I’ve always coded sites “by hand.” At first, early on it was using Windows Notepad and later I began using EvrSoft FirstPage, and then year later it was Macromedia Dreamweaver (before Adobe bough them out).

During the past year or so we’ve been using WordPress self-hosted blogs more and more. WordPress has a great following of theme, plugin and widget makers who continually write software that extends and enhances the base WordPress blog. Now, WordPress itself is a great, extensible, flexible system and since WP 2.7 support for child themes. We naturally evolved at work into using WordPress to build sites, and then to offer our clients the ability to maintain and add content to their sites (CMS).

I code HTML, XHTML, PHP, and CSS; I uised to code ASP before .NET came out  and I copy-edit-paste or install/customize Javascript (Lightbox, Ajax, jQuery) and whatever else I can get my hands on to extend what we do for our clients. The point is, I’m a CODER by nature and although I use Adobe Photoshop, I am not a designer. You can tell this by looking at a home page renovation I threw together last year (here).

So, here’s the question, in light of the fact that I’m heavily into coding, and do NOT prefer to let editors write my code (unless I check and edit it)…

Which is better for a WEB SITE CODER to develop a website that a client can manage – JOOMLA or DRUPAL? The CMS should allow easier building of a web site that is also easier to maintain than a site built in, say Dreamweaver. Can it be edited by a client who does not know HTML also? Do you think DRUPAL or JOOMLA have better templates/themes as far as visual impact? How about functionality?