Alright I must admit, I am jumping on the Drupal bandwagon (if there is such a thing). I just have to admit that it is so much better than Joomla (the other CMS heavyweight at the current time). And I mean so much better. My top ten reasons to use Drupal really do stem from my few frustrations of Joomla and how Drupal has solved those frustrations for me. This is nothing to harsh against Joomla! I think it’s a wonderful open source project that I hope continues on. I would love to find reasons to use Joomla more often. There are just some areas that they have need to improve. Anyways, here are my ten reasons to use Drupal:
- SEO Friendly URL’s – This is a pain in the butt with Joomla! It’s automatically built in with Drupal and very very easy to use.
- Easy To Use Admin Interface - I think Joomla tried a little too hard in this area. Drupal found a way to just make things more simple and not so overwhelming for the beginner user.
- Built In Blog – The blog that’s built in to Drupal is very easy to use and customize. Joomla really does not give a good blogging option at all surprisingly.
- Web Forms Plugin – This is a terrific plugin that I suggest you use. Just do a search for it on the Drupal.org website. Let’s you create as many of your own customized forms as you need. Very easy to use and very comprehensive.
- User Management – User roles and access control is so much easier to manage and maintain using Drupal. It makes multi-user websites easy to create rather than a pain in the neck.
- Ubercart – I just recently wrote about this shopping cart plugin for Drupal. Hands down the best shopping cart you will find for any content management system period.
- Drupal Taxonomy – Drupal’s way of categorizing content is such much better than Joomla. You can tell that it was way more thought out beforehand. This is important for anyone creating content rich websites.
- Meta Tags Plugin - a fantastic plugin allowing you to create custom meta keywords and more importantly descriptions for each page. Do a search for this one. Great Plugin.
- Page Title Plugin – Something Joomla does not currently have. A plugin that EASILY allows you to customize each pages Page Title. An absolute must for search engine optimization.
- Social Networking – For a major social network I of course choose elgg. However, if you are looking to build a more niche/smaller social network than Drupal is perfect. Again referencing to it’s user management capabilities combined with it’s Drupal Taxonomy to content manage all content Drupal makes for a fantastic easy to setup social network.
Also I find it fair to mention that the templating system for Drupal is much much better making it easier and more reasonable from an HTML/CSS perspective to make customizations and create high functioning themes. This list of Premium Drupal Themes shows some examples of what I’m talking about.
I wrote this post for two major reasons. First and foremost of course, to inform you the reader about Drupal and it’s advantages. The other is to hopefully in one way or the other encourage Joomla to “take it to another level” if you will. Hopefully it will help motivate Joomla contributors and creators to better refine the CMS that they have. If they don’t, people are gonna find out how much better Drupal is and stick with them.
penyaskito
January 6, 2008
And if I made the wrong decission, is there published a script to migrate a website from Joomla to Drupal?
TIA.
Tim
February 20, 2008
I haven’t used Drupal yet but may have to soon, I am concerned though that the level of community support & modules and components available isn’t up there with Joomla and I have heard its a lot more tricky to customise template does anyone have an experience with making Drupal sites that could comment on this, Cheers.
Al
May 29, 2008
I’ve used Joomla for several years now and build a lot of websites with this great CMS. Recently I worked with Drupal and I must say it’s indeed better then Joomla, mostly for the 10 reasons listed here. However, customizing templates is easier with Joomla.
Dheeer
June 25, 2008
Two years back I’d to make a choice between Drupal & Joomla. We created sites with both. But today we only work with Drupal. We are happy of the choice we made.
Drupalbased
September 17, 2008
Drupal.org is getting a full professional redesign soon, I’m predicting a sharp drupal rise once this is done.
qwan
September 22, 2008
I have been using joomla and its great. I am hearing a lot of buzz about drupal. I search and search and search and all I see is all fart and no shit.
I am not saying drupal is bad. Drupal is indeed better than joomla, but what I see with drupal is a lot of articles which can be called PR. All these articles just keep on singing praises on drupal.
Tutorials? Help? or any other resources for drupal………..NONE!!!!!
