Content management systems are widely used in modern websites. One analysis by BuiltWith.com found that 791,981 of the top 1 million websites had some content management system.
There are a number of great CMS applications on the web. But which is ideal for a given website?
Drupal. Joomla. WordPress. Do these names all feel the same? You are not alone! With how often all three come up to mention in web design chats, it is easy to feel like they all sound the same. After all, they all do the same thing: manage content. What more could there be?
These Three Names Play the Same Game Different Ways
That is where the similarities between these platforms come to a stop. WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla all have entirely different approaches to how they manage content. So, let us try looking at each one by one to see what makes it stand out so much from the rest of the pack.
Joomla
You can check out this Joomla beginner tutorial first to see what Joomla looks like from the inside. As you can see from that link, this CMS likes crisp minimalism. You may have also noticed that it seemed a bit advanced, too.
While it may look like just another nerd’s toy, this platform seeks to compromise between ease of use and excellent coding standards. It is a perfect choice for anyone that wants to step up the speed, security, and compatibility of their website.
While it does sport a bit of a learning curve, Joomla comes with lots of tools to help automate the process of installing it and building a website. Some other notable features include its built-in multilingual support, active central user support community, and built-in SEO tools. But what Joomla is best known for is its flexibility. Joomla can be used to create virtually any kind of website thanks to its hack-friendly code and substantial collection of extensions.
WordPress
Everyone loves WordPress. Well, almost. This platform is best known in the web design community as the easiest CMS to use for beginners while retaining flexibility and extensibility for more advanced users. While it is sometimes criticized for being bloated and slow, it remains the most used CMS in the world. Due to this, the platform features the most extensive collection of plugins and the highest level of compatibility with third-party services.
However, some new users may find the WordPress dashboard too broad and confusing to navigate. Developers may tire of it sacrificing speed and power for user support. Additionally, the nature of the platform itself can make it challenging to produce a cleanly coded, snappy website.
Drupal
Drupal is the elite cool kid among these three platforms. Since it’s for developers, the learning curve on this platform is way too harsh for a novice. It may be too steep for an intermediate user, as well. What Drupal loses on user support and ease of use, though, it gains in power, speed, flex, and coherence.
Drupal also boasts a high number of plugins and extensions – 16,000+, to be exact. Combined with minimalist, open-sourced code, it is much like Joomla in that it is highly flexible and customizable. However, Drupal takes it a step further than Joomla by only providing the absolute minimum coding needed to manage website content.
Which One Should You Use?
So, which of these three platforms should you use for your website? A lot of that is going to depend on your skillset and needs. Let us do a quick review.
– Joomla is the middle-of-the-road option between WordPress and Drupal. It is ideal for medium to large-sized websites and intermediate users who are not afraid of a challenge.
– WordPress is the easiest CMS to use of the three, but it can quickly get too slow. That makes it ideal for a small to medium-sized website and novice users who, like those using Drupal, want to take on a little challenge.
– Drupal is the most advanced platform of these three. It is the fastest, most powerful, and most flexible, but at a cost. Due to its lack of helper tools, it is only for advanced users. It is ideal for large websites because the medium to small-sized websites will find it more complicated than their needs require it to be.
As you can see, each of these CMS platforms has something to offer to a specific niche. So, while they may all sound the same to an inexperienced user, the truth is that they could not be any more different. If you are looking for a platform to host a website with, make sure you know which platform will be the best to use for it.