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Which is best overall system, Joomla, Drupal or Wordpress

Posted: Mon Jan 25, 2010 7:21 am
by edkellett
Hi, Please let me know what is the best overall CMS. I want one that I can customise fully and can integrate my own mysql and php bits and pieces into. Also, I want to allow a number of different users access the backend with different rights etc... I am finally ready to make the jump into this so want an objective idea of which is best. thanks in advance. Edkellett

Re: Which is best overall system, Joomla, Drupal or Wordpress

Posted: Mon Jan 25, 2010 10:30 am
by pickle
You're never going to get a straight answer. "Best" is entirely subjective. People familiar with Wordpress, or who have had a bad experience with Joomla will have their opinions skewed.

For example, my opinions are:

Wordpress is a blog - it shouldn't be used as a full fledged CMS & you might have trouble turning it into one
Drupal is extremely powerful & extensible, but also difficult to learn & master
I have no experience at all with Joomla.

Re: Which is best overall system, Joomla, Drupal or Wordpress

Posted: Mon Jan 25, 2010 10:57 am
by matthijs
It's as pickle says. For each person and each website there can be a different best choice.
For certain basic websites with uncomplicated content like a few hundred pages and a few news sections, Wordpress can be a good CMS and might be the best choice. In a different situation, in a more complex website, Joomla or Drupal can be the better choice. Personally I don't like Joomla, not because of it's features but because of how it looks and works

In general, the more a system can handle (more features), the more complicated it is. And the more difficult and time consuming it is to build a site with it. Wordpress > Joomla > Drupal > more complicated and more features is my idea (I have little drupal experience)

Re: Which is best overall system, Joomla, Drupal or Wordpress

Posted: Mon Jan 25, 2010 5:50 pm
by alex.barylski
Each system has it's pros and cons...wordpress is easier to learn for a user but less flexible. Extensions like shopping carts are extremely hackish at the code level and shows in the user experience as the implementations are clearly incomplete when compared to full scale eCoomm solutions.

Drupal is a powerful system, sure, but it uses a more resreicted approach than Joomla. It has a modular archiecture but is more limiting than Joomla. eCommerce solutions in Drupal, for example, seem incomplete. Drupal is great if your working strictly with content that is hierarchial. A core page dictates the base fields and every content type after that derives from that base table and extends it.

This works OK with systems like knowledgebases, articles, blogs, news, events, etc. But will cause more friction for a developer and user when you start requiring highly specialized systems like eCommerce, etc.

Joomla architecturally is superior to all, although not without it's flaws. The concept of modules, components, plugins, etc make for a far more robust system. Download a commercial eCommerce package and it will be as robust as Magento or at least smaller, lesser known solutions.

You can probably do a little more with a little less code in Drupal, but only to a point. You eventually reach a deminishing returns whereas Joomla, at least in theory that should not be an issue.

Drupal implements an interesting hooking system to facilitate AOP, whereas Joomla does, but it's much more limiting. Extending an existing module, usually means deriving from or replacing outright, whereas drupal will let you override very finite peices of functionality and thus save yourself tons of work if you can find an existing module which meets 95% of your requirements.

If you plan to build from scratch and resell in a professional manner, Joomla wins hands down. Both Joomla and Drupal are complicated to learn, even the basics take a few weeks to understand.

I personally would select Joomla in most cases, but Drupal might make sense if a client wanted a content heavy (variant in nature but not extremely) web site and would at least consider hiring a Drupal editor to manage content, at least interim. Joomla default article manager is confusing tomost but makes more sense the more you use it and understand how and why the system works the way it works.

You can also replace the default article manager component with something more intuitive apparently (told by a friend but never tried myself).

WordPress is a deal breaker for me, it offers no long term advantages, other than being simple for a client to use.. I would use WP if the client was clearly a one time deal. Paying me bare minimum just to get online ASAP and easily as possible. If I didn't have long term vested interest in a client, I would let them go forward with WordPress. :)

Cheers,
Alex

Re: Which is best overall system, Joomla, Drupal or Wordpress

Posted: Wed Jan 27, 2010 4:44 am
by greyhoundcode
Of course, as with anything, the more familiar you are with a platform the more avenues open up as ways of extending it. The Kohana framework for example can integrate with Wordpress so that structured applications can extend it in ways that would be difficult, or 'hackish', using WP alone.

Re: Which is best overall system, Joomla, Drupal or Wordpress

Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2010 12:46 am
by jack_indigo
Money might also play into your decision. I mean, if I make a product that integrates with ModX, I might be shooting myself in the foot as far as monetization compared with, say, WordPress.

But anyway, my favorite is WordPress for these reasons:

- I don't need to be scrambling for a ton of modules just to get the thing actually useful like I would with Drupal.
- It's faster than Drupal (when you compare against a Drupal with its most-recommended modules).
- I don't have to worry about a forked framework war (as in Drupal vs. Acquia).
- There are far more books and useful tips for it, and understandable docs, than for Drupal.
- Joomla is ugly under the hood. Some people liken it to hell. Besides, according to the stats, it's like #3 in the market with Drupal and Wordpress in the top 2 slots.
- I can turn it over to clients and they won't be baffled. (I'd have to say that some would be, but most can be helped out. With Drupal, they seem a bit more confused.)
- It's easier than Drupal to get under the hood to take it in new directions.
- It's super easy to take almost any XHTML/CSS template and modify it into a WP custom theme.
- It doesn't use a gazillion tables.

