcome.

I'll have a stab. Others may well add to this.

1. Yes you can. You could write a module to pre-process before storing, and you can theme individual fields to control how they are displayed on the page.
2. Yes - the role system is very versatile. Although it would help if you could spell out a little more what you mean by your example about Role A and Role B.
3. It won't change so much as to turn your learning curve at this point into a waste of time. The one gotcha is to be wise about what contributed modules (from the Drupal repository - I'm not talking about ones you code yourself) you work into a site. If it's old and looks a bit abandoned, there's a chance it may not ever be ported to D8. That said, D7 will be fully supported until D9 comes out, so you have no rush to migrate to D8.
4. It uses more RAM than some systems, but Joomla isn't too light either. It all depends on the modules you use. Lots of views and panels adds to the memory, but with careful caching you can usually run fine provided PHP has at least 128M of RAM to use.

I hope that is a bit of help for you!

1. Not sure I understand what kind of data processing you want to do. You can receive and publish data in JSON. http://drupal.org/project/Services http://drupal.org/project/feeds_jsonpath_parser
2. Yes, with contrib modules http://drupal.org/project/profile2.
3. Maybe. Although there will probably be a lag before D8 becomes a good solution in some situations owing to lag in updating contrib modules. A typical Drupal contrib module interacts with core and other contrib modules using hooks, which are documented in the API. This system will probably not be swept away before Drupal 9 (source: http://drupal4hu.com/node/366).
4. Drupal runs a lot of code on every page load. Maybe D8 will be more efficient (although not smaller). In addition Drupal requires heavy database IO (which can be alleviated by using RAM to cache data), especially on a page load when the built-in cache is cold and being populated. On most low-grade hosting a complex Drupal site is likely to be unacceptably slow. My Drupal sites are not slow, but that comes at a price in server resources and setup time. But then Drupal is complex with extensive APIs for custom coding, and arguably is not a good fit for the kind of low-budget site which uses low-grade shared hosting, although people who are familiar with Drupal may find it works well for small sites just because it is what they know best.

Community is great. Most add-on software is free.

For me the time to switch from joomla was about 5 years and 46 weeks ago, lol. And i've never looked back.

I'll try not to duplicate john's info:

1. drupal is designed architecturally from the ground up to be easily overridden/intercepted. In almost 6 years i've never encountered an operation or event I needed to intercept and couldn't. And my apps are not typical internet web sites, they're complex and obtuse intranet business management type apps. Even to point of using views to construct the basics of a listing page and then using views_query_alter to tweak the query as necessary for the ridiculously complex logic some of my listings require. Something that previously took a lot more time, is now 99% drupal, and 1% custom.
2. for d7, there's profile2 which, along with the autosssignrole and/or profile2_regpath modules, make for a very flexible registration system without having to write a single line of code.
3. d8 is still a long ways away, but if you have no pressing need to actually build a site now you could start with that if you wanted. It's going to be a game changing release (views in core, moving to symfony and twig, etc).
4. most complaints seem to stem from users trying to run facebook or craigslist type sites on www.freecrappyhost.com or el cheapo shared hosting. As with anything, you get what you pay for.

1. If you can make code in Joomla then it is not problem to learn for Drupal too.
Need to say that it will sure go easier in Drupal, because of modularity. You are Joomla person, so you will understand me perfectly now. Did you tried in Joomla to show some data from K2 (or some other extension) in J contact form ? Or to show some gallery extension in slide show at front end, or to change some module, plugin, extension that HTML resize images, instead of using PHP functions and reduce page load ? Tried to show K2 slide show Items in module made only for Joomla Articles, or opposite ? No such problems in Drupal.
You know what i mean, and those examples are endless.

In Drupal you have all this build in the core. With Views is all that literally piece of cake.
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2. Absolutely possible, and easy. Joomla ACL is nothing compared with this.
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3. and 4. i jump over. As i only saw some screen shots of Drupal 8, not more.
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As old Joomla fan, since Mambo time, i can tell you difference between Joomla and Drupal.

