You Can’t Be Lucky All The Time, But You Can Be Smart Everyday.

Drupal vs Joomla

An age old question, Drupal vs. Joomla. I compared these two content management systems IN 2008 so PLEASE mind the dates of the posts, certain details may have changed relative to each system. 80% of what you read here will still hold true.

Joomla vs Drupal: Part 1 (Intro, Installation and Admin Interface)
05/18/2008 - 05:00

So the two CMS we have been developing sites on are Joomla and Drupal, specifically Joomla 1.5 and Drupal 6.2.

The first thing you will find if you search the net for comparisons of CMS is that they are dated. Any review you read comparing two content management systems is only marginally useful if it is more than 6 months old.

When new version of these puppies roll out it’s like rolling out a revamped model of a car and if you are not careful you will be reading a review comparing a 2006 Honda Accord and a 2005 Toyota Camry when you are in the market for a 2008. So take any old comparison with a grain of salt, they are useful only to a point.

So I’ll break down, from our ‘noob’ experience, a rating (1-5) of the two and the “winner” across the issue that you are probably most interested in. Whether you are more hands on or using a vendor to assist you these rating should help you get a feel for how hard you (or you vendor) will really have to work.

Ease of installation - Winner: Tie

The installation of both Joomla and Drupal will depend on where you are hosting your website. If you are hands on find a host with preloaded scripts (”Simple Scripts” or “Fantastico” for example). If these are pre-loaded on your host installation is a breeze. You can also manually install each system which requires a little more effort but is not terrible, it just adds more steps.

If you are using a vendor, it will be a breeze for them to. If a vendor remarks at any difficulty with this run the other way.

Organization of Administrator Interface - Winner: Drupal
Drupal: 4 Joomla: 3

Both systems have an administrative back-end where you can access all your content, modules and settings. Each has things that are better than the other and worse than the other.

Joomla definitely has cuter icons which gives the illusion of being more user-friendly. While Drupal doesn’t have the icons it is much easier to find where you want to go. “Content Mgt,” Site Building,” “Site configuration,” and “User Management,” are the basics and pretty self explanatory.

Joomla has separate area for Menu, Sections, Categories, Modules, Components, Plug-ins, Templates and there is a significant learning curve on locating what you really want to get to. Setting up a menu in Joomla is a frustrating experience even when you have done it 20 times.

Drupal also come with Ajax menus that make it VERY easy to reorder content whether it is in menus or actual site layout. Joomla will drive you to tears with its click boxes and ordering irritations.

Joomla vs Drupal: Part 2 (Themes/Templates)
05/18/2008 - 05:00

So how do Joomla (1.5) and Drupal (6.2) compare on issues related to getting the look and feel you want AND the content where you want it?

One thing to seek in mind is that Joomla calls these site layouts and designs as “Templates” and Drupal as “Themes.”

Availability of Templates/Themes - Winner: Joomla
Drupal: 2.5 Joomla: 5

There are many quality, free templates available for both of these platforms. However, there are more templates available for Joomla (1.5) than for Drupal (6.x) at this time. So if you want to find something free or cheap as opposed to finding someone to make you a custom template or making it yourself (which you probably won’t do if you are reading this) Joomla wins hands down.

Ease of Installing Templates/Themes - Winner: Tie
Drupal: 5 Joomla: 5

Installing a new template/theme is as easy as downloading it, possibly unzipping/uncompressing it, and uploading it to the templates/theme directory on your server. Simple, simple, simple. Then you just go in the back-end and select it.

Ease of Configuring and Customizing Templates/Themes - Winner: Joomla
Drupal: 2 Joomla: 3

Both platforms get relatively low marks but for different reasons and too there are many factor when it comes to configuring templates/themes. It is important to not confuse customizing the actual theme/template with positioning your content areas in a template.

In short, by design the Drupal platform makes it easier to place you content in any given template but the templates themselves can be difficult to customize beyond changing the logo. Joomla by design is an exercise it patience and prayer when trying to position content but most templates are fairly simple to modify the look and feel of for those who can tweak html and css.

