I am membership chair and webmaster for an online needlepoint guild
chapter.  We just incorporated in November of last year and our Internet
Vice President put up a quick website on the fly.  Unfortunately, she
isn't that great at web design let alone coding.  It is done in straight
html.  It needs at the bare minimum fully redone using CSS.  I just
spent several days doing a dirty fix to make all the navigation bars,
headers, and footer all consistant.  I had to get rid of pages where she
had essentially the same information, often in the same format, on four
different pages.  We started out with a public area and a private area.
 Until the membership complained that they couldn't remember the obscure
id and password she assigned the private area (these are mostly 50+
woman who can basically turn a computer on and read email and, maybe,
log into Yahoo.)  She had the site set up with two folders, the main
pages in \public-html and a subfolder for the private stuff.  Instead of
linking to the pages between the two folders, she copied pages into the
private folder when they were linked in both places.  A lot of the
information was not updated in all the pages where it was referenced.

I took over as webmaster when the IRS said we couldn't pay her for her
web services while she was an officer of the club.  I am not asking to
be paid other then being able to put it on my resume.  We are going to
do a full rewrite of the site.  Members want more color (the web
committee looked at several templates she came up with and voted to go
with a three tone gray site) and pictures.  Some of them blog and read
blogs so want more dynamic type pages with graphics, picture galleries
of the projects we are doing as a group, etc.  So I am looking to move
to a CMS.

In my research I can see pros and cons to both Joomla and Drupal, but
not having used either I am not quite sure how to go.  Joomla looks to
have more themes to choose from, and more of them are configurable by
the admin, but the backend programming isn't as robust.  Drupal seems to
not have as many themes available, and a larger percentage of them are
not easily configured, but it has more programming capabilities.

Which way would you go and why?

9 responses total.

Have you considered Wordpad?

If you mean WordPress, yes and rejected it.  It was designed and written
for blogging.  While it can be put into service as a CMS, it is not as
robust as Joomla or Drupal.  And I haven't seen a site using it as such
that I liked the look of.  If I was doing a blogging site, I would use
it in a minute, but I am not doing a blogging site.  

Most of my data is static for 1-9 months without changes, then it it
moved to a showcase of we what have done in the past page(s) and not
changed after that.  I do need to be able to offer it up in different
formats depending on the users needs.  Like pulling all current and
future projects into a calendar page or a page with the descriptions of
all upcoming projects, etc.

WordPress, yes, that's what I meant.  They have some very useful add-ons.
I noted the amount of blogging your users are looking for.

I'm fond of PHP Nuke for static modular news/gallery/information type sites.

Some of my users have their own blogs or read blogs, the site won't have
any blogging on it.  

I need backend programming for user logins (that need to be
authenticated by me before allowing access.  I have to be able to mark
some information as private, only available to paid chapter members as
well as the public stuff everyone can read to try to lure them into
joining the chapter.  I need to be able to change the theme of the site
without much effort.  I need to be able to have pages that turn on and
off according to date, i.e. the dues are paid in January but prorated 6
times a year for new members.  We are incorporated in Illinois so that
kind of change goes into effect at midnight central time.  Right I can
usually do it as I am up at that time.  Once I get a real job, I may not
be.  I missed the last couple of date critical changes do to other
things happening that caused me to forget them until reminded.  I need
to be able to put them up and tell the system when to make them active
or inactive.

I will look in PHP Nuke, but don't have a lot of time to look into a lot
of different things.  I need to look enough to make a reasonable
proposal for the web committee to look over and pass on to the board. 
Then I have to learn the system well enough to get a site up and running
in a reasonable amount of time, the sooner the better as far as I am
concerned.

Why run your own site at all?  Let Google do it for you, instead; have you
checked out groups.google.com?  You could create a group for them that
probably basically does everything you'd need it to, or perhaps use
sites.google.com and/or appengine if you need to do anything more advanced.

No, thank you.  I want full control over the web site, not use and rely
on yet another layer between me and it.  We already use Yahoo Groups. 
The web site is mainly for attracting new members.  Our Yahoo Groups are
private, you must be a member of the chapter to join, and to become a
member of the chapter, you must be a member of the national guild.  We
already have the hosting site and domain name and have the site listed
on the chapter link on the national guild's site.  I am not going to be
moving the domain.  I like the hosting company (and am considering
moving my personal site over to them before my current hosting runs
out.) Their support is great, as I expect it to be when I pay for the
service.  Free hosting services support is often what you pay for, i.e.
little to nothing.

I am not asking for other options.  I just would like an opinion between
joomla and drupal from anyone that has used either.  Since it looks like
no one here has, or is willing to offer such an opinion, I will continue
with my research and set up dummy sites on my local machine to test out
both.  I was just hoping to avoid having to learn two systems before
offering my opinion on which to my Board since doing so will delay when
I can get the site revamped.

I know folks who are happy with Joomla.  Tony Chamberlain comes to mind.
Drupal?  I dont' know of anyone using that.
Good luck.

I built a site with joomla once and found it to be a pretty nice CMS for
 the most part. Of course with all out-of-the-box solutions I found it
to  be on the bloated side.

customization was rather painful and I would not recommend Joomla to
anyone  that is uncomfortable chin deep in PHP/HTML/CSS.

The administrative control is dandy but has a bit of a steep learning 
curve. I tried building the site to be a turn-key for my son who quickly
 lost interest after discovering even a CMS takes a great deal of time
and  organizing to get up to speed.

There are plenty of plug-ins or modules and the joomla user community is
a  big help in working them out. But for someone unfamilier with the 
techniques of sifting forums for the required bit of help is likely to 
throw in the towel in the face of some unforseen ??

From what Ive gathered much the same could be said for Drupal. Many look
 the the CMS to be a quick fix but they really do require an expert at
the  helm for best results.

I personally feel that time learning a CMS could be better spent on 
building a foundation of knowledge about the underlying technologies.
HTML, CSS, PHP and MySQL. If you are looking at redoing an existing site
 then you already have content and that is the important part. With some
 carefully applied design skills you can put up a unique site that
delivers  content in a much more logical fashion than the rigid generic
of Joomla.

After all, form should follow function. Joomla has to contain all the
bits  to handle many conceivable forms. Compare a sculpture made of clay
versus  one made of lego, time spent perfecting your art will be better
spent then  time spent sifting the bucket for parts. IMHO

BTW- sorry Glenda to be so late on the post but my thoughts are no less 
valid, only perhaps not as useful as they could have been. 

I say Joomala NO Drupala or maybe Wordpress?? I'd host it on Grex but what
do I know? This is a very old post so I'm sure nobody cares. Hope it all
worked out for you.

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