Why I Like Drupal
A former employer emailed me recently and asked if I could provide a couple bullet points about why I preferred Drupal over Joomla. Since I was writing it up anyway, it seemed like a good thing to share:
- Lots of developers. Chances are good that someone else has solved your problem before, and if they haven't released a module to address it, then they probably wrote a blog post about it.
- It's all free. Joomla and Drupal are both licensed under the GPL, so I'm not sure how this works, but Joomla plugins may be released as commercial software. I guess the plugins aren't required to use GPL, while Drupal modules are. I've heard horror stories of people buying 10 different plugins before finding one that did what they wanted, or had decent support, and while those may have only been $3 a piece, that adds up and incentivizes developers to spin off and do their own thing instead of contributing to the larger community and project.
- Contrib repository. Drupal modules and themes are all in one place. There are some exceptions that live outside of that - unusual distributions that have more specific requirements, and those written by developers who haven't yet been granted full repository access - but those cases are rare.
- Training. I'm not sure what the state of things is in Joomla, but there is a lot of training available for Drupal. My favorite comes from Lullabot: they make fantastic training videos, in addition to their workshops and events. All of their videos are available on their subscription-based website, http://drupalize.me/.
- Community. This last one is kind of touchy-feely, but it's worth mentioning. I don't know who in the Drupal world coined the phrase, "Come for the code, stay for the community," but it's true. The Drupal community is a lot friendlier and more diverse than that of any other open-source project I've worked with, and that makes a bigger impact that one might think.
