Drupal, Mambo, Joomla
Hi Everyone,
We are looking into using Joomla for a project that allows our editors to post reviews on restaurants, accommodations, nightlife and snow conditions for the ski resorts we cover. We currently have a system in place that was built in perl. You can see an example here:
http://community.onthesnow.com/seereview?type=dining&id=190&resort_id=5
The current system in place is a pain to use and very slow. We are looking into rebuilding this using Joomla, Mambo or Drupal. Does anyone have any recommendations on which one to use?
We would need the ability to associate a review with a resort and a state. Meaning a dining review for Steamboat would be displayed under Colorado > Steamboat > Dining. So each review would need to have a State ID and a Resort ID associated with it. Example:
http://community.onthesnow.com/seeall?resort_id=5
I have installed Drupal, and Mambo and played around with both. Just recently found Joomla. I am unsure if any of them could replicate or scale to do this. Does anyone have any recommendations? I appreciate the help. Thanks.
Jeff Simmonds
i'm pretty sure joomla and
i'm pretty sure joomla and mambo still have a majority of their code that is identical to one another. a short summary on that is basically the developers didn't get along, so they split. eventually joomla and mambo will grow apart, but right now I'm pretty sure its safe to say that they are one in the same, other than a few trivial differences. I started off using the mambo/joomla platform, but i soon noticed that while that route provides a quick solution with decent features out of the box, its just not nearly as sophisticated and cleanly written as drupal is. Drupal provides an excellent framework for developing very organized and user friendly websites. Drupal is also more search engine friendly. what i love about drupal is that the sky is the limit, just about anything can be customized. my experience with mambo/joomla was that when you tried to customize it, things got messy. and the community for that platform does not seem to provide very much help. One thing that annoyed me was that even with "SEO" turned on, the urls were still extremely sloppy. lets say you have a forum component installed (joomla/mambo has no forum out of the box like drupal) and that component is named comSimpleboard. Every single one of your forum urls are going to have something like ?com=comSimpleboard/board maybe not that exact line, i actually think its worse than that. but anyway. I wouldnt think mambo/joomla would be a good choise for a large scale, customized website. however, it seems as if that is where drupal shines. anyway, just my opinion. i havent looked back since switching to drupal.
whoa... the developers got
whoa...
the developers got along fine
they all left the project and took all the code with them and started a new project and called it Joomla!
The old project (Mambo) is ironically the fork with a brand new development team.
The code is diverging very rapidly
Joomla 1.5 will have very little common code with the next Mambo release
PS
SEO is fairly easy in Joomla with Open-SEF and it's automatic
see it in action here http://supernet.ucalgary.ca/forums
Joomla lovers made a joke about Drupal forum
*I scanned the Joomla site and found lotsa positive articles and threads about Drupal.
But one guy said `Drupal forum is a joke'
Excuse me, but Drupal Forum is out-of-the-box and integrated, unlike Joomla forum which is ported from SMF-Forum which is proprietary and obligatory `Powered by you-know-who and so and so'
*Integrated means - you can display the forum tables and inside, with side-bars displaying anything you wishes.
SMF forum is an eye-prodder - because of the `avatars' - after so many avatars I dont want to see anybody's avatar anymore - so even though Drupal forum looks the way it is, it is configurable and not rigid, it is themeable and easy to do so (just go to style.css and find all the styles for forum tables and fonts)
So, Jeffsimmons - go with Drupal :)
Advantages to SMF
I'm both a Drupal and SMF user. I disagree that SMF is rigid. As far as "avatars" go, their use is a personal choice by the site owners and not a requirement of the software. While I haven't done much custom theming for my own SMF sites, theming in SMF is no more or no less difficult than it is in Drupal. There are also just as many themes available for SMF as there are for Drupal.
If it's a new site I try to steer the customer to Drupal and, as you mention, it's well integrated forum. However, if a site already has a history of using a legacy forum I've recommended SMF. Drupal's forums take awhile to get use to...and sometimes it's in the best interest of the site to use Drupal but not it's forums. It's one of the reason there are those interested in a Drupal-SMF bridge.
