The number of people who want to create a website is growing by the minute. Whether it’s a basic blog detailing the day-to-day operation of an individual, or an enterprise-level website with all the bells and whistles. There’s no stopping people’s passion with websites and the Web. Mostly because of this value, there are some obstacles and one obstacle people face quickly is cost-as anyone who has taken this path will tell you. The cost of building a website can often be excessive.
Although engaging website developers and programmers may have limited impact on the bottom line of large corporations. These costs can be prohibitive for the rest of us – individuals and those involved in smaller businesses. Recognizing this reality, and ensuring that (as much as possible) the Web remains a level playing field. Developers around the world are investing time and energy in providing individuals. The resources they need to set up websites independently and at no cost to them.
Such developers, known as the “open source” movement, create solutions which anyone can access free of charge. Most developers focus their efforts on creating content management systems (CMSs), which underpin the creation and management of websites as a whole. The majority of websites are design using CMSs, and while there are a myriad of options to choose from, three have total dominance: WordPress, Joomla and Drupal.
Just to give you an idea of their supremacy level, seven out of ten websites are build on the Internet using either WordPress, Joomla or Drupal. Some people use Android mobile phones, and others use iOS phones. Whether someone uses WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal depends very much on their background and which one he or she first came in contact with.
But if you just start and have little or no knowledge of any of these solutions, then the natural question is this “Which one is the best?” so this article will try to compare the three solutions and offer the suggestions that might help you or someone to make a better choice of CMS.
Which one is the best?
The Basics
First, you should note that the same thing is done by WordPress, Joomla or Drupal-they underpin the websites. They are all download from the Internet and each is license under the terms of the ‘GNU General Public License’. As we have said before, anyone is free to use any open source solution and CMSs are no exception. Although WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal are similar in what they do, they are different in how they do it. And each solution has its advantages and limitations. Comparing issues of a similar nature is complicate, so we will suggest a few requirements in this article and see how each solution shapes up.
Costs
For the first requirement which is costs because there is truly no such thing as a free lunch. Likewise there is no such thing as a free website. All websites require hosting. Thankfully, “PHP” is designed for WordPress, Joomla or Drupal and a cost-free server operating system that many web hosts use. There is an abundance of the Linux hosting that PHP-based solutions require, and being so popular such hosting is often quite cheap. For up to $10 per month, you can get a good hosting service, so that shouldn’t break the bank. The commercially available add-ons and templates that you can use for your websites will be the biggest expense beyond this. And they can be costly.
Although it’s costly, it’s much lower than a developer’s cost, but most people still need to worry about it. Generally speaking, the cost of modules is reasonably similar between solutions. By WordPress products often come in a bit cheaper when you compare individual add-ons.
Security
If you’re just starting with WordPress, Joomla or Drupal, safety may not be one of your main concerns. Security should be your primary concern in a time of cyber threats including websites being completely hijacked and only usable again when a ransom has been paid.
Customizability
Each solution does pretty much the same thing. Each provides a core framework that facilitates website development and each offers templates that change the look and feel of a website. Such templates are either developed for free use by the communities that support a solution. Or offered at cost by commercial organizations. More importantly each solution offers additional functionality using ‘add-ons’ (WordPress ‘Plugins’, Joomla ‘Modules’ and ‘Plugins’, and Drupal ‘Modules’) that can be installed into the framework. Again, these are provided free of charge or at cost depending on the source.
If you want your website to have a rotating image where the header should be. There are add-ons that provide this functionality. If you want to add a complex email form to your site, again, there is an appropriate add on to use. Whatever your requirement, there will be something you can add to your site. To determine which solution has the greatest customizability, we have to establish which has the greatest number of add-ons available.
There are more than 50,000 plugins in the official WordPress directory, while Joomla suggests it has around 8,000 extensions in its official directory. Drupal states that is has 30,000 official modules available to users. Logically, with the largest number of add-ons, WordPress should have the greatest customizability. As 25% of all websites on the internet use WordPress, this might be a fair conclusion.
Complexity/ Ease of Use
Whether or not you view something as complex depends on your experience with it. Despite familiarity with one particular solution indicates how complex it is per se. If you start from zero knowledge with respect to WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal, there will be a learning curve before you can really understand what you’re doing.
WordPress was design for the masses and is known to be the simplest of the three CMSs in general to use. It is recognize for its simplicity and its intuitive nature. Joomla has a more complicated structure and as such Joomla’s learning curve is steeper. Although Drupal is noted for reliability and performance, in terms of usability this comes at a price.
While WordPress and Joomla are fairly easy to master, Drupal is difficult to use. A quick look at the control panel / interface of each framework could underline the view-Drupal requires some consideration while WordPress is more immediate. Joomla is somewhere in the middle.
The WordPress community is considerably larger than the Joomla community, with members of the Drupal community far less abundant. Though a matter of personal opinion, how easy it is to access each community and how helpful the members are.
Performance
Website performance is key to getting good ranking in Google. Websites with fast loading pages often rise to the top of Google’s ranking. While those with slow loading times often languish at the bottom. As with security, the performance of WordPress, Joomla and Drupal is often dependent on the hosting used.
Hosting that is optimize for WordPress, Joomla or Drupal will offer better performance than hosting that is not optimize for any of the solutions. That being said, there are some basic differences between these CMSs.
As WordPress started as a blog solution and transition into a CMS, some suggest its performance is not as good as Joomla or Drupal, which both start life with a strict focus on website development. Others point to the page loading times of WordPress sites being only fractions of a second.
Joomla has a number of features that are design to improve performance, as does Drupal. Although each solution offers add-ons that are design to enhance performance. As we said at the outset, Drupal is build with reliability in mind, and is probably the better of the three in this respect.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Unless you have a big advertising budget, the number of visitors that your site receives. Depends on issues such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO). As for SEO, there are countless issues. As we said before, page speeds play a role in determining where a website ranks in Search. And do things such as how many connections a website receives from other websites.
There’s really a lot to learn and do as far as SEO is concerned. And as a WordPress solution makes things a bit easier (although you’ll need to add specific plugins to get the best results). In contrast, Drupal has many SEO features built into its control panel. Drupal can be considered complex to use and this SEO functionality is no exception. Like WordPress, Joomla relies on modules and plugins for SEO capability.
The jury is very much out on this one, but Google has suggested itself that WordPress addresses many of its concerns with regard to SEO. With that in mind, it looks like WordPress is the solution to go for.
