Joomla vs Drupal

Joomla vs Drupal

The debate whether or not to use Joomla or Drupal goes on and on. However, popularity stats do speak for themselves. Here are a few examples of statistics from the world, Canada and the US.

World

Canada

United States 

All images above are statistics from Google Trends  

A picture can be worth a thousand words. But, the words can be all over the map. Since Drupal and Joomla do practically the same thing, it can be a matter of preference. Joomla should be more easier to use and update; unless all updates are through the front end for which both cms would easy to manage. Joomla 1.6 and Drupal both have good user management and Joomla has various 3rd party plugins available for earlier versions. Drupal gets the edge in performance, with all things equal. But, skilled optimization and an optimized web server take care of such issues. I’ve seen optimized Joomla websites with Jquery slideshows and video plugins rank 95% with Yslow. While the Joomla vs Drupal debate focusses on the basics, it often never gets to the nitty gritty for how to make the most of what you got. Codeigniter integrates very simply into Joomla and can be used for very fast performance; although slightly more work.

One negative drawback about Drupal for some ‘low balling’ web design projects is that it has a disadvantage in the module department. Joomla has so many and it can help a seasoned developer build a website very quickly. For larger websites where speed is an issue, Drupal could be a good choice. Often, many Drupal users like to condone Joomla with regards to speed, code, etc. But, Joomla does do a good job in the proper environment if the server, template and code is optimized for speed. Codeignter and pure php/mysql is faster than Drupal, but, not many Drupal folk discuss this.

In the end, both are great pieces of work.

July 26, 2009 by kent