Going back to the original poster, if I had to choose between Drupal, Mambo, and Joomla...I would pick Drupal. However, Drupal is best used when you actually want everything to be integrated. If you have some legacy or propriety software that is a "must have" then Mambo and Joomla seem to be better communities for catering that need. An issue though with bridging between two different applications (what Mambo and Joomla tend to do) is that when one application is upgraded...it may no longer be possible to bridge with the current or future builds of the CMS you have chosen.
-Bryan
CMSReport
What about user names and
What about user names and profiles? (Joomla / Mambo )
Bryan, thanks for the reply -
Does Joomla and Mambo allow for long and descriptive user names (with spaces), and what about its default profile module?
And by default, SMF is a proprietary (licensed) software right? (Lewis Media somebody) - powered by SMF footer; I believe Mambo has the obligatory `Miro owned' and what about Joomla.
For a real organization, company, federation that use websites, I'd recommend Drupal with the 1st reason being that by default, usernames can belong (less 56 characters), and profile.module is out-of-box. So other CMSes lose from the very beginning.
Keep in mind guys that we are trying to help the guy in weighing the merit of Drupal, it is weird if Drupal.org users usher away people from Drupal without discovering first the power of Drupal `the future of Internet' :)
SMF's license is open-source
SMF's license is open-source but with a lot more restrictions than the GPL. That's good or bad depending on you point of view. For example, you can modify the code as you see fit, but you can't redistribute that code without the copyright holder (Lewis Media's) express permission. You can find details about the SMF license at: http://www.simplemachines.org/about/license.php. I suspect most who only work with GPL projects would not like this license.
Now believe it or not, Mambo and Joomla are both open source projects and both are under the GPL. The uproar was that Miro, the copyright holder of Mambo, wanted to form a foundation and I think eventually dual license the project. Some in the Mambo crowd wanted their efforts more community owned and forked Mambo to the Joomla line.
Most working with Drupal are likely happy that not only is the project GPL owned, but the copyright is contributer owned (check out http://drupal.org/node/29481 ). There are of course pros and cons with this model, but it seems to work well for the Drupal community!
Bryan
CMSReport
I'd say that people should
I'd say that people should STOP loving any brand as if their lives depend on it....the same is observed (my observation :) about Joomla and Mambo - despite being ludicrous, lack of modules, bloated and hard, etc etc...
Drupal is `lovable'..yes because grasroots people can really benefit by using it to fulfill their needs, communities, organizations, ecommerce, making their voices heard, reaching out - thru Internet that is.
They shouldnt be bothered by `Mambo love, Mambots, etc etc'....when the CMS stopped working for some reasons, they are really in limbo so to speak!
Look at this site http://mecd.gov.my - if you ever have the chance of opening it, its a government owned site
But Drupal soldiers on, and Drupal guys (Dries, Killes, developers like kbahyeldin) are to be respected and befriended because they provide excellent product and services and dont even require us to advertise `Drupal' on our sites!
Good?
What exactly in the SMF license would fall on the "good" side?
As a dabbler, I'd say Drupal
As a newbie to Drupal and someone who's dabbled in all three, I'd say that u should definitely go with Drupal. Joomla may look more friendly, but it's my opinion that you can do more - particularly the kind of things you want to do - with Drupal.
If u look into the Taxonomy module(s), I think you'll find all your needs catered for.
Hackability - Joomla site hacked - what about Drupal
For a brief moment, JoomlaMalaysia.org was hacked and defaced.
My concern is that whether there is any chance of Drupal (4.6.8 or 4.7.2) entity being exploited, manipulated by hackers
Guys, set your SEND.module setings to restrict number of `send this page' to a minimum you are comfortable with.
I believe the SEND module CAN BE EXPLOITED by SPAMMERS to send spams to other emails of the same server or widely, in 1 day your site will have to be suspended, and this also give your site a bad name.
This happened to users of CubeCart (not Drupal, non-FOSS, not GPL) with the `tellafriend.php' is the key to spammers exploit. Some might use it just because they hate your site and want to see it shutdown
fyi
FYI, this site hacked caused the weakness by server and management file, not from CMS Joomla
Thank You!
Wow, thanks for the quick replies! I really appreciate you guys taking the time to answer. divrom thanks for the heads up on the Taxonomy modules. I will go read up on them. Thanks.
