Comparison of Drupal and Joomla

Like many I have recently been trying to work out whether to use Drupal or Joomla for my own business, and being a small company I didn't want to spend time using the wrong tools. I am also quite new to CMS's so I don't have any bias (yet). I searched the net and found, among many other good reviews, Webology's survey. Then I did some additional analysis of their work and put an article on my own personal blog to contribute to the discussion and help others in the same situation as myself.

The summary of that analysis is as follows:

* There are 18 out of 42 Selection Criteria where Joomla and Drupal scored about the same.
* There are 7 criteria where Joomla was judged by Joomla users to be more satisfactory than Drupal users judged Drupal.
* But there are 17 criterion where Drupal users judged the Drupal CMS to be more satisfactory than the Joomla users judged the Joomla CMS.

On numbers alone Drupal wins for that particular survey. Of course it depends on what Selection Criterion are critical for your project.

Here are the areas where Joomla seems to be markedly stronger than Drupal

Let’s look at the numbers first:

* There are 18 out of 42 Selection Criteria where Joomla and Drupal scored about the same.
* There are 7 criteria where Joomla was judged by Joomla users to be more satisfactory than Drupal users judged Drupal.
* But there are 17 criterion where Drupal users judged the Drupal CMS to be more satisfactory than the Joomla users judged the Joomla CMS.

On numbers alone Drupal wins for this survey. Of course it depends on what Selection Criterion are critical for your project.

Here are the areas where Joomla seems to be markedly stronger than Drupal

* Easy to create attractive websites
* Range of Themes
* Easy Interface for Non-technical people
* Easy to train clients to use
* Easy to find qualified Joomla developers

Here are the areas where Drupal seems to be markedly stronger than Joomla

* Documentation of Core and Modules
* Fewer bugs in the Core and Modules
* Social Networking Support
* SEO Support
* SSL Support
* Internationalization Support
* User Management and Permission Features
* External integration
* Quality of Add-ons for administrative functionality
* Easy to develop large complex websites
* Developers don't need to invest time with extensions that don't perform well

The choice is good one to have because either way Joomla or Drupal are great systems and for many people either will do what they need but Drupal wins overall.

So far in my brief excursions into both I have found Drupal much easier to use than expected based on some reviews I had seen and definitely better documented than Joomla. Drupal's footprint is also clearly smaller and its wide range of power and good design already means I am starting to consider developing more complex sites than I had originally planned. That might not be a good thing :-) But I can see Drupal gives me enormous power, and from what I can see quite a wide range of templates. Installation of some extensions however does seem more complex with Drupal, but it is early days for me. The absolute easiest system for installation of extensions is Wordpress in my limited experience but it doesn't compare of course to Drupal in features or power. There is no comparison in fact.

Another confusing point of comparison was speed and SEO features. In my reviews on the net it seemed clear that most reviewers felt that Drupal was faster and was much better at SEO than Joomla. However, in the Webology survey that marked difference didn't seem to be supported. So I was left a little puzzled on if there is much difference between the two for SEO and speed. Drupal seems to win but by how much is the question?

At a certain point the only way to decide for yourself is to try each and find out what is really the case. So in addition to learning Drupal, I am also building a site with Joomla to learn that as well. But in my limited spare time this could take a while.