CMS Comparison: Drupal, Joomla and Wordpress
If creating a website for your business is on the horizon, you may be wondering which content management system (CMS) is the best choice for you. Here’s a look at three of the most widely-used ones. All three are open-source software, each developed and maintained by a community of thousands. Not only are all three free to download and use, but the open-source format means that the platform is continuously being improved to support new Internet technologies. With all of these systems, basic functions can be enhanced ad infinitum with an ever-expanding array of add-ons, contributed from their respective communities.
There’s no one-size-fits-all solution here; it depends on your goals, technical expertise, budget and what you need your site to do. For a simple blog or brochure-type site, Wordpress could be the best choice (while very friendly for non-developers, it’s a flexible platform also capable of very complex sites). For a complex, highly customized site requiring scalability and complex content organization, Drupal might be the best choice. For something in between that has an easier learning curve, Joomla may be the answer.
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. With both Wordpress and Joomla, you can order a wide range of services and options off the menu to suit your needs; with Drupal, you’ll be in the kitchen cooking up what you want for yourself, with all of the privileges of customization that entails.
See the comparison chart below for more insight into the differences in these top content management systems. Still not sure? Download each of the free platforms and do a trial run to help you decide.
| Drupal | Joomla | Wordpress | |
| Homepage | www.drupal.org | www.joomla.org | www.wordpress.org |
| About | Drupal is a powerful, developer-friendly tool for building complex sites. Like most powerful tools, it requires some expertise and experience to operate. |
Joomla offers middle ground between the developer-oriented, extensive capabilities of Drupal and user-friendly but more complex site development options than Wordpress offers. |
Wordpress began as an innovative, easy-to-use blogging platform. With an ever-increasing repertoire of themes, plugins and widgets, this CMS is widely used for other website formats also. |
| Example Sites |
Community Portal: Fast Company, Team Sugar |
Social Networking: MTV Networks Quizilla Education: Harvard University Restaurant: IHOP |
Social Networking: PlayStation Blog News Publishing: CNN Political Ticker Education/Research: NASA Ames Research Center News Publishing:The New York Observer |
| Installation | Drupal Installation Forum | Joomla Installation Forum | Wordpress Installation Forum |
| Ease of Use |
Drupal requires the most technical expertise of the three CMSs. However, it also is capable of producing the most advanced sites. With each release, it is becoming easier to use. If you’re unable to commit to learning the software or can’t hire someone who knows it, it may not be the best choice. |
Less complex than Drupal, more complex than Wordpress. Relatively uncomplicated installation and setup. With a relatively small investment of effort into understanding Joomla’s structure and terminology, you have the ability to create fairly complex sites. |
Technical experience is not necessary; it’s intuitive and easy to get a simple site set up quickly. It’s easy to paste text from a Microsoft Word document into a Wordpress site, but not into Joomla and Drupal sites. |
| Features | Known for its powerful taxonomy and ability to tag, categorize and organize complex content. | Designed to perform as a community platform, with strong social networking features. |
Ease of use is a key benefit for experts and novices alike. It’s powerful enough for web developers or designers to efficiently build sites for clients; then, with minimal instruction, clients can take over the site management. Known for an extensive selection of themes. Very user-friendly with great support and tutorials, making it great for non-technical users to quickly deploy fairly simple sites. |
| Caching Plug-ins | Pressflow: This is a downloadable version of Drupal that comes bundled with popular enhancements in key areas, including performance and scalability. |
JotCache offers page caching in the Joomla 1.5 search framework, resulting in fast page downloads. Also provides control over what content is cached and what is not. In addition, page caching is supported by the System Cache Plugin that comes with Joomla. |
WP-SuperCache: The Super Cache plugin optimizes performance by generating static html files from database-driven content for faster load times. |
| Best Use Cases | For complex, advanced and versatile sites; for sites that require complex data organization; for community platform sites with multiple users; for online stores |
Joomla allows you to build a site with more content and structure flexibility than Wordpress offers, but still with fairly easy, intuitive usage. Supports E-commerce, social networking and more. |
Ideal for fairly simple web sites, such as everyday blogging and news sites; and anyone looking for an easy-to-manage site. Add-ons make it easy to expand the functionality of the site. |
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83 Comments
Drupal Rocks
Show content in mobile devices.
