Moving from Joomla
Hello
I'm running a community website, but i need more features then Joomla can offer now. Can Drupal be a possible solution for my problems/requests? I don't know much about it, so please excuse some of my questions.
Here is what i need so far (sorry for my english, it's not my native language):
Strong users management
I need to have four major groups , each one restricted to own area but also able to acces a "General Zone". Users must select desired group on registration and not be able to change it later. For example, my actual site have a General Zone, a zone for women, one for man and one for kids. All groups can acces General Zone, but a women can see only contents and information for women and not for men and viceversa. Kids area can be keep unrestricted. Of course, each group should have roles like Author, Editor, Publisher, Manager etc.
Nested categories. As you already know, Joomla it's very limited here. I need my users to be able to submit info in any category
Easy instalation/remove of modules, components and plugin. I'm not a programmer and Joomla help me very much with this problem, just upload archive and set desired configuration.
Easy customization of site design. In Joomla i can asign different themes for each section of my site.
Thanks
It sounds like you are
It sounds like you are outgrowing Joomla and ready to move on to Drupal. Drupal has powerful user management (I seem to recall that it is even better in Drupal 6) and very powerful taxonomy (category) handling. Joomla 1 had nothing I am aware of that even approached the power of either. I haven't used Joomla 1.5 other than perhaps installing an alpha release, so I can't say there.
However, for now, module handling isn't as smooth as it was in Joomla. Drupal 6 has some improvements there, but it still isn't there. I think part of that is for technical reasons since Drupal users more commonly monkey around with the code in their modules and in general are more technically advanced than the typical Joomla user.
Drupal 6 also offers easier site templating and I expect to see more themes developed for Drupal 6 than there were for Drupal 5 although there are a number available in Drupal 5.
If you have patience, I would suggest passing on Drupal 5 and going right to Drupal 6. For most people, I recommend the opposite. Either way is fine. Just understand that Drupal 6 is new and the module and theme development haven't caught up yet. However, rest assured that you can expect their development to pass up Drupal 5 in most areas within perhaps 6 months or so.
Drupal does have some rough areas, particularly in areas of usability, but the core and many of the modules are rock solid. Drupal 6 saw many small, but important steps in the area of usability, and I expect more of the same in a year or so from Drupal 7.
Joomla Stinks
At first Drupal will seem tough to administer, however this is due to the modular nature of Drupal.
And once you get the hang of Drupal, which won't take too long, it will make Joomla look like it was coded by a bunch of monkeys.
If you need a site up soon, I would go with version 5. If you got time, then go with 6. The two most important modules for any customized drupal site are the Views module and the CCK module. Both of those are not yet complete for version 6.
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