When starting a website or content management project there is always the choice of what platform is the best tool for the job. There are lovers and haters of each, all with their own pro’s and con’s, price, timing and use-case considerations. It is usually so overwhelming that it is difficult to know where to begin. The information presented below is not meant to solve that question for you but simply to present some facts, insights, analysis and a data dump of what is available out there.
When you have questions or need help, will you be able to find it easily? With all of these systems, the answer is yes. Each has passionate, dedicated developer and user communities, making it easy to find free support directly through their websites or through other online forums or even books. In addition, paid support is readily available from third-party sources, such as consultants, developers and designers. Each of these systems shows long-term sustainability and longevity; support for them will continue to be readily available for the foreseeable future. The more time and effort you are willing and able to invest into learning a system, the more it will be able to do for you.
WordPress – WordPress is web software you can use to create a beautiful website, blog, or app. We like to say that WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.
Joomla – Joomla! is an award-winning content management system (CMS), which enables you to build Web sites and powerful online applications. Many aspects, including its ease-of-use and extensibility, have made Joomla! the most popular Web site software available. Best of all, Joomla is an open source solution that is freely available to everyone.
Drupal – Drupal is content management software. It’s used to make many of the websites and applications you use every day. Drupal has great standard features, like easy content authoring, reliable performance, and excellent security. But what sets it apart is its flexibility; modularity is one of its core principles. Its tools help you build the versatile, structured content that dynamic web experiences need.
SquareSpace – Squarespace helps anyone build a beautiful home online. By blending elegant design and sophisticated engineering, we empower millions of people — from individuals and local artists to entrepreneurs shaping the world’s most iconic businesses — to share their stories with the world.
Magento – Magento Commerce is the leading provider of open omnichannel innovation. Our open source, cloud-based digital commerce platform and omnichannel solutions empower merchants to integrate digital and physical shopping experiences.
Blogger – Free weblog publishing tool from Google, for sharing text, photos and video. Free templates/ themes and gadgets/ widgets included.
Shopify – Everything you need to sell. Build your online store with Shopify’s ecommerce software and easily sell in person with Shopify’s iPad POS.
Installation is the initial task you would need to do before you start using a CMS, so lets have a look at what it takes to install these tools.
Drupal
Drupal is considered by many to be the most complex of them all to get up and running and use, but that’s simply not true anymore. Drupal has evolved and the process is fairly simplified. Download the files from the website, unzip and place the contents in the root folder of your server. Then access the root folder from any browser. From there on, you just let the Drupal software do it for you. But remember to create a new database for your Drupal website and keep the database user name and password on hand before you initialise the installation process.
Joomla
Like above, Joomla also needs you to provide the database name during the installation process. The installation process in Joomla is similar to Drupal except for a few extra options that Joomla provides during installation. You can choose if your Joomla site should be offline after you have installed it, and you get to see all the configuration options before the final installation happens. Also, as a added security feature, the installer script requires removing the installation code folder after you are done.
WordPress
A lot of people think that WordPress is the easiest to use of these three Content management systems. This is generally correct. WordPress requires the same types of information as the others above, but this is only entered behind two stages of the installation process. The 1st step is the creation of config.php file (all the necessary information about the database, username/password, database host etc. goes into the config file). After this step, there’s just one click for installation of WordPress. If you have a config.php file available (from your previous projects, your developers or if you manually created it) there is no need to do the initial step. The installer automatically searches for the file and takes you to config.php file creation only if it is not present already.
Summary
The installation of all three of these CMS’s is relatively simple and similar with only a few technical differences. While Drupal installation looks and feels a bit long compared to the others, Joomla provides few other configuration options and a secure feature of installer files deletion. WordPress has a easy-to-use minimal interface and the quick installation feels nice, but it doesn’t let you configure much during installation. However, all of them need basic information like database name, user ID, and password, among others.
This is very important aspect of choosing a platform. You don’t want to get stuck with a CMS that has too few plugins or extendability and themes available, because if you don’t find what you want through the community, you may need to get one built as per your requirements and that will directly impact the overall cost of you project. Lets have a look at the total number of plugins and themes available for each of the platforms in question, though it is possible that you may not find what you want even if the there are more available; but the higher the count the greater the probability that you will find what you are looking for.
Drupal
Drupal’s official website lists 1223 themes and 14369 modules (plugins are called modules) which are available for free download. This is a lot, but the quality and ease of use are dependent. If you want to find Drupal themes outside of the theme marketplace though, you will be more hard pressed. But Themeforest has a number available.
Joomla
Joomla’s official website lists 7437 plugins, and there is no information about themes. But the theme marketplaces have relatively more Joomla themes available than Drupal themes.
