CMS: WordPress Joomla Drupal
Nowadays, building a new website is not that difficult as training a dog. Anyone can create a website with the help of tools and technologies available for the website development without having any knowledge of coding. Wix, weebly and squarespace; they are the three most well-known website builders.
Content Management Systems (CMS) are those technologies and tools, which allow developing fully-functional websites without needing to write a single line of code. They are used for creating and managing websites without any hassles. Joomla, Drupal and WordPress are one of the most popular content management systems. This explains why today’s match is WordPress vs. Joomla vs. Drupal.
If you’re thinking about building a website or blog, you should consider using one of the best CMS available in the market. Previously, WordPress mainly for blogging platform. Currently, WordPress is way more than that. While it did start as a blogging tool, WordPress has evolved into the standard CMS choice. Today, you can build a website from scratch thanks to WordPress.
The easy-to-use nature of the modern CMS platforms means that anyone can build themselves a great-looking website all on their own. You don’t need to be a web developer, a programmer, a designer, or have any previous experience with website building either.
These three CMS platforms have made it considerably easier for those with little-to-no technical knowledge to build a professional website. All three platforms offer users a diverse range of tools to enhance their sites.
But which one is better? And better in what? Let’s dig more into it!
The eight best CMS features that we’re looking for are:
- Costs & Expenses
- Ease of Usage
- Security & Updates
- Plugins & Themes
- Speed
- Customization Flexibility
- Learning Curve
- Support and Community
1. Costs and Expense
As all of you had known by now, all three CMS are free 100% downloadable without any cost. But there are others side expenses for you to take account to before you could starts using it.
These are the domain name and hosting costs you need to pay yearly or monthly depending on your hosting provider charges. Both expenses need to be paid then only you are able to install any of the three CMS.
Okay, your money will not stop here after the installation done. If you need extra modules, plugins or themes then you had to be charge as well. More modules, plugins and themes will costs you more and more.
All three of the best CMS have add-ons in roughly the same price range. Ultimately, you don’t have to buy any add-ons if you don’t have the budget.
In the end, you need to pay minimum:
- RM120 (.my domain name) + RM100 (hosting) = RM220 a year
2. Ease of Usage
These three major CMS, Drupal, WordPress and Joomla are aimed at beginners and tech-savvy individuals alike. But, despite this intention, their simplicity and ease-of-use is not quite on the same par level.
After all, installing Drupal, WordPress and Joomla to your host is pretty easy as different hosts provide the option to install various content management systems including Drupal, WordPress and Joomla in the backend of hosting environment.
However, you will need to hire a Drupal and Joomla developer to create a customized theme as it might be difficult for you to build a custom theme for your site.
In fact, ease of use is one of the main reasons why people prefer WordPress for developing their sites. And within minutes, you can install WordPress with plugins and themes on your host with simple one-click install option available on most of the hosts.
Clearly, WordPress is the most easiest to use and control.
3. Security & Updates
You can expect a new Drupal, WordPress and Joomla version update roughly every 2-3 months. Many of those updates are minor and just fix small bugs and issues here and there. Bigger Drupal, WordPress and Joomla releases come out a couple of times a year.
Drupal is highly secured and due to a low user base as compared to Joomla, it is much securer than WordPress. In fact, security is a critical feature for Drupal.
However, there is nothing, which is 100% secure on the internet, hence Drupal websites might be vulnerable to various threats for any reason. Most vulnerabilities for Drupal, Joomla and WordPress come from one of two factors; out of date platforms and entry points that are made from adding third-party plugins and extensions. Such plugins and extensions account for 56% of said vulnerabilities existing on websites.
WordPress is the most popular web development platform. Therefore, it is the prime target for most of the hackers and malware. As you known by now, most of the website being hacked are under WordPress (which are way past outdate). On the other hand, it’s worth pointing out that both Drupal and Joomla are hacked into proportionally less than WordPress; even once we factor in the popularity levels of all three CMSs.
Nonetheless, WordPress core is very secure and robust platform and most vulnerabilities come from the users’ end. WordPress, being a more widely-used CMS, has many more staff working behind the scenes to keep it secure.
Final result Drupal is the most secure platform.
4. Plugins & Themes
There is very much huge WordPress community that provides solutions for different requirements. You can find tons of themes and plugins from WordPress repository which are both free and priced. There are lots of plugins to choose from, and these can be fulfill various website requirements from loading speed, SEO, to security.
Joomla and Drupal isn’t as popular as WordPress, but there are still a lot of extensions available for the users. Finding the available and required extensions might be an easy task for experienced users or professionals with a strong technical background. However, this does not usually apply to beginners. In most cases, you can expect to either have to hire someone or learn the inner workings of either Joomla or Drupal if you want to end up with a custom-looking website.
And with this result, WordPress have the most plugins and themes.
5. Speed
Drupal enables you to develop fast-loading and high-performing websites. The most crucial reason for why it’s fast-loading is because Drupal is not very resource-intensive. Drupal is more lightweight compared to WordPress. Drupal becomes the first choice for those who want to build websites with thousands of pages.
Then here comes Joomla, Joomla also have a speed advantage over WordPress when it comes to larger and more complex websites. It has better scalability and will require less server usage than a WordPress website of the same size.
Speed is one of the shortcomings of WordPress. However, it doesn’t mean that WordPress sites can’t be fast. Plenty of work need to be done first. Many webmasters fail to optimize their site in the right way that’s the reason their sites lag behind in terms of speed. Things like using too many plugins, poorly coded themes, and large image websites are some reasons for slow WordPress websites.
Clearly, Drupal is the fastest in term of speed.
6. Customization Flexibility
Using Joomla, you can inherit multiple themes across and into your website. What this means is that Joomla customers can have different themes for different pages. You can switch up styles and templates if, for example, you want a different theme for your blog than your main website.
As for Drupal website. Though there are some starter themes, you would like to customize the theme to get greater potential of your site. Drupal does provide various themes and plugins in terms of themes, modules and extensions, but finding the right solution for everything will be difficult and intimidating.
On contrast, WordPress users can only work with a single theme per website.
Result with Joomla is the winner.
7. Learning Curve
Joomla, require more commitment to learning to tight the ropes. It is more complex for non-developers and beginners. While Drupal, its interface are very much complicated for a beginner or non-technical person. To create a website with Drupal, you need to possess some basic technical knowledge too.
WordPress offers a simple and fully-functional way to do anything with your site without even knowing anything about coding. There is a massive repository of themes and plugins from where webmasters can choose any theme and plugin to enhance their website’s appearance and functionality. With the help of some tutorial videos and articles, users can learn how to build their websites effectively.
And that with WordPress you can build a website without any knowledge.
8. Support and Community
All three of our best CMS offer plenty of ways for you to get help:
- WordPress has their support section on the official website. You’ll find user guides there, documentations, and you can also access the user forum where the community itself can help you solve your problem.
- Joomla have their main documentation, the community portal and training, and also the user forums.
- Drupal follows the same, for documentation, support, community portal and user guides.
The official support forums are all quite similar with either CMS.
