From my limited exposure to Joomla the biggest aspect I consider to be User Interface. Umbraco has to have one of the most intuitive and user friendly administration interfaces. And if you are creating sites for customers to manage, then this should be of prime consideration - a site will get maintained if it is enjoyable doing so - so far I have not enjoyed accessing the administration area of a Joomla site. Maybe that it just a product knowledge (or lack thereof) thing.
Another plus is that you have complete control over look/feel and resulting html output. This could also be said for Joomla I am sure, but from my experience Umbraco appears to be more flexible. I high proportion of resulting page output can be controlled by XSLT and I have found the learning curve for this much easier to "surmount" than becoming an expert in php / asp.net coding. That is not to say that you don't need these skills, but I feel that you can take an Umbraco site much further with less programming / development knowledge.
Joomla has a wider audience and therefore has a huge library of prebuilt modules - this could be viewed as a plus for it, however the Umbraco community is growing and brilliant in providing assistance.
My vote, obviously . . . JOOMLA, oops UMBRACO
That's my 2 cents worth and obviously my personal opinion - I hope I don't offend anyone.
I just started looking at Joomla properly and instaled it locally yesterday for the first time. It's true, as slace said that it's apples and oranges, but technology isn't always the developer's choice, you may have a customer who just wants a site that does 'x' on their PHP server, and you have to run with it. Which is why I'm looking at Joomla now. I would still sell umbraco and .NET first and foremost as the best option for a build, and familiarity plays some part in that of course, but I'd be foolish not to at least know a little of the dark side to back me up when .NET isn't an option. So here's some first impressions. I may well be way off on some assumptions, these are just, as I say, first impressions.
I think the Joomla install looks more professional, and if I'm honest, so does the backoffice, although that said, I have completely reskinned the umbraco backoffice before now anyway, so that's largely academic.
At first, I thought there seemed to be more community support. Joomla's free trial provisioning with cloudaccess.net is *excellent* and it would be great if umbraco could offer something similar - maybe over azure? But I looked at a few of the thousands of components and plugins people offer online for Joomla, and despite the CMS itself being free, unlike the umbraco community most of the plugins I found were commerical offerings. An interesting contrast.
I did also notice the sort of plugins and modules available for Joomla appear to be "power user" targeted rather than developer targeted. I might be wrong about that, but I think umbraco is more of a developer's CMS than Joomla. Not that umbraco requires that, through you do need XSLT to get the best of it, It just looks like Joomla tries very hard to hide the codey bits, whereas umbraco proudly presents them. It's a bold statement umbraco makes there I think, but it's conceptually such a great piece of work it gets away with it. So as a result umbraco certainly encourages developers to get stuck in more.
The Joomla backend is pretty confusing compared to umbraco. For instance - WHERE ARE THE TEMPLATES?? I'd certainly second what Nigel said. I haven't quite worked out Joomla admin yet, whereas the umbraco backoffice is extremely intuitive - I've trained people sufficiently to manage their own sites on umbraco in an hour. I don't know if I could do the same for Joomla yet, and that counts for a hell of a lot.
Joomla seems to force you down a certain path with content and content types, modules, sections, categories etc, whereas umbraco says you have content and content types. you decide what they are, and you decide how they're structured. That sounds like umbraco gives you more work to do from a clean site, but I don't think it does, it gives you a hell of a lot more freedom. Joomla so far seems to want to lock me in to a certain way of doing things, and I'm not sure I'm going to get much further just by clicking around looking for the right options.
Also, the whole modules thing in Joomla is reminiscent of DNN and IBuySpy which gives me the fear. I'll second what Nigel said here again, the XML/XSLT model for umbraco is just excellent, and I don't see anything equably powerful in Joomla so far.
One of the things I *love* about umbraco is its extensibility. When you get down to brass tacks, it's a shell, but it's not an empty one, it's an incredibly useful one. Joomla doesn't have this appearance to me, it's much more locked in to being "a CMS that works like 'this' - Take it or leave it". Conversely I have described umbraco's backoffice to people as a little like sharepoint in the past, in that you have an application "platform", and the CMS is just an application hosted on it. Now I know that the CMS is slightly more tightly coupled than that, but the implication, and the fact, is that it is eminently possible to add your own custom sections and trees to construct your own "app" in umbraco, then to have users that have content access on the one hand, and users with "custom app" access on the other hand doing pretty much anything in the same backoffice, working seamlessly together.
I remember doing the level 2 training some years back on v3, and I had custom data in a custom tree in the back office working in class, inside an hour. From never having tried before. Admittedly I know .NET and C# well, and I don't know PHP very well, but I'm not sure such a customisation would be anything like as easy with Joomla.
Finally, Joomla unlike umbraco is GPL licensed, so that may have implications.
Time will tell anyway. Hope that helps and wasn't just the ramblings of a madman!
ugh, I don't like the way Joomla works with templates at all. Maybe I'm spoilt by umbraco.
One thing's for sure though, I know I could recreate the entire joomla default site, including the three templates inside a day in umbraco, from a fresh, clean install. I'm not sure you could say the same for Joomla, on first impressions.
I might give this a go, re-implement the Joomla default site in umbraco, and see how long it takes? Make a good blog post anyway.
Advantages over Joomla
Hi,
What would you guys say that is Umbraco's advantages over Joomla?
Apples and oranges.
Joomla is a PHP CMS so if you're targeting a PHP development/ deployment platform it's a better choice.
