Why is Joomla so much popular?

I'd say "out of the box experience" for a big percentage of small-business sites. Especially those who don't know how or don't want to tinker. Drupal's install profiles will change that... one day.

Also, the first impression of their included themes. While they have a "brand" look, at the same time they look more like the average "serious" commercial site and you don't get the impulse to "make it not look like Joomla".

Joomla has a pretty face. Many heads turn when they see Joomla strutting its stuff. After a brief infatuation, the smart ones find that Joomla's elevator doesn't go all the way up, and so move on to a more serious development relationship. ;-)

Joomla is more than adequate for most small to mid-sized sites, looks good out of the box, has a real, standard GUI backend that's well-organized and easy to learn. Basic to advanced competence operating a Joomla site follows from a short, low learning curve. None of this is true about Drupal currently.

Lots of Drupal sites look like Drupal, lots of Joomla sites look like Joomla...that's up to the amount of time and design competence the owner puts into it. With Joomla it takes a lot less time and learning, and I think it's become a lot more common in the past two years to see reasonably original Joomla sites rather than cookie-cutter sites using default templates.

Joomla has a very robust codebase and a quality, active development community that are both quite different from Drupal. There is definitely an attitude in the Drupal community that its code is superior and more serious. I think it is more accurate to say that Joomla is a car with an automatic transmission, and that's what most drivers want, but a few people think a manual shifter is really cool and you're a superior person if you use one, especially if you have a 4-wheel drive as well. That's Drupal. A lot of Drupal drivers expect you to have not only 4WD but a winch, and they are actively engaged in engineering dialogue and actual mechanics with the people directly managing the development of Drupal. There is a lot less separation between developer and non-developer, and a lot less segregation between the leetspeak and n00b "please help us make it go" conversations.

With Joomla, there is more of a segregation of developers from the general usership and a well-established PR, marketing, community-building segment of its main leaders and volunteers. Drupal by contrast has been defined as the dominion of geek coders who represent a tiny fraction of the total population of people who have ever installed a PHP-based open source web publishing application. The core coder element in Drupal has built an amazingly strong, integrated, centralized, scalable blog-wiki-socialnetwork thing that can theoretically be modified into just about anything--except for a sleek CMS.

Drupal's condition today seems to reflect development at the hands of people who had no understanding or regard for interface design, well-organized and navigable content, or aesthetics in general. This has led to Drupal being an exotic, solidly-built vehicle that looks very basic by itself but in its trunk there's an oily, ripped cardboard box full of parts and notebooks (Drupal.org) that can be used to make the vehicle (Drupal) into just about anything--except for a sleek little convertible sports car.

To get Drupal to do what you want, new users must either hire a Drupal expert who benefits in this way from Drupal's inaccessibility (not really in the open source spirit, IMHO) or else learn to cope with the horrid Drupal disinterface and devote themselves to the way of pain, spending hundreds of hours of digging, wading, and sifting through Drupal.org. Here they will encounter people pushing ultra-pre-release alphas at them, they'll stumble down nested comments looking for buried solutions in the form of tarballs, patchfiles, or plain old cut-and-paste. Those with no *nix experience will soon pick up that they are probably regarded as chumps as they wade through the mud below the gaze of the expert drill instructor types above.

This all goes to show how Drupal was built like Linux and Joomla has a history like Windows--at least the comparison is partially justified. Here's the main history on each in a nutshell:

Drupal--An Unorganized Origin: A random nerdcore is trying to make something cool to do what they want, and it's so cool a lot of other people to join in and contribute--most of them nerds as well. Eventually it becomes useful and accessible enough to sell to businesses and package for average users, but a lot of work has to be done on documentation, presentation, interface design, general accessibility, marketing and distribution. People make money on the system aside from selling related services. Looming Advantage: core qualities of the software leverage the way people are increasingly using the web.

Joomla--An Organized Origin: A hand-picked team of corporate nerds cooperate with people with different skill set (e.g. non-nerd management and designers) are paid to develop a well-defined commercial product that is packaged, branded, marketed and made ready-to-run for a total out of the box experience that sells itself. A large emphasis is placed on building an impressive interface prospective users will immediately feel they can handle. When the software turns open source, it's well-distributed with a simple .zip package and web installer interface. A lot of webhosts start offering it auto-installers for it--anyone with a simple hosting account can push a button and they're in business. There is an explosion of contributions, some of them commercial and geared toward building commercial sites that sell products and services, sell and carry ads, etc. Looming Disadvantage: core qualities of the software adhere to rigid conceptual and technical limitations based on how people used to misunderstand the web, not how they are increasingly using it.

If there is one big thing that sets Drupal and Joomla apart, it's that Joomla users never have to assist each other by posting direct links to parts of their admin UIs as lifelines for the lost. Joomla has an administrative interface that never goes more than a few screens deep no matter how many extensions you install, and no screen will ever run over 1000px of vertical space, filled with "helpful" text instructions to explain the import of a million links. You can also find out exactly what extensions exist for what functions within a few minutes.

Most people with websites aren't and don't want to be stuck inside them all day. They aren't computer people at all really. If open source web apps are making it possible for the common person to own and operate their own website, the software that succeeds will be the software that's a good fit for them.

Fortunately for Drupal, it's strengths have been enough to compensate for its weaknesses, and the weaknesses I've mentioned here seem to have been identified, accepted, and turned into targets for abatement. If Drupal 7 really turns the corner on all or most of Drupal's shortcomings, it will be something else.

Dan Knauss

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/danknauss
New Local Media :: Riverwest Neighborhood Network
www.newlocalmedia.com :: www.riverwestneighborhood.org

... I found a poll (unscientific, of course) that had Joomla! with a 26% market share, and Drupal with a 24% market share. If this is anywhere near true, I don't see this as a meaningful verdict.

Joomla is much more "restricted" than Drupal, so it is easier for newbies to get going on. There are only so many things that can be done.

Drupal, on the other hand, is much more flexible and this flexibility "scares" people... they think that the learning curve is too high. Thats why I have focused on creating template "packages" of Drupal that I install for my clients. These packages have all of the pages and modules that they need, pre-configured and ready to go. It shortens the learning curve... alot.

That being said, I think its telling that so many large companies are using Drupal more and more - the security, flexibility and incredible community are huge assets. I would be curious to see any stats on the recent Joomla vs. Drupal polls... I would imagine that newbies still would prefer Joomla (or Wordpress, actually), but anyone who wants to build a quality website and know that there will be support and continued development in the future will choose Drupal.

regards,
Ron Northcutt
Freelance Developer

Custom Drupal Websites
Small Business Website

Peace, Compassion, Prosperity

.. there is an "apply button" to save, with which you can save AND stay in editing mode. ;-)