Building a website requires a lot of homework and planning, especially in the modern cut-throat business scenario. A website is the face of your business that will play a decisive role in expanding it and adding new dimensions to it and will help in boosting the functionality of your business.
A stoic content management system becomes an utmost necessity for modern-age businesses, as in the digital world if you have strong content; it becomes easier to retain your customers.
Popular Content Management Systems (CMS) platforms such as WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla are available for the top web development companies, each having a uniqueness of its own. WordPress on the one hand powers almost 35% of the total websites on the internet, while using the inherent qualities of Drupal and Joomla, the expert Drupal and Joomla developers create advanced and sophisticated websites.
It becomes imperative to understand the usage of CMS Platforms such as WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal while developing a website for the benefit of your business. In this article, we will help you by explaining the difference between top CMS systems.
Introduction to WordPress
WordPress is an open-source content management system written in PHP and paired with a MySQL database used to build online websites. It is one of the most powerful and most comfortable website content management system in the world today. WordPress, an online website creation tool, provides a platform to build a variety of websites.
Top WordPress development companies will assist in developing different types of websites such as blogging, ecommerce, portfolio management websites, and much more. WordPress provides versatility, and that's the reason why many Fortune 500 companies use WordPress for their content management.
Introduction to Joomla
Joomla is a content management system whose primary focus is on enhancing the usability and extensibility of the website. With Joomla, the content management and delivery is made easier on both the site manager’s as well as the visitor’s end. This is the reason why recognized brands such as MTV, Harvard, and iHop trust Joomla and hire expert Joomla developers to develop innovative websites which go well beyond their boundaries.
Moreover, it can carry out multiple tasks and develop websites for various businesses hailing from different industries.
Introduction to Drupal
Drupal is a flexible content management system that is based on LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) stack that allows features to be added or removed by either installing or uninstalling the modules. At the core, Drupal contains PHP scripts that are needed to run CMS functionality, image assets, JavaScripts, and many additional modules and themes.
Top organizations like Tesla, leading universities like the University of Minnesota, and government organizations such as the Australian Government and the US department of energy use Drupal as their preferred choice of web development platform for building a website.
Let us now have a look at how the Market Moguls, WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal, fare against each other.
The differentiating factors: WordPress vs. Joomla vs. Drupal
Ease of Installation
Ease of use or installation becomes an essential factor before selecting a content management system for web app, as a majority of the people who design websites are not skilled web developers or web designers.
WordPress
With WordPress, the best web developers have a one-click install system that makes it reasonably easy for a new WordPress developer to start a WordPress blog. In addition to this, companies choose WordPress and hire expert WordPress developers as the CMS provides a better post-installation experience as compared to Drupal. WordPress gives you a neat and clean dashboard that makes it easier to control every aspect of the website in a highly synchronized manner.
Joomla
Like WordPress, Joomla has a five-minute installation method too, but it is not as fast as WordPress. Many shared hosting providers are offering one-click install packages for Joomla. But despite all this, Joomla ranks a tad lower when it comes to ease of installation as compared to WordPress. Moreover, the post-installation experience of Joomla is not as good as compared to WordPress. WordPress provides many options that help customize your website. Thus, with the help of top Joomla developers, a company can customize its website according to the likes of their targeted customers.
Drupal
The installation process in Drupal can be challenging if you are a beginner. Drupal provides distributions to the best developers that will help them to create websites using specific configurations and modules. But for this, you need to have a team of Top-notch Drupal developers as they will help your organization to crack the code and develop a robust, customized website. The post-installation of Drupal will seem a bit complicated for novice developers, as changing the appearance is not mentioned.
Popularity
The popularity of a content management system is crucial as it guarantees the support of a broad community of expert web developers that can help you during the website development process.
WordPress
WordPress is the most popular CMS platform, which was first introduced in the year 2003. The reason behind the popularity of WordPress is that it is complete content management software and is a highly intuitive platform even for rookie WordPress developers and designers. In addition to this, WordPress has an extensive global community that includes experienced and enthusiastic designers and developers who can help you with any queries during the website development process. It is the reason why WordPress occupies almost 59% of the total CMS market share.