Re: Which is best overall system, Joomla, Drupal or Wordpress

Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2010 2:00 am
by greyhoundcode
What jack_indigo said, +1

Re: Which is best overall system, Joomla, Drupal or Wordpress

Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2010 5:56 pm
by alex.barylski
Joomla is ugly under the hood. Some people liken it to hell. Besides, according to the stats, it's like #3 in the market with Drupal and Wordpress in the top 2 slots.
Under the hood? If you mean code wise, I think Joomla is the most compliant in terms of following accepted patterns, etc. I have not looked at WP code in a while but last I checked it was about the most worst example one could give in terms of quality code. Highly coupled, very little separation of concerns not to mention insane cross cutting concerns.

Security wise, I think WP oribably fares much worse than core Drupal or Joomla. The extensions are all adhoc-ish work arounds that hook into the available events offered by WP API. There is somestructure and organization to a WP module (more than a home brewed CMS for sure) but no where near what is dictated by Joomla.

I think it's fare to say developers concerned with architectural aspects of application development favour Joomla over Drupal and definetely WordPress. Architecture and good design is not intutive, so it takes time and a lot of additional learning and effot to get right, which is why so many designer-developers favor WP because there is much less to learn in getting a module built. The trade off being, lesser quality code in terms of stability, organization, coupling, etc.
I can turn it over to clients and they won't be baffled
Agreed. Big selling point for WP.
It's easier than Drupal to get under the hood to take it in new directions
It is perhaps, but modules in WP are never as robust as Joomla (not even Drupal modules are). So to whose benefit is this 'simplicity'? Once you are familiar with Joomla architecture and MVC, it's quite easy to build and extend the system in any direction you want. WP is nothing more than a glorified blogging engine. There are millions of scnearios I could through at you which WP would have a much harder time meeting than Joomla.
It's super easy to take almost any XHTML/CSS template and modify it into a WP custom theme.
I agree again. WP is easier in this regard a big mistake on behalf of Joomla and especially Drupal.
It doesn't use a gazillion tables
As in HTML or Database? I think the core intallation of Joomla is relatively acceptable, Drupal really goes over board. WP has about 11 or so tables which is admittedly a little less.

All in all, it really depends what yuo need a CMS to do. WP works for most small business, but anything enterprise I would always favor Joomla and occassionally Drupal.

http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?la ... rd2=Drupal
http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?la ... =WordPress
http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?la ... =WordPress

Wow WP really kicks butt :P

Cheers,
Alex

Re: Which is best overall system, Joomla, Drupal or Wordpress

Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 9:23 am
by qforever
There's no BEST system: if something supposes to do ALL, in fact it does nothing:). Use specialized solutions for particular task.

Re: Which is best overall system, Joomla, Drupal or Wordpress

Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2010 11:29 pm
by JNettles
Coding inside the Joomla core can be difficult, no argument there, but extending Joomla (which is what it is designed for) is a breeze. My only knocks against the system are the tight coupling of models to component views, the inexplicable decision to lace the backend with an old version of MooTools, and the difficulty in using your own Javascript frameworks (nothing hurts worse than trying to use a jQuery script that hasn't been written with noConflict in mind......).

Re: Which is best overall system, Joomla, Drupal or Wordpress

Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 7:51 am
by alex.barylski
^^^ +1

Templating system is a bit over the top IMHO as well, which extends the learning curve. Lots of static methods and because of poor documentation it's difficult to learn which objects are used for what purpose.

Joomla is not without it's flaws it just beats everything in second place, IMHO.

Cheers,
Alex

Re: Which is best overall system, Joomla, Drupal or Wordpress

Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 8:36 am
by JNettles
I've never understood the documentation situation on the Joomla website. There is a fairly strong community of developers on Joomla and an excellent forum but for some reason hardly anybody contributes to the wiki manual. Aside from a few tutorials on basic usage of each extension type there's very little to go on.

Of course, I think quite a few of the issues with Joomla are that its still supporting back to PHP 4.3. The 1.6 release is supposed to be a migration to PHP 5.2 so hopefully there will be some smarter design decisions while implementing the PHP5 object model (but then..... the bits I've seen so far of 1.6 have looked just like 1.5, just with additional features added........)

Re: Which is best overall system, Joomla, Drupal or Wordpress

Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2010 5:12 am
by edkellett
Thanks to everyone who replied...

What I am really looking for is something which can do the following:

I design a site... normally.

I can add areas of the site that beople can publish to, much like a news section... and different users have different rights.

I think on balance I will try WP... as it seems that people feel it is one where you can just drop bits and pieces into your site, as opposed to design the entire site from...

Any comments, let me know. Thanks again.

Ed