Category: Internet / WebTags: DrupalWebBlogJoomlaWordpress

Drupal, Joomla and Wordpress are the 3 most popular content management systems according to Alexa and most webmasters. They all have their own blend of features and options that allow for extremely powerful and well-built web sites. With such feature rich systems it is important to understand the different aspects of each one to help with making a better choice as to which CMS fits you.

It should be noted that this chart is written from a web developers perspective and I am fairly experienced with creating sites with a CMS or without. I have used all 3 systems for developing web sites, but strictly stick to Drupal now as it allows me to built the most powerful sites the easiest.

 
Drupal
Joomla
Wordpress
Homepage
http://www.drupal.org
http://www.joomla.com
http://www.wordpress.org
Example Sites

• http://www.popsugar.com
• http://www.mtv.co.uk
• http://www.twit.tv

• http://www.joomlart.com
• http://rockettheme.com
• http://www.mamboawards.com

• http://www.ndesign-studio.com
• http://www.simplebits.com
• http://www.larissameek.com/

Installation
Fairly easy, but requires a bit of technical stuff (will be much easier with version 6)
Piece of cake
A walk in the park
Ease of use
Not for the casual user. Drupal is usually more oriented towards developers and webmasters, although it is becoming more and more user friendly with each new version.
Fairly easy and straightforward.
Very easy to use. Pretty much anybody can use this.
Administration
Lots of control, but a bit confusing for the newbie
Very graphical and intuitive!
Very easy to administer the site
Themes
Decent, but lacking when compared to Joomla and Wordpress
Good selection of themes
Excellent, large theme selection!
Comments
Yes
Yes
Yes
SEO

• Fantastic! Title tags match your article title and clean URLs are easy to add.
• Content is categorized nicely and eveything is listed as a preview and also has a permalink.

• Requires OpenSEF or SEO extension.
• May offer security risks due to SEO changes

Fantastic! - All content has a unique page with an SEO friendly Title and URL.
Users
Yes - Full user accounts and profiles can be set up. Users can log in and set preferences and settings.
Yes
Yes, can have multiple users
Blogs
A bit more cumbersome for blogging, but still has many blogging features and modules. Also, great for allowing more than 1 blog.
Yes, you can create blogs easily with Joomla
By far the best blogging software. Has support for many blogging features and plugins.
RSS Feeds
Yes, everything has a feed
 
Yes, made for RSS!
Forums
Decent, functional forum, but it doesn't have a traditional type of forum look and feel. It requires heavy theming to get it to feel right
SimpleMachines integrates in very well.
Yes
Ecommerce
Contributed ecommerce modules that are dencent, but a bit cumbersome
Yes, as extensions Joomla offers ecommerce
Yes, with plugins
Video
Full support for conventional video (.mov, .avi, .mpg) and Flash video (.flv) conversion via FFMPEG. Users can upload videos.
No, unless embed YouTube videos
No, unless embed YouTube videos
Audio
Full audio support for uploading of MP3s by users with audio module.
Yes, with multimedia extensions
Yes
Photo Galleries
Decent looking photo galleries with the use of the Image module.
Gallery extensions allow for image galleries
Yes
Calendars
Decent events and calendars, although they could definitely be improved on.
 
Yes
Web 2.0
Yes! Pure!
No, it still has the older content driven aspects and less community focus.
Yes, very web 2.0!
Permissions
Yes, very granular permissions allow for precise control over certain features for each user
Lacking
Yes
Scalability
Great for adding new sections and elements to a site. It is very easy to build off the existing codebase.
Decent Scalabily
Limited scalabilty - much harder to add new sections and elements.
Multisite
Yes, full multisite integration out of the box!
No
Yes
Categorization
Complete control over categorization of content. Can sort and order content virtually any way. Super easy to create pages listing whatever you want.
Limiting, only allows for section/category/content structure.
Very good categorization via categories and tags
Documentation
Good documentation with lots of user submitted guides and tutorials. The forums are very friendly with helpful users.
Decent, but a bit sparse on certain topics. Large community with lots of active contributors.
Good documentation over all important aspects of the system.
SSL
Yes - SSL is all built in and pretty much transparent.
Yes, requires some programming
No
Standards
Yes sir!
Close, but not exactly
Full standards compliance
Learning Curve
By far the hardest learning curve. Easier to wrap your head around if you are a developer.
Pretty easy learning curve. Lots of features, but pretty easy to follow.
Fast and easy!
Speed
Very efficient, but page loads can take a bit longer as it can be common for many queries to happen with modules and features.
Very fast with rendering pages. Can also slow down when features are added.
Fast, pages render quickly and efficiently.
Theming
Complete control over all aspects of HTML. Hard to get used to, but fairly straight-forward once learned.
Control over most aspects of the theme, although certain parts are injected in that can not be themed or tweaked. Changes on certain parts of the site may break other parts of the site and theming in general is a lot more buggy.
Control over most aspects of HTML.
Anti-Spam Features
Lots of modules, features and captchas for removing and preventing spam
Extensions that help prevent spam
Lots of spam features
Features
Tons of features for blogging, communities, social networking, content management and everything you could ever want for a web site.
A lot of good features, but lacking in social and user oriented areas.
A lot of blogging features, but not many site features.
My opinion
My CMS of choice. Great for any type of website and very easy to build off. The Drupal community is very driven and has a great vision of where to take Drupal.
Very good for brochure type sites. I guess you could say it is less powerfull than Drupal, but more powerful than Wordpress. It doesn't offer complete control on things which I don't particularily like. It is also hard to build off and is kind of more of a web 1.0 system and not web 2.0.
If all I had was a blog and I wasn't too good at programming I would use this for sure. By far the best blogging software and still very good for smaller sites without a user base.
Stability
Rock solid, although be careful when adding modules, things can go downhill very quickly. Also avoid hacking core code.
Very stable.
Extremely stable.
Database

• MySQL
• PostgresSQL

MySQL
MySQL
Security
Great
Good
Great
Programming Language
PHP
PHP
PHP
WYSIWYG Editor
Yes, but not seamlessly integrated
Yes
Yes, great integration
Page Caching
Yes
Yes
 
Integrated Statistics
Yes
Yes
Yes
Download Size
728kb
878kb
802kb
Sitewide Search
Yes
Yes
Yes

 
Drupal
Joomla
Wordpress
Pros
Scalable to support high-end comunities
Lots of features and little programming knowledge needed
Best blogging software with tons of themes and plugins
Cons

• Lots of modules that aren't updated and not compatible with the current version
• Coding knowledge required to really make it shine

Hard to control the theming and flow of certain parts
Not many!

Overall they are all very great systems, but Drupal and Wordpress stand out to me as being at the top of their game. Wordpress is best if you are the only user and are mainly blogging or building a small site. Drupal is the best if you have multiple users and are looking to build out a full web community. Joomla kind of falls in between these as it has many features but is a bit less scalable and less customizable.