Joomla still beats drupal when it comes to resources, infact it beats the PR of Drupal with the amount of help one can get on joomla is just amazing.
Drupal seems to me like a community full of selfish snobbish geeks who want to prove that drupal is the best(and It may very well be) and then just go around all “snobby snobby” without giving any kind of help in their websites or articles. It is very closed and selfish community I feel. They want drupal to be popular and they dont want many developers to become and expert in drupal.
Whereas joomla is in the true spirit of opensource. Joomla users just keep on contributing and contributing. There are tons and tons of videos about joomla articles websites you name it.
Youtube i filled with joomla tutorials. No geeks talking about how good joomla is. You get tutorials on anything.
But when you search for drupal all you get is all these drupal geeks telling us how drupal is the best thing to happen to this world.
So in the spirit of opensource I would rather wait for joomla to catch up and I am sure with the help of extensions any of these above mentioned 10 reasons can be tackled in Joomla.
Jason
September 25, 2008
I must say, I agree with Qwan. I’ve used Joomla since the Mambo days and I love it… It has opened so many doors for me. Drupal is a bit more powerful, but comes with more complexity for the average user. Qwan is right about the community… The Joomla! community is phenomenal… the resources are great, the developers are awesome and the spirit truly is, “open source.”
I’ve written several posts about “joomla vs. drupal,” and I continue to fight with myself about it… The list above is perfect… I think you hit the nail on the head, Chase. It’s tough to really determine which is truly “better” because they both have traits that surpass the other…. for instance, the community built around Joomla is far better than Drupal…. Now, that really has nothing to do with the platform or architecture, but it is relevant and has value – especially when dealing with clients.
In summary, they’re both great… and one should determine which CMS is better for each particular project… Joomla! might be better sometimes… Drupal might be better sometimes…
Cheers… great post.
admin
September 28, 2008
thank you for your comments. You have brought up an interesting subject that I have not thought too much about in the past. And that is the Drupal Community as a whole and how helpful they are or are not. I’m going to take a deeper look into the Drupal Community and find out what’s going on. Expect a new post about that soon.
Hussein
October 15, 2008
I am actually stumbling with tags drupal and joomla. I’m researching which one is a better CMS other than wordpress. You made a good points. Giving this post a thumbs up!
james
October 24, 2008
Who needs help? One needs doc and drupal has a wonderful and complete handbook, search for it on drupal.org it has everything you need and more.
And I know for a fact that there are video tutorials out there for basic installation and much more advanced topics, don’t say there aren’t.
But anyway, if you can’t work it out by yourself then yes, stay in the playground with joomla, who cares really???
Kai
October 31, 2008
I used to like playing a lot with Joomla, it has very beautiful templates. being a graphic designer and gradually branching into web design, I am glad there are projects like drupal.
But lately after doing a bit more research, what do i find?
Half of all these decent templates are being sold[rather steep if you ask me] by the very same Main Developers of the project.
So I decide, let me buy a book to help me get up to speed with all this Joomla template design.
I will save you all the trouble!!!
There is nothing out there for you if you want to learn how to make a really good Joomla template. Thank you Tessa for your books, but they are really not up to snuff.
With drupal on the other hand[apart from overkill with the style sheets] there are plenty well documented books on theme-ing and basically everything you need. By the time you are done, you will really come to appreciate style sheets and xhtml. I’m glad I made the right choice there.
Drupal doesn’t pretend to be simple[and its not], its a great system and there is a great number of books out there to help you get to speed in a coupla months. Its probably the real reason I want to learn php more, even though I am not a programmer at heart.
And when you are done, you actually wont regret the time spent, you will have learnt a thing or two.
qwan
November 1, 2008
Kai.
Hmmm very surprised to hear that, cause I learnt to make a joomla template without reading any book . Just read the documentation saw a few templates(I am too lazy to read documentation) and figured it out.
I tried doing that in drupal and whoa, also in joomla just do a google search on “how to make a joomla template” and you will be overwhelmed by the resources.
but that doesnt make joomla better than drupal
.
