Joomla has lots of quality templates. I have used RocketThemes for several websites. Great templates for a low cost.

It is not as customizable as Drupal. No CCK like options.

Please let me preface this by stating I'm a Drupal guy and don't know much about Joomla. This may be a misperception on my part.

But:
If you want Joomla to do X, you download Module X and you're good to go.
If you want Drupal to do X, you download Modules X, Y, & Z (or A, B & C, or perhaps 1, 2 & 3) and configure them to work together.

Joomla has many more modules which tend to be created to solve a particular function. This makes for a straightforward learning curve.

Drupal's modules tend to be larger in scope and may require several to accomplish your particular task. As module functionality sometimes overlaps, several solutions may be possible. This makes it difficult for the beginner to know where to start.

My understanding: It is simpler to get Joomla up and running but Drupal can be configured to do exactly what you'd like it to do.

I see all open source projects as friends and allies. Both have their place at the table. I think Drupal is it; but if someone wants to build one site for their church I don't know if tackling Drupal is worth the effort.

Joomla Folks: Please highlight any deficiencies in this response.

Thanks!

-NP

The Joomla of 2 years ago isn't the Joomla of today.

Joomla has a low barrier to entry for people wanting to build sites. If my uncle wanted to build his own site I might refer him to Joomla. He can install it, add on some additional features, and it's configured to go.

There are, also, a lot of good looking out of the box theme/templates.

As of Joomla 1.5 there is now a solid framework underlying Joomla. This is a good foundation to build sites on and add ons. Rewriting the framework is one of the reasons there was such a gap between Joomla 1.0 and 1.5.

Now, you can't customize and configure Joomla to the same extent you can with drupal. I think that's one of the reasons drupal seems to be more popular among web developers. As NonProfit said, you might install one Joomla module to get what it would take 3 configured drupal modules to do. There is work on a solution for this in drupal.

I hope this helps. I would love for some Joomla folks to chime in.

I've been really pleased with Joomla after maybe designing 30 websites with it. The one thing that I know Joomla has going for it is the strong / international developer community. I've had great success in being able to accomplish anything my clients have requested with the help of custom components, modules, or mambots. The other thing I am extremely happy with is that it is a simple enough CMS at the same time, that I can hand a site over to a 50+ year-old church secretary for the continual updating of the site and rarely get many support calls at all. I'm sure there are pros and cons for both Drupal and Joomla, but my first though on the difference is that Drupal is much more "programmer-friendly" and Joomla might be a simpler CMS with great multimedia support and a larger community.

Didn't login for the above post (Gabe), perhaps I should spend a bit more time over here! Not sure Bob and I have connected on Twitter, but wanted to see if you (Matt) could pass onto him that there's a chance I'll also be heading to BibleTech (speaking at conference) out in California in March. Wanted to see if he had interest in splitting room. Thanks man!

We've been building sites with Joomla for the last 3 years or so, and I would agree with Matt - there's a big difference between Joomla 1.0 and 1.5+. I guess one of the good things about Joomla is that it's the 'second wind' of the original Mambo project - there's a lot of "new fire" that's been ignited over the last few years.

History:
-----------
The core Mambo CMS developers who were really committed to the original open source ideals of Mambo left that project when it started getting commercialised and started an independent offshoot - Joomla. Joomla 1.0 was the project's first major landmark - to simply provide a stable, viable project independent of Mambo. Then the original Mambo application architecture was redesigned and rebuilt from the ground up, thereby removing a lot of the 'spaghetti' code and redundant routines that can begin to characterise any long-term open source project over time (particularly the popular ones!).

Strengths:
-------------
Anyway - extensions are definitely one of Joomla's strengths. Most Joomla 1.0 extensions are now being ported over (or made compatible with) Joomla 1.5, and as a developer I can agree that it's certainly much easier to create robust extensions for 1.5.
Joomla is very quick to set up, and the www.joomla.org forums seem to be fairly responsive and well attended by users / developers. We regularly use big extensions such as a full e-shop or a complete social networking system and some great small ones (e.g. one rising star I've just found allows you to 'archive' your Joomla installation as one zip file, then re-install it on any other server via a simple integrated wizard (user / password / db config...) in seconds ... very cool). There are usually around 10 new extensions released every few days, and the quality level seems to be increasing on the whole.
The Joomla UI is also attractive and generally well thought out. We have few problems teaching non-geek clients how to maintain their sites - they are usually shocked to find out that Joomla is 'free'!

