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I'm trying to convince my friend and my customer instead to move from Joomla legacy 1.5 to Joomla 3.4, that it would be better to move to Yii2. Site have ALOT of custom logic, custom created components, custom rules different types of users, just all in one, more than 80% of important parts of site is based on custom rules. Other problems I found with joomla is object based programming. when we come to complex systems with more inherited objects it becomes such a mess with files, basically I would need to create set of rules by which I will organize so many models. To create Joomla library would be fine, but then, why would need a joomla? Also objects are mess in current site, there are gods objects, design of mysql database is really messed up, multiplicated fields, deprecated fields, etc. and some parts of site are hard coded and very complicated.

Do you think there is any reason why I might be wrong about moving, except time to do it and admin experience of Joomla?

Milos Radojevic
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  • There is such a world of difference in sophistication and ease of use between 1.5 and 3.4. In 3.4 many people can build a site with just the core and some plugins and modules that they can make themselves and then maybe some bigger extensions for custom features (like an image gallery) that will be quicker than coding yourself. What kind of custom rules are you talking about? The ACL in Joomla 3 will probably take care of that. – Elin Jun 18 '15 at 02:07
  • Well I know exactly how it looks, I work with Joomla since 1.3v, but honestly, my experience say that there is maybe 10% of well written extensions for joomla, even some well known are so awful created. And thats Joomla Team guilty. When I say custom rules, that means that no any 'gallery' will suit me 100% for what my customer wants. In yii generally it's very easy to do something like this because of assets, extendable widgets. If I would be able to extend extension without mess, that would work, but most extensions are NOT created to be extendable in programming logic, only CMS actions. – Milos Radojevic Jun 18 '15 at 10:59
  • I'm not sure what you mean by Jomla 1.3, there is no such version Anyway, it sounds like you really don't have a lot of experience with Joomla development since 1.6/ in the last few years and that's fine. I never use bad extensions, and there certainly are a lot of those, but if you use extensions that are serious about using the API they are quite easy to work with and it's easy to make your own. But you do have to learn the API. Anyway the main advantage of using an existing CMS is that you don't have to deal with building user management, passwords, ACL etc. – Elin Jun 18 '15 at 11:55
  • Yes I have experience, and you are talking about gallery, which is not at all about what I explained in my question. What data modeling and project structure have to do with gallery. Other thing when I say about Joomla quality, I felt like you're defending and arguing with me about Joomla quality. Idea behind Joomla is mostly 'click&install'. Then explain me how can I extend controller of some downloaded extension and still to be updatable joomla and to have nice structure of joomla? – Milos Radojevic Jun 18 '15 at 13:13
  • What if I want to use model of one extension in other extension? To not mention that it doesn't have shared objects between extensions. Code becomes 3x longer than in Yii – Milos Radojevic Jun 18 '15 at 13:13
  • Yes and there exists 1.3 which was before 1.5, but I think it's not called Joomla, don't remember name really or exact version, but it doesn't matter at all. – Milos Radojevic Jun 18 '15 at 13:23
  • Believe me there was no 1.3 (plenty of 1.0 and 1.5 sites) and if you think you used it you are right that it was definitely not Joomla. Probably it was some other CMS. And of course in Joomla you can use a model or extend a controller from one extension in another extension that's a normal part of the api. But if you aren't willing to read the docs there is no point in discussing. I'm sorry you don't understand that the gallery thing was an example, just substitute "X" in my comment. – Elin Jun 18 '15 at 17:54
  • I will stop here. It doesn't matter and totally not related to my question, was it 1.3 or 1.5 or 1.0 or whatever, but I know one think that it was joomla without MVC, really doesn't matter, matter the state that I didn't asked about your opinion, I asked about facts, why It would be better to use Joomla over Yii? Maybe you don't know much about Yii but it's fairly extendable and you can create admin in few hours without any other things that customer will never use it. In every CMS/Framework you can solve problems but what matters is cost+quality+code quality+readability of code. – Milos Radojevic Jun 18 '15 at 22:51

2 Answers2

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Joomla is a content management application while Yii2 is a framework, a great framework. If the level of customization of the code is very high the benefits of using an application or a CMS standards become very few and the advantages of using a framework are many.

Often the framework and in particular Yii are used to create special versions of common applications and between these the CMS is one of the modules taken better into consideration. The data model is fairly well defined and the bulk of the work is concentrated in functionality to customize.

scaisEdge
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As I asked for my project, I later found answer by myself. This project that is explained would be easily defined as Web Application and not only Web site, better relation between these two is already answered here:

What's the difference between a web site and a web application?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_application

Declaration "If some site is Web application" is mostly based on opinion, while my explanation of project pushes it to far end to Web Application. While Joomla is somewhere in the middle to support both with ease, yii2 is constructed as base for web applications.

So why is better to stick with Joomla.

  1. Articles - There is article system created as 'ready to use' which is good for static pages like blog or some similar stuff, which almost all web sites needs it.
  2. Time - Cost. Really it might take time to get over, but still I don't know how much until I redesign it.
  3. Admin Expirience - might be wrong about this since with Framework programmer can create admin for only what customer really needs.
  4. Click&Install - I'm really reconsidering to mark as advantage when comes to some big applications. Customers tend to install alot of components/modules/plugins that makes web app working every day worse and worse.

As scaisedge said in his answer there are few benefits of using Joomla versus Yii2 in such projects since level of customization of code is high and seems that any other development comes in favor of Yii2/any framework based on same idea. This can be applied to any other similar project.

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Milos Radojevic
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