In the very first episode of
Speak Easy Drupal, the LevelTen staff compare and contrast a variety of content management systems. While the focus of this podcast is comparing Drupal, Wordpress and Joomla, attention is also given to open source vs. proprietary systems. You'll learn the differences between each CMS, strengths, differences, and when you should use each.
What's the Quick Takeaway?
The simple answer is that there isn't any. Each CMS has it's clear strengths and weaknesses. If you're looking for a quick answer, here's the lowdown:
Wordpress
Wordpress is great. It's easy to use, intuitive, and very flexible. That said, it's more of a blogging engine then a true CMS. Yes, there's work being done to make it work more like a CMS, but it requires a lot of bending to get it to work right. If you're looking for a site that's flexible and scalable, and you want to do more then blogging, look more at Joomla or Drupal. If you're on your first website, however, it might be a good idea to try out Wordpress.
Joomla
A good middle ground option between Wordpress and Drupal. Not as flexible as Drupal, but has better out of the box themes, and a little bit easier to use. Joomla, much like Drupal, has great community and developer support.
Drupal
Drupal is a great option if you have some familiarity working with CMS systems, and don't mind a more difficult learning curve. As one member of the Dallas Drupal Users Group put it, "Drupal takes longer to learn, but once you learn it, you won't want to build on any other platform." What's great about Drupal is that it gives you a blank slate, where you can create scores of different websites. There's a strong developer community behind it, and support is plentiful. The out of the box themes aren't quite as good as Joomla or Wordpress, but if you know what you're doing, you can create some fantastic designs.
About Speak Easy Drupal
Speak Easy Drupal is a Drupal podcast for the rest of us. In upcoming episodes, you'll learn how to set up and run your own Drupal website, add great functionality, and without any custom programming.
Panelists for this week: