As you may have noticed I am launching a new website. After years of using Joomla, Wordpress, and just hand-written scripts I have decided to start setting up Drupal for my homepage. Although I have used Drupal periodically in the past, I wanted to get more up to speed with it as it is now used as RIT's main CMS. Also I think it could be something I set up for future clients.
It is a great tool, especially for tech-saavy developers, but at the same time I would be nervous about setting it up for clients as there seems to be a lot of set up time to get certain functionality that may be quicker to do with other systems that may have a component already built to solve a problem.
For example; if I wanted to create an event registration type website with integrated payment funcitonality I have used "Event Booking" by OsCommerce for Joomla. Literally with a one-click installation it comes with all the functionality you would need to list events, charge various prices, and have registration deadlines built right in. Out of the box it would work for probably most people events, and might take some adaptations if you are converting from a custom built solution.
On the other hand, I was trying to investigate how I would set up a similar system in Drupal. Sure, Drupal is really robust and I could create a content type called "event" I feel like I would need to invest a great deal of time building it out. And then on top of that integrating in payment would be another challenge on top of that. I suppose once you do build it you get a system that is built exactly for your needs, as opposed to adapting from a pre-built system, but the amount of time it takes to re-create the wheel here would probably be a turn off for most clients.
Expanding on this example of needing an event registration system, another option for Joomla or Drupal could be to use a cloud based system and integrate that into Drupal / Joomla. Anyways I suppose I am still trying to evaluate how I can best use Drupal for clients, and will continue to develop this list of pros and cons of each CMS.
