Dwayne Lee

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Today

We very close to moving opensparc.net to a new site. The new site will be using Joomla! (http://www.joomla.org), a great open source CMS (content management system). Joomla! has a large and active community with a sizable core team and a large community writing extensions. The extensions directory currently lists over 700 extensions (and there are a bunch more not in the directory).

The Joomla! community has been working on a new version called Joomla! 1.5 and International PHP magazine has a great article about it. FREE sample of the entire article (which requires filling out a form).

Drupal is another open source CMS and IBM choose it for their developWorks website and their review of why they choose Drupal. Would be interested to know how Joomla! would have ranked.

Joomla! I believe will bring more functionality to the OpenSPARC.net website. It's more interactive with the ability for users to comment, review and rate content. There are newsfeeds for the front page, news, blogs and events. The community marketplace is directory based and will become more useful as it grows. The events calendar has a full calendar view and support for iCal and vCal. Maintaining the site will be must easier. And there is a lot more.

I would be interested in any comments/feedback on Joomla!

[ T: OpenSPARC ]

Comments:

The link to their review of why they chose Drupal isn't working, maybe you wanted to link to this article: http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/ibm/library/i-osource1/index.html If you read it completely, you'll find Joomla mentioned there. Basically, a year ago Mambo and Joomla were the same and the current Joomla 1.0.x is almost the same as Mambo 4.5.x. This split is one of the reasons IBM didn't chose Mambo/Joomla at the time. One of the main reasons I switched from Joomla to Drupal is also mentioned: "The easy installation seemed to get us to a point where almost all the function we needed was available and ready to be themed. However, as with many CMSs, the templating is limited to a tag system that leaves you at the mercy of the quality of the markup that is substituted for the tags. This is fine if the markup is valid, semantically structured, and adequately sprinkled with CSS ID and class attributes to aid styling. If it isn't, then you can find yourself delving into the guts of the application to figure out how to correct the generated output." I haven't followed the development of Joomla 1.5 but 1.0.x was a pain to customize, much of the html structure was outputted by the core code and templating was therefore very limited. To make matters worse, the core code produced lots and lots of tables. Durpal on the other hand is far better in this aspect, the admin backend isn't as great as Joomla's but with a little bit of customisation you can get a fairly good one.

Posted by c2uk on August 05, 2006 at 05:08 AM PDT #

The core code produced lots and lots of tables. Durpal on the other hand is far better in this aspect.

Posted by Jasmine on August 06, 2006 at 12:42 AM PDT #

Thanks for the comments. I've found that the quality of the templates for Joomla! seem to be much better. In the sense of look and feel. Some templates claim to be tableless but if the extensions used aren't tableless, tables still appear. Seems like a minor issue if there aren't many.

Posted by Dwayne Lee on August 15, 2006 at 03:25 PM PDT #

Dwayne - What an honor to have OpenSparc.net join the Joomla! community! I have read the IBM review, as well. I was very disappointed that they elected to compare Mambo instead of Joomla! with Drupal. It made no sense to me. Mambo's forums are like a ghost town and Joomla! is nearing 50,000 forum users in one year. Drupal is an excellent CMS, as well. A bit more complicated to get your head around, but very functional and broadly respected. The truth is, if you go with an open source solution we all win. Open source *does* matter! Joomla! V. 1.5 is a complete refactoring of Mambo code; it will be easier to get after the "wish list" items and accelerate progress with this work complete. And, you are correct, the 3rd party devs love Joomla! - there are over 700 extensions NOW. Tables are output from the current and v 1.5 core. But, there are also template options to produce <div> tags instead for the modules. With v. 1.5, the same is planned for the content area in addition to the modules and it is likely that tables can completely be excluded from core Joomla!. 3rd parties will follow (or are there.) The markup is valid, semantically correct -- I do not hack core code and I am able to pass XHTML and CSS standards. I started using Joomla! last November, it is possible this is an old issue, maybe. Dwayne, if I can be of any help, please do not hesitate to contact me. We will be very pleased to have OpenSparc.net join us in Joomla! What an honor!

Posted by Amy Stephen on August 27, 2006 at 11:43 PM PDT #