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Content management systems, or CMS, have been around since the late 1990’s. They allow publishing, editing and modification of content through a central interface. There are many different types of CMS available for use, with a handful being widely used over the world. Here are three of the most popular CMS out there to give you a better idea of where to start when choosing a CMS for your website.
Via Drupal.com
Drupal
Drupal was released in 2001 and is now used for 2.1% of the websites worldwide. Drupal has many of the normal features that CMS offer such as RSS feeds, taxonomy, page layout customization, and user account registration. The Drupal community contributes 31,000 modules, used to alter and extend the core capabilities, appearance, and even behavior of a site on Drupal CMS. Though it boasts how easy it is to use, if you have no knowledge on working or building a website it will take some time for you to get the grasp because of its high learning curve. Drupal is not very backwards compatible with its themes and software, which means whenever they update their CMS version you will need a new update theme to continue using it on Drupal. This can be a little nerve-racking when you have a business to manage and are trying to manage a website every year or so. Also, because of how Drupal runs its demands, a very high cache which some hosts don’t support or provide could cost you more for that service.
Via Joomla.org
Joomla!
Next we have Joomla, which is a free open-source CMS written in PHP, combined with the techniques of OOP or object-oriented programming. Since its conception in August 2005, Joomla has been downloaded over 50 million times and has almost 8,000 add-ons or extensions to change the appearance and functionality of the website as a whole. It includes features such as page caching, RSS feeds, printable versions of pages, news flashes, blogs, search, and support for language internationalization. Like WordPress and Drupal, Joomla uses themes made by the community; however the community steers away from giving these things for free so if you are planning on using Joomla as your CMS of choice just make sure to know you’re going to have to be ready to pay for it.
Via WordPress.com
WordPress
Saving the best for last we have WordPress, the most utilized CMS in the world. WordPress is used in more than 23% of the top 10 million websites of the world. Mike Little and Matt Mullenweg designed and realized WordPress in May of 2003 and it is now used in over 60 million websites worldwide. What makes WordPress so great is how easy it is to use even for beginners, yet it is more powerful than any other CMS out there. The community develops Plugins, which allows users to extend the features and functionality of their site. They produce themes that allow users to change the look and functionality, just like Joomla, however free themes and plugins that are very widely used are available for download which means they won’t break the bank. WordPress is easy to use right out of the box. It takes no more than 5 minutes to get it up and ready for you to design your site. What’s better is the excellent documentation they have online for people who are beginners to pros looking for a trick or better way to get their site how they want it. It also carries a WYSIWYG editor (what you see is what you get), which can be used if HTML is not your cup of tea. This will allow jQuery or PHP to be used to build out a page or the whole site! Unlike Drupal and Joomla the image management uploading support is integrated in the WordPress CMS instead of as a separate system.
Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress are three of the most used CMS platforms in the world and all make it easier for website design and building. WordPress is by far the most powerful and easiest to use compared to the other two contenders. However, Drupal and Joomla bring in features that can make a website really shine because of their customizability. WordPress is easier to use with its unbeaten online documentation feature, which can answer any and all questions you may have to create the website of your dreams.
If you are building a new website please check and read “How to Protect Your WordPress Site from Hackers”, so that you are prepared to protect your site and users from the dangers of hackers!
