R. U. NUTTS?

Have you actually written any Joomla plugins that incorporate AJAX? Ever?

Would you like to see the open-source repository with mine?

Would you like to PROVE that you can do better? I'm EXTREMELY interested in your answer. If you are able to do so, then I would be happy to forgo my way of doing it in favor of yours.

Thanks for the tip. I have heard very good things about TextPattern and EZ Publish. However, the issue is that the folks who use my code are primarily "big 3" users; with a distressing number of Joomla users.

It has to do with "market penetration" and "community support," as much as good code, ease of extensibility, etc.

Try to play with the Atlassian product line databases. Makes Drupal look like a cakewalk.

However, the whole idea is to avoid direct database access. That's a good security best practice anyway.

In Joomla, I am forced to directly interact with the DB (in the installer). Maybe 3.0 is different, but I have finally been able to farm off the Joomla plugin to someone who is a lot more familiar with (and likes) Joomla.

I'm pretty sure that it was designed by fairly young JAVA folks. The patterns are extremely similar to many academic exercises in JAVA.

Young folk are willing to work very hard, and hit the Kool-Aid like there's no tomorrow. It can be quite amusing to read some of the Joomla discussion forums.

Also, I think that they switch architects fairly frequently, so they tend to rewrite the whole damn system on a regular basis. Keeping a plugin compatible between all the various Joomla versions is a nightmare. The fact that I have to provide four different modules to do what one single file can do in other CMSes means that my installer is a real Rube Goldberg machine.

I posted up there, somewhere about this.

I tend to use WP for my own sites. It is not as extensible as Drupal, but I can get a really well-crafted site up and going within a day. I would not recommend WP as an engine for, say, the White House. They made a good call with Drupal there. I believe that they actually added security code to Drupal, and returned it to the repository.

Joomla is clearly an engine written by recent grad JAVA lovers that hate PHP. Drupal was clearly written by folks very familiar with PHP, and a great deal of coding experience in the real world.

PHP? <shrug />. I use it, because it is important that folks actually be able to USE what I write. I'm not even slightly interested in pushing a coding philosophy. I need as many folks as possible to be able to install and run my code. I won't get that in any dynamic, database-driven server language other than PHP.

PHP is a suckass OO language. I tend to use OO as a Model layer or as a namespace. A lot of the rest tends to be procedural. I sometimes ROTFLMAO, when I see some of the conversations around the Joomla camp. It's like architects boasting about using mud daub to build a skyscraper.

Whoops. Posting before coffee.

Switch "Joomla" and "Drupal."

As noted, there is no such thing as a "perfect" CMS. Much as I may grouse, Joomla is extremely popular, and I need to support it. For many folks, Joomla is the "perfect" CMS.

Drupal is the best of the "big 3" CMSes. Hands down.

However, it has a Matterhorn learning curve, and I choose not to use it in most of my work; opting for WordPress.

The thing about Drupal is that it has an extremely solid extension mechanism. Lots of good hooks, and thoughtful design.

I write plugins for all 3 CMSes. I am extremely familiar with what it takes to extend each. Drupal and WP can be extended with a single file that allows me to provide a powerful administrative interface, content filter and module system.

Joomla, on the other hand, requires -I am not exaggerating- ten times as much work as either Drupal or WP, and, subsequently, ten times as many "problem nodes," for juicy, fat bugs.

For example, if I want to handle AJAX responses, Drupal and WP each offer a simple hook to intercept program execution at a point between CMS setup (authentication, module initialization, etc.) and HTTP output (I need to output prior to any headers being sent out). Since I can use the same module file, I can preserve object context. Also, they each have a very simple CSV options/preferences system that abstracts the database behind a basic functional interface.

In Joomla, I am forced to write an entire system plugin, and use a pretty hairy database "semaphore" system to communicate context. I also need to write a content plugin in order to allow a shortcode ability. In both Drupal and WP, the content filter is simply another functional interface in the same context.

However, for the kind of extensibility that Joomla offers, only Drupal can match it, and Drupal has that learning curve, so it tends to be popular amongst folks that want a heavily-customized site, with less knowledge, than Joomla.