- Community and core developers.
Last 2 years everything went badly in Joomma community. There is almost non plugin/module/extension that you can download anymore and test it. Joomla became paid community. They are still cheap, but as i sometimes test up to 10 different (for one purpose x so many purposes) to find what suit me best, this pissed me off.

Core community became most autistic community of all CMS. You wait for years and years to get image management in core (at least some basic), and with J 3.1 version you get big ****. They build in core separate images for Intro and Detailed, and you need to resize them first with Photoshop then upload it. Madness, 2013, even Wordpress is now more powerful.
No, no.....i have been stupid to wait and use it for so many years. Now time have passed, and it is more or less lost.

Look in K2 code how it handle images with PHP functions. Few lines of code literally.

In Joomla 3.1 you can only remove some options from Admin panel according to ACL rules. In Drupal you can remove and rearange things for each user/role separately. I mean completely different layout of Admin panel. You can make it and rename it to suit IT capability, character and knowledge of your clients. You will need to install 2 modules as i remember right, dont know if they are in core.

You will not need more to search (or manually code) modules and extensions that pull data and show it in tabs/accordion. And more important, you will not wait anymore at different support forum of extensions to developer to answer why you cannot pull some data from database. In Drupal make your tabs how you will, show them where you will, and show any data from database how you will.

Multilanguage, no more waiting for Joomfish and pay subscription, otherwise wait 1 year version for new Joomla. And it never comes.

You want merge, compress all CSS, JS files in one ? I never had problems in Drupal, never mind how many modules i had installed.
In Joomla i tested all plugins for that, no one worked. I managed to find one, and developer needed to come to my server and adapt its plugin for my configuration.

There is absolutely no rules how non-core developer in Joomla will code extensions/plugins. Because of this is such chaos (and competitive fight for money from subscriptions). Joomgallery, K2, Seblod, Vmart, Phoca extensions, etc, etc. They all behave as separate universes, they cannot communicate with each other. You can only make design and style to appear as they are parts of one thing.

Only some examples, there are many more.
Joomla has some things better organized. But i need to spend more time on Drupal to be sure. Menus and hierarchy, i believe.
Let it be for some comments in the future.

I will write some more examples typical for Joomla, as experienced Joomla fan. It is very difficult to remember most of them, as they are spread through years of using Joomla.
(i will not mention things that are possible in Joomla, but your whole website depends of one plugin developer with 3 topics in support forum, and unanswered questions longer than 1-2 years. I dont regard them as they enrich Joomla, opposite they are part of problem.)

- Calendars and Events
Due to Joomla philosophy you can show data/events in calendars only for that extension you installed.
You show only that developer meant to show. For all other small/big things you want to show you need to make PHP "prepare" functions. It demands very high skill level of PHP coding.

- URL in modules title/header
Wordpress = 3 minutes, search plugin in Admin, download/install, put URL in new widget field.
Drupal = 5 minutes, download module, install, put URLs.
Joomla = i dont know, didnt succeeded. It goes to tweak core code for default template, if you have own big problems. (then as it is not already so difficult, you need to fix xml files of ALL INSTALLED MODULES, and put new field in their settings)

- Login/Register to see more than Teaser/Intro
Yes, it can be achieved in Joomla, but good luck. You will need a lot of competence, experience and prepare a lot of coffee.

- Google Maps
Have you ever been asked by one client to make website with 5-10 addresses, Google Maps with separate markers,, and he/she want radius search in Joomla search function ?
Good luck with that.
First obstacle is to chose Article type for object description, second obstacle is all good Gmap extensions are paid and you simply cannot test them, third obstacle is Joomla is simply not meant for such type of job.

- Watermarking all images in website.
I wont explain, who knows knows what i mean.