Jeff
My two bytes
I tried Mambo before switching to Drupal and I have to say that Drupal is 100% easier to customize and to use straight after installing. I remember having severe frustration with how Mambo was so "stuck" in it's ways. With Drupal, you can mold and bend it any way you want. The administration area is also MUCH cleaner and more logically set-up, as well.
In addition, I've found Drupal users to be very helpful with any questions or issues one might have, unlike Mambo users.
I pretty much reiterated what those guys said above, but I just had to reply with my opinion. In short, go with Drupal. I think you'll find that it meets or even exceeds your expectations.
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Visit me @ binaryblonde.com
i think the taxonomy and
i think the taxonomy and glossary modules will be very interesting for you.
with the taxonomy / category module, you can build a matrix like categorisation of articles. so you can easily build two types of categorisation for each article, one will be by geographical location and the other by resort type. you can also have grouping and sub-grouping for the categories. on my website i use taxonomy to categorise rss newsfeed by geographic location (world, asia, europe) and type of news (general, business)
there is also an add-on module for building a glossary. the glossary module is able to pick up the terms that you define, so that it will automatically add a link whenever the term appears in your articles and comments. on my website i use it for economic and business terms.
on my website the presentation / information architecture sucks.. so eventhough the features work, it is not a good example. still working on it. i like the categorisation on your site.
i did try out with joomla first but it was too complicated for my wife to add articles and organise them. in drupal i use the book style of organising data. so whenever my wife needs to add a page, she will navigate to the parent page/chapter and click on the 'add child page' where she can further organise by taxonomy categorisation. i have also added a rich-text editor for writing the articles.
with regards to performance, my website is slow as i have a lot of cron jobs picking up rss news feed. i have about 15,000 rss items in three months (i use the aggregator2 module for this). with regards to heavy loading drupal has cache and throttle but i have not found a static html page generator module (which typo3 has).
another useful module is the similar entries module, which will list 10 related articles to the article being viewed.
i have not tested drupal for ecommerce or workflow features.
Raja Iskandar Shah
Consulting for Malaysian Business
www.norazilaco.biz
Try Malaysian Drupal site at
Try Malaysian Drupal site at
http://drupalmalaysia.org
http://drupalmalaysia.org/cuba
If you are keen Drupal eCommerce, we can install on `cuba' for you to try
eCommerce Drupal has been installed in DrupalMalaysia.org and you can try from user POV
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Internet for ISLAM, get to know Islam and Muslims :) May Allah brings you to the Straight Path
http://muslimin.org/Islam
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Could you contribute your
Could you contribute your translation to Indonesian? I think it is more complete than what we have.
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Drupal services
My Drupal services
Killes; We dont have the pot
Killes;
We dont have the pot file for Malay. Thought that Indonesian lang file (pot) has existed? Actually Malay is brethren to Indoesian, but still different and strange to each other :) (Like Chinese Mandarin to Cantonese)
We did not use the translation module, we just changed the texts in *.module files which were meticulous and might cause errors (such as user.module).
Why?
Why, o why? Using poedit to create a translation is not that difficult, is it? You will have a hell of a job updating.
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Tips for posting to the forums.
When your problem is solved, please post a follow-up to the thread you started.
Yes, it is meticulous
We did the same way for ECommerce modules :)
Later on will make use of the transl module
I like site-seeing too
Oh boy, a bit of work that would have been. Well, speaking from experience, it's a good way to site-see the code!
Did you keep t?
If you kept t() around the strings, it would be fairly easy to adapt extractor.php to generate a proper .po file.
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Tips for posting to the forums.
When your problem is solved, please post a follow-up to the thread you started.
Oops, sorry for the
Oops, sorry for the confusion. Nevertheless, I think it was quite a stupid thing to change the strings in the modules. You've really shot yourself into the foot. For each upgrade you will need to do that again...
