Drupal or Joomla for membership sites?

pigsnog

pigsnog

Registered Member
Joined
Feb 12, 2009
Messages
79
Reaction score
12
I hope this is the right place to ask this. I'm wondering if anyone has an opinion of joomla vs drupal?

I've been using Joomla for a while now for different sites, I like the dev team and the forums there and there are some great plugins BUT would Drupal be better?

I tried Drupal out a few years ago and found it too complicated, it was the 'node' thing that threw me off. But for the longer term ongoing growing paid membership site if Drupal is the way to go then I'll have to get my head around it.

Basically I suppose I'm asking which is more reliable.

Any thoughts?
 
Advertise on BHW
I think you should just try it.
download install it play with it.
It's free!!
 
joomla is my choice. Just throw in AEC component and you have a membership site in 20 minutes.
 
Thanks folks :0)

I'll go find the AEC component, thanks for the info.
 
I use joomla and templates are plentyful. I don't know about AEC, but community builder is great.
 
i would definitely use joomla along with community builder and AEC - possibly JASC too...

i am currently about to sponsor some additional development of the AEC plugin! :)

i have used it many times and have a clients site with well over 5000+ users on it... i believe the community builder forum itself has 10's of thousands of members...

plus you can add a ton of useful components as well as create your own - joomla is very flexible
 
I vote for Joomla. It is the best CMS.
Joomla support many components to create cool website.
For membership use Joomla + Community Builder (Free) or JomSocial(Paid but powerful).
Hope this helps.
 
Joomla and AEC is great, although i've always disliked tghe fact that Joomla doesn't show User IPs to enable a ban by IP. I did code my own script for it though! :D

And on a side note, don't pay for use of AEC, the support doesn't seem to be any different whether paid or free, and their forum is just full of unanswered questions. I do like it though and did "donate".
 
you can get plenty of plugins to ban ips in joomla

theres a lot of other security plugins too - just search the extensions directory at joomla.org

also under no circumstances purchase jacl for access control level instead try out noixacl instead
 
Thanks again :0) No votes to Drupal then, that's interesting!

I've been testing it for a couple of weeks now and also need dynamically generated subdomains when someone registers. It looks to me like the domain access plugin for Drupal is the best for this. I'd happily switch back to Joomla though, if i could find something equivalent that doesn't cost a lot of money.

Thanks again for the replies, they are much appreciated. :0)
 
ukescuba said:
you can get plenty of plugins to ban ips in joomla

theres a lot of other security plugins too - just search the extensions directory at joomla.org

also under no circumstances purchase jacl for access control level instead try out noixacl instead
Click to expand...


Please feel free to show me one which logs IP against the username then please, where by i can see a user's IP against their username and ban.

I know there's plenty of IP banning software, but there's fuck all, at least that 2 months searching yeilded, that display IP relevent to username! :)

Besides i find it stupid that it even needs a plugin, i mean it's basic level stuff you know?

I kinda hope you can show me a plugin, at least then i can bin my script! :D
 
theres a few components out there i use a couple together - not necessarily the neatest of solutions but it works for me :)

ill try and dig out the urls for you

theres one for community builder that logs ips per user and puts it as a field on the profile so a user/admin can see this

theres joomlatrace - which by itself gathers lots of info on registered and non registered users on your site, i customized it so as my output wasnt as bulky and more specific for my needs, when i see issues i tend to dump this from my db and analysis the info

sh404sef - has built in ip protection using the honeypot db, any known bad ips it will automatically block from your site

ninjoomla security has a wealth of secuirty tools - including single/block ip banning

double login blocker - this prevents two ips accessing the site under the same username at the same time

then this page has a handful of ip banning plugins too

Code: 
http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/access-&-security/site-access

i couldnt agree more with you though, there should be better user control, from my understanding this is being implemented in j1.6

hth
 
I struggled for a while to really customize a joomla site.
It's a nice CMS, great community and a lot of extras.

But: if you try and follow the 1.1.X vs 1.5 (and future) versions you'll see that there is a potential split in the community. It's been a while i haven't checked but last time i did the air had not cleared. Maybe a Mambo -> Joomla story repeated again ?

Another pain is that INTER-operability with components.
eg. you install a SEF then work around to make sure everything works and you are happy. After a month you really want to install a useful one for e.g. tracking IPs. Its stable, high feedback etc.
Then u realize that it breaks down your SEF !!!

What do you do?

This is just an example.
My advise would be: How much do you believe in the site's future? If you do have high hopes and beliefs, i would advise you to get a custom made. If you have the $$ that is.

Never used Drupal but heard really good comments.

If you dont want to spend money take my advise so you dont do the same mistakes i did:
DO YOUR HOMEWORK first! I mean: spend time to search and list ALL the necessary components that you think would be happy with. Forget about the extras for now.
Then spend a lot of time researching their interoperability AND their stability !
Make sure that when people reported problems they either got fixed, or it was something silly like their PHP version.

Then go ahead and install everything. And TEST the hell out of it!!!

Trust me it will save you a long time and a lot of headaches !
I could write a book on joomla! I like it but it has its problems!