- Recaptcha
Yes, in last few years it is possible to have same captcha (same look and type) everywhere in Joomla. Problem is it is a trick, appearance, lie, you probably use different code, due to incapability of Joomla extensions and core to communicate and play together.
(Hint, very common situation. Joomla native recaptcha, Komento recaptcha, Fabrik recaptcha)

- Front end slide/rotate modules
As they are Joomla native Articles selection is big. But if you build website with K2, Seblod, some other extension to bypass boring and useless Joomla article manager. You are on ice, left alone.

- Voting/Stars/Recensions
They are plugins in Joomla and as that allways cached. No matter if cache plugin is not activated. No way to deactivate cache for voting stars.

- Edit Item/Article design
Have you ever tried to rearrange / remove things from that window, to less confuse beginners who add content ?

Yes, good luck and a lot of coffee, if you decide to do that.
You have 2-3 choices, stay with useless Joomla native Article manager, move to K2, or try to adapt things with Seblod. But, all of this is take it as it is.

- Multilanguage
You want all in one place, nice organized for translation of everything. Yes, wait to developer of Joomfish to make it. I waited 2 years, no more. It doesnt come, they are not satisfied how it goes with money from subscriptions, and they absolutely lost lust for developing further for Joomla. I dont blame developer of Joomfish, it is great job and coding he done, but problem is with Joomla core community and confusion about in what direction Joomla will go.

- Article comments showed at forum
Yes, it goes as long as you use Joomla native Article manager. It is so wicked circle, that article manager is so boring and so useless.

- Webforms
Anything advanced, use Fabrikar forms. But they are so buggy and unstable it is impossible to explain. Use it for years, become expert on them, and with all new versions you get PHP errors (not PHP notice, but real errors that prevent you using forms, and often give you blank page)
I dont remember when i had similar problems with Drupal forms.

- Merge/Compress CSS, JS files.
I already mention that. Only one plugin worked, and developer needed to change in its code (not settings) to work it on my configuration. Only one, and if developer is not so nice person, not any of this plugins would work as described.

I done see problem here by developers, or plugins, but by Joomla core developers and they dont set strict rules for non-core developers. (or maybe first set rules for themselves, i dont know)
I already mentioned that almost all extensions/plugins/modules for Joomla behave as separate universes.

- Style an design of Joomla native contact form
Just look at paid templates for Joomla. Not even those experts dare to touch layout and design of contact page, they change some colors, and style of fields. Because it is so complicated and nobody want to start thinking about it. Now they made something more stupid, they separated contact page to 2-3 different template PHP files. Stupid, stupid, and stupid. Whole Joomla is such.

- Title and text character limits
Oh boy, it exist in PHP since stone ages, and in Joomla it is always, always problem to fix limit.
Never mind Joomla native things, or installed extensions.

- And many, many more, comment is already long.

I checked demo version of Drupal 8, Admin panel most.
So answer for 4. and 5., if you are not in hurry you can wait it. Module developers are usually faster to adapt their modules to new versions. Joomla developers need sometime up to 2 years to make versions for new Joomla. And i am talking about very popular extensions, not some less important plugin. (Joomfish, Jcomments ?)

I noticed in Drupal 8 a lot of small changes that will make life easy for end users and beginners, content Authors. Drupal community thinks about those things. Joomla article manager doesnt even have basic image management, no "image styles", at least one pity.

I remember when Joomla core staff announced they will make (probably driven by popularity of K2 extension) two HTML editor windows in edit article window, in new 1.6 version. One for Intro (summary, teaser), one for full body.

It was needed only one forum topic with mad and shouting few developers and users, and they rejected that idea. I wrote in that forum topic that i personally always have better reactions from beginners when i teach them how to use two windows for Intro and full body text, then when i have to explain them that stupid "read-more" button in editor.

Whole Joomla core community is like this. They will never implement most useful and basic things in core because they have Mambo complex and subconscious they want to keep best third party developers sticked to Joomla.

