In my last article I discussed the pros and cons of using a CMS to build or update your website.  This article will help you decide if a CMS platform is best for your company and I will give you a short overview of the more popular CMS products.

Answer yes or no to the following questions:

1.       My site is very static and the content rarely changes

2.       I just need a brochure on the web

3.       I have an agency that handles all of my content

4.       I have an in-house designer/developer that efficiently handles everything

If you answered YES to ALL of the above questions then it is unlikely you will benefit from a CMS.  If you answered NO to ANY of these a CMS may be in your future.

There are quite a few CMS’s available and the good news is that the most popular and useful are all free for the core product.  There are huge advantages to using a very popular CMS, the primary being that they are part of the Open Source community, for you that means if you have a specific need or functionality for your site there is a very strong probability that a module has been created.  Modules for the major CMS’s are created from users all over the world and that results is a lot of options.

The best known and most widely used CMS’s are: WordPress, Joomla and Drupal.

WordPress

WordPress is the best known and really the software that brought blogging to the masses.  As a testament to the popularity of WordPress, the NY Times has over 60 blogs that utilize WordPress as the blogging engine.

These days WordPress has moved way beyond a simple blogging platform.  There are thousands of plugins available and there are over 25 million people that have chosen WordPress as the CMS of choice.  As with Drupal and Joomla, WordPress has thousands of plugins, to be more accurate there are currently over 12,000 available plugins available.  These cover almost anything you can think of; from automatically posting your blogs to Twitter, to building a social networking site for your company.  Add to that things like; posting video players, advertisement rotation systems, website security protection and you will find WordPress to be a powerful tool in your web and marketing toolbox.

If you need more powerful features such as the ability to better define user rolls then consider Joomla or the most powerful of all – Drupal.

Joomla
Joomla has seems to have a way to make websites look fantastic.  While WordPress is easier to use, Joomla is more versatile.

Joomla is a bit more robust than WordPress for things such as; Web Portals, e-Commerce, but WordPress is getting closer with each release.  Developers like Joomla because of its capacity for customization.  While the system is flexible and strong it does not have the strength of Drupal when it comes to really pushing the system.

It’s a fair conclusion to say that it’s not as user friendly as WordPress and not as powerful as Drupal but for those looking to find a happy medium then Joomla might be a good choice. There are a good number of developers that make the jump from WordPress to Drupal and skip the middle ground that is available with Joomla.

Drupal
Powerful and flexible, Drupal is the current champion for a CMS.  There are not a lot of limitations when it comes to site building with Drupal but it comes at a price, complexity.

Drupal has a much stronger development environment than most CMS’s.  For those that like to write or tweak code then Drupal could be the platform of choice.  The developer community is engaged and very helpful, still it will take some work to learn the system.

Developers have to go through some pretty strenuous work to make the system as user-friendly then either WordPress or Joomla.  Still it is a task that can be accomplished with a skillful developer and for those looking to build a very powerful site with few development limitations, Drupal is a great platform.