WordPress
If you consider only the total number count, WordPress wins this round hands down. With 2176 themes and 28593 plugins available on the official website, it quite clearly shows the might of the community behind WordPress. WordPress needs more plugins because there are fewer core CMS features supported by WordPress out of the box. Even the marketplaces have many WordPress themes available. This huge number is also attributed to the popularity WordPress has over other Content management system platforms.
This is critical aspect of having a CMS. You know that your CMS has many features, but you will need to use them without having the time to read the user manual or do lots of online tutorials. So, how easy or difficult it is to learn new things by yourself matters a lot.
Drupal
Drupal provides some very critical features in a simple and clear user interface (UI). Once you login to the administrator account, you have a menu bar on the top, showing all the important aspects of your Drupal site. There is a content link, which shows you a list of all the content and comments on your site and lets you add or manage them easliy. For example, for publish/remove. Other links in the menu are also quite intuitive: Structure, Appearance, People, Modules, Configurations, and Reports. With each menu item, you can probably guess what’s in there.
Joomla
When you login to the Joomla admin page for the first time, you will most likely be confused. With so many menus on the page, both vertical and horizontal, it is a bit difficult to understand clearly the UI. But then you will recognise the menu on the left side of the page is just a collection of important links from the main menu on the top. As with Drupal, Joomla lists all the features of the site as different menu items, and below each menu item there is a drop down with more link info. Overall the interface of Joomla admin is more polished (compared to Drupal) and also provides more fine-tuned control over the details of the website, but the downside is if you are new to Joomla you will find too many buttons and links all over the place, and it may be difficult to understand their use without looking at the documentation and user forums.
WordPress
WordPress lives up to being simple and easy to use as to why it is the most popular. The interface is minimal and uses easy to understand language which makes a difference, especially to novices. Compared to the Joomla/Drupal interface that uses more technical language, WordPress definitely has an edge here. For websites managed by users with little or no technical background, or small websites with frequent updates required, WordPress is probably the best. But if you don’t mind playing around a little and learning things along the way, Joomla is a lot more interesting. It has lots of settings and controls, which let you manage the site to a greater extent. Even Drupal lets you do the same, with a more simple but robust looking interface.
How you can customise and upgrade the CMS is another important consideration point you will want to think over before deciding which platform to use. With time, any CMS needs to be upgraded for security or functionality or other reasons, and you may not like to be stuck with a system that is difficult to update or maintain. Also, many times the out of the box solution e.g. themes or plugins are not exactly the way you want them to be, but very close to it. So, you may want to customise things yourself in such cases. Although, customisation requires a level of technical expertise, user experience makes the difference. Let’s see how easy or difficult it is to customise or upgrade these CMSs.
Drupal
The only way to upgrade a Drupal installation is to do it manually, i.e. backup old files and data, extract the Drupal latest package, and replace all the old files except /sites folder (contains themes and other data) and any other files added. This may sound like a tough task for someone new to the field, there is a certain degree of risk involved as well, and if anything goes wrong you may loose your website altogether. But, if you are an expert, or don’t mind getting expert help, there is no need to worry. Again, to customise your theme, there is no in-application support and you will need to either install a new plugin, which lets you edit themes, or do the customisation offline.
Joomla
Joomla supports upgrading the core from the backend, i.e. you login to the backend, go to Joomla update component or Update tab in Joomla Extension Manager, and click install update. However, in certain cases, this update method cannot be used. Other methods to update Joomla are Install method, where you select an update file and then tell Joomla to install it and manually update, where you need to manually replace the files. Do remember to always keep a back up before attempting any updates. As far as editing themes is concerned, you need to edit them offline or install the theme editor plugin.
WordPress
Like Joomla, WordPress also supports online updates via the admin user interface. WordPress alerts you whenever there is an update available, if you want to update, just click on update now and WordPress is updated to latest version. Another interesting feature is the online file editing. It lets you customise your themes or plugins by editing the files in the application itself. Suppose you don’t like an image which is embedded in the theme, and there is no theme setting to change it. Just head over to Administration > Appearance > Editor menu, select the file which you think has that image and edit it. Then you can straightaway review your change as well. Similarly even plugins can be updated; the editor can be found at Administration > Plugins > Editor.
The choice really comes down to personal preference and what type of project you are looking to build. Whether you are dealing with a software development company or building it yourself will also be a factor. The time you have set aside to learn new tools and platforms, the availability of platform specific resources near your business, the length of time that your project will be live before an update/rebuild are also important considerations. No matter which one you chose the internet is a large and helpful place with a mass of information, communities, forums, tutorials, service providers and general assistance that you should, with a bit of time and effort get the most value out of which ever platform you choose. Good luck!
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