Using a high level content management system

Joomla, Drupal or WordPress?

As WordPress develops it gains more of the features of an advanced content management system.  Already it is relatively easy for a developer to trun the home page into a magazine format or to add links to specialised sections in the sidebar.

WordPress already has the facilities for multi-users where people may have the right to edit and others may only have to right to submit articles, which need to be checked and approved before being displayed in public.

It’s also possible to turn sections of the blog into a members’ only area, with protected information only available to those who have paid a fee or have a particular password.

But WordPress is still  mostly a blogging system.  To add complex membership areas, to add shopping carts, to build complicated relationships with chunks of data – say linking a football team. with its position in a league and then linking the team players and goal scorers would be difficult, if not impossible, within the WordPress structure.

You need to use a content management system which will allow these more complicated data links, but also has a built in blogging system, that may or may not pull in pieces of data from these complicated relationships.

The following two systems are both free, open source systems that can be used on small and corporate, (which in the jargon are called enterprise), systems.  They are both more difficult to use and learn then WordPress and you will need either a reasonable level of technical skills or employ someone to develop the site for you.  This is why I have included them in the premium section.

To set up a blog will take far longer than the five or ten minutes needed to set up a WordPress installation and there are less options on themes for the packages.  However, both are supported by a large number of friendly users.

Of the two packages Joomla is the easier to use than its rival Drupal.  It has a large number of helpful users and has a wide range of built-in facilities.

It is relatively, from a geeky point of view, easy to customise the look and the features of the package.  It is noted that designers, with some technical knowledge prefer to use Joomla over Drupal.

If you are planning to extend your technical knowledge and learn how to work with complicated data techniques and build front ends to business systems then this is the package to cut your teeth.

Drupal icon

Drupal is the technical developer’s content management system.  It is a lot more powerful than Joomla and allows the user to control multi-sites from the same control panel.

There are a lot more features than in Joomla and the package allows more complex manipulation of data.  Also these features are a lot easier to completely recode – so it is the coder’s choice.

This complexity makes Drupal the developer, rather than the designers choice and on quite often the look of a Drupal development is a lot more chunky than the Joomla developments.

Unless you have a good reason for using one of these packages, such as needing a complicated business function, then I would suggest not using these packages, unless you have expertise that you can use or are prepared for a steep learning curve.  (One point if you train yourself and become a Joomla or Drupal developer you will not have too much difficulty finding freelance work).

Even in a situation where you have a membership site or need a robust e-commerce shopping cart than you can use existing free or low cost packages and then style the packages to look similar.  In most cases this would be quicker than developing something with the two packages above.

So go back to WordPress

Blog Basics:  Why you must use WordPress

Good Web Practices:  Brilliant overview of  WordPress, Drupal and Joomla