Author Topic: Drupal or Joomla for CiviCRM? (Read 2303 times)

grahamdavis · January 24, 2008, 08:27:38 am

Hello,

I am creating a new website for a political organization I work for, and am trying to decide whether to use CiviCRM with Drupal or Joomla. Has anyone had enough experience with one or the other to recommend one over another? I've read that Joomla is not as good as Drupal for building any sort of community website --- is that so in your experience? Which platform is easier to create a theme or template for? I've only had experience with Wordpress and Movable Type in the past...

I'd appreciate any help anyone could provide,

Graham Davis

geilhufe · January 24, 2008, 03:22:05 pm

I do the idealware seminars on Joomla/Drupal/Plone (and I am the Drupal guy). The answer always depends on your requirements.

In general, Drupal takes longer to learn the Joomla.
Drupal tends to be better for community features than Joomla, but for a basic community-- forums-- it is probably even.

On the theming/ look and feel side Joomla is easier for basic stuff and Drupal is probably a bit better if you do the html/css yourself and learn all the ins and outs of drupal theming.

CiviCRM is more deeply integrated with Drupal in terms of creating a login on completion of a profile or that type of thing.

hope that helps a bit.

umphakatsi · January 25, 2008, 07:26:54 am

I agree with above, have one comment though, favouring Joomla:

Recently Joomla 1.5 Final / Stable is available. The Joomla 1.5 API on all in general but login and userdatabase specific has completely changed to enable easy integration with any system.

My expectation is that Joomla 1.5 very soon will have a smooth and consistent user registration integration with CivicCRM 2.0.

When that has happened, you might consider Joomla above Drupal since Joomla has the largest community and development power.

With regards
Mandla

Donald Lobo · January 25, 2008, 10:39:16 am

Note that CiviCRM 2.0 is currently in alpha. We are not officially supporting Joomla 1.5 and/or any integration with the joomla reg system in 2.0

lobo

geilhufe · January 25, 2008, 02:27:04 pm

Quote from: umphakatsi on January 25, 2008, 07:26:54 am

When that has happened, you might consider Joomla above Drupal since Joomla has the largest community and development power.

I don't believe in religious wars, but I do believe in precision. I would suggest people do their own homework and make their own decisions

Largest community.
Joomla has by far a greater user base.
I have not seen any data on what the recent enforcement of GPL has done to the consulting community around Joomla, but traditionally there have been more people selling Joomla solutions than selling Drupal solutions.
In terms of sheer size of development team, Drupal had 492 engineers working on the Dupal 5 release. A higher number is expected for Drupal 6. Joomla tends to have a much smaller number of people writing code for it.

Largest development power.
I have no idea how to measure this. But I would say that most large customer software implementations on the Drupal platform (Warner Music, Amnesty International, etc.) yield direct improvements in Drupal core. I do not know if this is the same way in the Joomla community.

As we say in our workshop on Drupal, Plone and Joomla, the quality of the product and the community are pretty much a draw between these three platforms... each have different strenghts and weaknesses... but what you really should base your decision on is the match to your requirements.

twowheeler · January 25, 2008, 05:16:06 pm

Not that this is a big deal for CiviCRM, but I just want to offer a clarification on one comment in the above post. There are many people who test, submit patches, and write modules for both drupal and joomla, and their level of activity varies. When you say there were 492 engineers working on the drupal 5 release, that implies some high level of commitment that may not exist. For both projects, there are a very small number of people in the inner circle. They filter all of the other contributions and make the final commits.

For drupal, "Over the entire history of the project, 9 contributors have submitted code. 4 have done so in the last year." See http://www.ohloh.net/projects/3189/analyses/latest/contributors

For joomla, "Over the entire history of the project, 39 contributors have submitted code. 32 have done so in the last year." See http://www.ohloh.net/projects/20/analyses/latest/contributors

So, the drupal inner circle appears to be smaller than the joomla inner circle. What does that mean? Nothing, really. I am just saying that there appears to hundreds of people working on or around both projects, and there may be no reliable way to compare their numbers because of the nature of open source.

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Author Topic: Drupal or Joomla for CiviCRM? (Read 2303 times)

grahamdavis

Drupal or Joomla for CiviCRM?

geilhufe

Re: Drupal or Joomla for CiviCRM?

umphakatsi

Re: Drupal or Joomla for CiviCRM?

Donald Lobo

Re: Drupal or Joomla for CiviCRM?

geilhufe

Re: Drupal or Joomla for CiviCRM?

twowheeler

Re: Drupal or Joomla for CiviCRM?