But like I said joomla should learn from drupal and get a new version out soon. That will be the best thing
Mike
November 3, 2008
The only thing Joomla has is the community. But the joomla community is a community of Amateurs that do not get called out for being so. Alot of the extensions, plug-ins and templates are the first projects of their respective creators and are horribly written and written for a horribly bloated piece of software from a design aspect.
I am actually glad that drupal and other CMS’ do not have the community that Joomla does. Alot of what makes Joomlas’ community great in the average users mind is what makes it a horrid in a real developers mind.
Kai
November 6, 2008
I totally agree with you Mike.
Joomla+Bloat-Relevant documentation=Total Mess!!
And Qwan thank you for agreeing with me.
For a sec there you had e going.
Kai
November 6, 2008
I totally agree with you Mike.
Joomla+Bloat-Relevant documentation=Total Mess!!
And Qwan thank you for agreeing with me.
For a sec there you had me going.
Pierre
November 12, 2008
I have a super simple website builder that I wrote to make it very simple for pastors of small churches to work on their websites.
I have a friend who started doing sites for his clients in Joomla and he loves it. I tried Joomla and found that it was very hard to learn. I started to improve my own system but I really don’t have time so I took a look at Drupal. In the first day or two I was able to do more with Drupal than after a month with Joomla.
I don’t know what all the talk about doing things with templates is about. Both have templates that are relatively easy to modify, although I give the edge personally to Drupal.
It is true that there is more out there on Joomla but Joomla seems to need it more that Drupal. Anyway, both are good systems and it probably depends more on the personality of the person using the system than the system itself. The way my mind works I prefer Drupal so far and my friend prefers Joomla.
What I don’t like is the foul language that some have to use to express their opinions (remember that is all they are) and the way they have to slam the other system.
The best advice is to try them both and use the one that works best for you.
qwan
November 12, 2008
Pierre that was a wonderful comment, I am glad I subscribed to it.
I think I was being too judgmental about Drupal, when in fact you can say that I never tried it.
I tried to work on it after having worked on Joomla found it really difficult to carry on and try and complete a site with it.
I think I was looking at it from a Joomla point of view.
Reading about your experience I think I will give Drupal another try. This time I will unlearn what I have with Joomla and give Drupal a fair chance and try and work on it for atleast a month.
Then I will come back here and post a comment
Thanks
ethen
November 24, 2008
I see post after post after post going back to ’05 on drupal of newbies asking questions i know are easy to answer for a drupal pro, but there are no answers. none. nothing. if there are any they are technical and abstract and never confident. it’s like the drupal people look down on noobs with – in their minds – stupid questions. or maybe nobody is there. nobody seems to know for 100% if anything is the right way to do something.
people ask how to best to build a site structure/hierarchy – no answers. do you use books or taxonomy? nobody frickin knows or wants to say. if you go with taxonomy you can’t separate the navigation vocab from the other vocabs – it’s in the same vocab container. there is no data on different ways to build site structure – no examples i could find.
what if i want to have a page (node) with multiple content types submitted at different times and layed out in different places on the same page? I want a page to be comprised of multiple child data only associated with that page and shown nowhere else. nobody seems to have a clue. to do it is a tedious process it seems.
I can’t find basic data on drupal functionality and asking for it on the forum gets no responses. stuff that is almost required in modern web design is missing in drupal, such as multi-column layouts in the content section. you can ‘t easily reorganize your data on the page in different columns and locations. add on modules just complicate the entire system even more.
i think joomla caters to noobs/non-techies verses drupal who hates them, and wants to cater to developers/programmers only. until they let go of this ego trip drupal won’t go mainstream with all the majority.
qwan
November 26, 2008
@ethen,
You have put this forward so beautifully.
It is almost poetry
That is indeed the biggest problem with drupal. It is so closed that they just do not want anyone jumping on to the bandwagon, which almost becomes a paradox, but upon closer look you see their real intentions. That is that they just want to make money as “drupal programmers”.
So they never ever help a noob they would like to force him into “hiring” them or the “closed community” as a whole. I see that as the only reason for such behaviour.
Basically Drupal is trying to be l33t or elitist which is really n00b in my opinion.
You cannot be like that in opensource. But they are surviving.
