I find it very strange that people feel the need to take such extreme positions on these questions. People like me, trying to see a way through the jungle of CMS options, need clear, calm explanations of the weaknesses of the different systems, not aggressive and unsupported assertions.
I’m logging my own path through this jungle at cms-frameworksDOTevaluatedDOTorgDOTuk - though I’m still in the early stages.
Chris
After spending years developing my own CMS (with a lot of work left to be done), I’m loathe to change. However, I heard so much good news about WordPress, I finally decided to give it a try. I’m now planning on integrating it into my CMS/websites.
In the meantime, I’ve been seeing frequent mention of Joomla in my job searches. My perception is that it’s in greater demand as a job skill than Drupal. So I’m thinking of giving Joomla a spin, then figuring out if I want to convert one or more of my sites to Joomla.
I’m toying with the idea of creating a website that combines Joomla and WordPress. To put it another way, it would probably be a Joomla site with a specific section/channel (e.g. MySite/Blog) reserved for WordPress. Is this commonly done? Is it easy to do?
One thing that bummed me out about WordPress is the discovery that it can’t handle URL’s with upper case letters. I have several websites with URL’s that look like this: MySite/World/Spain. I’m not keen on the idea of converting them all to MySite/World/spain.
I assume Joomla can spit out URL’s with capital letters, similar to Wikipedia, right?
Thanks for the informative article.
The hundreds of files is actually really smart, it’s what all the serious frameworks do (just look at Zend, Cake, even the Java language itself). Joomla 1.0 (and Mambo before it) had “less” files but they were all “bigger”. That means on every page load you were including a lot of bloat that you didn’t need. Joomla uses the principle of “lazy loading” which means that it only loads the code it actually needs to run. PHP caching systems love this (MemCache, APC, etc). So, while there may be hundreds of files in the framework, maybe only 50 or 60 are loaded on any one pass. The number of files has absolutely no bearing on the quality of the coding. However, less files could equate to worse performance.
The class structures (of Version 1.5) are also organised into packages, similar to the way Java does it. If you don’t get Object Oriented design then you probably won’t get Joomla (that doesn’t mean it’s bad code).
Most components have gone from a half dozen files in version 1.0 to possibly 50 in version 1.5. While this seems backwards it makes sense when you consider maintaining one 20,000 line monster file verses an average file length of a few hundred lines. I can go deeper into why this is significant if you want.
That Joomla has too many files and poor class structure is another complaint I’ve heard often, but I think this mostly comes from very inexperienced developers. It’s almost never backed up with solid examples of what files aren’t necessary or examples of where the class structures are deficient.
While there are certainly some badly coded extensions out there, the fact that the third-party extension and template market is so prolific flies in the face of this argument. Joomla has it’s quirks, but it is a solid platform on which to write web applications that are extremely flexible and maintainable.
I thought you could but I just tried it and you can’t. There’s no technical reason for it so I’ll raise it as a bug for you and hopefully we can get it fixed in the next version for you.
I agree. I’m only too happy to respectfully go head-to-head on a feature shoot out, but vague comments are hard to counter.
On your search to find a CMS - I share your pain. It’s bad enough evaluating addons “within” a selected CMS, let alone trying to pick one again.
Have a look at php DOT opensourcecms DOT com/scripts/show DOT php?catid=1&cat=CMS%20/%20Portals (sorry for the DOT’s, too much of a site newbie to be allowed to post URL’s sigh). Order them by User Rating Best-to-worst. That should at least be able to give you a quick feel for what each is like.
Do check out Drupal, Joomla and WordPress (although WP is not yet as flexible as the other two).
I didn’t mind the initial feel of CMSMadeSimple. It seems to have a lot of intuitive elements about it.
MiaCMS and Exlis come from Mambo stock (as did Joomla, but we are the team that brought Mambo to it’s original glory anyway) - I still think Joomla made some key improvements that these guys didn’t follow but that’s just my opinion. I’d only consider MiaCMS the only other successful continuation of the old Mambo project that has a viable future, apart from Joomla that is.
MODx looks stunningly sexy but I’d be concerned about how it scales for a really large sites (like thousands of articles).
SilverStripe looks really interesting. It seems to more of a “Page Management System” which is where we are wanting to head with Joomla. Scaling, to me, would still be a concern. The image manager is certainly impressive if nothing else. All good - lot’s of great ideas to cheat off 
Hope that helps some. If you want to know more about Joomla’s good and bad side (honestly, they all have a bad side despite our best efforts to cover it up), let me know. I’ll try to help where I can.
Thanks Andrew.
All of these systems are on my agenda, as you’ll know if you have been to my blog at cms-frameworks DOT evaluated DOT org DOT UK - although current favourite is ExpressionEngine.
I’m particularly interested in what you say about scaling, because it’s difficult for someone in my position to establish how a system will handle thousands of pages or thousands of visitors. What lies behind your worries about MODx and SilverStripe, and why do you not have those worries about CMSMS (or Joomla, for that matter)?
best
Chris
Tree menus of articles or pages always worry me because they get very big, very fast (that’s why we use list views in Joomla - except in the Media Manager where we use a tree - and, you guessed it, we have scaling problems because of it). That said, I don’t really know these apps so they may very well scale fine (but you need AJAX driven trees to do that). I’m sure the MODx and SS experts can jump to its defense All I’m really worried about (and it’s more a gut reaction and any justifiable concern) is the ability for the admin to handle lots and lots of things. The frontend’s (in terms of visitors) are probably fine. If you’ve got a small site - wouldn’t be worried at all.
McDonald’s is also the world’s most popular eatery, that doesn’t mean that’s the best food for your body.
Joomla is rubbish on so many levels. I understand that there are many fans of Joomla, and there are people who have their entire business models with Joomla as the core, but none of that changes the fact the the CMS is poor.