I have a web site, based in Linux / Tomcat / MySQl. This site have been working for some years.
Now, I need to develop an application to show part of the contents of the site in mobile devices, including database contents, html, photos and video files.
The question is: Is WordPress, Joomla and/or Drupal suitable for develop this application?
Thank you.
Antolo
These are only three of dozens of other open source CMS....
Personally I use Concrete 5, as it's easy and makes nice looking sites, but other CMSs include Tiki, Alfresco, Plone, KnowledgeTree, Radiant, EzPublish, etc. I have worked with WordPress as as well as Joomla/Drupal, and I agree with others...WordPress is a great blogging platform, but it's feature set and design limits should be considered before diving headlong into it.
http://bitnami.org/stacks/cms
Joopalpress
Wordpress and Joomla Fully Integrated
Problem in Drupal
re: Javascript
Re: Javascript
re: Javascript
http://drupal.org/node/121997
Migrating from CMS to another CMS
Hi!
I had the same problem with the migration. I have an extended site with a lot of elements. I used cms2cms tool that moves data automatedly with the help of the connection bridge between wp and joomla sites. here's video tutorial on how this tool works http://www.cms2cms.com/blog/5-simple-steps-to-migrate-from-joomla-to-wordpress/
I may say it migrated my site pretty good including almost all the content.
Drupal is good and easy
Nice review, these Content
I mostly work with Open Source solutions and also in customizing websites built on Joomla, Magento, Prestashop, Wordpress and Dupral.
Contact me if you need some help
Marc
http://beyowi.com/
Thanks for this. It answered
Cheers
Wordpress for Volunteer Organization
Drupal is too difficult
Drupal Resources for beginners
But there are also many paid resources for more formalized training for drupal developers and website builders.
Two popular ones are:
http://buildamodule.com/ (over 910 carefully crafted Drupal video tutorials.)
http://drupalize.me/ (hundreds of hours of video tutorials)
There are also many book resources and other local training in many cities.
Maybe these would help you.
In general drupal is well organized to use but you one first needs to understand the "content before structure paradigm" where content/data is input and only then told where to be presented.
Drupal Interface
Drupal 7 interface is well organized and easy to use out-of-the-box. I would say that Wordpress is even better out-of-the-box. But the differences are not huge. Also, with Drupal one can add the Admin or the Admin_menu modules (plugins) and have an even better backend interface.
Drupal 8 takes user interface to new levels. From what I understand it is very well built for content editors not only for desktop but its also responsive for mobile view ports (default out-of-the-box behaviour).
hello,
im unable to find the right CMS, i need these features:
- option to limit forums and blog view/post to groups of users
- good customization of theme with simple switching of tones (drupal)
- only admin can create a blog, forum rooms; sup users (see below) can post on forum room and comment on posts, no blog comment / creation allowed
example:
- i want only "sup" group be able to read/write on forums, and read on blogs, i do not want comments on blog side but only forums
- i also want "rguest" to be able to access only on forum room where they can post but i do not want that they read on blog.
Both Joomla or Drupal are good for it
FrontPage Addict seeks fix
FrontPage was my kind of toy. SharePoint Designer is not a good replacement.
I simply need an editor that is as easy to use as Word 2010, but is NOT Word.
My sites are hosted by a large hosting company, so all I really need to do is add content, both text and images - and a few movies - and format them to be easy on the eyes.
It appears that WordPress might be that editor, but I cannot seem to DL and make it grab my sites.
Does anyone have any ideas for an aging techie, who now needs an easy learning curve to be able to manage my sites?
