These content management systems are essential parts of web development industry. It is a good idea to understand their characteristics to find the one that matches our requirements.

Drupal

It is a developer friendly and powerful platform for creating complex website. However, we will need enough knowledge and proficiency to build it.

• Ease of use: Compared to two other platforms, Drupal requires a high degree of technical know-how, however, competent developers will be able to produce most advanced form of website, compared with two other platforms. Fortunately, Drupal becomes easier to use with each newer release.
• Features: Drupal is known for its powerful taxonomy and the ability to organize, categorize and tax complex content
• Caching: Drupal includes built-in caching features for improvements in various areas, such as scalability and performance.
• Best case scenario: Drupal is best used for flexible, superior and complex websites. Drupal will be better able to handle complex data management used for online stores and community-based websites.

Joomla

Joomla is placed in the middle ground between Drupal with its extensive capabilities and developer-oriented system; and WordPress with its user-friendly arrangement.

• Ease of use: Joomla is more forgiving than Drupal, but still distinctively more complex than WordPress. Installing and configuring Joomla is quite easy. By allocating enough time, we should be able to understand the overall structure of Joomla. We will still be able to establish fairly complex websites.
• Features: Joomla seems to have more focus for community platform and it has social networking-like capabilities.
• Caching: Joomla comes with good caching solution and page opens quite easily. Users have the ability to determine what content should be cached and what shouldn’t.
• Best case scenario: Joomla allows us to build website with better structure flexibility and content compared to WordPress. We should be able to use it easily and intuitively. Social networking websites, eCommerce solutions and others work well when we choose Joomla.

WordPress

WordPress started as a user-friendly blogging platform, but it could continue to expand rapidly in terms of functionality. There are thousands of plugins, widgets and themes that can significantly enhance the functionality and visual appeal of WordPress websites.

• Ease of use: In many cases, we don’t need real technical expertise and experience to use WordPress. It is simple and intuitive to use. Setting up a WordPress websites can be performed very rapidly. The actual text editor interface looks like Microsoft Word and we could paste document and text directly from any place.
• Features: Flexibility is a key advantage of WordPress that appeal to novices and experts alike. It is a potent enough platform to allow developers built websites proficiently for clients. With minimal training, clients will be able to take over the actual website management tasks. It is very easy to change and enhance the visual appearance of WordPress, due to the extensive selections of themes. WordPress provides great support and non-technical users are able to organize a website fairly quickly.