What is Joomla and Drupal?

Joomla and Drupal (and many others), are Content Management Systems that allow "non-coders" to build semi-interactive websites. They are themselves written... in Php!!!

An "expert" in these can write a piece of code relatively fast, but this is far from being efficient.

Once built on these CMS, the client has to LEARN how to use them... and never does.

These CMS use a huge amount of server space (Joomla is 26Mb zipped!!!) and have thousands of redundant functions you will never use.

I do not use any of them (actually, I removed them from many sites). I prefer to write a made-to-measure contents management for each client. Much easier to use by the client, these scripts do exactly what the client needs, and nothing else. All in php/mysql.

The results?

Sites that are much faster (less redundancies), more appropriate, easier to use (client point of view), and easy to maintain. As far as size is concerned, my biggest site is just about 1Mb (code only), and, on average, around 280k... for a FULL e-commerce!

Think about it:

Your function calls a function in joomla, that calls another series of functions that call the inclusion of several files, of which they extract the "password" for the database.

I find

function dbconnect()

{

$link = mysql_connect(DBHOST, DBUSER, DBPWD) or die ("Error: ".mysql_error());

mysql_select_db(DBNAME) or die("Could not select database: ".mysql_error());

return($link);

}

to be much easier to use! (UPPERcases are "defined")

Finally, having many years behind me, I have masses of small functions/modules that I can re-use (and I do!). That makes me as fast (if not faster) than the "experts" who use functions and modules they have never bother to UNDERSTAND!!!

Cheers!

Joomla is an open source content management system that allows you to build web sites and powerful online applications. Usually joomla is used for web development. Drupal uses are- Advanced URL control, Custom Content Types and Views, Revision Control, User Management and Page Titles and Meta Tags.

Following from what Just "JR" said, I am no programmer myself but the issue I have with the CMS available is the unstability that can arise from upgrades to the system.

That said, there are lots of Joomla and Drupal forums with wealths of knowledge to aid you but again there is always a sense you are not really sure what you are doing.

If you can, it is worth building from scratch as you will understand all functions and how to manage them better.

Both is open source CMS web apps to make website. both is php and MySQL based script.