I have been quiet for a while. For the last year I have been very busy building websites using everything but Joomla. I built a large static website, all with inline styling and javascript because the client wanted it. They already had a large base of legacy code to maintain and to make it easy for their support staff, they ask that I code the pages in the same style. I started to use jQuery to apply behavior to pages and I am still amazed about what one can do with so little code. And I ended up developing a couple of websites in Drupal, because a customer wanted it. Also, I had been intrigued about Drupal and wanted to see what the jazz was all about. I had read blog posts comparing Joomla to Drupal, many written by people who where really biased towards one of them.

There is an overall consensus in that Joomla allows a newcomer to build a site fairly quickly and Drupal has a steep learning curve. Joomla has a ton of modules that just plug-in and work - well, many of them do. The modules are monolithic in nature and one gets what the designers envisioned the module to do. However, even a small change requires a hack to the module code. Drupal on the other hand has many modules - actually, thousands - that are less solutions but building blocks. I found that Drupal’s learning curve was not as steep as I had expected. Knowing Joomla was a great help. There is one big difference, however, most Drupal extensions and modules are free, the important Joomla extensions are not.

Although I named my blog “To Joomla Or To…” my reality is that I design and implement websites using all types of technologies and tools, Joomla is just one of them so I have decided to change the scope of my blog to reflect that. I am still mulling over a better name to go with that.