Joomla is garbage…
I’ve fooled around with a couple of CMSs and Joomla was the only one that I have truly despised.
Massive amounts of files like 3000…
The way it is laid out is just a mess and confusing.
You can find a few free templates and then they try to market the rest for $50-$100.
Most reviews I have read about Joomla were horror stories about modules crashing the site and other headaches that took hours to fix.
The only good thing I can say about Joomla is it is easy to download and install, after that good luck.
Seems to be a small Joomla following I’m not sure what they see in the program…
Maybe money from selling templates?
You know… I’m going to give Joomla another honest look this year. I’m more of a Drupal zealot myself but that’s because I know it fairly well. I worked on a couple of Joomla sites last year that were at least a year old when I got to them and they were abslolute garbage. I hated the experience but… I didn’t know the CMS and it could be that the developers made a mess of a decent CMS. I’ll know more after giving it an honest try.
If it still sucks, at least I still have Drupal 
I speak from personal experience and I can tell you that Joomla is one of the most convoluted publishing platforms out there.
Everything works with this weird backwards logic, not to mention the difficulty of actually creating a template.
For me, WordPress is the way to go.
I have worked with Mambo/Joomla on about 4 of 5 projects, a few years ago. Then I found Drupal and found that it had:
-more flexible theming engine
-free seo friendly urls module that worked perfectly, with no duplicate urls ( you need pathauto AND global redirect module for this)
-better module development framework
-much better access control
-sucked at WYSIWG editor implementations
but still a much nicer system I think.
Though one of the more significant, genuinly good features that Joomla has is a client-friendly user interface. Drupal administration pages make clients eyes roll inwards.
Agreed… Although Joomla is much more “user” friendly, Drupal offers much flexibility. Drupal is our platform of choice.
I can’t agree on the theming engine but you are right about the ACL (trying to tip the scales in the next version - I think that will turn a few heads). I personally think that Drupal has the right idea architecturally (I wish I’d borrowed more ideas when I was tinkering with Mambo now) but they really need to give some more attention to their admin UI.
Thanks awasson. That’s all anyone really expects. I think a lot of the venting is from bad experiences with the 1.0 version (which took some coaxing to force the round pegs into square holes) but 1.5 is really a different beast. If we have one downfall it’s that we have a very low barrier for entry development and that means people can write some very bad code. As has already been suggested, you need to check the reviews on the Joomla Extension Directory and go from there.
There are dozens and dozens of free templates available. $50 is an absolute bargain for a professionally done template! That would be typically 1% of the actually development cost, not to mention the support and documentation you might also get for it. If you want quality, you have to be prepared to pay for it. I pay $250 a year that allows me access to about 60+ templates that I can install of any of my client sites. For me, that is such a no brainer to subscribe to.
The fact that any CMS has a health and thriving template market is good sign (Joomla arguably has the biggest template market of all the CMS’s). Try finding good free templates (let alone good template cutters) for relatively unknown systems.
I my self have tried joomla, mamba, drupal and many others.
Joomla in my opinion is a over rated article system not a cms.
The only cms that has met my needs and one I feel is the best cms ever created is ocportal. It even has an owner that would be a level 5 company owner according to the good to great book by Jim collin’s. If you have not read good to great a level 5 company owner is the best kind of company owner.
Any way I do feel ocportal is the best and I have not yet seen any cms better.
I certainly have read “Good to Great” by Mr Collins (actually saw a very good interview with him and Bill Hybels). I will have to take a look at ocportal - not heard of it before.
>> I find it very strange that people feel the need to take such extreme positions on these questions.
I agree with Chris Gill. It’s surprising to me that folks get so dogmatic about which system is best. These are tools. One should choose the tool to fit the requirements.
That being said, I think a lot of the negative comments made about Joomla reflect more about the lack of understanding on the part of the commenter than they do any shortcomings in Joomla.
I have worked with numerous CMS over the past 7 or 8 years. They each have their strengths - and proper application. Problems arise when developers/implementers take a “I have a hammer” approach and use a single CMS to solve every problem.
That being said, Joomla 1.5 is very well designed and very well coded. In my experience, criticisms like “bad html output” or “all Joomla sites look the same” come from people who don’t really know the system or understand the architecture.
Joomla 1.5 allows the developer to over-ride ANY output of the system, whether it be the Menu modules, components, etc. (Take a look at the Beez template that comes with the download).
Many of these CMS are very sophisticated systems. If a particular developer/implementer is not immediately able to grasp the underlying concepts or how the system works, I don’t think this is necessarily a reflection of the system. One of the things I really like about Joomla is the use of the MVC architecture. Since I understand how MVC works, I can pretty much dive right into developing custom code for Joomla.
>> You can find a few free templates and then they try to market the rest for $50-$100.
You are downloading a “free” software package. And you’re complaining about paying $50 for a template? Are the developers of open source software obligated to give you free labor? Are the template designers/developers obligated to give you their work for cheap or free? This is a ridiculous notion.
Having written a CMS and worked on a few open source projects, I can tell you that many of these guys (myself included) put in 20 or more hours per week, in addition to full-time jobs and family obligations, and don’t get paid for their work.
Most of the users of Joomla, Drupal, WordPress, etc. are using the software on projects for which they are being paid yet most don’t make donations to the projects. In my opinion, the developers of the CMS are doing most of your work for you. If you doubt what I say, try writing your own CMS.
As far as donations go, they do not need to be monetary. Users can (and should) do their part by participating in forum discussions, donating code, offering to help test, writing tutorials, etc.
If you are not contributing to an open source project, then you’re right to criticize is very limited in my opinion. I mean, after all, do you really feel like you are not getting your money’s worth?