I have recently been trying some funky stuff out. As a result, I started to seriously consider migrating from Drupal to Joomla!. Drupal is a good CMS, but there are minor issues I'd rather dump. For instance, WYSIWYG edition appears to be broken, despite having the WYSIWYG integration installed, adding images to posts requires sending them over via ftp and adding a HTML tag in the post's body, there can only be one blog per user (and I'd really love to have two simultaneous blogs - UR isn't everything after all).

Joomla! addresses most of my needs, and more. Let's list some of them.

1. WYSIWYG comes out of the box, and works even better than expected. With additional styles (defined in default themes) I can easily add funky stuff in my paragraph formatting, such as a sticky note icon or a download icon.
2. Adding images isn't just easy, it's also well thought. Joomla! integrates a neat image manager, where I can upload images directly from my computer (no FTP involved!) and organise them into categories, folders and whatever I like. Thus, I can create an image gallery of sorts. All images become available for adding to the posts. Very nice, thumbs up for Joomla!.
3. There are some dedicated additional modules that are simply better than in Drupal. For instance, there are several different forum modules, offering functionality comparable to standalone forum applications such as SMF.
4. Joomla! has beautiful themes. I also made a custom theme for it and it looks fabulous. I made the same theme for Drupal, but it won't work (it works in all parts save for the blog - which is the key part of the site!). So, again, Joomla! proves to be better.
5. While Drupal case tracker is dead simple, Joomla! has a native version of Flyspray. No further comments are necessary.
6. Joomla! allows gMail accounts as login. This way, no registration is necessary for gMail users.

Of course, there are drawbacks of using Joomla!, and they seem quite significant:

1. Joomla! has no native blog support. Available blog extensions are either paid applications (although I found a promising one that costs mere 7 bucks) or simple views that offer no advanced functionalities such as comment moderation or restricting comments to registered users.
2. Joomla! lacks a permissions system Drupal has. There are unregistered, registered and admin users. I think there's also a special category of users who can post own content, but in most cases they fall into the admin category. So adjusting shown contents to various user categories is simply impossible (note that this site has 6 user groups, each one with different permissions set and able to view different content).
3. Joomla! is difficult. Drupal can be learned in one afternoon. Joomla! is complicated as hell. Tasks that are among the simplest ones in Drupal seem almost impossible in Joomla!.
4. Module base is much smaller for Joomla!, even though it's open source. There are also many good COMMERCIAL modules. I mean, it's an open source CMS, goddamn it! If I choose an open source solution, I expect it'll be free!

I'm really unsure about what I should do with it. Drupal has its disadvantages, but also has some advantages. Same goes for Joomla!. Where one lacks, the other trimphs. None of the two offers decent blogging support rivaling Wordpress, and installing Wordpress isn't an option. OK, maybe it is, since I HAVE it installed for testing purposes. But if I laid my hands on a module that integrates Wordpress into Joomla!, I'd probably switch UR site to Joomla!. The thing is, such a module exists and is a COMMERCIAL one. 80 bucks, no less. Too much for something that simply bridges one open source CMS with another, allowing them to share usernames and passwords.

Anyway, have a look at the test site I set up and tell me what you think: http://umbrarumregnum.110mb.com/joomlatest Is it worth the hassle? Would you prefer a more limited blog functionality in favour of a better looking and better organised website? Or perhaps you'd prefer a Wordpress blog instead, with a link to a blogless UR website? With time, I might find a way to integrate the two somehow. What's your opinion?