The CMS Wars: Joomla vs Drupal – A comparison of User Roles

Content management systems are taking over the web design industry. Drupal and Joomla are the two most popular. If you have considered using one of these, here is my comparison of them.

Making comparisons between Joomla and Drupal are very common these days as they are currently considered the top two open source content management systems (CMS) out there.

Most people claim that Joomla is too difficult and Drupal is easier, but it really depends on how used to one you become over the other. I found Drupal easier when I first started using it than Joomla, but I find that Joomla has better looking templates.

Both CMS systems allow you to edit the live pages as soon as you are logged in as an admin, but Drupal has much better user management which you can assign custom user roles to any content type. Joomla’s user management is not that great as you are limited to only 6 user types, while Drupal allows you to create as many as you need. I created a web site for an online podcast conference at www.Podcamp.Info and created user roles for speakers and another for attendees. Speaker roles can create sessions. Also, what I like about Drupal’s user management is the Auto Assign Role module which allows people to register for more than one role at the signup form or to automatically assign a role. I have not seen that from Joomla.

Joomla has good plug-ins and components to manage users, but out of the box, Drupal gets my vote for the better CMS when it comes to user management.

What are your comments?

Blueprint CSS Framework Saves the Day for web designers!

In the battle of tableless CSS vs tables, I was having some issues with cross browser compatibility. I found CSS Frameworks. Blueprint is actually a great one that I am currently using, but there are others.

CSS Frameworks are now making their way into the hearts of web designers. I know how we all disapprove of using tables for multi-column web page layouts. Some web designers still use tables because CSS flops in some browsers. Most web designers still do not know the difference between fluid CSS and fixed CSS.

I recently discovered CSS frameworks and found that they do make CSS easier to use. Actually, the CSS layout is already done for you. You simply add the classes to DIVs, like you would your own. I checked out Blueprint CSS framework. It works on a grid system. Has anyone tried this or a similar CSS framework yet? Blueprint is cool, because they offer a grid section of 24 columns. You simply add classes called span-#, where # is the number of the column. You simply specify what column you want that DIV to be in and it moves it to that column. Each column in the grid is 30 pixels wide with 10 pixel margins. You can always override that if you need to. Now, how good is this system?

I applied it to a few client web sites and it worked really well. The cool thing is that it took 45 minutes to redo the entire CSS using Blueprint. I know about 960GS, but have not used it. Has anyone had luck with it?