Drupal or Joomla? What do we think?
Drupal or Joomla? This is one of the questions many web developers and web designers might ask when choosing a right CMS (Content Management System) for their project. Here at Horesh Studios we use both.
Back in 2006 when Horesh Studios just went in business we were facing the exact same question. We were trying to find the best content management system to develop content rich web site on. At that time we’ve decided to go with Joomla, which had and still have a very large selection of modules and plugins making it easier than ever to create a fully customizable website.
In 2007 we’ve Meet with the owners of the newspaper ‘La Gran America’ with a goal to develop a content management site for their newspaper. After long investigation of many CMS platforms, we ended up deciding between two CMS which in that time seemed to be the best for the news paper project. The first one was Drupal, and the second was Joomla.
Both Content Management Systems have many features that could be helpful in developing the website. At that time we’ve found Joomla to be the best choice for the easy installation and customization process.
Since then we’ve developed couple of websites powered by Joomla the leading two were the website for Shaare Torah which was completed in August of 2008, and La Gran America which was completed in the summer of 2007.
During the development of Shaare Torah we were facing some problems that were very challenging to solve using Joomla, but since the development of the site was about 90% done at that time we’ve decided to stick with Joomla.
Our main problem was the user access rights and permissions that as of today January 2010 is still lacking in the last release of Joomla. We have ended up developing a custom module for the solution which cost us in many additional hours we were not planning for and delay in the project completion date.
In the past couple of months we’ve decided to give Drupal a second chance, since at the first time we’ve looked at it, the development environment of Drupal was very complex, and mostly due to that we’ve decided to go with Joomla which had much easier development interface.
In November 2009 we were contracted by Locksmith Solution, a local locksmith company to create a large content driven website. At that time we’ve decided to go with Drupal. For my surprise the theming process was a brief, using the CCK Module we were able to create custom data types, making it easier than ever in creating catalog, and custom information queries a brief.
Another Huge advantage Drupal has is the built-in support for Jquery, which enables web developers to use to latest Java Script technology faster and easier than ever.
For conclusion, both Joomla and Drupal are great content management systems, which one has some other advantages over the other. When choosing which CMS to use it is important to compare all the differences between the two. Based on our opinion Drupal made a huge step by making its templating engine friendlier which is a huge advantage for the Drupal, which make it as easy if not easier to setup a complete customized website in a very short time.
We would love to hear what you think about the subject as well!