And as results you have third party extensions that try to replace Joomla. Thousands and thousands lines of code just to serve as replacement for stupid Joomla that is not anymore adequate for anything (K2, Seblod).

If you read some old stuff on Internet you can see that many of this developers at least once publicly admitted that they planned own CMS when they started with its extensions. (K2, Seblod, Soby).
Then they changed minds, to much work and pain. It says a lot of Joomla.

Joomla will never improve much. Third party developers hold core developers for balls, and they dont easy that grip. Core community has "Mambo fear and complex", and they will never be free of this.

Joomla community has become money driven community, and biggest third party developers decide. Dont be tricked by harsh attitude of core community at Joomla forum. Third party developers always have last words, one way or another. It is "Mambo fear" and it is strong.

I noticed one more strange thing. Whole situation around Joomla now reflects on most popular extension and their support forums, their supporters, and "palls". So you have situation that for some biggest Joomla extension developers wont add few lines of code in new versions, only because some lonely guy somewhere in say France, Bangladesh make some plugin for that extension. Never mind that 1-2 files and 200 lines of code plugin is precisely that makes extension so special, popular and used.

Joomla is a never ending circle of confusion, evil and stupidity.

Want just to add, i am aware of improvements of Admin user access and rights in new Joomla 3 version. But, painfully slow, and painfully not enough.

But not one time i got it to work all the way and satisfactory. If some third party extension give you problem you are on the ice. You can say it is not Joomla issue, but i would not agree. If it works in Wordpress or Drupal, then it is problem in Joomla philosophy. They, core community, make rules and regulations.

I promised some topic updates, as time pass.

It is not possible to explain with words how Joomla crawls behind Drupal and Wordpress. Excuse me if i mention Wordpress to much here, but it is good to see that i am not in some CMS fans' group. Everything said about Wordpress implies for Drupal too. I am comparing one CMS to another, nothing else. It is more than fair.

I am impressed, and still cannot believe my eyes what i can achieve with Drupal, Wordpress, and not with Joomla. And so easy, when for Joomla you need to pull your hair off for some simple tweaks and goals. (losing days and weeks surfing, reading forums, trying, often without desired results)

Something is very wrong with Joomla, very wrong. And i cannot still put my finger on it. They talk about coding standards, new frameworks, MVC, responsive, blah-blah, but all of this is useless when it comes to advanced results a developer can present to clients.

In Drupal, Wordpress you can turn Admin panel upside down, dissolve it to the molecules and build as you want it. In Joomla it is impossible. There is only one plugin that add pity few custom fields in edit Article window. Is it problem in all Joomla coders, or is it problem in Joomla basis ? Decide for yourself.

Then i see now after more time passed working with Drupal, WP that it seems as developers of Joomla extensions/plugins/modules put too much useless options everywhere. With so few options i Drupal, WP i can achieve things that i could only dreams about achieving in Joomla. Is is because of fact they earn from support subscriptions ? Or because of fact that Joomla core in crippled and limited in its basis. Decide for yourself.

Everything Joomla core community improve is painfully slow, painfully not much, and painfully too late.

I stopped to work with Joomla long time ago. Will build an website in Joomla only if client asks and demand it. And never regretted it, now i enjoy building websites.

Few days ago i had to login in Admin panel of one Joomla website to add few new K2 photo galleries. Now after so much time spent on Drupal, WP where some things work as expected i tried to sort those 2 K2 Items with Joomlas drag and drop function.

Not, nada, njet, never mind what i tried it didnt work. Only in Joomla, only in Joomla, never in Drupal, Wordpress, never. (i had this problem with Joomla core drag and drop function all the time, on all Admin panel, this is not some exception)

Joomla should be forbidden by the law. It makes monkeys of people and make them stupid. I have been monkey for so long time, thank God it is over.