Thanks for your patience,
-a.
Server resources usage
The answer is important for website administrator with the large number of visitors.
I'm not sure to choose between Drupal 6 and 7, or choose another CMS like WP.
Guide me please
Thanks
Server Resources
I don't think its a straight forward question/answer.
I cannot speak for Joomla.
I know a little about WP.
There are many issues to consider like:
Server processor (be it VPS, dedicated server or otherwise)
Harddisk (how often does your CMS need to access a hard disk) if a lot then a SSD (hard disk in flash memory - solid state drive) maybe a good way to do. SSD would also boost Database performance.
Database is another issue - how often is the DB accessed by the CMS.
Database cacheing would go along way.
If you need to conserve server resources then usually the best approach (other then selecting a good CMS and hardware) is having good options for cacheing various elements of the server.
Opcode (for php) like APC, etc. would reduce resources like needed CPU cycles to interpret the php instructions.
Reverse proxy like Varnish or Squid would help a lot on static content.
Drupal CMS has the boost module which caches static pages which dramatically saves server resources and helps a website deal with large amounts of traffic for static pages.
In general, Drupal has a very sophisticated api for hooking into various cache systems like memcache, varnish reverse proxy, apc opcode cache.
There is also the need to reduce http requests, so optimizing and aggregating CSS and Javascript files automatically also goes a long way. There are a number of options in Drupal for this.
I know that on simple/cheaper hosting WP probably needs less resources than Drupal, but as a website becomes more complex the Drupal provides a lot of flexibility to acutely tune and cache many parts of the CMS and significantly reduces resources. I know Drupal has been used on the Grammy's website for the past 4 years and that website gets a huge about of traffic on Grammy night. Huge is an understatement. But I guess they also have a lot of server resources available.
Joomla
Joomla won hands down for me. Maybe it's about how I think...
omission of critical criteria from comparison
Over the past year, and until one month ago (April, 2013), WordPress has been by far the most vulnerable to intrusions with more than 83,000 Wordpress sites hacked just this quarter.
This important factor should not be left out of any discussion of Web security.
re: Security
There haven't been many major vulnerabilities found in core WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla in the last few years, to my knowledge, and when found they've been quickly accompanied by fixes. If WordPress seems more vulnerable I suspect it has more to do with it being an easier target (since it's used more than the others) and because its ease-of-use attracts more users who aren't as security-savvy as they could be.
The key to security with the CMSes covered here (and with most others) is keeping up with updates to the core software and add-ons and sticking to good hardening practices. Don't use obvious admin usernames, use hard passwords, don't re-use passwords, lock down database access, and carefully review any add-ons you install to ensure they don't introduce any potential vulnerabilities.
re: Security
I have found that usually contributed plugins or themes introduce vulnerabilities. This happens a lot with Wordpress where I have even seen a site "grind-to-almost-a-halt" due to viruses attached to the theme files. I am not sure why?
In Drupal the community tends to reduce plugins with duplicate features via collaboration and merging of plugins (modules in Drupal speak). The plugins result a lot of peer review which tends to reduce the security concerns of back doors, etc. Also plugins are security reviewed when published and there are proceedures for removing plugins that may be problematic. Also there is a lot of awareness in the Drupal community regarding security. In Drupal 7 security was given a lot of attention.
Wordpress Easy to Use
Thank you so much to share wonderful information with us.
I am looking forward to your kind support.
Drupal Easy of Use
In general Drupal is significantly more customizable than most CMSes including Wordpress. To some users that could be a good thing or not as usually systems that are more customizable tend to be more complex due to their flexibility.
joomla is best
Responsive design
Nice comparison, thanks.
Note:
there is some other caching and performance modules for drupal (for example varnish and memcached integration modules)
Excellent points. To do a
http://blazemeter.com/blog/aggregate-load-testing-results-wordpress-vs-drupal
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