WordPress, Joomla & Drupal! Oh My! – A Comparison of all 3 CMS’s

WordPress, Joomla and Drupal are three of the top Content Management Systems (CMS) used to build a website. A CMS is software that is installed on web space and used to create a website. Using a CMS lets you add your own HTML content to different pages for a customized website without building it from scratch. You can build an impressive website using a CMS without any prior knowledge of programming, but you will need to know basic HTML.

WordPress began as a blog publishing software, but has grown to be a complete CMS program with many of the same features as Joomla and Drupal. All three of these programs are open source programs, which means they are free to use and customize. Each program has its own community of developers devoted to upgrading and adding extensions. In addition, support is available from the community, so even if you don’t have experience with a CMS, you can ask for help or find a previously released extension for your needs.

Drupal

If you prefer to code by hand rather than using an editor, Drupal is the CMS for you. It is more popular among those with programming experience than it is with those new to web development. Since the community is made up of mainly web developers, help is available for complex websites. Hand-coding also gives you the flexibility to create a feature-rich custom website rather than relying on premade extensions and plugins.

Drupal’s interface is not as user-friendly as other CMS’s because it is designed for web developers rather than the casual or new designer. Unless you have a lot of experience with Drupal and programming, publishing can be frustrating and time-consuming.

Joomla

Joomla is the favorite open source software among web developers because it has so many possibilities for customizing a website. It offers more freedom when creating a website than do other open source CMS’s. There is a large community of users sharing support and extensions to use to create your website.

Joomla is not a very user-friendly program, so it is not the best option for new web developers. If you do not have prior experience coding and designing websites, it can be confusing and hard to implement. Joomla does have a learning curve, but if you are willing to use tutorials to help you learn, you can great a feature-rich website by yourself.

WordPress

WordPress is perhaps the most popular CMS because it has been available for bloggers before it was turned into a CMS. The latest versions allow you to create a static page, so it is easy to use this program as a website development tool. WordPress has an easy to use interface and is easy to customize to fit the needs of your website. There are thousands of widgets and plugins available for a variety of web applications. WordPress is one of the easiest CMS programs for new web developers because it is easy to install and easy to use.

WordPress has a smaller community than either Drupal or Joomla, so you may not find be able to find the help you need. In addition, upgrades and plugins can cause your website to not work properly or worse, disappear completely.

The best CMS for you and your website depends on your level of programming knowledge and what features you want to implement. Websites with basic features can be built in WordPress or Joomla, but Drupal makes a better choice for very elaborate websites. However, Drupal has a larger learning curve and can be frustrating if you are a new web developer.

Leave a Reply