Choosing a Content Management System

May 1, 2014

Choosing the right Content Management System (CMS) for your site is critical to getting the most from your business or non-profit website.

Why Use a Content Management System?

With the emergence of WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and other content management systems (CMS), its never been easier to publish and manage content on the web. Some advantages of using a CMS include:

1. Make updates and changes to your website directly via a Web console
2. Reduce long term maintenance costs
3. Access thousands of free plugins and modules to extend your Website

Drupal vs WordPress

Drupal and WordPress are two of the most popular open source content management systems available. As of June 2017, the market share for WordPress was about 59%, while Drupal represents about 7% of the total open source CMS installs.

Drupal

Drupal is an excellent choice for robust Web sites requiring numerous custom content types and e-commerce functionality. Here are some advantages to using Drupal CMS:

Advantages

1. Well established developer community with thousands of free modules.
2. Powerful custom content and views modules provide a robust framework for dynamic Web sites
3. Excellent and FREE e-commerce tools such as Ubercart, Drupal Commerce, and more.
4. Incredible flexibility and extensibility

Disadvantages

1. Higher development and maintenance costs than WordPress
2. Core updates require manual file and database upgrades

Learn more about Drupal

WordPress

WordPress began as a blog platform, and is one of the most popular content management systems in use today. Sites that use WordPress are highly extensible and easy to manage.

Advantages

1. Well established developer community with thousands of free plugins
2. Updates and maintenance are easily managed via the WordPress dashboard. This includes WordPress core updates.
3. Lower maintenance costs than Drupal and other CMS systems.
4. Good flexibility and extensibility

Disadvantages

1. Some of the better e-commerce tools for WordPress are paid plugins and require a subscription
2. Less powerful than Drupal and other CMS platforms

Learn more about WordPress

And the Winner Is…

There’s really no real winner as both are excellent CMS systems. We recommend using WordPress for smaller business websites as its easier and more cost-effective to manage. For e-commerce applications, we recommend using Drupal with Drupal Commerce for greater power and flexibility.