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Drupal or Joomla??

N

nigelivy

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 21, 2009
66
0
Newbury, Berkshire, UK
Hi,

I know this is not really a direct Mac question, but I'd like to ask this advise anyway.
I am installing a web development server, and am indecisive as to whether I should use Drupal or Joomla?
I will be developing on my Mac, but some of my developers might use Windows.

What is the general consensus of these two development tools?

Thanks,

Nigel
 
both should be platform independent, and the best recommendation you'll get is to just try an installation of both of them, and see which fits your needs better.

I have never tried joomla, but have become very familiar with Drupal and have found it has met my needs from small portfolio sites (my personal site) to corporate sites, and community sites.
 
both are bloated messes of a cms. if i had to choose the lesser of two evils, i would go drupal for sure.
 
I've used both and I think the appropriate question is, are you a designer or developer. While both tools lean toward the developer side (php), Drupal more than Joomla, they both were not made with a designer view in mind.

Try to do things in Drupal which you would think from a design standpoint, would be fairly easy. Image menus...PITA. Module conflicts...PITA. Custom graphics heavy site...PITA. Etc., etc... FYI, I'm using ver6 so hopefully they'll be adapting more of a design philosophy with ver7.

Joomla was awhile ago, and I used themes and stayed within their boundaries for the most part, but the thing I remember most was it relied heavily on MooTools for anything Javascript fancy and if you threw another framework in there (ie JQuery) you were just asking for trouble (Joomla has what's called extensions (similar to Drupal's modules) which extends the features of your site).

If you're a designer I'd try Joomla first or maybe even WordPress, which is becoming more & more CMSy. If you're a good enough coder (which I lack) then give Drupal a try first and/or Joomla. They both have promise but be prepared to spend hours tracking down obscure fixes and bugs, if you try to customize too much.
 
TuckBodi said:
I've used both and I think the appropriate question is, are you a designer or developer. While both tools lean toward the developer side (php), Drupal more than Joomla, they both were not made with a designer view in mind.

Try to do things in Drupal which you would think from a design standpoint, would be fairly easy. Image menus...PITA. Module conflicts...PITA. Custom graphics heavy site...PITA. Etc., etc... FYI, I'm using ver6 so hopefully they'll be adapting more of a design philosophy with ver7.
Click to expand...

I am going to respectfully disagree. :D

Given a proper theme (like Zen), Drupal gives the designer a tremendous amount of flexibility when it comes to theming. Nearly every element is named and has both static and dynamic classes based upon page context and user interaction.

to the OP: I agree that you should install both and see how you feel. In my experience Joomla was "nicer looking" out of the box. However, I soon came to realize that I found Drupal more powerful and flexible as an engine.
 
lucidmedia said:
I am going to respectfully disagree. :D

Given a proper theme (like Zen), Drupal gives the designer a tremendous amount of flexibility when it comes to theming. Nearly every element is named and has both static and dynamic classes based upon page context and user interaction.

to the OP: I agree that you should install both and see how you feel. In my experience Joomla was "nicer looking" out of the box. However, I soon came to realize that I found Drupal more powerful and flexible as an engine.
Click to expand...

Yep, I see your point, but I think you're coming from a developer perspective, are you not?

Sure Zen (I've used 960 btw) allows you to change things and adapt, but my point was/is I was hoping for a point & click kind of CMS interface where I could just say "I want an image menu block there" and "I want an image/pdf gallery block/page there" and "I want a BBC style ticker block there" and I want them all to fit my look and not collide. Going in and changing some CSS to fit the theme versus having to go in and muck with templates and module files php and javascript files is a different beast (and don't get me going on node titles :--)).

Don't get me wrong..Drupal is very, very powerful. I just think (and get the impression from the Drupal forums) that it is made for people who like mucking with code. I'm from the Dreamweaver design side but believe dynamic pages with CMS is the next big thing. Just wish there was something more design like in mind when having to create these things.
 
TuckBodi said:
Sure Zen (I've used 960 btw) allows you to change things and adapt, but my point was/is I was hoping for a point & click kind of CMS interface where I could just say "I want an image menu block there" and "I want an image/pdf gallery block/page there" and "I want a BBC style ticker block there" and I want them all to fit my look and not collide. Going in and changing some CSS to fit the theme versus having to go in and muck with templates and module files php and javascript files is a different beast (and don't get me going on node titles :--)).
Click to expand...

I'd have to disagree with this too. I went through a trial last year of both platforms and honestly found Joomla too confusing. Drupal took a while to get my head around some of the framework, but after that found it far more usable and adaptable. For the look and feel, there are great themes and being able to give them a little tweak in the CSS to customise is heaven! Or you can go the Zen route and build from scratch. I'd also like to point out that the last couple of iterations of Drupal have seen significant improvements in regards to usability and functionality. Plus the Drupal community is awesome! I can't say how helpful they were and the documentation developed is amazing. Some commercial companies should really take a leaf out of their book on this.

With the ease of use and flexibility plus the support and development of the Drupal community I would say that it has it over Joomla.

But I am going to go samwich's advice - try them both... it's the only honest way of telling. You will know after a couple of days which you prefer and then you can get stuck in.
 
I am struggling with the installation of Drupal on my Windows Server 2008. Can anyone point me in the direction of a decent tutorial/installation guide which I can check?
 
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