I grabbed a copy of Joomla the other day, to play around with another option for a CMS to use for projects at the Learning Commons. Some early thoughts:
- The admin UI seems very well done – but man, is there a lot of stuff in there. Not sure I’d want to unleash that interface on a novice user, or even a casual Office warrior. I’m sure it makes more sense as you get used to it, but it’s even more jarring than Drupal, and much more complicated than WordPress (likely necessarily so, since it does so much more than WordPress, but seems like it should be on par with Drupal).
- Seems like a very odd definition of “Open Source” in the Joomla community. Likely some historical context to make it meaningful, but of the several Joomla community sites that I’ve visited for modules and templates, they all seem to require logins to download stuff, and several require paid subscriptions – some quite steep – just to get access to something that I thought was GPL. Bizarre…
- The content publishing process seems much more complicated than Drupal or WordPress. How do you determine which chunks of content make it to the front page, in what location? The admin interface provides a lot of bells and doodads to control that, but it’s not immediately obvious how to control the flow of content.
- It’s got a really nice level of granularity for permissions. Admins, publishers, editors, managers, writers, etc… All with their own sets of restrictions. People with access to the admin UI can publish content immediately, while “lesser” users need to have stuff approved before it shows up.
- The URL structure is pretty much semantically meaningless. URLs take the form of
/content/view/14/2/ – and that’s with the “search engine friendly” option turned on – it’s even worse without that. There’s a spot for a “Title Alias” – but it doesn’t seem to get used as the Post Slug does in WordPress, or the Path does in Drupal. Maybe there’s another bit to twiddle for that to kick in…
- The pervasive rich text editor / WYSIWYG dealie is pretty nice.
- Joomla feels like a robust, mature CMS. Things like content checkin/checkout, staledating, moderation, etc. appear to be done quite nicely.
- What’s up with Joomla’s RSS Feeds feature? It’s borked. Right now, it just gives a list of feeds, and you have to click on each one to get a list of items. It should give a merged list of items, ala Drupal or FeedOnFeeds or SuprGlu or etc…
- Installing templates and modules – hasn’t worked for me so far. Not sure what the exact process is. Doesn’t seem to work if you just drop files into the templates or modules directories. The provided Upload/Install feature fails for me, too. I’m sure it works, but I haven’t tripped over the piece of documentation describing the installation process.
I’ll have more thoughts over the next few days – I’m setting up an instance for a demo on Friday. Right now, Drupal feels more “fluid” but Joomla feels more “newspaper-ish”. If that makes sense.
Here’s a handful of screenshots of various stages of the content publishing process:
I grabbed a copy of Joomla the other day, to play around with another option for a CMS to use for projects at the Learning Commons. Some early thoughts:
- The admin UI seems very well done – but man, is there a lot of stuff in there. Not sure I’d want to unleash that interface on a novice user, or even a casual Office warrior. I’m sure it makes more sense as you get used to it, but it’s even more jarring than Drupal, and much more complicated than WordPress (likely necessarily so, since it does so much more than WordPress, but seems like it should be on par with Drupal).
- Seems like a very odd definition of “Open Source” in the Joomla community. Likely some historical context to make it meaningful, but of the several Joomla community sites that I’ve visited for modules and templates, they all seem to require logins to download stuff, and several require paid subscriptions – some quite steep – just to get access to something that I thought was GPL. Bizarre…
- The content publishing process seems much more complicated than Drupal or WordPress. How do you determine which chunks of content make it to the front page, in what location? The admin interface provides a lot of bells and doodads to control that, but it’s not immediately obvious how to control the flow of content.
- It’s got a really nice level of granularity for permissions. Admins, publishers, editors, managers, writers, etc… All with their own sets of restrictions. People with access to the admin UI can publish content immediately, while “lesser” users need to have stuff approved before it shows up.
- The URL structure is pretty much semantically meaningless. URLs take the form of
/content/view/14/2/ – and that’s with the “search engine friendly” option turned on – it’s even worse without that. There’s a spot for a “Title Alias” – but it doesn’t seem to get used as the Post Slug does in WordPress, or the Path does in Drupal. Maybe there’s another bit to twiddle for that to kick in…
- The pervasive rich text editor / WYSIWYG dealie is pretty nice.
