Joomla-Drupal comparison is the most hyped these days. Every now and then you will find people discussing this burning debate which seems no less than the typical Pepsi-Coke debate. Joomla and Drupal are two of the most popular CMS i.e. Content Management Systems available on the vanguard today. While Joomla is said to be easier and providing a great user interface; its competitor Drupal is considered to be more flexible along with ease of tagging. However, each of these CMS platforms is backed by huge supporter following. Each has its own advantages and shortcomings depending upon the kind of site that you are using.
If you are looking for flexibility and power, it looks like Drupal has a huge advantage over Joomla. Although it is easier and quicker for beginners to start up with the Joomla interface but in the long run, it offers very little flexibility.
On the other hand, in terms of ease-of-use, Joomla blows away Drupal. With its great user-friendly and easy-to-use interface, Joomla is gaining vast popularity. Whereas Drupal, even with all its free videos, blogs etc, is far more challenging.
Joomla also wins over Drupal by a huge margin in case of templates. It offers a lot of beautiful commercial templates, free. Whereas, Drupal themes are simply awful and fail to deliver what enterprises actually need. For a new enterprise, which is just starting up with Drupal, would have to go a long way for getting their news site or map site look good. But Joomla templates offer special installation which gets all the sample data and all the components in place. And above all, Drupal templates lack one of the major key elements i.e. the menu system. Without a proper navigation system, your website can be good for nothing because thats the first thing that every evaluator would look at in your website.
In case of Content Management and Content Presentation, Drupals tools are excellent. Although Joomlas admin console is quite easy to organize but its straight-jacket approach, with its content items confined to only one section, is poor.
Joomla offers a large community of developers to help in the setup and development of your Joomla website. It has an immensely large dedicated community which offers great support. Also, one need not to have a great technical knowledge to create a real good-looking and functional website with Joomla and it is also very easy to upgrade your Joomla website. Moreover, it provides an extensive range of modules or plug-ins but the problem is that the more plug-ins you install, greater will be the chances of your application becoming unstable. Joomla websites can also be the easy targets for hackers besides not being SEO friendly. But overall,
Joomla CMS system is an excellent CMS for basic to complex websites.
To the contrary, Drupal websites offer great SEO and have very well organized user and group management. But it requires a lot of time and efforts to get used to Drupal interface as it is not so user-friendly. Overall, Drupal is a wonderful CMS system for community-building organizations.
In a nutshell, both Joomla and Drupal are excellent CMS platforms with some of the great and unique features. You can choose either of the two depending upon the kind of functionality that you need for your website. For those looking for a nice looking website with loads of creative plug-ins, Joomla wins over Drupal; and those who are keen to get high performance and significant flexibility, Drupal is the one for them.
