How to Choose Between Joomla, Drupal and
Wordpress - Is There a Best Choice ?
/MarcoBarbosa

●
Joomla! ( jumla ) means “all together” or “as a whole”' (Swahili)
●
Since 2005 (2000 for mambo)
[1]
●
189,429 weekly downloads
●
4.641+ extensions

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MTV Networks Quizilla (Social networking) - (link)
●
TNA Wrestling (link)
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Citibank (Financial institution intranet) - Not publicly accessible
●
Linux.com (link)

●
English rendering of the Dutch word “druppel”, which means “drop”
(as in “a water droplet”).
●
Since 2001
[1]
●
62,500 weekly downloads
●
7.274+ extensions

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The White House (link)
●
Ubuntu (link)
●
Le Figaro (link)
●
OpenSource.com (link)

●
Official successor of b2/cafelog
●
Since 2003
[1]
●
433,767 weekly downloads
●
9,157+ plugins

●
TechCrunch (link)
●
IcanHasCheezBurger (link)
●
PlayStation Official Blog (link)
●
NASA’s Ames Research Center (link)

Popularity

Google trends

Joomla
Sweden – All Years
Wordpress
Drupal

Joomla
Worldwide – Past 12 months
Wordpress
Drupal

Alexa (site ranks)

Traffic Rank

[2]
Open Source CMS Awards

Best Open Source PHP CMS
2009
1. Drupal
2. WordPress
3. Joomla!
2008
1. Drupal
2. Joomla, CMS Made Simple
2007
1. Joomla
2. Drupal
3. e107

The Differences

User

Frontend Backend
Admin
Login
Password
LOGIN
●
Template System ●
Manage Content
●
Displays Content ●
Install Extensions
Drupal supports multisites installation out of the box.
Wordpress from 3.0+ or with MU
Joomla must extend.

Joomla Drupal Wordpress
Content Articles Pages & Stories Pages & Posts
Sections &
Categorization Categories
Taxonomy Categories & Tags
Components,
Extensions Modules & Plugins
Modules & Blocks Plugins & Widgets
Design Positions Regions Widget areas

Design

css
images
html
templateDetails.xml
Template
index.php
component.php
favicon.ico

[3]

Developing

Joomla Drupal Wordpress
Model-View-Controller Presentation-Abstraction- Plugin Application
(MVC) Control (PAC) Program Interface (API)
Fair Documentation Good Documentation Great Documentation
MySQL MySQL/PostgreSQL MySQL
PHP 4.3+ PHP 4.4.0+ PHP 4.3+

Strengths

Joomla Drupal Wordpress
Blogging
Social Network
E-commerce
Templates
Framework
SEO
Flexibility
Resources
Community
Learning Curve

Wordpress
S F
I L
M E
P X
L
I
C
Joomla! I
B
I
I L
T I
Y T
Y
Drupal

The CMS Showdown
[4]
http://www.cmsshowdown.com
March 2009

Results

Joomla Drupal Wordpress
Total Hours 57.25 79.25 90.5
Hours spent on
15 21.75 36.5
front end
Html validation Yes No (8 errors) No (8 errors)
CSS Validation No (1 error) No (7 errors) No (21 errors)
Page weight 140K 180K 154K
Lines of custom
30 220 1,808
JS/PHP code

Joomla Drupal Wordpress
Total Hours 57.25 79.25 90.5
Hours spent on
15 21.75 36.5
front end
Html validation Yes No (8 errors) No (8 errors)
CSS Validation No (1 error) No (7 errors) No (21 errors)
Page weight 140K 180K 154K
Lines of custom
30 220 1,808
JS/PHP code

So..Is there a best choice?

Or, it's just a matter of taste

If a CMS would be a celebrity..

Wordpress
●
Very Popular.
●
Suitable for anyone.
●
Stylish.

Joomla
●
Easy to create attractive sites.
●
“ It just works ”.
●
Large market.

Drupal
●
Drupal knows best.
●
Deeper learning curve.
●
No problems it can't solve.

Thank you!
iam@marcobarbosa.com
marcobarbosa.com
/MarcoBarbosa

References
[1] Open Source CMS Market Share Report 2009
[2] Open CMS Awards
[3] Wordpress Template Hierarchy Diagram
[4] The CMS Showdown
Idealware - Comparing Open Source Content Management Systems
Survey Analysis Part 1: Developers and Documentation
Custom Post Types in Wordpress 3
Wordpress vs Joomla vs Drupal
Joomla and Drupal - Which One is Right for You? Version 2
What everybody ought to know about Joomla
Why running the White House Web site on Drupal is a political disaster waiting to happen