The biggest factor is the theme/template itself and the configuration settings that the developer/designer has built in. These preset configuration setting can range from having many different color themes to several column layout setting to having almost no custom configuration settings. This goes for both Drupal and Joomla.

You should read before you download and install a template/theme to see what the options are but you won’t really know and have a good feel for how the preset setting work until you try it.

With many of the readily available Drupal themes there are robust options for changing color combinations but not so many for layout changes. Yet because of Drupal's VERY nice “blocks” feature putting content areas where you want them on the page is almost fun.

Joomla? Getting the right modules (in Drupal “blocks”) in the right place on template can be nothing short of a nightmare, especially if you get things set up in one template and then decided to try another template. This is in part because Joomla templates can vary so widely in the number and labeling of modules (content areas) on a page. It is also in part because it is just a pain in the ass. If I could merge these two platforms this would be the first thing I would do.

There is a drawback in Drupal in customizing actual html or css because you have to use an external program to even see it. Joomla has view and edit html and css options right in the back-end.

Joomla templates are also easier to customize at the html and css level. This is probably because Drupal has much more fluid and dynamic page layouts and themes (templates).

So both have their pros and con but Joomla wins for the intermediate user.

Ease of Placing Content Areas in Templates/Themes: Drupal
Drupal: 5 Joomla: 2

Taking into account the aforementioned, Drupal with its Ajax-sliding units on the admin side blows away Joomla and Joomla just, well, blows.
With Drupal you just move the Blocks (content areas) to where you want them on the back-end, pretty much limited by the theme/template layout. It is awesome.

With Joomla the biggest problem you are going to have is if you ever get set on a template and then decide to change to another one. You will also probably have problem because modules (content areas) have types that can be not so clear.

Prettiest Template/Themes: Joomla (barely)
Drupal: 3 Joomla: 4

This goes back to the issue of availability. I don’t really think there are limitation to either platform with regards to aesthetics, either with the right amount of elbow grease can look fantastic. That said, if you need to use elbow grease Joomla will take less.

But Joomla win as there is much great select of very nice templates available for 1.5 than for Drupal 6.2.

Joomla vs Drupal: Part 3 (Modules/Extensions/Third-Party Stuff)
05/20/2008 - 05:00

Both Joomla 1.5 and Drupal 6.2 have nice stable cores as content management systems, congratulation to both the communities that have made this the case, but what can really make you CMS based websites explode (in a good way) with functionality are add-on modules (in Drupalese) and extensions (in Joomlan) that can do anything from add a gallery feature to create all you need for a whole social networking-based website and everything in between and beyond.

An argument could be made that it is these modules and the communities that make them are what really make these two platforms worth using for the non-programmer type. Without these modules these CMS would be nothing more than blogging software at the most and fancy website making tools at the least.

For both Platforms there are communities of developers who make the add-ons, some are free (many are) some are modestly priced.
So which platform, Joomla 1.5 or Drupal 6.x, is going to get you where you want to go.

Availability of Modules/Extensions - Winner: Joomla
Drupal: 2 Joomla: 4.5

As of this writing Joomla wins hands down. Why? Three main reasons:

1) Joomla apparently has a larger and more active third-party development community
2) More more more to choose from,
3) More to choose from because of the “Legacy Mode” Plug-in that allows Joomla 1.5 to run some Joomla 1.x extensions.

Joomla extensions are very well organized on Joomla.org and very well labeled for their compatibility with Joomla 1.5, Joomla 1.x, or both.

For Joomla 1.5 extension can be either “1.5 Native” which means it runs and is build for Joomla 1.5 or it can be “1.5 Legacy.” What this means is that the extensions was originally created for Joomla 1.x but will (or SHOULD) run on Joomla 1.5 with the Legacy Plug-in enabled.

Huh, gobbledygook. In plain English there is a setting in Joomla 1.5 that can turn on Legacy Mode which I guess is just the activation of code to make 1.5 properly run extension made for Joomla 1.x THAT have been modified by the developer enough to be compatible (i.e. don’t think that you can just turn on legacy mode and all extension made for Joomla 1.x will work on you site, save yourself the headache and don’t try that).