Good luck!
S
 
ukescuba said:
theres a few components out there i use a couple together - not necessarily the neatest of solutions but it works for me :)

ill try and dig out the urls for you

theres one for community builder that logs ips per user and puts it as a field on the profile so a user/admin can see this

theres joomlatrace - which by itself gathers lots of info on registered and non registered users on your site, i customized it so as my output wasnt as bulky and more specific for my needs, when i see issues i tend to dump this from my db and analysis the info

sh404sef - has built in ip protection using the honeypot db, any known bad ips it will automatically block from your site

ninjoomla security has a wealth of secuirty tools - including single/block ip banning

double login blocker - this prevents two ips accessing the site under the same username at the same time

then this page has a handful of ip banning plugins too

Code: 
http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/access-&-security/site-access

i couldnt agree more with you though, there should be better user control, from my understanding this is being implemented in j1.6

hth
Click to expand...

Thanks. I've already got the Double login and can't use Sh404 or CB due to constraints within my site. But it's only users IPs i care about really, because my new site has limited free access and i wanna kick people out the second they try to start any kind of shit storm. :D

I'm using Joomla Watch for most IP tracking, and then cross reference it against my IP script, which is ok for now, but Joomlatrace looks like what i've been searching for. Honestly, you have no idea how much i've searched! :)
 
stanto said:
I struggled for a while to really customize a joomla site.
It's a nice CMS, great community and a lot of extras.

But: if you try and follow the 1.1.X vs 1.5 (and future) versions you'll see that there is a potential split in the community. It's been a while i haven't checked but last time i did the air had not cleared. Maybe a Mambo -> Joomla story repeated again ?

Another pain is that INTER-operability with components.
eg. you install a SEF then work around to make sure everything works and you are happy. After a month you really want to install a useful one for e.g. tracking IPs. Its stable, high feedback etc.
Then u realize that it breaks down your SEF !!!

What do you do?

This is just an example.
My advise would be: How much do you believe in the site's future? If you do have high hopes and beliefs, i would advise you to get a custom made. If you have the $$ that is.

Never used Drupal but heard really good comments.

If you dont want to spend money take my advise so you dont do the same mistakes i did:
DO YOUR HOMEWORK first! I mean: spend time to search and list ALL the necessary components that you think would be happy with. Forget about the extras for now.
Then spend a lot of time researching their interoperability AND their stability !
Make sure that when people reported problems they either got fixed, or it was something silly like their PHP version.

Then go ahead and install everything. And TEST the hell out of it!!!

Trust me it will save you a long time and a lot of headaches !
I could write a book on joomla! I like it but it has its problems!

Good luck!
S
Click to expand...

That's good advice. When i built my most recent site it was always going to be a big site from the word go and getting everything working and integrated was always going to cause problems. The last thing i wanted was to sort 3gb of content for the thing to fall over.

So after a month or so of testing various versions and installs, along with various components i had to go with the most stable and supporting system for my needs. I'm now running a very stable 1.58, although AEC seems to be the route of most problems. It's never seemed to be the most co-operative of components.

On a side note, i think it was Joomlasuite or something, where this site was selling premium components and they had a membership module that looked the business.
 
Drupal is a bit of a challenge to learn at times but it's a very robust CMS as evidenced by the list of big companies who use it (e.g. Nasa, Sun, Adobe, Sourceforge, Mozilla, Jabber, FedEx, AOL, Novell, Yahoo, Macworld, Eclipse, Ubuntu, Sony, Second Life...).

Lots of modules & plugins developed for it and a good opensource community of developers.
 
Thanks again to everyone, this forum is invaluable!

I'm using Drupal now, and trying to get my head around it. I'm getting there but it's different from Jooma that's for sure. It was the dynamic subdomains that got it for me. It's an essential component for this project so a few headaches learning the ropes will be worth it.
 
Mind elaborating what exactly are the benefits of the "dynamic subdomains" feature? I haven't used Joomla nor Drupal, but that one got me interested.

pigsnog said:
Thanks again to everyone, this forum is invaluable!

I'm using Drupal now, and trying to get my head around it. I'm getting there but it's different from Jooma that's for sure. It was the dynamic subdomains that got it for me. It's an essential component for this project so a few headaches learning the ropes will be worth it.
Click to expand...
 
I'm starting to use Drupal as well... so far I am very impressed with the combination of CCK, Views and Panels modules. Steep learning curve, but very promising.
 
Yeah, just started getting into panels myself. will have to also go down the views & cck route but the results look good.

Just wish some of the documentation on how to use these things was a bit more 'user-friendly'. It's often the case that programmer who wrote the modules, also writes the documentation and, in my experience, you need to get someone else to do the docs - preferably a non-techy, so the instructions are idiot proof.
 
Advertise on BHW
You must log in or register to reply here.
Sign up now!

Main Menu

Home Main Forum List Black Hat SEO White Hat SEO BHW Newbie Guide Blogging Black Hat Tools Social Media Downloads

Marketplace

Account Selling Content / Copywriting EBooks / Methods Hosting Misc Proxies For Sale SEO - Link building SEO - Packages Social Media Social Media - Panels Web Design More

Making Money

Affiliate Programs Hire a Freelancer IM Journeys Making Money Pay Per Click Site Flipping Want to Buy

BlackHat World

Dispute Resolution Forum Suggestions & Feedback Introductions Lounge
Back
Top