Drupal vs. Joomla

It's no secret that I've just recently taken on a position as a sub-contractor at San Diego-based AboutImage Design and Photography.

Now I've been working in Drupal for about a year, and now since late January, 2010, also in Joomla. For the last few years, I've been hearing so many negative reports about Joomla that I didn't even want to check it out. But now that I'm using it every day, it seems much easier and the reports false.

It's true though, that to build a Joomla site, money must be spent on some of the components and templates. That's maybe the single factor why I would not recommend Joomla to somebody who's not interested in investing much money into a website.

On the other hand, Drupal is free and very easy to use if you know what you're doing... well, they're both easy to use if you know what you're doing. But then why would you want to choose Joomla over Drupal? Or the other way around?

Both have/are:

• good documentation
• community of users and developers that help each other
• easy to install and use
• seo friendly

I think since they are both open source, they are very similar, but Drupal is maybe not quite as greatly recognized as Joomla and is also not as well supported. With Joomla, you've paid for a feature on the site and you can expect that you will get the support you need effectively, efficiently and in a timely manner. Whereas Drupal module developers are not bound to giving you any kind of support, since you're not paying them for their time (you're encouraged to make donations though). Many Drupal developers, though, are committed to help you as much as possible anyway for their own reputation and that of the community's sake.

February 9th, 2010