You may have heard of the 3 more popular content management applications: WordPress, Drupal, Joomla – but you are not sure which one is best for your needs. Perhaps you remain curious; so we will focus the the two ‘other’ choices besides WordPress: Drupal & Joomla.
Each particular CMS will provide the basic functions of: adding, deleting, and publishing various types of content. Each program has different strong points (and weaknesses) which should be considered whole-cloth, prior to making your ultimate decision.
First write down your business’ objectives and goals. This should be is the first step in selecting the best CMS application suited for your particular business needs. Ultimately, optimally serving your business’ unique target audience.
Choosing the right CMS (by the way, easily confused with CNS (Central Nervous System)), is the backbone for your project it will save you a great deal of headaches later. A reliable web host, with super customer support, also saves you from initial and future headaches. With 4GoodHosting.ca you can get both ultra-reliable hosting and the CMS of your choice for free: Joomla, Drupal, or of course; WordPress – or any of the 200+ free scripts we offer you with any of our hosting package.
Drupal:
In 2016, there is an estimated 1 million+ websites built atop the Drupal CMS. Drupal is common to government offices, universities and colleges, Non-government Organization, Canadian & otherwise global enterprises. America’s White House website is taking advantage of Drupal’s strong website security features. Drupal is a comprehensive, expandable, powerful content management framework suitable to be the foundation of virtually any type of website.
Drupal’s Advantages:
- * Tested Enterprise-level security; advanced control over URL structure
- * Lots of functionality – including advanced menu management, graphics modification utilities, poll management, and administration/users management
- * Built for high performance; pages load fast because of its defaulting caching features
- * Ability to handle large amounts of content & data
- * Extensive selection of themes, modules & extensions
- * Ideal for community platform sites (requiring multiple users – admin, editors, logged in users requiring customized content, private groups, etc.)
- * Large robust community generally responsive to inquiries and concerns.
- * Good SEO configurability
- * Clean/professional looking designs/themes.
Drupal’s Disadvantages:
- * High/technical learning curve; not user-friendly
- * Developer skills needed to install and apply upgrades requiring experienced knowledge of PHP and HTML languages as well as CSS
- * More expensive: premium themes and plugins (modules) are prices considerably higher than say WordPress (and Joomla)
- * Big name Brands who are Using Joomla:
- * The Weather Channel
- * NBC.com
- * Oxford University
- * Verizon Wireless
- * The White House
- * The Economist Magazine
- * Forbes Magazine
Joomla:
Another good option for small to mid-sized websites or e-commerce stores (or for building a community or a social network with a membership features, forums, newsroom, articles, and a writing staff). However, if you need something more powerful for larger/enterprise projects where scalability, stability, & high versatility are essential, then learning and using Drupal would be more appropriate.
Joomla is becoming an increasingly popular CMS platform. Trailing WordPress, it is the 2nd most accepted CMS. Joomla is currently housing over 3 million websites.
Joomla level of complexity is somewhere between WordPress (simplest) in most advanced and enterprise-class Drupal.
Joomla has the extensibility of being extended in order to produce even new functionality. Joomla has won the Packt Open Source Awards now several years in a row.
Joomla entails a slight learning curve, particularly for novices, yet webmasters usually wind up happy with Joomla’s built in features.
Joomla’s Advantages:
- * Installation is simple (developer knowledge of CSS, PHP, or HTML is not required) updates installs are easily done through web browser
- * E-commerce made easy
- * Thousands of free extensions available (for increased functionality of your site)
- * Advanced administration panel offers many functions for complete optimization
- * Manage users simply and easily
- * Joomla’s application framework makes it possible for developers to create powerful add-ons
- * URLs generated are SEO friendly
- * Active community support (programmer tools and tutorials for users )
Joomla’s Disadvantages:
- * Some learning curve to ride – but not as much as Drupal.
- * About half of the plugins/extensions & modules are for purchase
- * Limited configurability options (particularly for advanced users); Limited “access control list” (ACL) support
- * Occasional compatibility issues with some of the plugins, which requires some PHP skill to iron-out the functions to work properly
Big name Brands who are Using Joomla:
- * IKEA
- * IHOP
- * Harvard University (Graduate School of Arts and Sciences )
If you have some experience with content management systems and you’re considering alternatives to WordPress, and the prospect of diving into Drupal seems quite daunting, then Joomla might be your best option. Thank you for choosing 4GoodHosting.com, your trusted destination for white label SEO services and B2B SEO services, as your 5.0 Google-rated, A+ BBB Canadian Web Host.