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Drupal services
My Drupal services
Newsfeeds
Raja thank you for insight I took the liberty to view your site , you have done a marvelous job it doesn't suck. I to am wanting to incorporate a newsfeed but, how do you pick up the RSS news feeds. I am completly new to this so my questions will be newbie related. Dou you need one cron job per feed. I am only interested in one or 2 feeds and is it possible to have the feed excerpts on the front page with a link to the full news article in another page that resides on our server. On a SEO standpoint How has this boosted your page ranking?
newsfeed related stuff that i've done
sorry for the really late reply. was switching harddisks over the past month. first, my original harddisk crashed, then i had to use an old harddisk with win-xp, then i bought a new harddisk and installed ubuntu on it, but now i had to use the old harddisk back to do some vb6 work (cleaning up, reorganising and commenting codes).
back to you:
1. install the module aggregator2 - read the readme, it is fairly straightforward.
2. to pick up the rss feeds - copy the rss url link, then at your site go to administer > aggregator2 > create news feed: select to promote to front page (if you want the rss to appear within the main body of your site), give a title, paste the rss url link, and set the interval.
3. for cron - i use poorman's cron, which is a really simple interface where you can setup hourly or daily intervals.
4. you can also add the newsfeed as a block (which can appear on the left / right sidebar).
5. you should also add the similar module. get the latest from cvs - there are loads more settings.
the aggregator2 module will only capture the info available from the rss, so how much content available depends on the rss. it will not 'fetch' the whole article from the originating site (due to copyright restrictions).
with regards to page ranking, adding links to the bottom of your signature in forums, comments and related sites has a bigger impact on google page rankings. with regards to 'stickiness' i like it mainly because of the similar module. at the moment, my site is like a prototype, my current 'experiment' is webforms and charts. cant wait for the proposed ajax webform module !
by the way, i have close to 25,000 nodes now. in terms of site stats all have been increasing steadily - but i dont get much emails or calls from the website, so it is not yet generating the traffic that i want.
Raja Iskandar Shah
Consulting for Malaysian Business
www.norazilaco.biz
Reasons to use Drupal
1. Categories that make sense to you and to readers
Use also taxonomy_context and shortcuts menu - recommended
2. Human friendly URLs (Drupal module - url alias / path alias / pathauto
3. Drupal will make your site top sites - consistently our pages ranked high for relevant searches and not-so-relevant searches, also by Yahoo and dogpile.com
4. Send+Mime to send emails with images to potential customers
Thanks everyone for your
Thanks everyone for your help. I tried posting a similar topic on the Mambo and Joomla forums and i only got one reply. So I really appreciate everyone take the time to help. I will read thru everyone's suggestions and hopefully make a decision soon. Thanks again everyone.
Jeff
Drupallers can get distracted :)
You are welcome.
Well a BONUS for using Drupal - helpful folks and they speak kindly in return.
Well what version of Drupal you are going to use?
Heard that 4.7 is buggy? If that's the case, try 4.6.5. You might want to avoid all the bugs in order to get your site Drupalized
Tomorrow we are going to have a Drupal class for IT guys who had been using Xoops.
We mentioned that Drupal has very nice USER PROFILE out-of-the=box and that turned them on :)
andre75 travel site
andre75 has a nice travel site.
be careful, pathauto 4.6 does not scale. (people have had trouble scaling even the patched version)
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Drupal ecommerce, at http://www.drupalecommerce.com is a new site written using language that Drupal beginners and intermediate users can understand. Quick links to "Modules" and "Module Groupings."
Mambo is Limbo
I have came across two major sites using Mambo that have that nasty `overload problem' either due to too many visitors, or just blank page for its inherent weakness.
http://www.mecd.gov.my - Would you believe that a government portal site runs on Mambo - result of overhyped and good marketing to the folks of the bigwigs and it cannot open after I registered as a user?
It looked nice if you managed to surf into it, but most of the time, blank page.
`The document contains no data' - embarrassing to the owner, but the webmaster (whoever was the Mambo installer) seem to be ignorant of this fact
Another problem with Mambo site is it shows only frontpage, and you could not read the whole article.
I'll try and stay away from the debate...
What it boils down to is this: Stay away from Mambo, so pick either Joomla or Drupal. If you want the easiest solution out of the box with the most themes go with Joomla. If you want control of your site and the ability to grow over the long haul go with Drupal.
Also here's a quick tip:
Look into CCK and node reference if taxonomy doesn't give you exactly what you want. This will allow you to create a custom content type called "States" where you can fill out actual information about the state you are visiting. Once you have the states in place, you can create a review content type that "references" the other type automatically. This is awesome for creating real relationships between the different content on your site.
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