CMS Platform Comparison – WordPress vs Joomla vs Drupal vs Magento

Content has been the most important part of any website from time immemorial. Organizations spend a considerable amount of time in coming up with some attractive content for their website. It has a direct impact on the sales and marketing of their product, as it lets users know what a product is and how it can be beneficial for them.

Content is not only the textual part we see on a website but includes other visual (videos, GIF) and aural (audio) elements as well. So, the question is, how does an organization manage its website content.

“Content is of great importance, but we must not underestimate the value of style.”– Maya Angelou.

The content needs to be presented, stored and managed in the most efficient way to reap the maximum benefits.

Here, a Content Management System (CMS) helps in managing content with complete flexibility and security.

What is a CMS platform?

A content management system is a software application that helps to upload, edit or manage content exhibited on a website. It also manages how the content interacts with other elements of the site. It helps businesses in:

• Increasing the efficiency with simple publishing, editing, and revisions of content, even without requiring any knowledge about the backend coding.
• Using effective methods to improve the SERP ranking of the website or blogs published.
• Maintaining the content workflow of the business.
• Solidifying the product branding.
• Multi-user CMS platforms like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and Magento are some of the most popularly used platforms for content management. All of them are open-source and are built on PHP + MySQL platform with differing features and flexibilities.
• Companies and individuals many times face the challenge of choosing the right CMS platform. Hence, we have come up with a quick CMS platform comparison based on different parameters.

WordPress vs Joomla vs Drupal vs Magento

WordPress

WordPress is an open source CMS platform that is used around the world for running everything from a simple fashion site to a fortune 500 company site. It was founded in 2003, and had a very limited number of users at that time, as compared to 68 million websites utilizing it today. It began operations as a simple blogging platform but soon developed enough to manage a full-fledged website. Some of the advantages of WordPress are:

• User-friendly interface: It has a very simple to use interface and even a non-technical person can start using it. This is the reason why it is being used as a major blogging platform. Built-in themes, plugins, and installations further improve the flexibility.
• Support for multi-authors: WordPress supports multi-author functionality -something that most of the blogging platforms need.
• Great SEO functionalities: It supports auto-optimization using plugins like All in One SEO. With SEO in place, anyone can easily start blogging within minutes.
• Customization capabilities: WP supports easy customization, anyone with a simple know-how of HTML and CSS can start customizing themes as per requirement.

It provides a number of plug-ins that can be used for extending various functionalities.

Also Read: GoDaddy Purchases Sucuri to Provide Advanced Digital Security

Joomla

Joomla is an open-source, powerful CMS platform supporting websites and online applications’ development. It started its journey in 2005 and since then has supported a myriad of individual users and organizations in building anything from a personal blogging site to a company website. It also extends capabilities to third-party plugins and extensions for improved user experience. Some of its advantages are:

• Easy to use: It is quite easy to use but also requires a bit of an effort when a user starts working on it for the first time.
• Powerful functionalities: Joomla was initially launched as an enterprise-grade CMS platform and thus has the capability to manage more content volume than any other CMS platform.
• Strong extensions: Joomla has divided its extensions into five sections – templates, components, plugins, languages, and modules with differing power and capability.
• Developer community: Joomla has a very strong developer community who constantly work towards bringing new capabilities to the software.

Drupal

Drupal started its journey from early 2001 which makes it one of the oldest CMS platforms around. Being based on PHP and MySQL, it is also a popular choice for many websites and developer communities. Its strength lies in the user-friendly interface and strong SEO capabilities which help websites rank higher in search engine ranking. It can control hundreds and thousands of pages with ease and complete flexibility. Some of the major advantages are:

• Multiple functionalities: Drupal contains a lot of features like advanced menu management, graphics modification tools, poll management and others.
• Supports various content types: It is known for its ability to support a lot of content variants like text, video, polls, podcast, statistics, and blogs etc.
• Documentation support: To facilitate content management, it also has detailed documentation, discussion forums, chat and mailing facilities etc.
• Plugins: It has several plugins available on its website and users can customize their own plugin sets as well.

Magento

Magento is an open source content management system, that is completely owned and managed by e-commerce giant eBay. It was previously known as Bento and was designed particularly to fit the needs of e-commerce websites. It is built on PHP and MySQL platforms and is compatible with Linux. Users can manage multiple websites by simply logging into a single portal. It requires little or no investment to get started. Some of its advantages are:

• Flexibility: It provides users with WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor, making management quite easier.
• Module support: It allows the users to manage a multitude of modules that can be easily installed and virtually stored.
• Mobile support: One of its peculiarities is its mobile-friendliness. It supports integration across multiple devices from iPad, smartphones to notebooks.
• Security: It is completely secure and has a strong set of security features.

Quick Comparison

Conclusion:

Finally, the choice of the CMS platform depends on the need of your website. We hope that through this write-up, you will be able to make an informed choice.