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WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal: Which is the Best CMS for Your Website?

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Published: September 26, 2014

Deciding on which content management system will meet all of your company’s needs is not an easy decision to make, since it can lead to a promotion or possibly termination. Before you get sold on a platform that will not meet your company’s needs, read this post to make an intellegent decision. All three platforms (WordPress, Joomla and Drupal)have their advantages and disadvantages, therefore in the end it will be your and your team’s decision to make.

Advantages of WordPress

  • WordPress is the most widely-used CMS (Content Management System) platform in the world, powering such big-name sites as Forbes, CNN, and Sony.
  • Over 2,000 themes and more than 27,000 plug-ins are currently available for WordPress.
  • WordPress is an ideal choice for visually appealing sites that require a platform that is easy to set up and manage.

The WordPress platform is extremely user-friendly. How-to tutorial videos are readily available, in addition to a world-wide community of WordPress users and developers who like nothing better than to help diagnose and solve WordPress problems and issues.

WordPress was designed to be search engine friendly, and a number of plug-ins are available for quick and easy on-page SEO. Full theme customization is fairly straightforward and can be accomplished by just about anyone with even minimal HTML and CSS skills. WordPress is an extremely flexible platform that can power anything from a basic blog site to an ecommerce store.

Disadvantages of WordPress
WordPress sites are a favorite target of hackers. Unfortunately, the software itself has a number of security issues that require additional plug-ins to correct.

New updates may have a compatibility issue with older plug-ins. This means that you may have to hold off on updating your site or go through the hassle of replacing your older plug-ins. Despite having thousands of theme and plug-in options, some website applications may be hampered by limited design options. A limited CMS capability means that your WordPress site may have problems dealing with large volumes of content.

Advantages of Joomla

  • Joomla software powers such sites as Harvard University and cloud.com.
  • More than 900 themes and some 7,000 plug-ins (extensions in Joomla-speak) are available.
  • Joomla is best suited for no-frills applications and small to mid-range ecommerce sites.

Like WordPress, Joomla has a strong and supportive user and developer community to help you over the rough spots. Joomla has a fairly powerful CMS that enables the software to easily handle volume content applications.

Disadvantages of Joomla
Joomla has a steeper learning curve than WordPress, which means you’re going to need training before you slide behind the steering wheel.

SEO capabilities are seriously lacking with Joomla. You’ll most likely need to bring in an SEO/coding expert if you hope to rank your Joomla website in the search engine results.

Joomla has very limited ACL (Access Control List) support. This function controls access to specific web pages.

Advantages of Drupal

  • Drupal is the platform of choice for such websites as whitehouse.gov, Warner Brothers, and data.gov.uk.
  • Over 1,800 themes and 24,000 plug-ins (or modules) are supported.
  • Drupal is well suited for those applications where stability and the ability to manage large volumes of content are more important than site aesthetics and user friendliness.

Drupal software is extremely flexible, permitting a wide range of website applications. Like WordPress, Drupal websites are extremely SEO-friendly and easy to optimize. The variety of available themes and modules makes Drupal easy to customize as long as you know what you are doing.

Disadvantages of Drupal
Drupal has a very steep learning curve. Because Drupal requires an in-depth knowledge of its programming, finding qualified support help may present a problem. Most of the better plug-ins, or modules, for Drupal are not free. Many of the available themes are severely lacking in aesthetics; you may find it necessary to find a designer well-versed in Drupal to help you come up with an acceptable website design.

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