Weaknesses:
------------------
Now to the weak points - I still think that Joomla can be too big for small projects (e.g. basic website with only a few static / editable pages). We used to use TextPattern for most projects before my wife discovered Joomla, and I still like this blog/CMS for its simplicity, templating options and speed. Joomla needs to be optimised before it can be said to be 'speedy'. I can't make any direct comparisons to Drupal, although the several times I've wanted to check out Drupal I've been put off by the apparent steep learning curve before I could 'do' anything. I do believe the above posts about Drupal being highly extensible are true -- although nowadays if I had the time, I would probably study the up and coming www.Silverstripe.com CMS, since that's a developer's dream in terms of extensibility, but also does seem to require some study time before understanding the core concepts.

A second weak point about Joomla: the lack of a true 'ACL' system, meaning flexible multi-level access/security controls for groups or individuals. Even Joomla 1.5 still has a fixed authentication scheme (e.g. each user is a visitor, editor, administrator, super administrator), which is ok for basic purposes, but doesn't help if you want to give multiple different groups of users their own 'access profile' to different parts of the site etc. - then you need to use custom programming. I think a full ACL is planned for Joomla 1.6, which should be coming out this year sometime. Can't wait!

Summary:
-------------
Overall, I think Joomla is ideal for the budding web designer, who wants to get something up and running quickly, but doesn't want to 'dig very deep'. We mainly stay with it because of the low barrier for new users / site admins, massive extension library, popularity (therefore forum support) and relative ease of moderate templating/customisation. I think there is little point in switching between Drupal and Joomla, since it's better to 'stick to what you know', unless you have a very specific need to move over. Users/visitors will prefer a well thought-out site with easy access to the content they're looking for, and your CMS shouldn't get in the way!

Final Musings:
-------------------
Personally I see one branch of the 'evolution' of the CMS continuing through Drupal / Joomla and on to very modular systems such as Silverstripe. As a professional developer you download a robust framework, study its API, find (or build) a particular interface on top of it (e.g. for a blog, CMS, wiki, e-shop, etc.), then skin (customise) the UI as necessary (including extensions!). This is what has already started happening in the browser, with the explosion of powerful open source Javascript ('AJAX') libraries now available. As more types of devices (mobiles, tvs, toys, e-books, ...) start accessing websites, it will be these modular frameworks that will probably cope the best with developers' varying demands. I can't imagine that 'skinning' PC-focused Joomla now to show content on an iPhone screen would be the most efficient solution for a mobile site...

Sorry for the long post... :-)

Well I have been a Joomla user now for a few years. I have seen the changes between 1.0 and 1.5 and I have to say that they have been dramatically improved especially when it comes to user interface.

I am not a code guy or can tell you all that awesomeness whenit comes to writing scripts and what not, but I can say that iahve slowly learned how to manipualte, edit code as wll as found many intresting modules that work well with joomla.

The template availabilty is growing rapidly there are more sites now offering designs that will suite everyones needs. Currently I am a Joomla Junkie User http://joomlajunkie.com they have a small but growing template gallery. Very powerful templates for both business and personal uses.

I usually tend to learn from these templates to create my own personal designs.

and try to learn fromt he scripting.

Also the modules are very many that can be incorporated. On a daily basis there is more and more being uploaded to the http://joomla.org site under the extensions.

Now this is just my look at joomla. I have never used Drupal or wordpress but I have been told several times to use worpress for my blog.

But after seeing many wordpress sites they all seem to be the same. not very unique. Now the design layouts are different but in the end they all amount to be the same layout scheme.

With joomla sites I have noticed that you can achieve more of a website look than just a blog. You can customize your sites in many different ways that it doesnt appear or have the look of a blog, but yet keep the blog feel for your Blog.

I think its awesome and everyone should experiment.

With that said yes I did try wordpress once but I was confused using the administration interface.

Well good luck to all. And if you need assistance with joomla I dont know much but im sure I can help research and learn more.

So send me a note ..

@msabas I think the reason Wordpress was recommended for you as a blogging tool is because it does an outstanding job being a blog. The way the UI is layed out, the helpful little extras, and more make it a top notch blogging tool.

