WordPress, Joomla, Drupal. If you’re not a web site designer or a backend coder then you might be forgiven for thinking they are early twentieth century printing techniques or towns from a far distant land. In fact they are just a sample of current software solutions to a ‘catch-22’ that many small and medium sized businesses face today with their web sites.
In order to rank well on Google or just about any search engine your site content needs to be fresh and new and relevant on an ongoing basis. If you do not know html and you have to pay every time you add or change content on your site, it soon adds up.
There-in lies the 22! If your ranking is effected by your content but updating is too expensive, you need to be able to do the updating yourself. In short you need a Content Management System.
Once set-up, you can add, edit and delete content on your site at will. What software you decide on is up to you but can be affected by the kind of site you are looking for. The first choice is an easy one for most, Free or paid? See I said it was a simple.
The three most popular GPL/Open Source (free software) content management systems in use today are WordPress, Joomla and Drupal. All have fully functioning content management and in conjunction with the thousands of plug-in’s designed by the respective communities of users, they can offer an astounding feature rich experiences for you and your site visitors.
Each system has its own collection of fans who swear that their system is better. In reality they all have their pros and cons and all provide fantastic, (like free) value. Let’s take a quick look at the top 3.
WordPress
Originally designed as a blog publishing environment, WordPress has developed in to the world’s most popular web site development platforms. In terms of availability of pre-made solutions, including design, WordPress is way out in front. Claims of over 25 million downloads of its software show how useful it is. However many of these users are using the platform to publish their blog, with a much smaller number running the software as a CMS.
Even so there are still 100’s of thousands of sites including government and universities using it and the free plug-in functionality is hard to beat. In recent versions the WordPress development community has included built-in functionality to promote its use as a CMS.
The sheer volume of Professional templates available for either free or a nominal donation make it irresistible for many businesses on a budget. Sound too good to be true? Well like any new piece of software it takes time to learn and the templates are often tricky to adjust to your specific requirements. Leaving some to either abandon their sites unfinished or worse still half finished.
Joomla
Touted as the more professional solution and favoured by more technical web development professionals, Joomla was designed from the ground up as a CMS.
With more than 2.7% of the entire web built on its platform Joomla is no slouch when it comes to proof of its power and flexibility. Combine this with its immediate access to 30 days of free hosting on cloudaccess.net you can see how easy it is to set-up and use in just a few simple steps. Joomla has also done a fantastic job of providing free video lessons to help you get started.
Joomla also has an extensive community who produce free and almost free professionally designed templates and extensions to the core functionality. However more emphasis is given to this as a professional tool that most users who do not have a coding background would need some help to set-up the software to suit their specific needs.
Drupal
585,753 people in 228 countries speaking 182 languages are powered by Drupal, not a bad boast. In my view Drupal is a mid way point between the two top players and has many of the same advantages of WordPress but with the dedicated functionality of software designed to be a CMS.
With its drag and drop content display system and its ability to connect content types to each other in an organic way Drupal can be implemented very simply and quickly to match specific requirements. Unlike WordPress you do not need to have experience in advanced html or php to create content specific layouts.
Drupal also has an active community producing ways to extend its functionality, but rather than 100’s of different third party extensions to wade through core functions like ecommerce have just a couple of complete solutions. Which make it easier to make core choices. Like Joomla, Drupal is often used by professional developers as a CMS solution and has a steeper learning curve than WordPress.
Conclusions
To get the best out of any CMS you are going to either need a bucket full of patience or some help from a pro. Where functionality can be packaged in a simple plug-in, and layout can be configured by a set of rules in a template, the experience your visitor has with your site and your brand will stay with them long after they have moved on. A professional Web Designer will shape that experience in a way you could never hope to achieve on your own.
If your requirements are simple but you need to update your content to support Search Engine Results (SER), any of these three solutions would be more than capable of getting the job done.
I have developed sites for all three and would recommend any of them to my clients as solid solutions. Which one I would recommend would depend on the client’s needs and the type of site they are looking for.
None of these solutions, despite what they claim, are an afternoon away from a completed site. However you can get a feel for how easy it would be to add, edit and delete content. In the end you will need to know some xhtml/CSS and some rudimentary PHP to implement a site that will give your visitor confidence in your brand and reason to return and just maybe buy something from you. After all your site needs to promote your business and make profit otherwise it would be your hobby not your job – right!