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How to pick the right content management system for you

07 June 2012

With the time passing by web industry has undergone many global changes. All the web design and development tools used today would have been absolutely impossible to picture a decade ago. The modern web techniques and programs has brought a massive wave of changes. The emergence of content management systems is a big step forward when website construction is needed. However, the abundance of CMS on the web has greatly complicated a choice of the one. All of them claim to be good, highly usable and comprehensible but you never know if they really provide everything you look for or it’s a simple marketing ploy.

First of all, let’s figure out what the content management is and why you need it. CMS is a great tool to publish the content and edit the contents of the website, even with little technical skills. Some content management systems allow unskilled web masters to modify their websites and add interactive functionality, which was possible to do only through the code programming some time ago. With a simple and reliable content management system everyone can successfully run a website.

The good news is that the major content management platforms are both, free and open source. In practice it means that web developers and designers are evolving their features, testing its components and modifying the platforms in general to make sure they suit their business goals and needs. In this article I’d like to discuss all advantages and disadvantages of all three cms.

WordPress

WordPress is one of the most popular content management system which is widely used today. It’s gained its popularity due to its flexibility and user-friendliness. WordPress cms is generally recognized as one of the best publishing tool to post blogs and articles. It doesn’t require deep technical knowledge or any particular computer training to run the WordPress platform and maintenance the site. WordPress popularity inspires web developers to design thousands of new plugins on a regular basis which can greatly expand the functionality and opportunities of the site. The shortcoming of WordPress cms is a possibility of plugin conflicts. WordPress websites have to be updated quite regularly and sometimes the chosen plugins may damage the entire core of the site. But surely, if you devote some time to learning online guidelines you will manage to successfully run a website and post your blogs.

Drupal

Drupal is another open source and free content management system. In comparison with the WordPress cms, Drupal is not that easy to use, however the users with technical skills will find this platform really  convenient, reliable and secure. There are millions of websites which are built in Drupal cms including such presentable websites such as whitehouse.gov, data.gov.uk, fastcompany.com etc. Despite its comparative complexibility Drupal encourages a lot of web developers to design new features to improve website performance.
But still, if you made your mind to go for Drupal, make sure you’ve got enough expertise and computer knowledge. Drupal content management system is more popular among advanced users.

Joomla

The novice Joomla platform has already won its fans in the web industry. It’s functional and advanced as Drupal but user-friendly as WordPress. Joomla cms has attracted a large amount of open-source web developers who regularly create various plugins and templates to improve its quality and performance. However, the most attractive features are usually not available for free despite the fact that Joomla is an open-source cms. Though, the cost of these modules is usually quite sensible and more favourable than hiring professional programmers to set up a nice website architecture.

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