Umbraco is a .NET CMS so if you're targeting a .NET development/ deployment platform it's a better choice.
From my limited exposure to Joomla the biggest aspect I consider to be User Interface. Umbraco has to have one of the most intuitive and user friendly administration interfaces. And if you are creating sites for customers to manage, then this should be of prime consideration - a site will get maintained if it is enjoyable doing so - so far I have not enjoyed accessing the administration area of a Joomla site. Maybe that it just a product knowledge (or lack thereof) thing.
Another plus is that you have complete control over look/feel and resulting html output. This could also be said for Joomla I am sure, but from my experience Umbraco appears to be more flexible. I high proportion of resulting page output can be controlled by XSLT and I have found the learning curve for this much easier to "surmount" than becoming an expert in php / asp.net coding. That is not to say that you don't need these skills, but I feel that you can take an Umbraco site much further with less programming / development knowledge.
Joomla has a wider audience and therefore has a huge library of prebuilt modules - this could be viewed as a plus for it, however the Umbraco community is growing and brilliant in providing assistance.
My vote, obviously . . . JOOMLA, oops UMBRACO
That's my 2 cents worth and obviously my personal opinion - I hope I don't offend anyone.
Cheers
Nigel
I just started looking at Joomla properly and instaled it locally yesterday for the first time. It's true, as slace said that it's apples and oranges, but technology isn't always the developer's choice, you may have a customer who just wants a site that does 'x' on their PHP server, and you have to run with it. Which is why I'm looking at Joomla now. I would still sell umbraco and .NET first and foremost as the best option for a build, and familiarity plays some part in that of course, but I'd be foolish not to at least know a little of the dark side to back me up when .NET isn't an option. So here's some first impressions. I may well be way off on some assumptions, these are just, as I say, first impressions.
I think the Joomla install looks more professional, and if I'm honest, so does the backoffice, although that said, I have completely reskinned the umbraco backoffice before now anyway, so that's largely academic.
At first, I thought there seemed to be more community support. Joomla's free trial provisioning with cloudaccess.net is *excellent* and it would be great if umbraco could offer something similar - maybe over azure? But I looked at a few of the thousands of components and plugins people offer online for Joomla, and despite the CMS itself being free, unlike the umbraco community most of the plugins I found were commerical offerings. An interesting contrast.
I did also notice the sort of plugins and modules available for Joomla appear to be "power user" targeted rather than developer targeted. I might be wrong about that, but I think umbraco is more of a developer's CMS than Joomla. Not that umbraco requires that, through you do need XSLT to get the best of it, It just looks like Joomla tries very hard to hide the codey bits, whereas umbraco proudly presents them. It's a bold statement umbraco makes there I think, but it's conceptually such a great piece of work it gets away with it. So as a result umbraco certainly encourages developers to get stuck in more.
The Joomla backend is pretty confusing compared to umbraco. For instance - WHERE ARE THE TEMPLATES?? I'd certainly second what Nigel said. I haven't quite worked out Joomla admin yet, whereas the umbraco backoffice is extremely intuitive - I've trained people sufficiently to manage their own sites on umbraco in an hour. I don't know if I could do the same for Joomla yet, and that counts for a hell of a lot.
Joomla seems to force you down a certain path with content and content types, modules, sections, categories etc, whereas umbraco says you have content and content types. you decide what they are, and you decide how they're structured. That sounds like umbraco gives you more work to do from a clean site, but I don't think it does, it gives you a hell of a lot more freedom. Joomla so far seems to want to lock me in to a certain way of doing things, and I'm not sure I'm going to get much further just by clicking around looking for the right options.
Also, the whole modules thing in Joomla is reminiscent of DNN and IBuySpy which gives me the fear. I'll second what Nigel said here again, the XML/XSLT model for umbraco is just excellent, and I don't see anything equably powerful in Joomla so far.
One of the things I *love* about umbraco is its extensibility. When you get down to brass tacks, it's a shell, but it's not an empty one, it's an incredibly useful one. Joomla doesn't have this appearance to me, it's much more locked in to being "a CMS that works like 'this' - Take it or leave it". Conversely I have described umbraco's backoffice to people as a little like sharepoint in the past, in that you have an application "platform", and the CMS is just an application hosted on it. Now I know that the CMS is slightly more tightly coupled than that, but the implication, and the fact, is that it is eminently possible to add your own custom sections and trees to construct your own "app" in umbraco, then to have users that have content access on the one hand, and users with "custom app" access on the other hand doing pretty much anything in the same backoffice, working seamlessly together.
I remember doing the level 2 training some years back on v3, and I had custom data in a custom tree in the back office working in class, inside an hour. From never having tried before. Admittedly I know .NET and C# well, and I don't know PHP very well, but I'm not sure such a customisation would be anything like as easy with Joomla.
Finally, Joomla unlike umbraco is GPL licensed, so that may have implications.
Time will tell anyway. Hope that helps and wasn't just the ramblings of a madman!
ugh, I don't like the way Joomla works with templates at all. Maybe I'm spoilt by umbraco.
One thing's for sure though, I know I could recreate the entire joomla default site, including the three templates inside a day in umbraco, from a fresh, clean install. I'm not sure you could say the same for Joomla, on first impressions.
I might give this a go, re-implement the Joomla default site in umbraco, and see how long it takes? Make a good blog post anyway.
Leon - use ModxCMS if you need a php cms.
Thanks Chris, that definitely looks worth a go. I'm definitely not enamoured with Joomla so far.
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