Content management system comparison - Drupal vs Wordpress vs Joomla

Content management systems make creating, running, and organizing websites and blogs a breeze! I have used three content management systems heavily over the years and I wanted to create this Content Management System Comparison to help others choose which CMS they should use.

In this content management system comparison I will compare Drupal, Wordpress, and Joomla and give you the pros and cons of each. Keep in mind that these three content management systems are all free to use, they are some of the most used CMSs, and they are constantly being updated and further developed so the pros and cons that I discuss in this article could be different once new releases come out for each of these.

But currently here’s how I access Drupal vs Wordpress vs Joomla:

Drupal

This is the best Content Management System to build an advanced website with many users because you can pretty much use it to do control and create anything on your website. However, there is a pretty large learning curve to use Drupal but once you get past this learning curve you can do almost anything! Because of this, I think Drupal is best for large complex sites with many users.

Drupal was use to create websites like:

• mtv.co.uk
• universalmusic.com
• foxsearchlight.com

Drupal allows you to manage members and permissions with ease and it has many modules you can easily add to your website to customize it however you want.

Pros:

• Best written code out of these three CMSs
• Best out of the box for SEO
• Allows you to do more than most  other CMSs
• Allows for very advanced management of members and permissions
• Excellent for tagging
• Has many modules to customize your site
• Decent out of the box forum
• Great community (many non-profits)

Cons:

• Larger than normal learning curve
• Not many great free themes
• Not many outside commercial developers work on new themes or templates
• Not easy to customize code if you only know html

 *note—YouCreateWebsite.com was built with Drupal

Wordpress

If you are creating just a blog or a basic website you should absolutely use Wordpress! It is extremely easy to use and it offers many nice (easy to use) features.

Pros:

• Very easy to use
• Beautiful themes
• Many outside developers work on themes and plugins
• Has a massive user base that help with any questions you have on their forums
• Has tons of plugins and widgets to customize your site
• If you know anything about html or CSS it’s very easy to customize your website or blog
• Great community

Cons:

• You can’t do as advanced of things like you can with Drupal or Joomla (like permissions and managing large membership sites)
• Not the cleanest written code…but pretty good

Joomla

This CMS fits somewhere between Wordpress and Drupal because it is easier to use than Drupal but more advanced than Wordpress. It also has nicer looking themes than Drupal but it's not as great at managing member permissions.

Pros:

• Can create advanced websites like Drupal
• Beautiful free themes
• Many commercial developers work on themes and templates
• Allows for good management of members and permissions
• Good stock WYSIWYG editor
• Great with multimedia
• Great community
• Not too hard to learn (when compared with Drupal)

Cons:

• The code isn’t written quite as neatly as Drupal
• Not as good as Drupal with SEO out of the box
• It has a larger learning curve than Wordpress (*but less than Drupal)
• Poor control over permissions (only 3 levels currently: Public, Registered and Special)

Conclusion

Use Drupal if:

You want an advanced website with a lot of community features, permissions, member control, and excellent out of the box SEO…but be prepared to get over their learning curve.

Use Wordpress if:

You are creating a blog or a basic website without really advanced needs. I think for about 90% of the visitors reading this... Wordpress will be more than you need. It’s very easy to use and set up and you can easily customize it.

Use Joomla if:

You want a website that looks great, that has advanced features, but isn’t as hard to use as Drupal.

It is often said that the best programmers and coders go develop for Drupal because the Drupal community takes great pride in writing the best code…and the best theme developers go to Joomla or Wordpress.

I hope you found this content management system comparison helpful.

So what's your thoughts on Content Management Systems? And which one is your favorite (you can comment below).

...also be sure to check out my free report.