Few days ago i chatted and shared experiences with some friend of mine via Skype, developer also. We chatted about Wordpress plugins.
Tried to pick best one of huge selection for everything you need.

And he asked me for one plugin i installed and tested: "Does it work OK ? Gives it some errors ?"
Subconsciously my answer was: "How do you mean is it working OK ? It is Wordpress, not Joomla." :)

When i worked with Joomla in all those years i always thought that i ask to much, i demand to much, i am trying to much. I need to cool down with demands and goals. I have some experience level, but dont have university certificate in PHP, JS programming. I put not normal and realistic goals. Etc....etc...

But now thanks to the Drupal and Wordpress i know i was normal person, Joomla was not normal CMS.

And lack of university programming certificate is not problem. Because those in Drupal and Wordpress community with PHP, JS certificate makes impressive things and make plugins as in child game. Those with PHP, JS certificate in Joomla community make one big nothing. (compared to other CMS, of course)

And it is Joomla core community that needs to answer to that question, why it is so.

You may be interested in this Drupal module: https://drupal.org/project/joomla. Very handy for porting content, sections/categories and users to Drupal.

If you use JoomFish you can import translations too ... see https://drupal.org/node/1968034. The zip file there is an alternate version of that module, with code I wrote to import JoomFish content. It does not map translations to each other, it only imports them as nodes, so it would still require manually "linking" translations together.

To answer you title question ... is a yes.

I just checked, 4002 Joomla adons are free. 4007 addons are paid, commercial. So cca 50%. It is not problem in itself, but problem is you cannot download and test vast majority of those commercial addons.

Drupal has 15,043 free modules.

Wordpress has 30,963 addons. (Not all ot those are full versions of course, but at least you can download and test all of them before you buy. Many times i paid licence for Joomla addons just to see they suck and never used it.)

did already.... :P

Maybe time for small update.

Last month i devoted one whole night to read news about Joomla and feel atmosphere in Joomla community. What a waste of an evening. :)
I read, and read, and read and i have absolutely no clue what new version will have, what roadmap, what changes are waiting.
They have a talent to talk and write bull**** endlessly and they never said anything specifically. And i gave up. Strongly believe they themselves dont know how new Joomla will look like.

Is it problem in me ? No, because i can with crystal clear vision see what/how new versions of Wordpress / Drupal will be.

Joomla community looks pretty much like USSR right before collapse.

Well, better to just C/P one of my comments from other website:

Inspired by this discussion I devoted my last night reading about present Joomla and future version. Checking demo, exstensions etc.
Nothing has change, almost nothing. Same old beating around the bush. A lot of fancy talk about framework, MVC, models, controllers, and at the end so boring, so abstract, and so nothing saying. If I would need to find a parallel in past or real life for Joomla it would be communism and USSR, promises of better life that never comes. I read those fancy talks for years and years and really never much concrete changed, except small UI fixes.

I see they fight and argue with biggest third party developers. (commercial exstensions, money)
it is good, to clear the air, for so long time they had to much influence on future of Joomla.

And again I have to compare it with WordPress / Drupal.
Since I left Joomla I catch myself reading a lot official documentation of those two. Reading and understanding well. Checking videos, reading and testing some implementations i dont need for present projects.

I don’t remember doing anything of this when I worked with Joomla. I tried, but official documentation is as their fancy talk about framework, MVC, controllers, models…abstract and at the and they say one big nothing.
I said once it is CMS made for monkeys, not humans. And I was monkey for many years.

Drupal and WordPress core comunity is light years ahead Joomla core community. You enjoy reading about roadmap, development of future version. If you worked just short time with those two you get directly a picture what they try to do for future versions, what they do now. In the least detail understandable.

Whole last night spent reading about Joomla and I still have no clue what features new Joomla will have.

And I have never seen in WP, Drupal community so much hate as there is between big players developers and Joomla core people, and inside those groups as well. They never left Mambo syndrome, it just continues for years and years.

