Eddie Monge Jr.

Darrell Houle has made a pretty good posting over at http://www.communicopia.net/blog/joomla-versus-drupal comparing and contrasting Drupal and Joomla. Having used both, I feel it is pretty accurate. There are some points that are generalized and slightly misleading, but overall it is a great place for someone deciding between the two platforms to start from and build from there.

As I learn more of Joomla’s ins and outs, it’s getting easier to develop for it. The component I am working on right now is for a client and was specifically tailored to that client. But I can see it being the basis for a much larger project. I think I might want to turn it into a product management extension. I’m thinking it will be open source with paid support. Might bring in a little change, hopefully enough to pay for the server hosting the downloads but not expecting anything.

Please comment with features you would like in a product like this so I can plan them in for the initial release.

By the way, a big thank you to ircmaxell on the IRC Joomla channel for all the help. Show some support for a great resource: www.joomlaperformance.com

I don’t know if it’s Joomla’s wackiness or the MVC model in general but I am still having trouble wrapping my head around the whole concept. At times it seems clear, but then I’ll read something and it blows my thinking out of the water. I think it could be a good concept, maybe I even use it at times already, but right now it seems to only add more steps to something that’s already complicated.

I like the idea of having as much separated out as possible providing the cleanest code, but I also hate it at the same time because you have to reference so many different files to see the whole picture. Overall I still am not sure about MVC programming but maybe with time and more practice I’ll come to like it better.

I’m probably going to get a lot of something for posting this but I feel I need to rant. Joomla is way over hyped. Yeah sure it can build skyscrapers, bring about world peace and end world wide hunger but it seems to struggle with it’s primary job, Content Management.

My major gripe with Joomla (if you have a solution for any of these that doesn’t require an advanced degree in biophysics, please let me know):

• User access levels – Yeah there are the default levels of Editor, publisher and so forth, but what about being able to customize per user or setting up custom groups. phpBB and Drupal have this. I want to be able to have the the option of creating custom templates for different user groups. I would also like to limit the content different users/groups can see. Joomla is a Content Management System and I see access levels as part of content management.
• Forms – I haven’t seen a default option for easily creating and managing forms. Yeah there are plugins but why not by default?
• Menus – Creating menu items is somewhat easy but the choices are daunting. I think maybe better documentation in terms of the tooltips. Some of the options need to be cleaned up and simplified also. Why are there multiple levels for wrapper when there is only one choice? And I hate how menus aren’t really the pages or the content but rather a sort of holder for the content. It’s confusing at times and frustrating at others.
• Why are there 5 million files for the install? I understand it makes things easier separating some stuff out but at some point you have to limit it. When it takes 3 hours to upload on some servers there is a problem.

Ok that’s all I got for now. Sorry, just needed to vent a bit on my recent Joomla excursions. That’s why I like being a web developer: I can make my own CMS that fits my needs exactly.