Winnipeg Web Design

Joomla vs. Drupal vs. Custom CMS

Reading time: 2 – 2 minutes

Lately, I have been felt the urge to better understand the buzz words of Joomla and Drupal. To me they seemed like almost a waste of time as I can build a custom CMS specific for the client’s needs.

During the past few days I have read some documentation on both of them, played around a bit, and have been rather impressed. I didn’t doubt the great functionality that they contained, but was more concerned with how easy it would be for me to create my own templates within them. A company does not want a generic theme applied to their company site, and thus my reason for tampering around with templates.

I found Drupal’s terminology, and ease-of-use very appealing, but overall Joomla seems to be more popular. I must confess I have briefly tried these two systems out, and am not a master of them.

Here are some points worth noting for each:

• Joomla uses articles, while Drupal uses nodes
• One installation of Joomla must be made for every site, where one Drupal installation can be used for many sites
• Both have great documentation, and a great open source community
• Both have a wealth of modules/add-ons freely available

In the end I will most likely remain using my Custom CMS code, as I understand it all and can make it bend to my will. The one thing I envy about these systems is its modularity, and how it would save the tedious tasks that bog down a busy programmer like me.

Related posts:

1. Joomla Series Part 1: Organizing Your Content.
2. Choosing an Open Source CMS: Beginner's Guide
3. WordPress: More than just a blogging platform?
4. Using WordPress Custom Fields
5. WordPress 3.0 Custom Posts

Written by Brenley Dueck