And this madness just goes on and goes on. Seems as Youtheme is making new Widgetkit which will replace almost all in stupid Joomla.

Imagine a module for Drupal that bypass/replace Content Types, Article/Node editing, blocks that show content, Drupal image PHP management, and Drupal way to handle fields.
Or imagine WordPress plugin that bypass/replace WP image PHP management, content types (separate database tables), custom fields, widgets.

And if you dont think twice it could seems OK for you.
Now imagine non of this data in custom and separates tables in database can be easy transfered back to Drupal/WordPress management and logic. And we are talking about Articles and pulling data connected with them, and presenting everywhere on website.

If you need to bypass article management of one CMS, and all that is connected to article manager, then what is purpose of this CMS anyway ? What good if can offer.

Based on your title I would say yes but before that you need to see what all you require. You need to understand the drupal and learn a bit of the customization skills. Seeing all this you can change anytime to drupal.

Hi,

@Stagger Lee,
"Joomgallery, K2, Seblod, Vmart, Phoca extensions, etc, etc. They all behave as separate universes", not true regarding SEBLOD. SEBLOD is very closed from Joomla and natively compatible to a lot of Joomla extensions.
"If you read some old stuff on Internet you can see that many of this developers at least once publicly admitted that they planned own CMS when they started with its extensions. (K2, Seblod, Soby)." Not true regarding SEBLOD.
"Both K2 and Seblod are replacement for missing options/functions in Joomla.", yes and what's about all Drupal modules! Drupal is not totally build on CCK/view system and require a lot of modules. Example the Drupal comment system is not using CCK.
While SEBLOD is now lot more mature about CCK/view features than Drupal itself.

All SEBLOD stuff is SEBLOD work. That means SEBLOD itself is build with SEBLOD features (fields on SEBLOD interface are SEBLOD fields). The SEBLOD comment application is build with SEBLOD. You have lot more control on SEBLOD fields about how to manage field value storage (standard database, JSON...) than with Drupal.
It's one reason why we can just not compare SEBLOD performance with Drupal performance (of course I'm speaking without cache system).

My comments are about Drupal 7. We need to use more Drupal 8 to have a good knowledge on it. But I already know after first tests that performance is a big issue and that the majority of Symfony stuff has been changed to match Drupal which means to update Symfony part including in Drupal is almost impossible without to change Drupal 8 itself.

Drupal is a nice CMS that we're using too in some cases. When we can choose Joomla + SEBLOD we take it because today the time require to develop a high level website and to maintain it is just so much reduced. Drupal is starting to speak about object programming and MVC architecture when Joomla is using these since 6 years ago.

Any technologies is always moving that's why nothing is true in a long term and that technologies require to be tested again every year to be able to see how it evolves. Too few people are doing this job!

Thanks.

Breaking news !!

Joomla walk on Moon. It gets custom fields soon. Core liders hope many new fields extensions will se light soon. Like for instance Google Map field plugin.

Their image field is awesome. Dropdown (select) of some stupid filenames. And Gallery field is submitted to Nobel Committee. Put all images in one folder and field will magically pick them all and make slider.

I hate myself I lost so many years on this tremendous stupid thing. As I said, Joomla core leaders treat people like monkeys, not humans.

As far as I know:

1. Of three CMS (Drupal, Wordpress, Joomla), Joomla is the worst for SEO.
2. Have to buy at least 3 extensions if you want to develop multiple sites like in Drupal.
3. Drupal runs well on Windows and Linux. Joomla runs well on Linux, not very well on Windows.
4. Drupal has less extensions than Joomla. Once a new Drupal version updates, you have to wait for extensions suppliers to update their products. Joomla got a huge extensions library, most of them are free.
5. Drupal is a bit hard for newbies, Joomla is easier.
6. Joomla needs much more resources than Drupal.

Myhan from hellonests.com