The fact is that Drupal never started off as a “gift” to the open source community. They had money in their mind all along.
You can see now they have commercial versions of Drupal out.
So what does that do, it just makes clients who want drupal go for the commerical version, in the process killing off business for all freelancers.
I somehow feel that I blabber too much and do not have the clarity that ethen has on this.
So I request ethen to voice his comments on this issue too
ethen
November 27, 2008
hello qwan.
I agree that Drupal is all about providing jobs to the developer industry, with a focus on corporate clients.
Drupal is Microsoft (catering to developers, techies) while Joomla / WordPress are like Google (catering to noobs). We all know who’s winning that game. *I personally think that WordPress and Joomla cater to the same groups, so I reference them both.
I didn’t know there was a commercial version of Drupal. I find that a major conflict of interest. So they are selling a product (or “support” as they call it) with modules that were built by the OS community? That is like Wikipedia putting ads on their site and taking revenue. What idiot would put time into Drupal development so that it could be later integrated and sold with a commercial package? For a commercial CMS, people should go with Expression Engine.
I think Drupal “people” are elitist based on the fact that they are obviously not noob friendly or think that noobs should be able to build a website. I’ve been designing/building sites since ’95, but since I don’t program, I’m also in that noob category. I get the impression that they think design and looks are irrelevant. Maybe this is all ego because when a site is done, the looks and content get all the praise and attention.
It’s not really Drupal’s fault, but an industry (programming, development people) not wanting to loose their livelihood. Imagine if some average joe could build a digg like website without the need of programmers. I think they have overcomplicated their CMS almost intentionally to make it harder to implement. Even modules are so complicated that most are not even ported yet to 6.0.
I don’t see Drupal using creative design in anything they do. They don’t consult with front end designers or noobs in how to make their CMS better. Compare Drupal with Joomla / WordPress. Compare their websites, site organization, admin interface, user friendliness, etc. Drupal has none of this. Compare Drupal sites with Joomla / WordPress sites. The only Drupal sites that look high end are corporate giants. Meanwhile there are Joomla / WordPress sites that look just as good as those corporate sites run by poor non-techies. Now compare the forums, see how many people are helpful and respond to posts compared to Drupals dysfunctional “forums” where most posters answer their own questions. The hard truth for Drupal is that a good website requires programming and design. Everything they do lacks design and I see that as a serious flaw in their system and operations. There almost no true front end drupal themers out there. Creative types avoid theming for drupal, leaving people that use Drupal to pay for custom designs.
Here’s what’s funny… Look at the big sites like digg, etc. They use custom solutions. Drupal is in the middle between Joomla / WordPress and a custom solution. Sorry but most people don’t have a round of financing to afford using Drupal. If they do they go custom. The programmers in turn who CAN implement with Drupal build ugly ass websites and can’t afford or even know good design when they see it. Thus most Drupal sites are not one man operations, there needs to be a team. Sorry but a website with fancy functionality will fail without good front end design policies.
I think Joomla / WordPress are the future of CMS’s, not Drupal. I personally don’t have any experience using wordpress or Joomla, this is just what I see in my research. I do like wordpress over joomla. WordPress seems easier, faster to implement and much more appealing to work with (for every person involved). Time for me is an issue. Drupal people KNOW their system has a learning curve, but don’t even see that as a problem. Drupal could be as easy to use as WordPress, but they prefer it to be technical.
Amarjeet
December 16, 2008
Hi Qwain and Ethen.
Assuming I want a site having about 100 pages, each page say of a new film released. Now, being a nontechie is it possible to design each page on Front page and then upload it thru FTP (Cute FTP)?
Also I want to know that using Joomla or Word press, designing the page is similar to designing on Frontpage or different.
Finally after filling the content and pics on every new page – does one need to use FTP to upload the new page or is it direct?
Please advise.
qwan
December 17, 2008
excellent point Ethen, I just hope dearly that what happened to mambo should happen to drupal.
.
Joomla came out of mambo. I am not looking for a joopal maybe
@amarjeet, well i can answer you briefly and put you on a path.
You can very well design a hundred pages in front page and upload them online.
