# Joomla, Drupal or Wordpress + a cart, or just a cart?



## Bvlgaro (Oct 14, 2010)

Hi guys and girls, I am a long time reader of the forum. So far I do not have a lot of posts, but have read end to end many of the sections. 
Me and my wife are planning on starting a small online clothing company which will be selling t-shirts, hats, belts, hoodies etc. I know there are 1000's of companies doing that already, but we believe that with the ideas we have and the research done, we will be successful.

I am still lost about one thing, even after reading the webdesign, e-commerce sections. I plan on trying to build our website and I do not know if I need to use Drupal, Joomla or Wordpress in combination with a Shopping Cart software like CubeCart or ZenCart, or just use the Shopping Cart software with a template and this will be the site.
Also what would you recommend me to use of the listed ones? I know the question have been asked, but all this software gets newer versions and improvements constantly and probably there is a new leader.

I read the gazillion opinions, but want to ask for your most recent opinion what do you think would be best to choose. I am tech savvy, network engineer, and although I know only HTML, I am sure I will be able to learn CSS and MySQL if needed.

Thank you for you answers in advance and I look forward to building an awesome site, putting it in my signature and showing it off 

Thanks,

Vlad


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## Hawkens (Nov 16, 2009)

Over a year ago I moved from Zencart to Wordpress. I prefer working in Wordpress and tested out a few wordpress shopping cart plugins. Wasted some money on a few and finally came across Shopp — plugin ecommerce for wordpress and it has worked great for my needs.

The above works great for my needs, but recommend you demo as many as you can. Before settling on a single solution.


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## Bvlgaro (Oct 14, 2010)

You are saying that I do not need a separate shopping cart software and I can use just a plugin for Wordpress (or perhaps Joomla or Drupal), right?

I was under the impression that one have to use either a cart as it's website or a CMS solution with the addition of a cart. I did not know that the CMS's offer shopping cart plugins on their own.

Thanks,

Vlad


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## Hawkens (Nov 16, 2009)

Yep, just look for a plugin.


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## breegav (Jul 13, 2011)

Check out Big Cartel this is what I am planning on using as my cart.
Big Cartel - Simple shopping cart for artists, designers, bands, record labels, jewelry, crafters


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## FlustardMal (Jul 11, 2011)

I would recommend Drupal and UberCart. Drupal is much much more poerful than Wordpress which is blogging software. Drupal and Joomla are content management systems meaning you can do much more, pretty much anything. Of the two CMSs, Drupal in my opinion is more powerful and better supported by its community.

Both Drupal and joomla are open source. Drupal is PHP powered, but you don't need PHP knowledge to get a site up and running. Drupal has many free templates (called "themes") which you can use to style your website to your liking.

UberCart is Drupal's ecommerce module. It too is also very powerful and well supported by an active community. For just a simple webstore, UberCart can handle it without issue. UberCart can also be used to build marketplace websites too similar to Etsy or eBay.

If you decide to go with Drupal, you will either need to pay for hosting or set up a localhost on your computer for development. 

Bottomline, forget Wordpress, a CMS is better, Drupal in particular. Good luck.


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## Bvlgaro (Oct 14, 2010)

Thank you so much for your answer, I was looking for exactly that type of an answer 
I will start watching the Drupal Tutorials right now. I have the Lynda materials and hopefully they are a good start.

Vlad


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## bweavernh (Jun 26, 2008)

Not quite ready to open, but I am thankful for the tips.


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## consultantnomo (Jul 21, 2011)

> Drupal is much much more powerful than Wordpress which is blogging software.


Wordpress hasn't been just "blogging software" in quite some time. I am proficient in all of the major open source apps and specifically choose based on requirements and the technical proficiency of the person who will be handling the day-to-day of a particular site. The right Wordpress ecommerce plugin is perfectly suitable for a majority of stores and has a significantly lower barrier to entry than do the joomlas/drupals/magentos of the world.


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## FlustardMal (Jul 11, 2011)

Have a look here for some Drupal tutorials and videos. Another resource is MustardSeedMedia's video podcasts. Don't forget YouTube, lots of gold there. There's some Lynda stuff on YouTube too. Lullabot is also in the Drupal tutorial business too, very high quality stuff.


