E-Learning Curve Blog

Open Source E-Learning Development 10: Joomla! CMS

At this point in my E-Learning Curve Blog series about open source environments for e-learning content development, I’m looking at platforms that enable you to deliver materials to learners. In my previous blog post, I looked at Drupal. Today I will discuss another Content Management System: Joomla! Neither Drupal and Joomla are not e-learning specific applications – rather, they are platforms that allow you to manage, maintain and deliver learning resources to your students.

Joomla! is a CMS platform for publishing content on the World Wide Web and on intranets. The system includes features such as page caching to improve performance, RSS feeds, printable versions of pages, blogs, polls, website searching, and language internationalization. It is written in the PHP programming language, uses the MySQL database system to store information, and is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

There’s not much else to say about it really – Joomla! is CMS that does what CMSs do.

However, seeing as I have your attention, I think that it might be worthwhile to evaluate the Drupal and Joomla! to help you understand which one would best suit your needs, should you decide to use them to deliver your e-learning content.

Now read on…

Both Joomla! and Drupal are mid-tier CMS’s, designed to serve hundreds of web pages from a MySQL database. Both are PHP-based (though knowledge of programming is not essential to use them), and both have long lists of features and longer lists of add-on plugins that extend their capabilities and functionality.

According to Good Web Practices’ Tim Stiffler-Dean

If you’re the type of person who would rather hand-code the content of your pages… then Drupal is probably for you.

The author asserts that Drupal more closely resembles a “developer platform” than a traditional CMS.

He continues:

Interestingly, being more developer friendly does not automatically make it more user friendly -  in fact the developer has to work hard to make it that way if they need the end-product to do so.

From my own research, I can say that there are many more features and functions in Drupal than in Joomla! Every single content item (or node) has its own set of commands and tags that can be placed elsewhere to manipulate the functionality of the platform.

In my experience, using Drupal can be a frustrating experience terms of form (as opposed to functionality): sometimes, it just refuses to look the way you want it to. From very minor graphics placement issues right through to a more general usability perspective, Drupal can feel a bit “clunky” if you’re attempting to build a graphically sophisticated or dynamic UI. In particular, a reliance on Javascript-based modules can really push up page size – and consequently increase site loading times to a point where they become untenable for lower bandwidth users.

These type of deficiencies pretty much cancel out Drupal’s strong programmatic development environment. “Must try harder” on the usability and design interface, folks. In fairness, the developers do While it’s certainly the case that there are many Drupal themes available, even a quick browse through Drupal.org’s Theming Guide demonstrates the complexity of designing and developing for Drupal.

So Joomla! is the CMS for me, right?

Not so fast, kemo sabe.

At first look, Joomla! is certainly a more user-friendly experience: it’s much easier to install for example, and there are many commercial and freely-available pre-built extensions available for it. However, I get  a certain sense of “my way or the highway” about using the platform: there are some parts of the system that have to be implemented in their out-of-the-box configuration. In a Top Notch Themes interview with an IBM Websphere consultant, their correspondent considered that

“Joomla’s “straight-jacket” approach [to content management] (Content items confined to one Section/Category) is poor. …Use Joomla if you want to get nice looking site up quickly and can deal with a slower system, rigid content categorization and limited design/configuration options.

One of the great advantages of open source software is that there many systems available for us to build our e-learning delivery platforms; with no vendor lock-in,  no reason to restrict yourself to just one solution or the other (though this comes with a caveat that I will discuss later in this article). As is common in the open source world, many different approaches, methodologies, uses and co-exist and cross-pollinate.

As when making any decision, I would suggest look at your needs, your audiences’ requirements, and the resources at your disposal, and make a decision based upon as much information as you can gather (see Table 1).

Table 1. Advantages and Disadvantages of the two CMSs.

I have used both of these CMSs in the past: Drupal for certain websites, and Joomla! as an LCMS (not an LMS), and in my experience both are quite good in these various capacities.

Having said that, my view is that if you want to use either of these CMSs for e-learning, sooner or later you’re going to reach a fork in the road, and you will have to choose one over the other and dedicate yourself to using that particular platform. This is the caveat – I would assert that the time and effort needed to acquire and hone the apposite skills for either CMS would severely affect your ability to do the same for the other one in a reasonable time-frame.

Of course, there is another well-known and powerful content management system available to e-learning professionals, and I will talk about what it is next time.

Fógra: According to a story reported in The Register, the well-known truism that Irish accents (yes – plurual, for there are many of them – from Colin Farrell’s Dublin tones, to Liam Neeson’s Northern Irish twang) are the world’s sexiest has finally been borne out empirically. To hear my sexy Irish accent (north Kildare with hint of south County Dublin), have a listen to the E-Learning Curve Podcast!

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References:

Stiffler-Dean, T. (2009) Wordpress vs Joomla vs Drupal. Good Web Practices. [Internet] Available from: http://www.goodwebpractices.com/other/wordpress-vs-joomla-vs-drupal.html Accessed 30 October 2009.

Top Notch Themes. (2009). Drupal vs. Joomla: a frank comparison from an IBM consultant. [Internet] Available from: http://www.topnotchthemes.com/blog/090224/drupal-vs-joomla-frank-comparison-ibm-consultant Accessed 30 October 2009.

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November 03 2009 03:30 pm | e-learning

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