No designing pages for Joomla and wordpress is very different from designing on frontpage. I really dont know how you can design on frontpage. Cause designing takes place on photoshop or its counterparts like fireworks etc.
I cannot possibly explain how designing a page on joomla works in this comment here.
Your questions are a little vague so I will give why and for what should use joomla and when
If your 100 pages are going to be updated regularly and new pages are going to be added, if you need visitors to rate the pages(since you said it is movie page) then you should go in for joomla or wordpress.
About the site design both cms have a variety of templates free and paid from which you can choose. Later if you go through the documentation of both cms you will learn how to edit and customize those templates to give your site a unique look.(or if you get too good you can create a new design from a scratch).
Once the Joomla or wp is up, then anyone can update and add pages. So other non-techies can update and manage the site. only will have to do a little learning.
you can also hire proffessional help just for creating a template for joomla or wordpress.
The rest you can do yourself.
I hope this helps
But I think you should get your self an account on wordpress or goto joomla site download joomla install it really dive in and then you will get more clarity on what youwant and what you can do.
Leo
March 4, 2009
I see a few people are complaining about the lack of helpful Drupal resources providing easy-to-understand intros on getting up and running with Drupal.
Here’s a link to a tutorial I found that has been incredibly useful for assisting in getting my head around Drupal: http://www.gomediazine.com/tutorials/create-a-killer-band-site-with-drupal-introduction/
When I first had a go at Drupal I attempted to refer to the drupal.org documentation, which as has been said, is not very useful for the novice. I ended up scratching my head and wrestling with Taxonomy just trying to get a workable navigation up and running.
Once I found the right resource to get me started, suddenly everything became very clear. In fact I would say that Drupal is quite easy to get started on, it’s just that the documentation makes it seem very complicated!
The other resource that is very useful for Drupal is the book Pro Drupal Development, 2nd Edition.
The Drupal.org website would benefit hugely from being reworked. For a start it looks fugly. But it’s also a bit of a mess in terms of content.
Put yourself in the shoes of the Drupal newbie. You want to download the files, install it and then have a quick tutorial in doing the basics. So you download the package, and go to the “Getting Started” secton of the drupal.org website. This section is okay up to the point of installation, but as soon as you get to the Page Building section, it fizzles out. Suddenly the newbie is buried under an avalanche of terminology. The best way of learning is by experience.
How this site would benefit from a quick and dirty “Make a basic Drupal site in a couple of hours” tutorial…
qwan
March 5, 2009
Totally Agree LEO, That is what we are talking about, That guy made the tutorial is a great guy.
The developers of Drupal are not. How many tutorials do you find like that.
As you can see that Drupal has released a commercially supported version, this brings up the issue of conflict of interest. That is why I feel drupal has deliberately complicating things and not giving out good documentation. They are just trying to become the most popular CMS that can be setup only by “drupal specialists”
That is not the true spirit of open source.
Go to a Joomla forum and ask a question most of the times veteran member will just post a link to the related documentation and when you read that it is so clear.
There is a conspiracy, not the right word, I feel it is unethical practices and you can call it groupism that is the reason why Drupal is not true open source.
I am not denying it is better is so many way. But I would just love Joomla to overcome it drawbacks and become better than support Drupal. Or else I will have to join Drupal, but I don’t like the idea of being all Highty mighty!
Andrew Ariotti
September 28, 2009
It should probably be noted here that the next version of Drupal is going to be much more geared towards the User Experience (UX). While the UX isn’t all that great for Drupal, it still is a powerful tool. While it might not yet be the “choice” for THE Open Source CMS it definitely has the ability to do anything and everything possible in CMSs. Once Drupal 7 gets released a lot will change, thanks to Acquia and the D7 team.
Colchester
September 30, 2009
Drupal still seems stuffy & uninviting to the noobs and until the community can overcome this attitude/persona it won’t get the recognition it deserves.
Wizan Zaini
January 19, 2010
I am designer and not programmer – php, html is not my area. So far I managed to solve almost all my problems by myself – solutions found on drupal sites or other sites but it took times! Complex problems solved by HIRING those developers. I have to agree with all comments regarding the COMMUNITY. Drupal need a better community!!