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## ClarkeStone (Jul 10, 2011)

Wordpress used to be "just" blogging software, however it has now devleoped into a full blown CMS

There are so many about, and understanding them can take up a huge chunk of your time. There are less prolific CMS's (CMSes, a flock of CMS) to choose from, each with pros and cons under their belt

Maybe even try a dummy site using something like Concrete5, they still have plugins, but this could give you a good understanding (although concrete5 is pure WYSIWYG) 

I use Joomla! It was hard deciding between Joomla and Drupal. Both offer a huge degree of flexability, but another developer I am working with on one of my sites is more comfortable with Joomla! - so we've stuck with that

Don't let anyone nay'say you off wordpress though. It's a strong CMS, with supurb community backing.

Without wax.


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## consultantnomo (Jul 21, 2011)

Well stated, Clarke. Gun to head, I prefer working with Joomla over Drupal, but am proficient with both. To me, the advantage of Wordpress is community support and it's intuitive administration. I designed a Wordpress site for my Mom's charity organization, and she picked it up in no time. I could not as easily do the same with Drupal, Joomla, or most others, for that matter. The ready availability of truly great themes, if needed, make WP an easy pick as well.


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## ClarkeStone (Jul 10, 2011)

I'm certain I posted this. I just can't remember doing so. 

To give you an idea, try drupalgardens, it's web based, and will give you a better introduction to drupal and other 'full' (loosely) cms.


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## FlustardMal (Jul 11, 2011)

If I'm not mistaken there's a paid Drupal alternative that is more user friendly albeit slightly limited in its power called Acquia Drupal, it was created by the founder of Drupal too. For those interested in using Drupal as a platform but are wary of it's potential complexity and learning curve, it may appeal to them.


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## UBO (Dec 7, 2008)

I used magento for a while. It is really easy to use and has nice features.


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## stoffer (Aug 11, 2011)

> The right Wordpress ecommerce plugin is perfectly suitable for a majority of stores...


Which shopping cart plugins would you recommend for wordpress?


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## MiEmb (Jan 29, 2011)

I tried osCommerce a while ago and found it pretty robust. It has out of the box functionality but also allows customization but requires some technical skills. What is nice about Wordpress is you have a blog and a cms and by adding a cart voila! you have a site up and running fairly quickly. One potential consideration is integration to a designer if you like to add that later.


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## songstershops (Mar 25, 2011)

My specialty is creating ecommerce stores
I've worked with many different ones
Here's my opinion on the subject

Drupal is very powerful as a content management system however it's more than you need, has a huge learning curve and can be costly to create if you are a beginner

I'm a big fan of Joomla and have built many sites with it. Once again it's more than what you need. I used to recommend it over Wordpress if someone was building a large site.

Wordpress has grown in leaps and bounds in the last year and is very user friendly. There are plenty of plugins available with a large % of them being free
There are also a few nice selling plugins that you can use with Wordpress

Those 3 items above are excellent if you plan to write a lot of content but it's overkill for a store

I use Zencart a lot and Magento is a very good store platform
Both have the necessary components for a store 
you need a way to display your product, provide attribute choices such as colors and sizes, a shopping cart to collect the orders, shipping calculators (real time), payment options PLUS those 2 carts above provide accounts for your customers to check their orders and a way for you to communicate with them.

My personal opinion is to use Zencart or Magento
Get the cart up and running and add Wordpress later if you feel the need to add extra content for your customers to read.
If you plan to have 25 items or more plus need to use color and size attributes, use Zencart or Magenta (or something similar)

If you have less than 25 items, use Wordpress with an ecommerce plugin integrated.

Hope that helps


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## On the Rocks (Aug 2, 2011)

I have used Joomla with a Virtuemart shop - it comes with a cart and mass of payment options including paypal.

TBH you might find it over the top and a templates give you too many pages and options but if you are looking for a site which has the capacity to expand then this will expand.
The CMS is similar to Drupal.
Wordpress is simpler but does not have the capabilities of the other two. There are 1000's of Joomla modules and components (plugins). I would go Joomla because I know it. Joomla is more popular unless things have dramtically changed recently.
Stick with Joomla 1.5. Joomla is rapidly updating but J1.5 is tried and tested.

A Joomlart template for example with Virtuemart eg JA Zeolite template will pretty much run out of the box but you will have to do a good bit of configuration in the backend to Virtuemart and change all the dummy products for your own.

This is what you get when you have installed Joomla with the Joomlart JA Zeolite template with Virtuemart.

