Hm. Would love to hear your opinion on my site: http://www.opentravelinfo.com I have created the theme in a few hours from another theme. I don't think my site looks retro at all. And yes, I know almost nothing about CSS, and still the theme is fully CSS driven. I think you have no idea what you are talking about. Lots of the Joomla sites I look at still show the Joomla favicon. This is even true for company websites done with Joomla. What a joke. I guess its the price you pay for simplicity.
Not really. If you install a lot of modules and have tons of simultanious users, your webserver might be forced to its knees, but thats the case with all php driven sites. I don't see why Drupal should be more resource intensive. Its the reason I opted for the Drupal Forums instead of the SMF plugin. Drupal forums usually look pretty crappy. Took me a little time rewriting the forum template to make it look halfway decent. The advantage is that it doesn't nearly burn as much resources as phpBB would and that I can comfortably show the sidebars (left and right) without having to install hacks and having to maintain two themes. My photo website has survived one Di** attack (9000 visitors in 30 minutes) and went to its knees on another one linking to this site: http://www.aguntherphotography.com/machupicchu_222mp.html Which I attribute to the amount of information this photo (222 Megapixels) holds and not to Drupal. I am on a cheap shared host and I can take a pretty decent Di** This is one of the largest Drupal sites I know: http://www.ourmedia.org/ They have a lot of visitors and exposure. I guess they wouldn't use Drupal if it were that slow or bad. Another common Drupal example: http://www.theonion.com/
Actually, I think your site looks a bit retro. And I think you can say many things against Joomla!, but I don't think that "simplicity" would be the first coming to my mind. Many people complain that it's too sophisticated for theirs needs.
I have Joomla on one of my sites, some parts of it are great, other parts are not very good at all. The best I have used and the easiest to use is e107 by far. However I use Joomla and wordpress also
Hm. Well it looks exactly the way I intended. It looks clean, which is probably what you understand as retro You have yet failed to show me an example of modern (a Joomla site of course). I am sure I can find a Drupal site that looks just as "sophisticated". I tried Joomla once but I was totally put off by the logic behind it (or the lack thereof). All I saw was colorfull buttons. Reminded me a lot of KDE (linux desktop).
Touche. I am merely saying that you do not proof your statements. Drupal can look as modern and fresh as any other CMS. I even admit that there are not as many themes available, but most Drupal users choose to write their own anyways, which has the added benefit, that their site is unique. When I open a Joomla site, I can usually immediately tell, even though the themes are supposed to look all different. I already gave 2 more examples above, but here is another well known site that runs Drupal: http://gallery.menalto.com/
Actually I didn't state anything else that, imo (because that's what you were asking for), your site look a bit retro. I didn't made any statements against Drupal , which I don't know, which is probably a great CMS, and I'm glad it's meet your needs. You keep talking against Joomla!, ok fine, don't use it. For me, it's work wonder.
No offense, but both of your websites are boring. It is not your fault at all, it is just Drupal by nature. Drupal sites tend to be ugly in my opinion. Take a look at drupal.org and joomla.org Joomla looks alot better. All though most open source cms have that terrible standard/boring 4 column blog look.
You are not saying yours looks much better do you? Just as I said above, most Joomla sites even use the Joomla favicon and so does yours. I really don't see anyting on your site that couldn't be done with a standard Drupal theme.
I am not sure why everyone is so hung up on looks instead of functionality. google.com myspace.com craigslist.org digg.com reddit.com are prime examples of hugely successful sites that look really ugly. ebay.com amazon.com are not that great either.
In reading further at the Joomla! site, it mentions the system requirements: Do all major web hosts meet this requirement, or do I have to be careful when selecting a web host in that they might not allow the installation of Joomla?
Most do, but it would be wise to direct these questions to them before signing up. Most hosts are eager to respond to get new customers and most have some sort of Fantastico script (pushbutton installation of most common CMS). I don't like Fantastico very much though, since they usually don't have the latest (most secure) versionion. Manual installation is pretty easy with most common CMS.
I have tried Joomla (and Mambo) but I always had trouble figuring-out the various pages, sections, categories, etc. I guess I did/do not have a clear image of the hierarchy in my head. I was wanting to create a simple site with an expanding menu on the left, content in the middle, but I had a hard time figuring it out. There are certainly many plugins/etc. for these CMS, but the base systems definitely take some effort to understand initially (BTW, if anyone has a good link describing how to properly generate content using the Joomla category/section/pages hierarchy, please do share ) I've tried CMS Made Simple and it, out of the box, did what I described above. It definitely doesn't have fancy Adsense plugins/etc. that the other CMS do, but it's easy to use, as the name indicates.
check the sigs of the guys promoting it here what strikes me as fairly common with joomla: almost all themes are fixed width (looks ugly on large screens). very few liquid layouts (you can stretch the browser as wide as you want). most people forget to replace the favicon with their own. don't make this mistake yourself. it tells everyone you are running joomla (makes your site more vulnerable) and it looks very unprofessional. otherwise i think you should just give joomla a try and see how you like it. if you ever hit a wall (you cannot implement a certain feature) i will see you at drupal.org (just kidding, no need for all the joomla guys to defend your cms ) lots of people seem to be happy with it, so i guess its a good choice for many (just not me).