If you are looking for a content management system (CMS) to build your website, you have most likely come across WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and Magento in your research. These are the four main software programs used to create websites, and each has its pros and cons. But which CMS is right for you? In this blog post, we compare the programs to get a clearer picture.
What is a CMS?
WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and Magento are all content management systems. This means that they are software programs that create a website for you without detailed computer coding knowledge. Designed to help you manage your site, allowing you to upload and edit new content; control how, when, and to whom the content is displayed, and manage user and content interactions.
Key Advantages of a CMS
Great tools for indexing, searching, and retrieving content. In other words, they make it easier for users to search for and find the content they are looking for. This also makes them search engine friendly.
These allow you to update and edit the content after it is published. You can use templates or themes to create the look and feel of your site and the display of your content.
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Benefits of using WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and Magento
All of them are open-source, free to use, and come with plenty of free online advice. They help SEO by creating search engine-friendly URLs.
There are plenty of themes to choose from and these can be customized to give your site a unique design. The website is managed through an easy-to-use administration panel. Installation is usually simple. Here is our evaluation of each platform:
WordPress
- WordPress started as a user-friendly blogging platform. However, its popularity has meant that it has been massively developed over the years, and today there are thousands of themes and plugins that can be used to create almost any type of website.
- 27% of the world’s sites have been created, and the WooCommerce plugin runs 30% of all online stores. One of the reasons for its popularity is its ease of use.
- The lightest of the four CMS platforms mentioned in this post, and technical experience, while useful, is not essential.
- Websites can be set up quickly, and learning how to use WordPress is intuitive – if you get stuck, there are mountains of information on the web.
- When you create content using WordPress, a built-in editor adds text, images, and videos, or you can cut and paste from MS Word, which is much harder to do using other platforms. Organizing your content using page menus or post/product categories is also easy, allowing visitors to easily find what they’re looking for.
- Overall, WordPress is best suited for fewer complex websites and for users looking for a platform that doesn’t require a lot of technical know-how.
Joomla
- Launched in 2005, Joomla quickly proved to be one of the leading CMS platforms and is used by millions of websites worldwide.
- It has thousands of free themes and plug-ins that allow users to create a wide variety of websites, including e-commerce, with customized design and user-friendly features.
- Using Joomla is a little more complicated than WordPress and you don’t have as many themes or extensions to choose from.
- However, creating a website is still relatively easy, and after spending some time learning how the program works and getting used to its structure and vocabulary, managing the site becomes easy.
- One of the advantages of Joomla over WordPress is that it is considered better for managing more complex websites. Ideal for social sites and membership sites with many registered users.
- One of the key features is the ability to create different user levels for different user levels, allowing them to restrict access to certain parts of the site or allow them to be modified.
- Joomla is also a great platform for creating social networking sites or integrating networking features into other types of websites.
- Overall, Joomla allows you to create websites that are structurally more flexible and have more content than WordPress.
Drupal
- Drupal is the most powerful of the platforms mentioned here and is ideal for creating very complex websites.
- However, it is also the most complex CMS that perhaps should be left to those with technical sense or developers.
- If you need a large, data-intensive website, Drupal is the optimal choice.
- It is often used to run university, media, and government websites, and is an extremely stable platform that can handle the significant quality of data much better than its competitors.
- It can also accommodate high traffic and can be increased with little difficulty. However, doing these things requires more storage resources, so you may need a VPS, dedicated server, or cloud-based storage instead of shared storage.
- Drupal is also an extremely versatile CMS with plenty of modules (plugins) to extend the functionality.
- Similarly, you can choose from nearly 2,500 different themes, most of which can be customized to create stunning and unique websites. As they are an open-source platform, they are constantly being supplemented and updated.
- Overall, Drupal is best if you need a large, efficient website and have the technical knowledge to manage it. If you want something to build and manage your own website, it’s much easier to use other platforms.
Magento
- Magento is a CMS that specializes in a single niche – e-commerce.
- Although open-source and free to use, it was “acquired” by eBay, who created the commercial “Enterprise” version of the platform. However, eBay’s involvement has been key to Magento’s development and is now considered one of the leading e-commerce platforms.
- Magento doesn’t simply create online stores, but in a way that increases user engagement, makes navigation airier, and most importantly for store owners, improves conversion rates and increases sales.
- Magento’s biggest competition is WordPress, with WooCommerce installed. The difference is that Magento is a CMS developed specifically for e-commerce, while WooCommerce is an e-commerce framework bolted to a general-purpose.
After reading this article, you now need to better understand what a CMS is and the main CMS platforms on which to build your site. You will have more knowledge about the similarities and differences between WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and Magento, and which one works best for you. If you are considering setting up a website with any of the CMS platforms mentioned in this post, we may offer separate hosting packages with separate 24/7 technical support for each platform. For more information, click on the appropriate link: WordPress web hosting, Joomla hosting, Drupal hosting, Magento hosting.
