We’ll take a look at these two systems in this article, with the objective of helping you make an informed choice.

First, let’s look at what’s common between the two – and there’s quite a lot. Both are quite easy to setup. The learning curves for both are comparable, although, once again, for a non-technical person, Joomla! is a lot easier to figure out and has a more intuitive interface. Both work perfectly fine in a shared hosting environment. Both have plenty of multimedia and photo-gallery integration options. And most importantly, they have extensive community support, with any number of tutorials and (sometimes inconsistent) documentation, add-on modules and others.

Joomla! is great at complicated page layouts. Unfortunately, the html it generates is not so great, and tends to be quite difficult to manage. Also, it is not overtly search engine friendly (in spite of the improvements in version 1.5), which means that you’ll have to resort to other, external means if you need to optimize your site for search engines. Drupal, on the other hand, appears to put programming simplicity above complicated layouts and is very flexible. It generates simple code, and offers very search engine friendly features. Drupal also does a better job over Joomla! when it comes to managing multi-layer dynamic content. In addition, Drupal installations are multi-site, while a new Joomla! installation is required for every new site built using it.

If technology is a constraint, Joomla! supports only MySQL and Apache while Drupal supports, in addition, to these, IIS and PostGres. Drupal is also XHTML compliant.

Joomla! has more, and better, e-commerce related add-ons, compared to Drupal. So, if you’re looking to build a shopping website, using Joomla! will give you more shopping cart modules to choose from, and a variety of payment gateways that you can integrate into your website.

Joomla! has many easy to use templates that make life simpler. Drupal does not have many; in addition, creating templates on Drupal is not very easy.

Joomla!, as mentioned earlier in this article, is not very difficult to use, and someone with not much technical knowledge can have it up and running quite quickly. Drupal needs quite a bit of technical expertise to successfully exploit of all the functionalities it offers, and a non-programmer may find it difficult to understand the jargon that Drupal uses.

Large, rich sites can be created with both these systems. Each provides advantages over the other in different aspects. Finally, it all boils down to what kind of resources you have on hand and what it is that you’re developing. If you have bunch of experienced programmers, and are building, say, a social networking site with a large number of complex features, Drupal is the way to go. If you don’t have much programming resources on hand, and want to build, say, a complex e-commerce site, Joomla! is probably is your best bet.

Sources: http://buytaert.net/drupal-vs-joomla-performance; http://php.opensourcecms.com/general/ratings.php;
http://www.alledia.com/blog/general-cms-issues/joomla-and-drupal-which-one-is-right-for-you/;
http://www.communicopia.com/blog/joomla-versus-drupal