It can be hard to choose a CMS for your website with all the options that are out there.

In this post, I’m going to explain and rate each one, based on a few criteria. Those criteria are:

• Ease of use for beginners
• Scalability
• Ease-of-access
• Flexibility for experienced developers
• Code add-on ease

WordPress

WordPress is my favorite CMS, and it’s what I use on 90% of my websites.

It’s very easy to go in and hack the code when I want to do complex stuff, but it’s also very user-friendly and easy to teach clients how to do simple updates in. There’s a bit of a learning curve, but that’s why I created my WordPress training.

WordPress keeps page backups, so if a client messes up one of their pages, it’s easy to revert it back to a previous version.

Additionally, there are tons of plugins out there that allow me to accomplish almost any fancy functionality on my websites, without having to know the code to create the functionality on my own. (plugins are scripts that developers create that you can install on your WordPress site in one click.)

It’s not going to be the best fit for high-traffic websites by default, as it’s not as secure as it would need to be for a huge company like Pepsi or something like that.

 

Joomla

Ease of use for beginners – 6/10
Scalability – 7/10
Ease-of-access – n/a
Flexibility for experienced developers – 7/10
Code add-on ease – 8/10

I’m not a very big fan of Joomla, and I have not used it very much as a result. One thing that has always stood out to me about it though, is that there are not any apparent advantages of using Joomla vs. WordPress. It’s almost like Joomla is a less-popular and harder-to-use version of WordPress.

All that being said though, it is not too bad. It’s simple enough to create content within your website, and once you get the hang of the system, it is easy-ish to do back-end configuration of the site. And while it may not have as many plugins as WordPress, it does still have quite a few. (They’re called “extensions” for Joomla though, not “plugins”.)

Overall, I’d say to definitely pick WordPress over Joomla, but if you have a client that wants a Joomla site, it’s not going to be the end of the world.

 

Drupal

Ease of use for beginners – 7/10
Scalability – 8/10
Ease-of-access – n/a
Flexibility for experienced developers – 10/10
Code add-on ease – 9/10

I used to dislike Drupal. It was a pain to navigate around the site as an administrator, and it was even more difficult to actually edit the content.

However, I REALLY like Drupal’s newer versions. If you’re an experienced php developer, you will really enjoy Drupal. If you’re not knowledgeable about php, and your needs are pretty simple, I’d say stick to WordPress.

The reason I like Drupal so much is that they make it extremely easy to do extensive configuration, such as adding new content areas & content types with new fields. Doing this sort of thing on a WordPress site takes quite a bit of configuration, whereas it’s almost like Drupal was made for this.

 

Dot Net Nuke

This one is hard for me to rate, because I haven’t used it. The one thing I will say about it is that the system is built in the .NET language, whereas the three above are all built in php. I personally prefer php, but there are many out there who prefer .NET.

So if you prefer .NET, it might be worth looking at Dot Net Nuke. If you don’t know the difference, or don’t care, I’d say go with WordPress.

 

In Summary…

Hopefully this made it easier for you to choose a CMS. To summarize this whole post, if you’re a beginner, go with WordPress. If you’re experienced with php, you might consider going with Drupal. (Although I still personally prefer WordPress.)

Because WordPress is my #1 recommendation, I’ve created a step-by-step training that will show you the ropes of WordPress, and you will come out the other side fully-equipped to tackle your new website in the WordPress CMS.

Click here to learn more about my WordPress Training.