Website Design Ottawa – The Joomla Advantage

Issue 2

Joomla vs. Drupal vs. Wordpress

There is a great deal of talk going on about which one of the three leading open-source content management systems (CMS) is better: Joomla, Drupal or Wordpress. Here is our view on the topic.

This discussion resembles a debate on which car is better:  Ferrari, Lamborghini or Alfa Romeo. Close your eyes, take a pick - you won’t regret your choice.

It is so wonderful to have open-source content management systems. All three – Joomla, Drupal, and Wordpress – are great CMS. There are, of course, differences between them.  We will try and summarize them in as short as format as possible.

Wordpress

Wordpress is great for blog style sites, with end users who have only basic Internet knowledge and need a simple and highly intuitive CMS. There is next-to-nothing learning required for an end-end. Limitations of Wordpress include a limited number of add-on modules, plugins and components. In the last couple of years, however, a lot more new components got developed for Wordpress, but it would take a while before Wordpress catches up with Joomla in this respect.

Joomla

Joomla is great for websites which require various dynamic functionalities, i.e. a job board, real-estate board, e-commerce, all of them together, etc.etc.  Joomla has the largest repository of components, modules and plugins available on a plug-and-play basis. There is a basic learning for the end-user, a bit steeper than for Wordpress, but it isn't steep.  All of our clients, even those who identified themselves as “digitally challenged”, were able to learn how to add and modify content on their new Joomla websites within one hour. If you know how to use Yahoo or Gmail email, you will learn how to use Joomla very quickly. Joomla also has the largest design and support community, so as a result, there is a larger number of website templates available for Joomla and they are generally of higher quality.

Drupal

Drupal is great for website owners who need specific, custom-designed, functionalities and  web solutions. Drupal is said to be more flexible than Wordpress or Joomla, but it requires a deeper programming knowledge and generally more programming efforts. The learning curve for the end-user is also steeper than Joomla and Wordpress. Also, the number of quality website templates developed for Drupal is low, so you will most likely need a custom-designed template for your front end, which will add to your overall costs.

Summary

If your website is largely text- and content-driven and you are unlikely to add a myriad of dynamic functionalities to it in the future, plus if you are mostly interested in social interaction on your website – then Wordpress is your best choice. 

If you need a highly tailored and potentially very complex web application and none of the folks on your end-user team are “digitally challenged”, and if you have a decent budget for custom programming - then Drupal is your best choice.

If, however, you would like to have the best of both worlds – Joomla is your best choice. In our view, Joomla has it all: ease of use, flexibility, and incredibly large pool of add-on functionalities. Custom programming solutions might not be implemented as elegantly on Joomla as they would be in Drupal, but Joomla can handle everything. What's also very important is that website templates developed for Joomla are of very high quality and there is an ocean of them. And any additional functionality - be it social networking user interaction, blog, content rating, what have you - can be added with just a few clicks. 

And with each new release, Joomla is getting better and better: Joomla 1.6 Alpha 2 Released.

If you would like to do additional research, here is a great list of CMSs. This can be a good starting point.

The Joomla Blilss Verdict

• Blog-style websites – Wordpress
• Custom-tailored web applications – Drupal
• Flexible websites –  Joomla 

Here is all that we've just said in one simple graph!

 If you would need help with getting a new Joomla website, contact us at Joomla Bliss. We offer several website design packages ranging from $100 to $1000+.

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