Laurence
March 16, 2011
Hi
I was looking for reasons to use Drupal over Joomla and found your post. But many of your comments are wrong, you can do a lot of what you say you cant in Joomla:
1. Been using sh404SEF for years it works fine for SEF
2. This must be personal preference because I find it the opposite. I find it hard to find where to manage my content and menus than Joomla. Joomla there are buttons on the dashboard that take you right to them.
3. You can set a Joomla Menu link to a category to display the category content like a blog, I do it all the time
4. You are correct on this, there is no web forms built into Joomla, but there are some components you can add on
5. This is also in favour of Drupal… Joomla 1.5 is lacking this, no different level of access for different users or groups. Joomla 1.6 fixes this I think.
6. Joomla has Virtuemart, BUT I dont particularly like it much. Not tried Ubercart so cant compare.
7. For my +100 sites the sections and categories in Joomla have been fine
8. META tags can be controlled out of the box for Joomla
9. This is wrong, you can add your own custom Page Titles in Joomla. You do it from the menu item. The disadvantage in Joomla is you do it on a menu level, not a page level.
10. Again, Joomla can be setup to do this, with extensions.
I would love to use Drupal, I am looking for reasons, but so far I found it difficult to learn and I am quite technical. I am worried my non-technical customers would find it harder then Joomla.
reuel
March 22, 2011
I agree with you Lawrence. It’s just now that a lot of good templates and extension are being sold.
I also noticed that there’s significant improvement in the documentation of Drupal, noteably in wikipedia.
Laurence Cope
March 22, 2011
I would actually like to start using Drupal, but at the moment the only thing preventing me is its more complex Admin area. I have customers who are not computer savvy, they want something easy, and I dont think Drupal is good for this yet. On the other hand maybe I can make it easy but have not seen any instruction yet, have gone back to Joomla for now. I will try again sometime probably.
Bill
June 23, 2011
Laurence,
The post is obsolete. It’s 2007. So don’t expect any actual comparation on it.
Further, it’s hard for me to find Joomla components with satisfying result. Nearly all of them are paid components which I can’t test on how to use it before I pay.
Actually, I understand that Joomla is easy for beginners. Drupal got bigger learning curve. But if you want to make a complex website, use Drupal. If you just want to make a simple website, esp. if you’re a web designer (not web developer), use Joomla.
Bill
June 23, 2011
And for administration, if you think Drupal is harder to understand, install “Administration Menu” module.
It helps you and your client understand Drupal.
Laurence
June 25, 2011
You have a good point about thd date, I didn’t notice. These days I get very annoyed with google for putting several years old webpages to the top of google results, happening all the time!
As for building simple vs complex that’s absurd, you can build complex sites with joomla. But could you explain what you mean by complex in case I misunderstand something? Maybe you are right but I dont know what mean by complex.
There is a mixture of free and commercial extensions. Some good ones are commercial, BUT that’s fine if you want a good extension! Theyre not expensive. I only use a few across all my sites, so once purchased they are re-used. Any customer specific the customer pays for.
P.s. Although it’s an old debate I think it’s still a good one and still applicable!
Laurence
Mike?
September 16, 2011
Well its a fact that the creation date is to old and then there are various improvements in both Joomla & Drupal..
but the contents discussed are good with some fights..
My simple thought is for normal 100-500 pages site with some good plug ins go for Joomla.
else Drupal
both are gr8……
best try both yourself in your pc first And then decide……..
for simple blog type entrys go for wordpress..
Laurence
September 16, 2011
Actually, since posting this I have discovered the need for custom fields in a few websites. This is one drawback of Joomla, no custom field management out of the box. I understand Drupal can do custom field management, e.g. for a database application website perhaps.
So for custom fields management (not just Title and Content like Joomla) then Drupal is better.
But I still had trouble understanding Drupal to setup a simple DB based website. I wanted a complete blank theme to start from nothing and add in my own HTML and classes, but could not figure it out with Drupal, so turned to Expression Engine (which is great!). But EE is not free and does not have a good WYSIWYG editor or menu manager.
So it seems the perfect CMS is still yet to be found!