Discover the three most important differences between WordPress, Drupal and Joomla
Today, there are thousands of free, open source website builder options available for non-techies. Although these Content Management Systems make creating new websites easier, they do have their strengths and weaknesses. Before choosing one you should ask yourself, what will your website be used for? What does it need in order to achieve your company’s overall strategy? Will your website serve as a primary source for blogging, press releases, or product and services advertisement? Or will it also function as a source of revenue?
If you’re having trouble deciding which platform is best for your needs, you can take heart in knowing that the three biggest: WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla do what most people are looking to accomplish. However, there are some differences. Let’s take a look at their pros and cons and see how they stack up against each other.
WordPress’s ease of use can’t be beat
Whether you’re a novice or seasoned developer, WordPress is by far the easiest to use, especially with the amount of free support out there from avid users. Released in 2003, it has been used on millions of sites and seen by millions daily. WordPress is also the most popular for blogging and smaller websites, but can do much more due to its plethora of plugins (more than 26,000), which presents both a great benefit and a challenge. These plugins allow you to do practically anything on your website. Unfortunately, not all the plugins are very good. Some may even slow down or crash your website. If you decide to choose WordPress, it’d probably be best to consider uploading the least number of plugins you need to ensure your site runs smoothly.
Drupal’s great for securing personal and financial data
Released in 2001, Drupal was designed to do almost anything from blogging to e-commerce. It can handle hundreds of pages of content without difficulty or slowing down your overall website. What makes Drupal a great choice for business are due to its strong version controls and access control list (ACL) capabilities, which make it very secure for your online buyers who have to input their financial information. Although Drupal is among the safest for content protection, it’s also more difficult to learn.
Joomla handles lots of data and media with ease
If you have a lot of data and media to manage, whether its PDF format, articles, videos or soundtracks, Joomla may be your best choice. Released in 2005, this software has the best interface for handling large quantities of information among the three open source website builders. However, it isn’t as user-friendly as WordPress or has the high security protocols as Drupal. Downloaded over 50 million times, Joomla’s extensions aren’t as plentiful as WordPress, but there are over 7,700 free and commercial extensions available from the official Joomla! Extension Directory.
Which is best depends on what’s best for you
If you’ve been tasked with building a website for your company consider WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla as three great open source website builder options. All three are free to download. Plus, they’re pre-designed to produce the most search-engine friendly sites.
Need further guidance?
If you’d like further guidance on how to build a website or need assistance on which content management system is best for your company, the friendly experts at Advance Micro Solutions would be happy to discuss your web presence situation and challenges. Please call or email our experts for a free consultation.