Joomla vs. Drupal

Doombo, only thing I disagree with you is that I think Drupal's documentation is PATHETIC. At least as far as 3rd party modules go. For just the core stuff it's pretty good, but very few modules have good documentation and a lot don't have any at all. Frustrating to say the least. I also think Joomla's backend is not as horrible as some people make it out to be. It could be a lot better but I think Drupal's is worse, and like you said, Joomla 1.5 has a much better backend.

Also, what future CMS's are you referring to? I'm pretty frustrated with the current state of CMS and I can't wait to see what's on the horizon.

 

3rd party : that's a problem everywhere, not just of Drupal.
i've lots of extensions for Joomla and often there's not
even a .txt file inside the .zip .. no documentation,
site is offline.. it's not rare, it's the norm ..
it seems to me too many coders just don't give a shit
about documentation, only commercial stuff is well
documented and maintained.

yeah really frustratin, i spent way too much
time hacking 3rd party crap because of zero
documentation.

but all in all at the end of the end with joomla
you get the job done if you know the framework
and you can hack the 3rd party addons to suit
your needs.

actually i'm very tempted to write my own CMS
since sometimes it's really a waste of time
using a generic and bloated CMS for easy things
that could be done with Wordpress or even with
some scripts that just include static html files
on the fly.

future : first of all a fully AJAX backend, second
a real desktop backend, something that seems to
be in the works, see SITEman (made by one of joomla's
core devs) which looks promising.

the desktop backend is probably the killer app,
you can do everything, real time previews, etc
that's the way it should be, all this crap about
server side backends is due to the faulty concept
of portability and multiplatform while in fact
90% of the ppl use Windozz but is forced to waste
10x times using a browser to add content and
change settings that could be made on the fly
with a simple local backend.

it's just ridicolous than in 2007 we have to
manage a site with crappy javascript backend
run on servers located 1000s of km far away.

why can't i just do it locally ?

i mean i want a Win32 appz, not a local
joomla running on XAMMP, (which try by yourself,
isn't much faster than running remotely...)

all this focus on web apps is crap.
we've 3Ghz cpu, let's use them.
technology is meant to save time, not
to take 10 minutes to upload and edit
a damn article with thumnails.

apart this i don't see much on the horizon,
they're only adding bloat over and over, or
try to make things "easier" with wizards
and crap that force you to load 10 pages
to do what you previously did in 1 page,
all that with heavy css menus, javascripts,
round corners, images, emoticons, pop-ups,
and so worth.

that's why making something windows based
makes sense.

an idean of mine is to make a custom admin
panel for joomla : ALL in one page, no menus,
no images, just text and few ajax tabs.
we'll see.

 

i prefer drupal over the ease of use. very smooth and easy to even add ur own themes.

 

Doombo, I think a lot of webmasters share in your frustrations. If you think you can write your own CMS in the way you described, I think you should go for it. It might be the next big thing.

 

yeah CMS SUCK, and they suck big time !

the whole concept is bad from top to bottom.

what i have in mind is NOT a specific CMS who does a single task,
i'm designing a whole new framework that can host CMS/DMS/VMS/
and whatever else you need via external "modules" or how you like
to call them.

something that goes beyond Drupal and his ugly "node" concept,
but not as naked as a fresh install of Joomla.

to me, a CMS must bring all the customer needs, not just a barebone
system that needs to be hacked and/or customized.

we'll see, it will be commercial, not open source.
if there's a market demand for something like this
i'll do it, otherwise i'll do it just for myself.

 

indeed.
BUT ... i have still many questions in my head :

1) how can you protect your code as long as the customers gets all the .php files ?

2) how can you protect your ideas ?
i mean i'm certainly not gonna pay 1000s of bucks to patent a concept .. (that's what Amazon did with their concept of "add to cart" for instance).

3) as long as any decent PHP developer can get his hands on my code
he can clone it and resell it, again, how can i protect my code ?

4) open source : yeah fine, but how the money is coming from ?
please enlight me.

 

Joomla is simpler than Drupal, but drupal is more flexible and more powerful.
If you need cms for simpler web site, for example for corporate web presence, you could try with joomla.
On the other side, if you wish to have lot of users, with better access control, better SEO (out of the box), and some other advanced features, drupal could be your solution.

 

well joomla's design is not so simple, it's kind of monolithic web application with addons running on top of it, while Drupal is kind of micro-kernel with node-based content, mure more elegant from a programmin viewpoint but also quite more complex to manage in the real world when you need to code your own extensions or hack specific functions.

as design is concerned joomla is something of the past, yet if you setup correctly the core engine, the cache extensions, the SEF, and your server setup well it can be as fast as a bullet compared to Drupal.

joomla 1.5 is very promising especially for permormance and much less SQL queries than the 1.0.xx

actually what's most frustrating is not the CMS but the damn wysiwyg editors and the commercial addons and the lack of a centralized download directory for them (each has it's own lamer site infested with ads and pop ups or needing registration to download a 0.2 kB file...)

i'm getting really sick of this damn open source bluff ... since for the majority of the devs it's not a feasable business model then now some rely on ads, spyware insinde the addon, hidden links, and worse.

yeah that's why i'm wondering about making my own CMS but .. who's gonna pay for a commercial CMS nowadays ?

people seem to pay happily for add-ons, but hardly for a CMS.
i see crap like a simple adsense module with barebone options being sold for 30 bucks... or templates sold for 20-30 $, or commercial icon packs...

who's gonna shed say 100 bucks for my super duper cms ?
nobody, i guess.

and judgjing from the Q&A in the joomla support forums the average
user base can't even code HTML, it must a real pain in the ass to manage
such kind of users, it's just amazing there's so much people working for free since the arrogance of some users has no limits.
.

 

Well, I believe Joomla is the answer for most of your needs until you have to do some developer work. Than you are likely to send it to hell. IMO Drupal has way much more logic in the backend than many commercial CMSes will ever have.

Drupal pros:
- modularity
- flexibility
- search engine friendly
- great documentation (even the API)

cons:
- modularity
- flexibility * that is, if you don't know what you're doing, you're doomed to failure
- still lack of a decent i18n solution
- still lack of a pro ecommerce solution

But first of all, never stick with one cms if you can afford. Sticking with only one makes you lose. That said, when you only have a hammer, you begin to see nails everywhere.

 

as CMS they're both good,
the problem is with 3rd party crap, and that's a big issue with joomla !