Choosing the Right CMS for Your Website: WordPress vs. Joomla vs. Drupal

Content Management Systems are the backbone of any website. However, it can be quite challenging to identify the right CMS for a website. WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal are the three most popular CMS platforms; each has its pros and cons, unique features, and capabilities.

If you want to choose the best platform, refer to this WordPress vs Joomla vs Drupal guide and identify which is most suitable for your eCommerce business.

What is a Content Management System?

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CMS is the process of building, managing, editing, and updating websites. It has made the process much faster and completely non-dependent on traditional formats, which were error-prone or slow.

CMS empowers brands to create, edit, store, manage, and update store website content effortlessly without the need for them to use complicated coding knowledge.

Some critical features of CMS are:

• Highly accessible and extremely user-friendly
• No need to apply technical expertise
• Helps to streamline website development and maintenance processes
• Handles “behind the scenes” functions, such as navigation and content searchability

Understanding CMS: WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal

Let us quickly understand the meaning and essence of the top 3 CMS for your websites:

1. WordPress

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WordPress is one of the most widely used CMS around the world, covering 40% of the websites across the web. It offers a range of compelling features as it is free and open-source. Here are some of its key features:

• Offers users extensive themes and plugins for customizing websites
• Constitutes unique designs and functionalities
• Has a user-friendly interface and versatile nature
• Suitable for content creators, bloggers, small businesses, and large corporations

2. Joomla

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Joomla is another renowned CMS choice that delivers comprehensive content management solutions. Its key features are:

• Provides flexibility and built-in features like page caching and media management
• Strikes a balance between complexity and flexibility
• Ensures robust security and advanced functionalities

3. Drupal

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Drupal is one of the most powerful CMS, which is used by some of the top websites of the world like BBC. Some of its key features are:

• Excels in handling complex tasks, courtesy of multi-site capabilities and content versioning
• Features a highly customizable framework, making it easier for developers and organizations to work with specific requirements

How to Make the Right Choice?

Consider the following factors before choosing a CMS website:

1. Project Complexity

For simple blogs and small business sites, you can choose WordPress, while Drupal is best used for highly customized and complex projects. Joomla falls in between, offering a middle-ground option.

2. Technical Expertise

For beginners, WordPress is the most user-friendly option. Drupal requires more technical know-how, whereas Joomla strikes a balance between simplicity and complexity.

3. Future Scalability

For significant growth, you can depend on Drupal’s scalability, while for the level of community support and resources, you can choose WordPress, which boasts the largest community.

Similarities Between CMS WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal

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All three CMS platforms share similarities in technology, philosophy, and community. Let us discuss some of them here:

1. These are free and open-source software licensed under GPL.
2. They encourage collaborative development and are community-driven projects.
3. These CMSs are primarily written in PHP and support MySQL as their database management system. However, Joomla and Drupal also support other database systems.
4. They use themes and templates for the visual appearance of sites and extend features using plugins, modules, and extensions.
5. They benefit from active developer communities and promise innovation, issue resolution, and strong security measures.

WordPress vs Joomla vs Drupal

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Let us check out the key differences between CMS WordPress and Joomla Drupal:

1. Content Types

WordPress provides default content types like Posts and Pages. It has a straightforward content model since WordPress 5.0 introduced a block editor called Gutenberg. Additional content types can be created through plugins like Advanced Custom Fields or custom development.

Joomla offers a basic content type in the Article form. It expects extensions for further customization and requires immediate development support.

Drupal includes a wider range of built-in content types and allows customization with development support. There’s even a Drupal plugin that enables the use of WordPress’s block editor within Drupal.

2. Access Controls

All three platforms offer flexible and robust access control mechanisms, allowing users to define various permissions and capabilities.

3. Multilingual Sites

WordPress and Drupal require plugins or modules for multilingual support, whereas Joomla offers native support. While WordPress’s multilingual capabilities are improving, Joomla and Drupal provide cleaner implementations.

4. Data Handling

Joomla and Drupal have more complex database structures, offering better internal data architecture. However, Joomla and Drupal’s increased complexity can lead to challenges in troubleshooting and performance issues if not properly managed.

5. Customization

WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla offer customization options according to the needs and preferences of the users. The options include themes and templates, plugins and extensions, code customization, and user roles and permissions.

6. Security

Security is paramount for any CMS platform. WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla all release regular security updates and offer security-focused plugins and extensions to reduce risks. However, Drupal is considered the most secure due to its built-in security features.

7. Support

All platforms offer extensive official documentation and active user communities for support. Paid support options are available through various channels for each platform.

8. Cost

WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla are all free to download and use. All three come with no licensing fees. Themes and plugins may incur costs, but both free and paid options are available on each platform. However, maintenance costs and hosting costs can vary.

Developing a site with WordPress can be quicker and more cost-effective compared to Joomla or Drupal.

9. Expert Development Costs

The availability of skilled WordPress developers is significantly higher than that of experienced Drupal or Joomla developers. The lower availability of Drupal and Joomla developers results in higher development costs compared to WordPress.

10. Market Share

WordPress has the largest market share among CMS platforms, with over 29.36% of the top 1 million websites using it in 2023. Drupal follows with over 2.72%, while Joomla has a smaller share of 1.39%.

11. Search Engine Optimization

Key SEO factors can be managed in all three CMS platforms. WordPress offers excellent functionality through plugins like Yoast. Drupal and Joomla also provide SEO capabilities, which are not as strong as WordPress.

12. Design Options

WordPress offers thousands of themes, both free and paid, with modern and optimized designs. Joomla and Drupal have fewer free themes but offer quality paid themes. In contrast, WordPress provides a wider range of design choices compared to Joomla and Drupal.

13. Easy Updates

WordPress updates, including core and plugin updates, are generally easier to manage compared to Joomla and Drupal. However, updates in all three platforms should be handled cautiously, preferably on a staging server, to test for compatibility issues.

Drupal and Joomla updates may involve more complexities and potential incompatibilities, especially for custom code implementations.

Example Websites for WordPress vs Joomla vs Drupal

Here are some websites running on each CMS Comparison Website:

WordPress:

1. The New Yorker
2. BBC America
3. The Walt Disney Company
4. Sony Music
5. The White House

Drupal:

1. Tesla
2. The Economist
3. NASA
4. The Emmy Awards
5. The United Nations

Joomla:

1. Roger Federer
2. Harvard University
3. Linux.com
4. IKEA
5. Kellogg’s

Conclusion

Choosing the right CMS for websites ultimately depends on your wants and requirements. Every CMS has its pros and cons. Hence, it is important to conduct thorough research and assess individual requirements before making a decision. This ensures you choose the best CMS that goes well with your website’s objectives.

If you have more questions about choosing the right CMS for your website, contact the experts at Free Parking. The experienced professionals can explain the pros and cons of each CMS category and help you manage your website content better!

Get in touch with Free Parking for more info!