Legacy mode is a tricky and precarious thing but from what I read on the boards it causes the most problems for people and extensions when people are upgrading from 1.x to 1.5 and have several extensions added on to their Joomla site that need to be supported on 1.5.

You shouldn’t have many problems if you have to run legacy mode on a new installation of 1.5. I have installed the community builder module which is legacy mode compatible with out significant problems.

Drupal has some great modules but at this time you will find yourself reading through the list on drupal.org going “Sweet module…aw damn it’s not for 6.x”

Installation of Modules/Extensions - Winner: Joomla (barely)
Drupal: 3.7 Joomla: 4

So this speaks more to the quality of the extensions available and the many variables that may cause of a module to have installation issues. I’ll speak more on those variable in the next section but for now I’ll concentrate on the actual installation.

The actual installation of Joomla Extension is easier only because you can directly install them through the back-end admin interface and you don’t even have to unzip/uncompress them after you download them (this is very nice).

Drupal modules (as far as I have experienced) have to be unzip/uncompressed and then installed into the directory structure of your site. It is easy enough to do over an ftp connection (the folder is called “modules”) it is just extra steps that the novices may not be comfortable with.

Basically it is pretty easy to install modules on both platforms. It really is not that bad.

Getting Modules/Extension to Work Right- Winner: Drupal
Drupal: 4 Joomla: 3

Once installed getting them module/extension to work is another game all together.

I highly recommend with Joomla extensions reading the reveiws of the extensions on Joomla.org. This will give a good idea of what kind of problems people are having and how widespread the the issue is and how easy it is to fix. These reviews will also give you an idea of how responsive the third-party developer is to making changes in the extension code to make it more usable if people are having problems. This goes for free and extension that may cost you $$.

And again don’t forget to look at the “Joomla 1.5 Native” and Joomla 1.5 Legacy” compatibility before you download and try to install. Don’t be afraid to read reviews for Joomla 1.x extension, something might catch your eye and maybe a 1.5 version is in development.

Now comes the reason for the low score on Joomla extensions, they can be fickle things. You may get module installed, turn it on (”enable” it) and it might hum great. Then you find a great new template and mysteriously you extension (or parts thereof) doesn’t work on that template. Then you are in a situation where you’re having to hunt down the solution and try and figure out is it the template or is it the module. Most of the time I resign myself the fact that is a just like a bad relationship, both are great, they just don’t work together, so I have to chose…template or module.

With Drupal I have yet to have a problem with getting a module to work as advertised but again, do your research on the front-end don’t just install modules because they sound cool and say they do what you want.
Drupal modules are more scarce but those that are compatible with 6.x are pretty stable and of higher quality ON AVERAGE. Please don’t misinterpret that, there are many many high quality Joomla extension but there are also many more crappy and buggy ones. Do your research!
I have also found that if you have problem 95% of the time someone else has had the same problem and it is on a forum, either on the joomla and druapl websites or on the forum of the developer.
The take home message are these:

1) Do your research before you install. If you see a lot of people have had a lot of problems and are trying to do what you are trying to do, you might want to steer clear of that module/extension or at least prepare yourself for the fact that it might not work or require some tweaking.
2) Be aware that your favorite extension in Joomla and your new favorite template may not play as well together as Hannity and Combs (and that is saying a lot). And for the none political minded, they may not play as well together as Duke and UNC (or the Yankees and Boston or the Israelis and Palestinians, you get the idea).

Summary

Joomla 1.5 is going to give a greater variety and availability of extensions and add-ons AND the pipeline looks better too with an active community and lots of Joomla 1.x extension that hopefully will make the jumps to 1.5. However, woe be unto the Joomla user that installs modules willy-nilly without reading the reviews first.
Drupal 6.2 is has fewer modules available and the pipeline seems a bit slower to get 5.x modules ready for 6.x. However, what does make it to 6.2 is probably going to give you fewer headaches and be very stable.