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Drupal Vs Joomla: Which One to Choose in 2018?
If you are willing to build a website for your business on CMS platform, the most difficult situation becomes to decide which CMS development platform to choose among plenty of options available in today’s market. Currently, Drupal and Joomla framework are trending in the market. Also, not to forget, the WordPress platform is there with the power of almost 59% CMS-based websites. Joomla and Drupal are in the second and third positions with almost 5.8% and 3.8% CMS market share respectively. Check the market share details here.
Image Source: w3techs
Well, when you are comparing the market share, WordPress is far ahead of the other available frameworks. However, we need to consider multiple aspects in which the WordPress framework seems to fall behind now.
Before, digging into the comparative analysis, let’s find out the similarities between all these most popular CMS platforms i.e. WordPress, Drupal and Joomla.
- All three platforms are open source software and available for free under the license of GPL.
- Joomla, Drupal and WordPress – all three are based on MySQL and PHP.
- All three platforms are backed by huge community support that consists of worldwide experienced and professional developers, trainers, designers, volunteers along with the users. The main objective of this community is to make the platform better by organising events, sharing knowledge, solving various issues, supporting users and many more.
- All three platforms use different templates and themes for website designing. Moreover, they use extensions, plugins and different modules to make the website feature-rich and to enhance the functionalities.
Apparently, all the three CMS platforms may seem kind of similar to you. However, if you look closely, you will see how different they are in several ways and how they take different approaches to build a website.
This blog is going to highlight a comparative study between two popular CMS platforms i.e. Drupal and Joomla framework. Read on and know which one is more efficient for your business website development.
Since the time of the invention of all these CMS platforms, within a very short time period, have evolved a lot and have turned into such website development platforms that are easy-to-handle, quick and easy to set up and also cost-effective.
Drupal
This is the oldest and the 3rd most popular CMS platform among all the available CMS options in the market. Dries Buytaert was the brain behind it. Drupal mainly focuses on strong security, reliable performance and customisability along with providing the standard features. Millions of websites of diverse industries including eCommerce, education, government agencies have been built on the Drupal framework. Also, the community arranges for worldwide groups and meetups to talk and discuss on the platform. DrupalCon is organised to train and to sharpen the skills of the Drupal users.
With time, Joomla platform has enhanced and evolved and now, worldwide millions of websites of diverse industries including art & culture, business, health, news & media etc. have been built on this framework. Also, this CMS platform has a big community support that works to make it better than ever. This framework is quite beginner-friendly.
Video Source: Joomla!
Let’s dig into the ease of use or user-friendliness factor for Drupal and Joomla.
In today’s digital era, having an online presence is crucial for most of the businesses. But, you cannot expect everyone to be a coder or having topnotch coding skills. This is where the user-friendliness factor matters.
How to Use Drupal?
Installing Drupal is possible with just a simple click! Next, you need to set up the website with information of tagline, email address and site name. The dashboard is clean and very simple looking and has a minimal layout. Once you go to the dashboard, you can see the menus mentioned below in the left sidebar.
> Content
> Structure
> Appearance
> Extend
> People
> Configuration
> Reports
> Help
To customise the website, simply click on the “Appearance” menu and you will be able to see a page to control themes. By default, you’ll get two themes along with an option that will allow you to “Install new theme”.
Till this step, the Drupal dashboard appears to be very simple. However, when you are looking forward to build such a Drupal website that has stunning looks, topnotch features along with a reliable and strong security, then you have to compromise a bit with the simplicity.
If you want to extend the functionalities of your site, then you have to do everything using modules. Think of any feature, you can get it using the Drupal module. However, you need to invest quite a bit of time to learn all these modules properly. If you need an honest answer regarding the comparison between Joomla and Drupal in terms of ease of use, the difficulty level is comparatively higher in Drupal. This platform has been developed mainly focusing on the experienced and pro Drupal web developers.
How to Use Joomla?
Most of the web hosting companies offer the facility of installing Joomla just by a single click. The next step is to set up as well as to configure the site. Compared to Drupal, the dashboard of this platform looks a bit stuffed consisting of several separate sections. Let’s take a quick glance at the dashboard menus available in Joomla.
> Content – Articles, New Article, Media and Categories are four other sections under this menu.
> Structure – Configuring menus and the Joomla modules are done from this section.
> Users – You can manage access levels, user groups, user notes etc. from this section.
> Configuration – The most important menu of the Joomla control panel is this Configuration section. “Language” settings, “Template” settings, and most importantly, the website’s “Global Configuration” is managed from this section.
> Extensions – Manage and install new plugins and extensions from this menu.
> Maintenance – This menu displays whether the Joomla core and all the installed plugins are updated or not. Accordingly, you can maintain the performance of your website.
More menus are present in this page on the top. If you click on the “Components”, you can check other important sections like banners, messaging, Gallery, contacts etc. Once you install Joomla, by default, you will get two pre-installed templates.
Well, at the first glance, the Joomla dashboard might look a bit confusing to the beginners. If someone is new to this environment, understanding the interface might take a bit of time but once understood, it becomes really easy to handle.
In a nutshell, if you have enough experience in the web development field, Drupal is the best choice to build a flexible, feature-rich, highly secure and impressive website. On the other hand, if you are not in a hurry and have a bit to learn with patience, Joomla will be a good choice.
Now, it is time to consider the design and functionality factor.
In terms of features and flexibility, Drupal is almost unbeatable. The powerful core Drupal software ensures high security and enhanced website performance.
At the Official Directory, almost 37,000+ Drupal Modules are available. If you want to extend the functionalities of your site, then you can do everything using these modules. Moreover, the official theme repository of Drupal has over 2000 Themes that are available for free. In addition to that, almost 450+ Premium themes are available at the ThemeForest. However, these are not available for free, you need to make a purchase.
Compared to Drupal, Joomla offers fewer options on templates and Themes. It does not have any official Template Directory. You can check out ThemeForest to buy paid templates. Almost 950+ Premium Templates for Joomla is available at ThemeForest. Joomla platform offers a huge directory for plugins and extensions. Over 7500+ Official Joomla Extensions (Both Free and Paid) are available in the official extension directory. You can get a direct access to all these extensions from the dashboard.
In short, if you are looking for unlimited design possibilities, Drupal is the best choice. If a site demands a higher level of customisation and security, opting for Drupal would be the best decision. However, be ready to give enough time to learn it properly before trying to build a website using it. On the contrary, if you are in a hurry and simplicity is the main objective while building a site, opt for Joomla.
The next factor to be discussed here is Security, Support, and SEO.
Well, in terms of security, both Drupal and Joomla have certain security standards. However, Drupal would be the best pick if website security is your main priority as the core software makes it into a powerful platform that isn’t easily breachable. On the other hand, if you stay alert and handle the security issues well, you can choose Joomla.
In terms of Support, both the platforms are backed by the huge community. You can discuss and get solutions to any kind of issues here. The community forums are really helpful if you get stuck with any issue in the development, installation or implementation phases.
Both Joomla and Drupal have some inbuilt SEO features and SEO-friendly modules that help in better ranking and marketing.
Well, both the platforms have their own set of pros and cons and features and functionalities. Here was the detailed discussion on that.
If you are still unsure which one to choose for your project development, You can always approach the web development team of PHPProgrammers. It is a renowned company in website development in Sydney that is quite popular for both Drupal web development and Joomla development services. If you are looking for Drupal developers in Sydney or Joomla developers for hire, PHPProgrammers can be your one-stop solution. For more updates and information, you can visit the company’s official website.
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