Web Interactivity and Engagement

Comparing Content Management Systems

Throughout the Web Interactivity and Engagement course, we are learning the in’s and out’s of the WordPress content management system (cms). I thought it would be interesting to explore a bit further the different types of content management systems to learn why certain ones are preferred over others for certain sites, and if there is any difference in their performance.

Upon initial light research, I noticed that many of the articles or blog posts I found discussing the differences in performance between popular cms’s like WordPress, Joomla and Drupal were many years old. This led me to question if performance isn’t really an issue to even be looked at between popular sites as they have all evolved over the years and the internet has progressively gotten ‘better’ as new technologies evolve.

The most up to date article I found was CMS Comparison: Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress from earlier this year. As this article points out, it seems that choosing the best cms relies on “your goals, technical expertise, budget and what you need your site to do.” This article then goes on to provide a side by side comparison of the three sites, providing a list of features, ease of use and even providing a few examples of sites utilizing each system.

Based on my little experience, and looking over current job postings in the web design field, it seems that WordPress is very widely used and perhaps preferred. As the above mentioned article points out, it seems WordPress has a very high ease of use and perhaps the widest variety of features. I’m anxious to delve deeper into WordPress and learn more of what it has to offer while expanding my thus far limited knowledge on content management systems in general!