Developers – trying to figure out what Content Management System is best to use? Here we take a quick look at 3 popular solutions and the pros and cons of each.
WordPress
WordPress is an excellent system to use when creating a website that lets you quickly get your thoughts out on the web, but while it is often used as a blog, it can be configured to work in many other interesting ways as well. It is key to know that WordPress is extremely easy to use and setup. Comments are already built into the system, as well as pinging services, multiple blogger profiles, trackbacks and more. However, the very reason that WordPress was created was to keep people from wanting to customize it to do things that are much more advanced.
- Pros
- Simple to use - No need for modifications
- Excellent for blogging or sharing thoughts in a sequential manner
- Even the most non-savvy users can get the hang of it quickly
- Cons
- Not developer friendly
- The community seems to like to complain
- Upgrades bring more bugs than fixes sometimes
Drupal
If you’re the type of person who would rather hand-code the content of your pages than use a WYSIWYG Editor, or if you enjoy tweaking the code that makes up the framework of a website, then Drupal is probably for you. This advanced content management system more closely resembles a developer platform than a traditional CMS. Interestingly, being more developer friendly does not automatically make it more user friendly – in fact the developer has to work hard to make it that way if they need the end-product to do so.
- Pros
- Extremely developer friendly. If I loved code more I would almost always pick this system.
- Strong community to help discern the dozens (hundreds) of functions and tags available.
- Can be used to create some really awesome websites that can outperform a majority of other sites out there.
- Cons
- Not very designer and user-friendly. It’s hard for someone with little code knowledge to make the leaps required to do the very cool things that Drupal is becoming known for.
- Theming of Drupal has been a huge case of fail (until recently). Probably because it has been developers, not designers, that are making the themes.
- Getting a Drupal website published could cost you more time, and thus more money, than WordPress or Joomla.
Joomla
Designers will choose Joomla because of the amazing capabilities that its engine has in making websites look fantastic. Newcomers to Joomla (and website management) will love the fact that it is very easy to use and even customize as more and more developers create tools that are easier to understand. Developers, likewise, will choose the system because of its large capacity for development and customization. The new MVC framework was built just so that anyone with the knowledge could override the core of the CMS without actually modifying the original code.
- Pros
- Friendly for all types of users – Designers, Developers and Administrators
- Huge community is awesome for assisting with creation of websites
- Has been rapidly growing and improving itself for the past three years
- Cons
- Still not user-friendly enough for everyone to understand
- Not quite as powerful as Drupal, and can be a bit confusing for some to jump into
- Recently rebuilt the entire system from ground-up, and so there are still many out there sticking to the old versions (1.0.x)
In conclusion, there is not just one system available for web development, and so we should never limit ourselves to just one either.
Here at Daedylus, we don’t believe in a one size fits all strategy either. We’ll work with you to determine the right solution for your business and ensure a quality product.
Further analysis of this post can be found at http://www.goodwebpractices.com/other/wordpress-vs-joomla-vs-drupal.html