Joomla has come a long way and I'm impressed with where it has moved to. I wish I had time to explore it more. But, there just aren't enough hours in the day.

I've created 3 PHP sites so far - my first was on CMSMS and the last 2 on Joomla. Although I have to thank CMSMS for getting me into this type of platform for starters (something I never thought I'd be capable of doing), when I found Joomla I knew I was "home"! For me, I love the GUI of Joomla but above all the hundreds of mods and coms etc that are available for almost every task imaginable. CMSMS by comparison only has a small number and I certainly couldn't get it to do half of what I wanted, so am actually in the process of moving the current site on it over to a new J1.5 platform instead.

Even just in the short time I've been working with Joomla (under 2 years) I've learnt SO much more than I ever expected, partly because of doing things which have caused all sorts of problems from messing up templates to totally killing the site and having to learn the hard way how to fix it, and I'm now much more familiar with some minor aspects of PHP coding, and have come to realise it's nowhere near as scary as I used to think it was. There was a time when even the word (PHP) would have had me running a mile!!

I've had a look at some of the other major contenders, but really found them more confusing - suspect though it's very much horses for courses and others may indeed find some of the other platforms better.

I love how easy the platform is to manage but I've a ton yet to learn about it - still struggling to figure out how to get mods to work as I want them to (have another query up on the board in this respect), and haven't explored the half of its capabilities but I just appreciate how much the platform has taught me! I also love the huge variety in templates for both admin and site use, and just the wide range of functions available esp for Christian use - where would I be without the Prayer Center and Sermon Speaker!!? Highly recommended IMHO!

I think one of the realities of the web is that if you want to do something cool and complex it's going to be complex. Learning a new tool takes time, especially the powerful ones.

When someone goes to use photoshop they expect it's going to take time to learn to use it beyond the basic. A photoshop expert is someone who may not have mastered or know how to do 50% of what the tool does. It's really powerful.

The same thing goes for stuff like Joomla!. It's powerful and that takes some time to learn how to do things. So, learn away. If you find something cool, please share it, write a tutorial about it, or just rave about it. I want to hear more.

For fun (in a strange sort of way) I'm actually reading through the Joomla! source code looking to learn how things work and keep my overall knowledge up. Don't want my dev skill to atrophy. :)

Hello everyone,

I've been playing with both Drupal and Joomla. Actually, I had played with Drupal long enough to be really confused when I installed Joomla!

When I get sick of Drupal, I work on Joomla a bit.. And when I'm tired of Joomla, I go back to Drupal... Then there are those times that I just have to get away from the computer!

Matt, I enjoyed your comment. I keep forgetting that it DOES TAKE TIME to learn the awesome stuff. And is it ever taking me time!

But I think the important thing is curiosity and the willingness to learn.

Joomla's forte is time-to-working-site. It's a simple install, and the base kit includes most of the modules you'll need for a basic site.

The admin interface is a little daunting; it could be cleaned up the way Wordpress cleaned theirs up over the last couple of years. It has a rough version of CCK with the custom module that ships "in the box." You simply make a copy of it and type the HTML you need in the input box, and voila!. It's not as full-featured as CCK is, but it also doesn't have the user complexity for CCK (haven't used drupal for a while, but I had a real dickens of a time getting a simple javascript-enabled page to work correctly with CCK).

The user access control is really lame, but a fix for that is Coming Soon. It was a Google Sumer Of Code Project a while back, and it's been slouching its way towards release ever since.

Doing a good template for Joomla can be daunting; if you're going away from table-based design, be ready to write some PHP code. In some cases, you can borrow code from other templates, but that code isn't always good.

The biggest aggravation I have with Joomla is over navigation; the navigation pretty much always has to be maintained manually.

Oh, and Rob? That "mambot" name you liked so much? It's a historical holdover. Joomla once was Mambo, hence "mambot." The name "Joombot" was toyed with for a while, but "plugin" seems to have won the day, now.

One of the most powerful features of Joomla that I have really started using are the template overrides. Joomla 1.5's new framework is based on the object oriented model-view-controller (MVC) architecture and that offers a lot of flexibility in terms of overriding the core output (ie "view").

When I develop a site, if I want a particular extension or even the core system to output its html/data differently, I can build that into the template without having to touch the core code or the extension (component/module...). That gives me a lot of flexibility as well as keeps the upgrade path clean.