Content Management System (CMS) can be quite simply defined as a system that manages content and the overall system. A CMS will generally come with the ability to manage user accounts. It is essential for the easy running of large, content rich sites. Three most popular and easily available on the internet are WordPress, Joomla and Drupal, but there have been a great confusion over which out of three is best. To discard their confusion, here is a crystal clear difference among all these terms. Each CMS has its various strengths and weaknesses.

WordPress

Wordpress is easy to use, intuitive, and a very flexible CMS. It is considered such an open source blog tool and publishing platform that is powered by PHP and My SQL which is customized into CMS. Company structures . It includes many features like various plug-in architectures, widgets and templates which can be positioned without the knowledge of PHP or HTML code. WordPress is used by over 14% websites.

Pros :

It has a huge community.
It is easy to optimize.
It is suitable for small websites that require limited features.
It is easy to install and setup, and have a fast development cycle and also there are many free templates available for more creative deigns.
Free downloadable plug-ins is available.

Cons:

It is being designed mainly for bloggers purpose which leads to limited functionality.
It has weak code in comparison to Drupal, but not Joomla.
It contains a lot of seriously broken plug-ins which can cripple the websites performance forever.

WordPress is recommended for anyone with light technical skills and who is launching a site on their first CMS.

Joomla

Joomla lies on the good middle ground between WordPress and Drupal. It is not as flexible as Drupal, but it contains various creative themes, and in comparison it is easier to use. It is award winning CMS as it is open source. Its ease of use and extensibility makes it the most popular Web site software available. It is written in PHP and uses OOP techniques. It can be uploaded to the server which supports PHP applications. It has great community and developer support. There are many hosting sites which provide control panel which allows the deployment of the website.

Pros :

It has a simple and visual interface.
It have extensive list of plug-ins and extensions.
Working on and using templates in Joomla is very easy and effective.
It contains good menu systems.
It has strong static page structures.
It has various in-built membership and community features.

Cons:

Plug-ins don’t always install correctly.
Security is one of the concern
Built-in performance is a bit sluggish.
It contains weak weblog sections.
Its core code is quite nasty and is its difficult to fix broken items.

Joomla is recommended for users with moderate technical skills and with a little experience in managing web sites.

Drupal

It is a free CMS package which allows anyone to publish, manage and organize wide variety of content on a website. Drupal takes a longer time to learn, but once learned, a developer won’t prefer any other platform. It gives a blank slate, where a developer can create score of different websites. It helps in creating fantastic designs. Drupal is very powerful tool that is best suited to advanced PHP developers. Hundreds of thousands of organizations and people use Drupal to power endless varieties of websites.

Pros :

It technically quite advanced and well-regarded for its efficient design.
All the plug-ins are efficiently integrated.
It have extensive list of plug-ins and extensions.
The core code is very clean.

Cons:

Its interface is not user friendly.
To make changes to available templates, advanced knowledge of PHP is must as compared in WordPress and Joomla.

Drupal is recommended for anyone with advanced technical skills.

So, on the concluding part we can say that in making the choice for CMS, its first best to understand the full scope of the website that has to be created. Choosing the wrong CMS at the start can cause unending problems as transferring to a new system may not be an easy task. Drupal is recommended foe complex websites, and for simpler sites one can go in between WordPress or Joomla.

Elephant Consulting has experience team of WordPress, Drupal and Joomla developer, for more information visit : Open Source Development