Drupal or Joomla for AdSense sites

[TheAviator]

I'm in the position of needing to decide to outsource my sites or develop them on my own. There are numerous features I would like to add but haven't developed a site for a long long time (and even then, it was only straight HTML). Though I could take the time to learn CSS, it's the dynamic part that concerns me the most. I'm not a programmer but it's the lack of time that concerns me most.

I'm leery of using elance.com because I haven't found any portfolios (of the ones I viewed) that contain sites that would appear to be "AdSense Optimized."

I've read a little on Joomla and Drupal and see these solutions are available on GoDaddy. What is your experience with these two CMS packages?

Thanks.

TA

[iwannano1]

Personally, I'm using Drupal and VB. Old site runs using perl and text files and mysql. Drupal is not just easy to use, you will get lots of extension and code is quite stable.

Some people recommends wordpress, but I found its mysql code puts too much load on server.

Finally, just don't create site for Adsense, always remember content is king.

[TheAviator]

Thank you for the reply.

I fully agree content is king...that's why I'm looking for a good system to manage it.

Hmmm, I'll need to re-review Drupal...I have it stuck in my head it uses PHP/MySQL as well. Perhaps in a different capacity? I'll go back to the site and check it out.

Thanks.

TA

[ecmedia]

I have used Joomla - easy to install with Fantastico but it was somewhat difficult to setup (way too many options). You can also download a module that allows you to insert AdSense with just one word wherever you want the ads to appear or simply fix them to show up at a location. Once you set it all up then it is simply adding content like you will in any other CMS though what I found great was that for each page you can write new description and keywords, something not available in Wordpress.

[abkaiser]

>what I found great was that for each page you can write
>new description and keywords, something not available in
>Wordpress.

You can do this in WordPress, via the many many free Plugins. WordPress in my opinion is excellent, with plenty of themes and plugins and support available. And it installs FAST, and use is easy and intuitive. However, you'll need to take time to research all the available Plugins to find the right ones for your site. AdSense, SEO-optimized themes, HTML and XML sitemap generators, caching tools (to prevent server overloads), they're all available.

[WiseWebDude]

Drupal, hands down. Joomla, like some others said, is extremely difficult to use (way too many options) and buddy...it can be confusing as hell! Joomla needs a lot of work IMHO.

[mayest]

Agreed on Joomla. It can be very confusing, but I had a similar experience with Drupal. I think it is the terminology that they use as well as the template systems.

I've just decided to switch to ExpressionEngine. It seems to fit my brain better than those other two, and is more flexible. It isn't free, but it is quite inexpensive, and you can try the Core version for free. EE also made it very easy to duplicate the look of my existing static site, and I used the same CSS file without modification.

[bbd2000]

Adsense works fine with both systems. There are modules and plugins available that make the management of all advertising methods.

A little off topic:

I tried both Joomla and Drupal. Drupal drove me crazy. I could not get the whole “taxonomies” thing down. However, the practice sites I made looked cleaner and ran faster than the practice sites I made in Joomla.

In the end, I chose Joomla because the way the content is categorized made more sense to me. Also, the availability of third party components was an important factor in my choice. It seems there is an extension for everything and anything with Joomla. I don’t think the learning curve was that great, I learned almost everything I needed to know in a couple of weeks of part time work.

Would I choose Joomla again? Maybe.

Right now the Joomola folks are working on a completely new version (1.5) that is not really compatible with the current version and for this version they have changed the license. The change doesn’t really affect the web developer or end user but is causing the programmer of third party components fits. Many of the main components that I use are developed by these programmers and they refuse to develop for version 1.5. This has me very concerned about upgrades, security patches and so on. I still like the current version of Joomla. But without those components I feel like I am stuck with an obsolete system.

By the way, if you are building a smaller site I think Wordpress is a good choice. I have played around with it also and I am thinking about using it for some smaller sites.

[willybfriendly]

I will come down on the side of Joomla - but not v. 1.5 which still has some maturing to do.

There is a learning curve with any CMS. Joomla is pretty flexible, and the taxonomy is really simple to understand: section->category->content. Can't get any easier than that!

Of course, that does mean taking time to plan a site out before going live.

Templating is extremely flexible. Joomla maintains very good separation of content and presentation.

There are extensions that will handle AdSense, but it is just as easy to write a module yourself.

[inactivist]

If you choose Drupal, definitely check out the "AdSense Injector" module, which is used in conjunction with the basic AdSense module to drastically simplify the task of adding ads to your content. I use it on all my Drupal sites.

[reprint]

I have used drupal, joomla and wordpress all using adsense.
- wordpress for small sites, simple, easy to manage
- joomla for more content, more features, better performance
- drupal for same as joomla but better user management if you need users with different levels of access

All will probably need some tweaking and/or add-ons depending on your exact application.

[walkman]

I am going with Drupal. Why?
It leaves the door open for anything. It's hard to get and the taxanomies thing is a mess, but once you "get it" you can do pretty much anything and manipulate the text any way you want. EXTREMELY flexible since you can set categories, tags, sections, terms etc. etc. Plus, it is very stable as fair as development goes and modules are updated regularly. In theory, you can run 100 domains with one setup.

I wish we had more templates though...