Wordpress Joomla or Drupal?

[madoctopus]

Wordpress is the most flexible and extensible of the batch. Definitely go WP it will outlast all the others. Drupal 2nd and Joomla last.

Really? You have no idea what you're talking about. WP is anything but the most extensible. Also, Drupal and Joomla are much older than WP, better architected, and offer more potential for expansion at the expense of increased learning curve and complexity.

@OP:

First of all, your question is not very specific. In absolute terms Drupal is the best because it is the most complex and well architected but it may be at the same time the worst choice of the three for many projects. You should choose the right tool for the job. Always! Read about them and see what yu find as being an advantage and what is a problem for your particular case/requirements.

I recommend using wordpress for any blog or simple site, even if it is more complex like an online magazine, a site with product reviews, etc. Never ever use it for shopping cart, large web2.0/social sites or sites that require massive customization or complex relationships between the content. WP is very easy to learn and setup, but very limited when it comes to extending. It's architecture is 1000's of times below that of Drupal and it is very unoptimized both for speed and SEO. It requires massive customization for good on-page SEO.

Drupal can be used for pretty much any content-oriented site, for web2.0/social sites, etc. It has fantastic architecture and its plugin developers are a head above the WP ones in terms of skills. However, it is extremely difficult to learn and always requires customization. For very custom and advanced sites it is ideal. That is why sites like White House, Barnes & Noble, MTV, etc. use it, or used to use it in the past. If you want just a bog, don't use Drupal because it has a lot of extra overhead you will never need and you might get lost in the admin section. If you want to extend a lot in the future, it is a good idea to use it however.

Joomla is somewhere in between, more close to Drupal than WP.

 

[altern8]

cant be forgeting to mention Team Magento

 

[likewhoa]

Use Wordpress if you want a simple blog that focuses on one specific niche and you're not planning on growing the site into a community website.

Use Drupal if you plan on building community driven websites or blogs that will grow to that. Get familiar with both CSS, PHP and a little Jquery as this CMS can get you far in terms of control of all site data (form fields, images, audio and video, visitor etc) which can be displayed without the need to write any SQL or Php code. Drupal is really for those that want to build small and scale high.

The main modules which Drupal users use are Views, CCK & Panels. With those 3 modules you can basically created really awesome websites like me. Keep in mind that recently with the new version of Wordpress they have incorporated what we in Drupal refer to as "Content Types" this allows you to include new fields into your pages/nodes.

I tried Joomla once and didn't like it, that's the end of that. From what i see Joomla's contrib modules are poorly written so they bring on exploits. Glad I stopped using it.

Anyways, use what works best for you by trying out these 3 Open Source CMS

likewhoa

 

[becky]

WP is by far the easiest to learn. If you're want to invest tons of time in learning and site building and maintenance, one of the other platforms may be for you. If you're planning on having a 10,000 page site, one of the other platforms maybe a better option. If you're into more advanced techie stuff, one of the other may be for you.

But if you just want to put to put up effective, practical, professional sites and focus on marketing them, go with WP.

 

[becky]

WP is by far the easiest to learn.

If you want to invest a bunch more time in learning, one of the other platforms may be for you. If you're planning on having a 10,000 page site, one of the other platforms maybe a better option. If you're into more advanced techie stuff, one of the others may be for you.

But if you just want to put to put up effective, practical, professional sites and focus on marketing them, go with WP.

 

[Selassie_i]

Use Wordpress if you want a simple blog that focuses on one specific niche and you're not planning on growing the site into a community website.

Use Drupal if you plan on building community driven websites or blogs that will grow to that. Get familiar with both CSS, PHP and a little Jquery as this CMS can get you far in terms of control of all site data (form fields, images, audio and video, visitor etc) which can be displayed without the need to write any SQL or Php code. Drupal is really for those that want to build small and scale high.

The main modules which Drupal users use are Views, CCK & Panels. With those 3 modules you can basically created really awesome websites like me. Keep in mind that recently with the new version of Wordpress they have incorporated what we in Drupal refer to as "Content Types" this allows you to include new fields into your pages/nodes.

I tried Joomla once and didn't like it, that's the end of that. From what i see Joomla's contrib modules are poorly written so they bring on exploits. Glad I stopped using it.

Anyways, use what works best for you by trying out these 3 Open Source CMS

likewhoa

Always nice to see another Drupal user on BHW.

 

[haylander]

if you want a site up fast , than use wordpress ,
a drupal site will take you some time to make it running,
but the good part (for a developper) is you can alter everything on it (with hooks system),another pro of it is the ability to run multiple sites with the same core which can save a lot of memory and space , this is the main reason i go for it .

 

[Guffy]

Wordpress has a awesome community, lots of support behind it.

Recommend WP highly.

 

[mike2000]

Those are three different types of CMS Platforms. Direct comparison isn't possible.

Wordpress is excellent for blogs and Joomla is for professional, advanced sites. It's heavily dependent on your requirements. Wordpress is much easier to manipulate with regards to the other two.

