By rockarena on

Hello everyone,

I bet this question has been asked thousands of times before. However I'm going to ask it again.

I'm currently working on a website project. I have my static site but now I need a cms. Now Drupal and Joomla seem to be two obvious choices. I've made some sites in Joomla before but this site needs version control and multiple languages (two). I really want to be able to easily customize the output of modules like a search module and I want a search module that can search through PFD documents. As Joomla has some troubles providing these functionalities it seems obvious that I take a look at Drupal. It seems that it has a higher learning curve then Joomla so that is what I'm a little worried about. Joomla seems to be a cms designed with the webdesigner in mind and Drupal seems to be more robust and has been developed with the developer in mind. So my questions to you:

Can I easily customize the look & feel of modules
Is Drupal more robust?
Can the search function and the indexer look through PDF documents etc?
Is internationalization easier to implement in Drupal?
Is there a high learning curve for Drupal?
Is version control easily implemented in Drupal?
Can some parts of the main menu be hidden from regular users?

⋅ Categories: Drupal 6.x

Comments

LiquidWeb’s picture

LiquidWeb commented
  1. Yes you can customize them but the word "easy" depends on your skills.
  2. From my experience I can easily say Drupal has a better performance with sites that have 10000+ unique vistors per day
  3. http://drupal.org/project/search_attachments
  4. Definitely Drupal has a better multilanguage structure
  5. I would prefer diffrent rather than "high" because most joomla users don't understand Drupal terminology (Forexample taxonomy)
  6. I have no idea about version control but I am almost sure its easier than Joomla
  7. http://drupal.org/project/menu_per_role
gareth_w’s picture

gareth_w commented

I am in the process of moving Joomla to Drupal, and believe Drupal is far and away the superior platform. Let me try and answer these questions in line for you

Can I easily customize the look & feel of modules

Yes/No/Maybe - you'll need to be more specific

Is Drupal more robust?

I believe so. If you look at this site it runs on Drupal for everything - the Joomla sites do not. There is also a lot more present in the core of Drupal (or having much closer ties with it) and you see much less of the discongruities between modules than you d oin Joomla.

Can the search function and the indexer look through PDF documents etc?

I don't think so.

Is internationalization easier to implement in Drupal?

Yes, though I've not done it. You load in a language pack, and it replaces text on the fly - you can even add your own strings into this.

Is there a high learning curve for Drupal?

The learning curve for Drupal is almost vertical - a lot steeper then Joomla's. However, once you've had a few of those Eureka moments you'll be able to create things using a few mouse clicks that would have taken an entire custom module in Joomla to realise.

Is version control easily implemented in Drupal?

I believe that you can save versions of documents as you edit them.

Can some parts of the main menu be hidden from regular users?

Yes, via about 4 or 5 different mechanisms.

If you're installing a test site, look at the 5.7 release as 6 is brand new and many modules haven't caught up yet. But I think you should give it a whirl and will be pleasantly surprised.

Gareth

rockarena’s picture

rockarena commented

Well, it's nice to see that my questions get answered really quickly. You have been very helpful. I'll give it a try tonight and I'll let you know my experiences.

epatr’s picture

epatr commented

the real confusing part is the terminology. by "version control" do you mean wiki style? drupal calls this revisions and its very configurable (ie who can edit, who can see old revisions). there are modules that expand on it even more.

rockarena’s picture

rockarena commented

I mean the process where older versions of some content are kept in an archive. If someone makes a new version and there are some errors in it, the old version can be retrieved and put back online.

I've been playing around with Drupal for an hour, bought the Pro Drupal book and so far it looks good. During daytime I'm a software developer myself. The company has made their own custom java based cms. (The reason I need Drupal is to do a website for someone else, long story. maybe I'll share it because it proves a point) I think that's a very good cms and it's also easy to expand. I'm finding the same thing here with Drupal and I just love elegant code :) I'm very excited about all of this and can't wait to get writing some stuff and make my template.

My css and xhtml skills are rather good so I think I should be able to customize the modules. Don't see a reason why not.

Well, so far this seems a great community and I'm already happy that I decided to take a look at Drupal. I will be continuing to use Joomla however for smaller sites but now time for some reading in my freshly bought Drupal book.

LiquidWeb’s picture

LiquidWeb commented

Its a feature coming with core just check save as a new revision (something like that) when editing node it will save as a new line instead of updating original record.