Any thoughts on which of these is better and why? Right now I am leaning towards Drupal because of its taxonomy and ease of use. But if Joomla will give better SEO, I would like to hear from you.
Drupal I have found is much harder to make new templates/ themes for. I have also grown accustomed to OpenSEF for Joomla SEO (you can set your own urls, and if you know what you are doing, this is a brilliant component). Drupal is really good with SEO, as alot of Joomla core code still uses tables. You can also handle template files better in Drupal than Joomla so you can remove or add any semantic tags in Drupal template. I have made my own patch for Joomla to remove all tables from core code, as well it replaces heading content titles, etc with H1, H2, H3 tags. With either, the majority of your SEO isn't in the CMS, it's in you, your content and how well you run your site. Everyone seems to think using Wordpress or some other CMS is going to get you better results in the search engines, and the truth is it won't give you anything you really can't get elsewhere. What you really need to think about, is what you need the CMS for. Joomla is a large CMS that runs really sluggish on shared hosting, while Drupal doesn't do nearly as bad. I would say honestly, to go with what you are more familiar with. If you do decide to go with Joomla, look into OpenSEF, the Joomla SEF patch, and if you want, I can send you the table-less patch I made.
joomla is more flexible and complex than drupal. joomla also has a great community and tons of extensions
Agreed - I've been using it for SEO and works brilliantly after some slight modifications. Great support as well.
I use Joomla from the start and Mambo before that, and I use WordPress and Drupal. Drupal is really easy to make it Search Engine Friendly and with adding some extra modules like Autopath, Metatags and Google sitemaps you can get good results. Joomla needs a lot more work to make it search engine friendly, even with some great components like OpenSEF and sh404SEF. But as said that is making a site Search Engine Friendly, getting the most of SEO is more about content and linkbuilding. Getting your site content in the most flexible way in adding and structuring information I would clearly go for Drupal. If you are used to Taxonomy you are definitly have to use Drupal. If you are used to the Section/Category/Content structure, stick to Joomla. In the end its all about you being able to create good quality content fast and easy. For Real SEF I really like the stability of Drupal over Joomla
How are yout taxonomy skills? Is there a good web article you recommend to fully understand taxonomy? I get the idea behind it and the basics of it, I would like to learn more. I will stick with Drup
Great thread, I agree with all that everyone has said. There are more templates and modules available for Joomla but Drupal seems to do a bit better at SEO and once you get used to the interface (if you have been using joomla/mambo) you will find it very easy to use. Also, if you are using fantistico, Drupal doesn't come all bloated like Joomla. I think they are both excellent and I have used and will continue to use them both in the future. I definately lean towards Drupal though. I use it for the majority of my sites unless there is a theme or compenent from Joomla that I just really want to use.
Joomla 1.5 is only at RC 1 at the Moment, but progressing rapidly. I have been testing some SEF (not to be confused with SEO) functions on the new version, but it is not yet as powerful as Joomla 1.0x versions with a SEF Patch and SEF Component. All though the URLs are nicer, there not as good as you should want them... But a step up for the basic Joomla installation, and thus getting closer to Drupal in forms of Search Engine Friendly from the start.
I dislike Joomla mainly because of its bloated backend which isnt a problem with Drupal, so Drupal gets my vote.
Can i install Joomla on my local servar and then, after the site is made, to put the folders on the web ? It works ? If i change the database details ? Thanks
i use Joomla for all my sites but frankly it's a pile of shit, said that, it's still much better than Drupal or other crap like Xoops. (for blogs-only i would go with Wordpress.) pros for Joomla : - easy - tons of extensions - seo friendly as long as you know what you're doing - fast as long as you know how to customize cache scripts cons : - bloated ! - backend : slow, illogical, badly designed, and full of shit - to hack the layout of the core modules you need to hack the PHP, it's all tables in the end, no way to just hack smarty templates or separate layout styles. - how they envisioned the module layout is really silly, i had to hack EVERY core module to get something decent on screen with the right stuff, the right css, and the right size and sequence. - documentation : NON existant ! if you want to know the APIs and the core function you better analyze by yourself the PHP files since on the joomla web site the documentaton is a JOKE, most of the APIs arent explained, some other are in a wiki which nobody so far compiled, the only way is to download some joomla books from P2P networks and even in this case many functions are compatible for all versions. - joomla 1.5 : most of the frameworks has been rewritten, lots of old addons dont work properly BUT it looks much much better, faster, native XMLRPC support, finally a decent design in the backend, logical menus, overall a great leap forward. - joomla 1.5 : most of the old layout don't work, which is not an issue for ME, but could be for many others. what to say : i think most of the CMS around simply SUCK big time. as a concept Drupal is more flexible and scalable, but in reality it's slow as a dog with big sites unless you hack a lot of core files and still it's slower than Joomla. Drupal : - few plugins - horrible backend - decent documentation (thanks god !) i mean guys, these are FREE CMS, you can't expect wonders. for a news site, no questions, i'll go for Joomla. for a blog, wordpress. for a DMS, joomla as well. for a magazine, joomla. Drupal, no idea, it seems more focused on blogging than CMS, it's a shame since the framework and the concept about the core engine is probably the best on the market (at least regarding free open source CMS) it's more complex, taxonomy and all the other stuff isn't intuitive, layouts aren't as easy as joomla, the "node" model isn't also slick as it should be but it seems this is the model to follow as future versions of Joomla are heading in this direction (full node-based content). as far as i can say, all these CMS are rock-age in comparison to future stuff we'll witness soon. Joomla 1.5 will feature also a desktop-based backend, that's a huge time saver, and to me that should be the way CMS should have been from the ver y beginning. (try "SITEman" alpha to see what i mean)