 

[ukescuba]

if you want a site up fast , than use wordpress ,
a drupal site will take you some time to make it running,
but the good part (for a developper) is you can alter everything on it (with hooks system),another pro of it is the ability to run multiple sites with the same core which can save a lot of memory and space , this is the main reason i go for it .

just fyi...

you can put a site up super fast with joomla...

you can alter everything in joomla...

you can also run multiple joomla sites with the same core using third party extensions...

@guffy FYI joomla has a huge community too

@likewhoa - "I tried Joomla once and didn't like it, that's the end of that." nice!

Going to be putting the new joomla 1.6 through its paces over the next few weeks should be interesting to see how it works out

I am actually looking at coding extensions and templates for all three platforms now, they all have a need in the market place and are all primed for making money.... i am going to mainly building tools that will be helpful for internet marketers who arent very technical using WP, similar stuff but more involved for joomla similar to kickass and mainly mobile web apps for Joomla 1.5+ and perhaps knocking out some drupal templates

 

[TeddyKGB]

Like Ukescuba, I prefer Joomla because it is intuitive to me. Most of the time I use Joomla for my money sites and WP for little mini sites.

To me:

WP = A Honda Accord (readily available, easy to use--with plugins/mods can be like a racecar or just a family sedan)

Drupal = A BMW (harder to learn but better performance--most of the big boys use it)

Joomla = A Audi A4 (closer to Drupal then WP, like WP though a few mods can make it top of the line as well. It also has a decent community backing it like Volkswagon does to Audi )

 

[ultrabizweb]

Good comparisons, I am currently working on OpenVZ template VM optimised for pressflow aka high performance version of Drupal. Runs Ubuntu 10.04 LTS x64, apache-mpm worker, PHP fcgid, APC, memcached, mysql of course, and varnish. Ran some apache bench test results on it this morning very impressive. 10000 requests 100 concurrent connections completed in about 11.4 secs. Of course I know that this is mainly thanks to varnish. Dynamic content will take longer to load of course. Still needs testing.

The VM uses about 1GB of RAM on my VPS. Not to shabby. I hopefully will be posting a download link to the VM when I get some free time to work on my new blog site which will be running this setup. I am still very very new to the interface but I will be learning it more in the coming months. I know there are projects that have VM templates like aegir, mercury, etc, etc. I tried those setups on OpenVZ VM and they just did not work out very well for me so I made a choice to build my own setup.

 

[gamersplaygame]

WP ofcourse!

 

[MikeHustle]

Drupal is such a PAIN in the arse! I worked over 100hrs one week trying to do a conversion for a client. I remember working a 19 hour day trying to figure out drupal. You start to hate it so much that you love it. I believe that the people who love it do so because of all the time they put into it.

I don't know what is "best", but WP is obviously easy and accessible to technically unsavvy people, drupal is extremely hardcore and can do anything if you put in the time to learn it, joomla seems to fit perfectly in the middle of the circle.

That's my 2cents...

 

[m0n3y_]

Well, in my opinion Wordpress should be used for creating personal blogs and nische websites. Bigger projects like communitys, forums, etc, I would go for Joomla without any doubt at all.

Drupal? What the heck is that?

 

[portalweb]

Drupal? What the heck is that?

If you didn't know, Whitehouse_gov web site uses Drupal.

 

[flipperace]

Word press-easy to initially learn, use, update, etc. Extensive amount of plug-ins and a great start for someone not used working with sites or CMS's for that matter

Joomla- Extendability, beautiful admin and user interfaces. Really adored by users. For me hard to understand and apply however will create that sexy "flash" look with the most ease

Drupal- love I believe it is the best thing since sliced bread. However it is a BIG pain in the butt to learn. However just like Joomla the ability to get EXACTLY what you want is there. Yet i would give the Trophy to Drupal because at the end of the day because with Drupal I don't have to worry about a certain feature or functionality not being available cause its structure won't allow it without a better way to say it.

 

[soctal]

until i read your comment, i had never heard of openVZ, and i had to read it multiple times to understand it. i like the thought of having a container inside a container to play around with. if i may ask, how do you backup? do you pay to backup your vps? i am on linode and i use 20% for backup. by the way, i am using aegir its really beautiful! just put in a domain and select what kind of drupal profile i want and press create, a new site just like that. i am using the aegir/nginx version called barracuda/octopus. the lady who put it together really stacked a lot of stuff in it, i am still learning how to use aegir/drupal quite honestly. i have gaping holes in my knowledge.

Good comparisons, I am currently working on OpenVZ template VM optimised for pressflow aka high performance version of Drupal. Runs Ubuntu 10.04 LTS x64, apache-mpm worker, PHP fcgid, APC, memcached, mysql of course, and varnish. Ran some apache bench test results on it this morning very impressive. 10000 requests 100 concurrent connections completed in about 11.4 secs. Of course I know that this is mainly thanks to varnish. Dynamic content will take longer to load of course. Still needs testing.

The VM uses about 1GB of RAM on my VPS. Not to shabby. I hopefully will be posting a download link to the VM when I get some free time to work on my new blog site which will be running this setup. I am still very very new to the interface but I will be learning it more in the coming months. I know there are projects that have VM templates like aegir, mercury, etc, etc. I tried those setups on OpenVZ VM and they just did not work out very well for me so I made a choice to build my own setup.