CMS evaluation |
 |
Another great way to start your thinking
process
is to visit
Step Two Designs
and
read
how to evaluate a content management
system by James Robertson.
I've compared 3 “popular open-source solutions” (Wolfe, 2010, p. 48)
The Technical bits
| Drupal | Joomla! | Wordpress |
|
Pros powerful tool for a complex site |
Pros the middle ground between Drupal & Wordpress |
Pros started for bloggers but now used extensively by other website designers |
|
developer-friendly good if you like to code |
friendly for developers, designers and administrators | simple to use without
modifications |
|
strong community support network |
strong community/social networking sites support network |
great theme-ing |
| performs well with
complex content medium flexibility |
fast set-up, good front-end full featured back-end | fast to get started, excels at blogging sites |
| Cons | Cons | Cons |
| not user friendly if you can't write code | not entirely user-friendly i.e. for beginners | not developer friendly |
| poor theme-ing | not as powerful as Drupal & hard to get the hang of | buggy up-grades |
| 3rd party plug-ins cost | recently rebuilt version not as good as original | whiney, unsupportive community |
| steep learning curve |
This comparison uses information from Rackspace knowledge Centre more detailed comparisons can be found at CMS Match & CMS Matrix
The Bottom Line
Understand your goals, design your website and choose you CMS to suit your needs.