Joomla
Joomla was first released in the year 2005 and since has become second most popular CMS platform after WordPress. Millions of websites have been developed using Joomla. Different sectors such as Education, health, technology, entertainment, and many government agencies use Joomla and it has a vast open source community with millions of Joomla developers all across the globe. Not only is it a fantastic platform for developing websites, Joomla community continually works on improving the platform and supporting the Joomla developers for better results.
Drupal
Drupal is the oldest CMS platform which was first released in the year 2001. Using Drupal, Best Drupal developers can focus on providing robust security, reliable performance, and customizability to the website. The open-source community of Drupal has over one million dedicated designers, trainers, and developers, which will help you in solving all the problems related to website development using Drupal CMS. Various businesses hailing from different industries such as blogging, Education, and e-commerce use Drupal as it provides a standard platform for the top web developers to showcase their skills.
Security
In the modern-day business scenario, security is very vital as it minimizes the risk of malware attacks or hacking on the website.
WordPress
WordPress has built a much-secured code as the developers know that the number one CMS platform is on the radar of the hackers all the time. It has an auto-update mechanism, and it responds to any kind of vulnerability quickly. Moreover, with two-factor authentication, expert WordPress developers can further secure their website with the help of automated backups and other good practices.
Joomla
Apart from responding to any kind of vulnerability in a quick time, Joomla also fixes and fills all kinds of security gaps. Although, the developer has all the controls when it comes to updating and maintaining the website as these processes are not automated in Joomla. The CMS platform renders enhanced security as there are extensions available for the backup of the website along with applying the best practices similar to WordPress.
Drupal
The Drupal platform is less prone to attacks among all the three content management systems. It applies a severe approach to the security as the Drupal team informs developers as and when the vulnerabilities of the official site get fixed. It is complicated to hack Drupal as it is a secure platform to the core by default and can carefully handle all the security-related issues.
Cost and Expense
Money becomes a significant factor to consider while building a website, as many upcoming bootstrapped start-ups will also be looking forward to making a cutting edge website to start on a positive note in the market.
WordPress
In WordPress, you need to pay for adding premium plugins as not all the plugins are free to use. For example, if you are building an e-commerce website, you need to pay extra if you want to include the payment gateways. Moreover, you need to pay for hosting a website which is very common in other CMS platforms too, unless you have your own server. Also, if you want to add sophisticated functions, you need to pay extra to hire WordPress experts.
Joomla
The expense structure in Joomla is pretty much similar to that of WordPress. Moreover, in Joomla, the organizations need to pay for premium extensions and templates as well. There is no option of free hosting like WordPress, and you need to pay more for additional functionalities as well.
Drupal
Drupal was designed and developed while keeping the security and performance of the website in mind. Hence you require less hardware which ultimately saves you on the server cost. Although for premium themes you need to spend some extra amount of money. Moreover, as Drupal is not as suitable for beginners as the other two CMS platforms, you might need a team of expert Drupal developers which will add more to your web development costs as well.
Multi-language support and Localization
To increase your customer base and expand your business, it becomes essential to have a multilingual website. Moreover, you can apply the hyper localization business technique more effectively with a multi-language website.
WordPress
WordPress is an excellent platform for developing multilingual websites. It offers different plugins that professional WordPress development companies in the CMS development market can use to provide you assistance. Moreover, it has all the popular themes and plugins. WordPress, however, doesn't offer a multi-language website development option out of the box. You need to hire WordPress developers to develop custom multilingual website.
Joomla
Joomla renders out of the box support and offers pretty straightforward methods to develop a multi-language website. The Joomla developers just need to choose their language and start building the website on it without worrying about adding new or additional extensions. With Joomla, the cms developers can also add a translation for the admin interface, and if you hire an experienced Joomla developer, the process of building a Multilanguage website becomes very easy.
Drupal
Drupal offers by-default support to the Drupal developers to create a multi-language website. Apart from adding the site and interface languages from the configuration section, you can get the functionality by enabling locale and content translation modules.
Final Words
The trio of WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal is a fantastic Content Management System that can help to add wings to any kind of business and help them fly ahead of their peers. Drupal and Joomla offer better in-built features as compared to WordPress. In contrast, WordPress has massive community support and is very easy to use and install, even for the rookie web developers.
Thus, for an organization, it becomes indispensable to do their homework related to their needs and wants and then select the CMS platform, which is best suited for their requirements.
