In the last week, I’ve installed Joomla, Drupal, and WordPress on various servers. Why so many different content management systems? Because they have different strengths and weaknesses.
Joomla 1.5 is quite easy to install compared to the 1.0.x series. If you’ve never run Joomla before, I recommend installing the sample data during the installation steps. That will help you see how your information can be organized in Joomla. The administrative interface is friendly and colorful.
Drupal is relatively easy to install, but it is harder to understand at first. The style is fundamentally different than Joomla, with less graphics and more text-based links in the administrative backend. The organization of administrative functions is not quite as intuitive as in Joomla. I like Drupal because it is much leaner than Joomla, and the codebase reflects attention to security concerns.
WordPress is also pretty easy to install. It has perhaps the simplest backend interface, and the code size is lean compared to Joomla and Drupal. It doesn’t have the large number of components and modules that Joomla has. It doesn’t have the raw power of Drupal. But it is definitely more than just a blogging engine. It is more like content management lite.
So why did I install three different content management systems? Because in one case I needed the wrapper function in Joomla, where I can run custom pages inside the look and feel of a Joomla template. In another situation I just needed the expansion room that Drupal offers, without all the gadgets and doo-dads that Joomla offers. And in another case the end users wanted a template driven site with an easy-to-use backend, but with good security, so for them I installed WordPress.
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