Membership Site Woes- Drupal or Joomla

Okay...I'm not a strictly technical person but I'll give you my experience with Drupal. It wasn't positive.

A client of mine started a dating site, she thought that by using Drupal she would be able to piece together a nice looking site with good functionality. This is true for the most part IF all of the modules you need are already out there. I'd do some very extensive research before you dive into drupal....make sure that all the functionality that exists is already out there in a current drupal module...because if its not then you need to either customize an existing drupal module or start from stratch..and I know from experience this isn't always the easiest thing.


Second are you or whoever is making the site very familiar with drupal and drupal custimization ( I take it you aren't or you wouldn't be asking this..) if the answer is no then again unless the EXACT specifications of your site exist in drupal already I'd wait until you can find someone familiar with drupal and confident that they can make the changes and integrations...also check with whatever thrid party site or application you plan on integrating any of your drupal modifications with incase they have restrictions ect..we ran into this problem at times when we were able to make customizations but the 'software,program ect ect' we wanted to integrate with wasn't able to provide the neccesairy code or modifications.

We had a lot of trouble integrating Drupal with our newsletter serivce in terms of cutomizing which fields we wanted to synch over to the newsletter..basically the site was supposed to launch last april and its only now just launching...given a lot of this was probably due to the web developer/s as they were not entirely competent... but I'd say unless you or whoever is building the site are familiar with drupal and cutomizing drupal modules I'd stay away from it

Again that being said I'm not a web developer..but no one has answered yet, so I thought I'd throw my two cents in.

good luck and let me know what you decide!

I have been just using Wordpress for my basic membership sites because you can do pretty much anything you can find a plugin for, but for a more advanced site like it sounds like you are needing, James Stein, known here as TheRichJerksNet, has a really awesome membership script that is very affordable and will handle pretty much everything you mentioned. I am currently building sites using it myself, just learning my way around it and it is extremely easy to manage.

Les

btl-1: Good luck with your site, sounds like integrations were a nightmare. I worked at a web-delivered software company last month, and they had a couple specialists who did nothing but integration and they were always up to their ears in work.

At the moment I'm currently leaning toward Joomla. It seems a little more user-friendly (Not that I'm scared of technical). Integrating everything is very important to me because once this site, payments, and moderators are all in place I want it to be mostly hands off.

Les Tatum, this script you're talking about- Is it supposed to be run in conjunction with WP or is it stand-alone? I'll take a look into it, but I'm hesitant to spend any money yet as I'd prefer to do most of this myself and not worry about purchasing software or hiring programmers.

Thanks guys!

Boomachucka

The script I spoke of is a stand alone script that handles all membership functions as well as affiliate tracking, product delivery, etc. I use it instead of wordpress for more involved sites.

Les

Well I use Joomla, Wordpress, and Drupal. Which i use depends on the scope of the site.

Blogging Sites: Wordpress (although can be used for more than just this)

Drupal is something I only use on 1 site right now, because Drupal is not exactly user friendly. But i need use Drupal for this site.

Member ship based sites, or sites requiring forums, advanced image galleries, membership management (paid memberships) I use Joomla. I currently have 2 sites using Joomla that are membership based for paid subscriptions (1 is a clients site, the other is mine). Joomla is a powerful platform for this purpose, and i have yet to find anything for WP that is comparable. Joomla is also very easy to use, configure and extend.

Take this info for what it's worth to you.

Cheers

Hi,

I build Drupal sites almost exclusively, and I know what you all mean about it being a bit more tricky to figure out. From a developers point of view, though, there is no comparison... the code base and the community are worlds better than any other CMS out there.

Joomla is great (and better suited to a membership site than WP) - powerful, pretty flexible and there are some great commercial add-ons for it. It can make things easier as its just not designed to be as flexible as Drupal.

While Drupal seems to have more complexity, its actually just that its not as restrictive... there are usually more options and once you understand the basics you can go a loooong way. Plus - you will not find more FREE code out there, or as much support if you need it... and this is high quality code. Thats why Drupal is used by fortune 500 companies and Joomla really isn't.

If you are planning on whipping up a site as quickly as possible with the shortest learning curve go for Joomla. You will have to pay for commercial modules and probably a theme to get you there, but thats fine.

If you are more interested in building a site that could grow to be world class OR will be building many sites, then go for Drupal. Its rock solid, designed by geniuses and has some built in features for multiple sites on the same server/codebase, etc.

FYI - there is a great module for Drupal called "LM Paypal" that will let you create a Paypal subscription for a "user role" on the site. Users have to have an account existing, so this is the process I use:
1) User creates a free account in the regular way. I use the "Login Tobbogin" module to allow them to sign in with their email address, set their password and login immediately. This also makes it easy to direct them to the paid subscription page as soon as they register.

2) On the subscription page, you can list out the options and the code for the subscription buttons. The "LM Paypal" module is cool because you can do subscriptions of any length, for any length of time AND you can offer a free trial if you like. Sweet.

3) Once they choose the option and set up the Paypal subscription, it sends them back to the site and uses Paypal's IPN (automatic with the module) to verify their subscription and assign them the user role they need. It will also automatically remove their role if they cancel the subscription. Amazing.

4) If you use the "Terms of Use" module, then the user will have had to agree to the site terms of use before getting access.

5) If you care to use the "SimpleNews" newsletter module, not only do you have a free newsletter system built-in, but you can get an option to add an automatic checkbox on registration. There is also a module to integrate Aweber.

BONUS: With this setup, the user has already created an account on the site (with their email and any other contact info you require) AND possibly signed up for your mailing list BEFORE they even hit the payment button. Then, if they leave, you already have their contact info and can try to get in touch with them.

Of course, thats just the beginning. If you use the "FeedAPI" module, you can have RSS feeds automatically create new pages on your site, you can allow all the users to have their own blog, add/create a wiki, create some slick profiles, add images/videos, create galleries, etc... Sky is the limit.

One final note:
- WP is like wooden blocks - simple & easy. You CAN do some advanced stuff, but usually it takes alot more work because thats not what its designed to do.

- Joomla is like Legos - more complex than blocks, more stable and really fun. They give you alot of solid pieces and you can put them together to creat your own thing.

- Drupal is like an Erector Set - more complex than Legos, ends up with a really solid model that can be professional quality. Still easy to do, but does require a smidge more effort.

I know that this sounds very "elitist", but the truth is the truth. Drupal is a professional grade system. In my opinion, its core code, design and underlying structure are superior to Joomla or anything else I have seen. Of course, its not as user friendly "out of the box" as Joomla (though Drupal 7 is going to change that).

BOTTOM LINE: Think about what you really want to accomplish, spend an afternoon researching the solutions with both, and decide which one is right for you. Ultimately, the only thing that matters is that you have a solid website that does the job and works!

regards,
Ron

PS another thing to consider is security... because Drupal core and modules are all coded to a higher standard and vetted by the community, security fixes are released as soon as they are found (and your site will tell you when!). Joomla seems to be more scattered without a central coding standard and are weak on the security updates.

PPS Artisteer software is great for making Drupal AND Joomla templates...