Joomla vs. Drupal: It's Still a Problematic Comparison

Joomla vs. Drupal. It's a not a new comparison or question by any means.

There are times when I understand the question, and there are times when I really don't. When it comes right down to it, I think trying to make the comparison is quite problematic. It's a comparison of apples and oranges.

If one has to make a statement about one being better than the other, without qualifications and without determining factors such as how, when, where, and who will be using one CMS or the other, then easily, Drupal is the better system.

Joomla is probably still best classified as a CMS. Drupal can be classified as CMS in much the same way that one could say a huge mansion is a house. But there are better ways to label Drupal - call it a content management framework or perhaps even a platform.

Sometimes you need an apple. Sometimes you need an orange. People have different preferences and needs. Both Joomla and Drupal provide content management functionality; both have large communities supporting development; both have add-ons and design templates available (free and paid) - although the labels are not the same (modules, extensions, themes, templates, etc.).

Recently, I stumbled across another article comparing these two systems - one that is far less assertive than this post - and more non-committal. Having developed in both systems, I am hardly on the fence. When I first started working in the open source CMS category, I touched Joomla before Drupal. Now, I generally have to be sweet-talked into doing a site in Joomla over Drupal - partly out of preference, but mostly because I can't remember the last time someone had a need which was better solved with Joomla.

There were some interesting points made in the article I read recently on CMSWire: Drupal vs Joomla: Which CMS is Best?. There were a couple of surprise as well.

For example, in reference to some results of a survey, it was stated that "[t]he Drupal users were, somewhat unsurprisingly, more experienced, with a median of 7 years experience in web development, while Joomla users claimed 5. This completely surprised me. I would have expected a much larger ratio, at least a 2:1 ratio with Drupal users having much more web development experience. And my surprise is not that I think Drupal users and developers need to have more experience - it is simply that I expect those in the web development category to prefer Drupal for many reasons.

I am also a little surprised to still be hearing than Joomla is easier to use. I'm not completely surprised because I have heard this for a long time, but I have to wonder if it is not a little more myth than truth. It does seem to be a common assumption, but I don't find Joomla easier to use. This is even more the case from the development side - I think the Drupal framework is far better for development.

Still, I can understand the choice to use Joomla in some cases, even if it is for a limited number of reasons. For some categories, there are more options of community-contributed components (modules, extensions, etc.) - at least in the "pop it in and away we go" category. And it is nice to have a system that allows design-related files (templates or themes) to be edited within the system - I guess. It doesn't make a difference to me personally, but for clients who might due some adjusting of CSS on their own it "can" be nice.

Some other points in the article are exactly as I would have expected. "Drupal Users Love Drupal, Joomla Users Love Joomla". Yes, that is dead-on every time. "Drupal Better for Extensibility and Large Sites". This is also quite true. I know of many large sites using Drupal - I am really not aware of too many (if any) large sites using Joomla. Drupal is extremely scalable and extensible (no these terms don't mean the same thing).

For any Joomla lovers that see this - no, I am not "knocking" Joomla by any means. A CMS doesn't have to be the best in every category to be a good CMS. And Joomla has helped many small business owners, organizations, and others find a presence on the web more quickly and less costly than might have been the case otherwise. And most likely, Joomla has probably done more than any other single system of it's kind to make "CMS" and "content management system" be more generally recognized as terms. And finally, even though I don't prefer it, Joomla is far better than many of the other open source CMS options. If Drupal didn't exist, it is likely the one that I would recommend