What is the difference between Joomla and Drupal?

Answer Posted / mahesh

Site Building
- Flexibility & Power: Drupal looks significantly more
powerful — much more flexible. Looks like Views, CCK,
Panels give Drupal a huge advantage over Joomla. You simply
can’t get that flexibility with Joomla. Joomla developers
design around their own paradigm with very little
flexibility. You can get up and running much quicker with
Joomla, but you will hit the wall sooner or later.

Performance
- In my initial tests, Drupal blows away Joomla. With the
new version of Joomla, the good template makers junk them up
with gee-whiz gadgets that are not suitable for the enterprise

Learning Curve
- Joomla is far easier to get up and running. Even with all
the free videos, blogs, etc, Drupal is still a lot more
challenging. Big oppty for comprehensive business
business/enterprise book/education

Templates
Joomla wins by a huge margin. For example, companies like
Joomlart, Joomlashack do a good job. Drupal theme companies
are simply horrific. What’s needed is a Template strategy
that emulates the requirements for the top web sites in the
country and, bundles modules, blocks etc. that work
out-of-the-box to give businesses a head-start. For example,
with our Websphere Portal product, we deliver incredible
Themes/Skins that are rock solid and professional with no
fuss or muss. I think you guys have a good stated strategy,
but you’re missing a big oppty to deliver what enterprises
really need.

Your templates are the best I’ve seen, but, an enterprise
that is just getting started with Drupal will still have a
huge ramp to climb to get a News site, mag site, etc. to
look good. Joomlart delivers their Teline II template with
a special install that gives you all the sample data, all
the components in place — everything in place.

Finally, the biggest problem with Drupal templates is that
the developers completely miss one of the key elements that
any evaluator looks at: the menu system. If you don’t have
a professional navigation system on your web site, you’re
perceived as a low quality site. The other top items:
Layout, Graphics, speed are also critical, and Drupal
developers don’t seem to care. Exception:

Code developers
Based on my limited review, it looks Drupal coders are much
more professional, skilled, disciplined. Good Joomla coders
are rare. Must have something to due with the Drupal
culture. I’m sure the Joomla devs are just as capable, they
just don’t institute the same rigor

Admin
Drupal’s backend admin functionality is bad. The front end,
backend separation is tenuous and confusing. Joomla is far
better.

Content Management
- Drupal’s taxonomy system is excellent. Joomla’s
"straight-jacket" approach (Content items confined to one
Section/Category) is poor. Joomla’s admin console is much
easier to organize, find content. Joomla’s WYSIWYGPro is
better than the options available for Drupal.

Content Presentation
- Drupal’s tools are very, very good — they don’t come close
to the built-in power of IBM tools — but they’re light years
better than Joomla. I like CCK, Views, but wonder why they
aren’t part of the code base. Seems odd. WIth Joomla, you
have to acquire components that will meet 60-80% of your
needs. For example, iJoomla has a tremendous news
component, but it will never meet the capabilities of
Drupal’s CCK, Views, etc.

Multitier Deployment
I’m shocked that there are no good tutorials, articles,
education on the proper method for implementing Dev, Test,
Staging, Dev environments. Drupal and Joomla communities
both suffer from this. Also, basic backup and restore is
not addressed adequately. The Drupal community is clueless
on this. Joomla at least has two good solutions. If I
decide to recommend Drupal for a production site, I’l
recommend use Xcloner from Joomlaplug — this product will
work with Drupal and does backup and restore of the site and
the SQL db.
Summary to Date

- Use Joomla if you want to get nice looking site up quickly
and can deal with a slower system, rigid content
categorization and limited design/configuration options.
- Use Drupal if you want high performance, scalability, good
content management and significant design flexibility. But,
be prepared to spend a lot of time/money to get the site to
look professional.

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