- Joomla feels like a robust, mature CMS. Things like content checkin/checkout, staledating, moderation, etc. appear to be done quite nicely.
- What’s up with Joomla’s RSS Feeds feature? It’s borked. Right now, it just gives a list of feeds, and you have to click on each one to get a list of items. It should give a merged list of items, ala Drupal or FeedOnFeeds or SuprGlu or etc…
- Installing templates and modules – hasn’t worked for me so far. Not sure what the exact process is. Doesn’t seem to work if you just drop files into the templates or modules directories. The provided Upload/Install feature fails for me, too. I’m sure it works, but I haven’t tripped over the piece of documentation describing the installation process.
I’ll have more thoughts over the next few days – I’m setting up an instance for a demo on Friday. Right now, Drupal feels more “fluid” but Joomla feels more “newspaper-ish”. If that makes sense.
Here’s a handful of screenshots of various stages of the content publishing process:
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Talk about co-incidence … Don Little and I were just looking at this tool because we want a more “weblike” appearance than a wordpress blog can give. I mean, sure, you can hack the daylights out of the wordpress themes but we were both curious about what a full CMS might offer over a blog engine. The granularity of user function (front office/back office — public, registered, author, etc) is very nice!
I agree with your assessment of the admin UI. It’s very well done and consistent, but with so much out there just finding the piece you need is a bit much right out of the box. After about 3hours of work, tho, I think I’m getting the hang of it. Things are where they need to be, pretty much.
Your problems with template installation are curious, tho. My install (joomla 1.0.4) worked perfectly .. I just downloaded the zip file I wanted, then used the Template Manager > New function to select the zip from my drive and the ‘Upload and Install’ just worked. Is there some kind of permissions problem that’s getting in the way of yours?
Module placement is not REALLY intuitive, but after dealing with Drupal, it’s pretty famliar construct. I’ve moved some stuff around but this is something new to play with
[…] Early thoughts on Joomla (nee Mambo) at D’Arcy Norman Dot Net I grabbed a copy of Joomla the other day, to play around with another option for a CMS to use for projects at the Learning Commons. Some early thoughts: […]
I have recently installed Joomla on top of IIS for our school web site. I have added a few modules and components to add some functionality – things like event calendar, snazzy bookmarks organizer, integration with Coppermine Photo Gallery, etc. It seems, so far, to be pretty decent software for this purpose.
I have found that I can give less admin options to other admin accounts. This will cut down a bit on the feeling of being overwhelmed, so I’m pretty happy about that. This may help a bit with the overabundance of admin options that you noted.
I plan to set up spaces for individual teachers, clubs, and so on. Joomla looks like it will scale well, but I guess we’ll have to see.
I love reading your stuff. Keep up the great work.
(By the way, I am looking into doing my M.Ed. in ed tech through U of Calgary. Put in a good word for me!)
Hey guys,
I think your review(s) pretty much nailed it. Joomla is very powerful, free, and has a steep learning curve. As a web designer, I don’t design “static sites” anymore, I do everything with Joomla. You can get a template to look like anything on the web, and the amount of add-ins is huge.
There are copious tutuorials on the web, I do a shameless plug for one of mine, more of a developer one: http://www.compassdesigns.net/livesite.
I also recommend frequenting the forums at forum.joomla.org. They are very active and have many developers/designers helping people with their questions.
Cheers
Barrie, thanks for the link to the tutorial. I’ll check it out ASAP.
Ive been using Joomla for about two years for a couple of sites but I sometimes think the back end admin is a bit overpowering for “normal” users. I am thinking of transferring to WordPress.
thanks
Barrie, thanks for the link to the tutorial.
I agree with your assessment of the admin UI. It’s very well done and consistent, but with so much out there just finding the piece you need is a bit much right out of the box. After about 3hours of work, tho, I think I’m getting the hang of it. Things are where they need to be, pretty much.