Joomlart Templates Demo

The work comes in changing everything over to your products.


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## songstershops (Mar 25, 2011)

Joomla is over kill for an ecommerce store.
Personally I have a Zencart store with over 5,000 products in it. I can't see you having that many items - keep it simple.
I love Joomla and Wordpress and I don't use either on of them for my stores.
The objective is to sell. You need a platform to handle that. 

As for the battle of the CMS systems Wordpress has exceeded or matched Joomla in many areas.
It's no longer the light weight it used to be.


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## On the Rocks (Aug 2, 2011)

Just had a look at a few sites through the Zencart website.
They could be Joomla sites.
I don't see Joomla as being overkill.

When you know how to install Joomla you can have a website that is running within minutes.
Then you need to configure the site for you.
Change the name, images, prices, menus and so on.
You will have more pages and menu items than you need but a lot of it is simply a case of unpublishing stuff and deleting stuff or simply overwriting the content of pages.
Then if you ever wish to learn more and expand the site the capability is there.

If you want to show videos, sophisticated slide shows, chat facilities, skype, sophisticated contact forms, quote facilities etc etc - it is all there within the capabilities of the system. There are more plugins than you imagined there were things to plug into a website and much of it is free.

The other thing about CMS (content management systems) is if you change a menu on the home page it will automatically change on all the pages where that menu is published. Change the template and look of the site, it will appear on every page.
A long time ago I used traditional html sites. I wouldn't dream of using these now. Every page is a separate entity. Every page has to be edited individually. The work in just changing or adding to something is mind numbing once you get beyond a handful of page.
I think if you know very little, CMS can overface you but the time spent getting your head round one of them will pay dividends in the end.

I have XAMPP on my machine (a server system) and recently put up the template from Joomart I mentioned. I have the website on my PC and can fiddle around with it on there. For anyone thinking of trying XAMPP (or WAMP possibly) don't install the latest XAMPP as the php in that is incompatible with Joomla at the moment. Try a few versions back where earlier php was being used.

This is all getting a bit technical but for anyone running a web store being able to manage their own site is a real boon. Having to ask a webmaster means your site will not be as responsive to change and if you are paying the webmaster it could end up expensive. Then what happens is the site doesn't get updated and it looks naff.


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## History Clothing (Aug 13, 2011)

Wow, a lof of content here. Im curious, how would you guys rate Big Cartel in all of this?

I can already sort of guess it may not be a veterans first choice, but what sort of pros and cons do you get in comparision to ZenCart or anything else you mentioned?


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## 4C Print Shop (Sep 8, 2010)

I agree 100 Percent with David "I don't see Joomla as being overkill" I have switch from Zencart to Joomla and it is so much better . I know the object is to sell that is why Joomla is better, there is a lot of free extension that works wonders in terms of SEO.


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## Bvlgaro (Oct 14, 2010)

Thank you for all the answers guys, I appreciate all of them and currently am reading in the ocean of information on Drupal's site. I have come to realize it is going to be a steep learning curve, especially having no web design experience, but I will give it a good, solid, all-in try, and will show the result to ask for your opinions as soon as I am done 

Vlad


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## FlustardMal (Jul 11, 2011)

Good decision going with Drupal. You're right, there is a learning curve, but Drupal's community is very active and helpful. Google for some Drupal tutorial videos. 

At least for your applications, a simple site/store, you should be able to build it in Drupal without issue. Don't forget about UberCart, Drupal's e-commerce side.


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## On the Rocks (Aug 2, 2011)

FlustardMal said:


> Good decision going with Drupal. You're right, there is a learning curve, but Drupal's community is very active and helpful. Google for some Drupal tutorial videos.
> 
> At least for your applications, a simple site/store, you should be able to build it in Drupal without issue. Don't forget about UberCart, Drupal's e-commerce side.


Had a look at the ubercart site and looked at a few sites running this system.

Virtuemart and UberCart will always put up good looking sites. The UberCart ones look nice.

sewologylab.com is a clothes site

Look at the slide show of the model with the clothes. This is how it should be. Nice looking young woman, loads of light in the photos, bright colours. Sharp, sharp images.
I'd pull out on the shots a bit more and not crop the model's legs off so much but otherwise. This is the quality I think people should be aiming for.

I don't think it takes lots of photographic skill just good sunlight, good looking models and a decent camera.


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