There are three major open source content management solutions in a field of hundreds of options. These are the most robust, widely installed and supported (community as well as commercially) content management systems: WordPress, Joomla and Drupal.
WordPress
Fast Facts:
- 72 million web sites use WordPress (by some estimates, 24% of the internet)
- 19,000 plugins in the WordPress plugin directory
- 1 in 5 new web sites are deployed with WordPress
WordPress is most widely known as a blogging platform, and that is the most common function, however with increased deployment and necessity for enhanced functionality has led to it being accepted as a common core CMS application for many different online presences from Ecommerce to video blogging. Its ease of use and ease of installation make it a go to base platform for millions of startup websites, most commonly for personal blogs and business marketing web sites.
While WordPress does have thousands of plugins to extend and make more it powerful, it is not commonly used to power large scale web sites with complex functionality. That is not to say that it cannot be done as the New York Times blog section would testify. However, such heavy lifting deployments are usually left to the experts in the matter: Joomla and Drupal.
Pros
- Thousands of themes and plugins
- Active support community and available commercial support (WordPress.com)
- Highly functional out of the box
- SEO friendly
- Easy to administer and extend
- Well documented
Cons
- Not optimized for large-scale, complex deployments
- Originated and still intends to be a blogging platform
Joomla
Fast Facts:
- Means “All Together” in Swahili
- 210,000 active registered users on the Joomla! Community forum
- 1200 Projects on JoomlaCode community site
- 2200 Extensions for Joomla! have been registered on the Joomla! Extension Directory
Joomla, like the other solutions here, is under constant, active development.
In the Drupal community, today's business-model of choice seems to be providing implementation services for medium to large websites. The Joomla community, it seems, is very focused on the low-end of the market and most people make money by selling subscription services, usually either by selling commercial support for their GPL extensions.
Joomla, like Drupal, is not designed to provide a one-size-fits-all solution out of the box. (Out of the box means installed without any third party modules or custom enhancement.) While it does have basic CMS functionality when installed, it is intended to be extended with third party plugins or custom plugins to suit whatever purpose it has been tasked to do. While Joomla has thousands of extensions, there is the sense that many extensions compete in the same space rather than complement each other.
Pros
- powerful, when augmented with the many third party plugins
- large, active support community
- highly customizable for a multitude of functions
- suitable for small to medium commercial implementations
Cons
- very few commercial support entities
- not optimized for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- complex administration interface (though this could be mitigated through a custom built dashboard)
Drupal
Fast Facts:
- Means “water drop” in Dutch (‘Druppel’)
- 760,000 registered developers
- 14,400 modules
Drupal has claimed the “high ground” in open source CMS solutions and cements that position with the largest active development community and largest array of available third party modules. Drupal, like Joomla, has very limited functionality out of the box with only a handful of included themes and basic CMS functionality. It is designed to be immediately augmented with the proper modules to suit the intended functionality.
Drupal has nearly 15,000 third party modules (module is the Drupal nomenclature for ‘plugin’) that are not only designed to enhance Drupal directly, but many of the modules are designed to augment other modules as well. For example, Ubercart is the most popular Ecommerce module for Drupal. Ubercart itself is comprised of over 10 bundled modules and can be extended with dozens of other Ubercart modules (for example, FedEx real-time shipping quotes or Washington State sales tax calculators). So not only does Drupal support modules, its modules are design to support modules. The Drupal “hook” system (an internal API mechanism) is very well documented and allows this kind of augmentation to occur. In fact, many modules are designed to recognize and react when other specific modules are installed to augment their behavior as well.
Drupal is also the most suitable, of the three options, for third party or legacy API integration for delivering and/or extracting information or content.
Pros
- active, centralized support and development community (Drupal.org)
- available commercial support (Acquia, others)
- well documented, tightly integrated API (“hook” and theme system)
- deemed most “developer friendly”
- command-line updatable
- suitable for small to enterprise deployments
Cons
- administrative interface has a steep learning curve (though this could be mitigated through a custom built dashboard)
- content migration is a challenge between environments
Researching the best option for you is an important task. We hope that this will give you a starting off point. JLB is always happy to work with you to help you make the best choice for your organization.