open source questions for ya

May 28, 2008 12:58 PM

drupal vs joomla. some questions inside.

2 questions:

a) we're setting up a website for a film client who wants to be able to add a lot of multimedia (esp. video) to their site. bandwidth providing, which is the better CMS for this kind of serving?

b) which is easier to skin/template/etc? i'm quite comfortable with php/css and the concepts of of semantic skinning (eg wordpress and shopify). which of these follows more easily from knowing those two sites?

posted by yonation to computers & internet (5 comments total)

Firstly, I've never used Joomla. I've built a few largish sites in Drupal and learned to love and hate it.

Drupal seems very big and slow and memory intensive. But the module support is great and it's easy enoughto skin and template. It uses standard templating systems, and I'd be surprised if Joomla didn't do the same. The template I end up using is just a straight HTML page with occasional php tags echoing out the relevant area content.

My biggest complaint about Drupal is that you can't (easily) set different areas of your site to use different templates. Second is that it produces huge numbers of divs - helpful for CSS, but not exactly compact code.
posted by twine42 at 1:17 PM on May 28, 2008

Not having actually used Drupal (I looked at it, but for various reasons I don't entirely recall, went with Joomla instead - and learned to love and hate it), but can tell you Joomla does skinning for areas of a site quite easily. Also, as I'm about to do so setting up a site for a film company, module support for things like video is good.
As far as which is better bandwidth-wise and the like, I really don't know, having only used the one.

Oh, Joomla is easy to template though, and I think the way it handles templates was why I chose it over Drupal.
posted by opsin at 2:08 PM on May 28, 2008

I run a site using Drupal. There is a nice flashvideo module for Drupal which allows the end user to upload video which is automatically converted to flash and displayed in the page with a simple placeholder. You just put [video] where you want the video displayed. Works for us. I've experimented around with Joomla and was not as impressed as I was with Drupal.

Drupal is easy to skin/modify if you know php/css.
posted by FloryTric at 2:54 PM on May 28, 2008

I think it might be easier to use different themes for different parts of your site than opsin suggestions - for example, see the discussions in the Drupal forum on changing theme by node or path.

The Media Field module is one good way to add video to your Drupal site.

You can browse dozens of multimedia plugins (modules) for Drupal in the Drupal media modules list.

My Joomla experience hasn't included either of the things you ask about; my experience is with Drupal, and with migrating Joomla clients into Drupal. One of my migration clients was ecstatic at the features in Drupal, and its ease of use. I really recommend Drupal over Joomla.

And, of course, you can probably set up a quick prototype in each CMS and test the most important functionality for yourself. Try a quick modification to a Drupal theme and a Joomla theme, and see which is easiest based on your own coding experience and preference.
posted by kristi at 3:17 PM on May 28, 2008

I've installed Joomla (since early versions of Mambo), Drupal, WordPress, Nuke, ZenCart...the list goes on. Joomla is always my favorite. Depending on your stock template, the "skinning" may lie 50% in the CSS or it may lie 100% in the CSS. Especially since 1.5, there are a LOT of 100% CSS templates out there.

A lot of templates are sort of a hodgepodge, images in the php and colors in the CSS or vice versa. I had one that took me FOREVER to fix because the body color was in the php AND the css and it took me FOREVER to figure out why changing the CSS didn't change the body.

However...

Joomla is so much nicer and easier and friendlier than Drupal. Every single time I've said "Man, I wish I could do X without having to code anything, I pop over to the Extentions page and there's already one there, that's free, that does what I want.

There are a BUNCH of joomla plugins to embed video/music, some add it to the editor and some are bots that use bracketed variable names for the content. Those are the ones I like. I can't show you an example because MF eats my brackets.

I'm kind of a fanboy though, in case you can't tell.
posted by TomMelee at 7:52 PM on May 28, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]