WordPress, Drupal, Joomla Winning the CMS Game?
Posted on 28 July 2008 by Scott Frangos
Have you ever noticed how many Open Source Content Management programs there are out there? CMSMatrix.org that tracks and compare them, currently lists over 750. But of that number, only a handful have risen to the top of the heap, and a new study, The Open Source CMS Market Share report from Water & Stone names WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal as the winners.
The report author, Ric Shreves, states: “WordPress enjoys great brand strength courtesy of two complimentary offerings: the WordPress CMS and the WordPress hosted blogging service. Nonetheless Joomla! is positioned to challenge for the lead in brand awareness.” He added, “Though it might be surprising to some, Drupal is not far behind.”
This is pretty much what I’ve discovered in my work and why we (at WebFadds.com) have determined to focus on WordPress as a CMS development platform. Most people who have compared the three find WordPress easiest to use, from the clients’ perspective. A key to the game, I think. Take a look at this portion of a comparison chart for the three systems (from CMSMatrix.org):
The portion of the comparison chart, above, is from CMSMatrix.org, showing ease of use features for Drupal, Joomla, and Wordpress.
The The Open Source CMS Market Share report analyzed metrics including downloads, installations, third party support, development service provider volume (number of freelancers providing development and support), books in print (about the programs), rate of adoption, and “mind share”, a metric combining search engine visibility, popularity metrics and evidence showing reputation for the programs reviewed.
While WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal lead across a wide range of measures, the survey also identified Elgg and MODx as rising stars. In addition to naming the market leaders, the survey also identifies projects whose market share indicates they are at risk.
One of the analysis measures involved a Google Trends chart showing search volumes for each of the systems. This is an excellent tool for BlogMasters and WebMasters to use for strategic research. So, here’s a chart, fromm Google Trends comparing WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and the two new up and comers, Elgg and MODx:
The top chart from Google Trends show Joomla leading WordPress (second) and Drupal (third) in searches. The lower chart, tracking news coverage, shows WordPress with a big recent spike in "news buzz".
Ever wonder how the developers of Open Source (freely distributed) software plan to recoup their investment? Well, WordPress developers formed a for-profit company called Automattic that offers paid services related to WordPress, and continues to develop other projects. Neither Joomla or Drupal appear to have one large commercial company backing it, but both do a good job providing links to support professionals, and both have a robust developer community. And WordPress, with over 2500 “plugins” also fields a growing group of support and development professionals in addition to that provided by Automattic. Distribute free. Earn on related services. A model for which, I for one, am grateful.
Speaking of “games”, there’s a new Search Engine in town that promises to be faster and more extensive, indexing 120 billion web pages to Google’s estimated 20 billion. Called “Cuil” (pronounced “cool”), the engine was developed by three former Google engineers, and is backed by 33 million in venture capital.
I tried a search there, and noticed that in addition to a different, magazine-style layout for search returns, Cuil also returns related links within a category — which in this case is “Open Source Content Management.” When you search on “WordPress” at Cuil, related open source CMS returned are: DotClear, Sakai Project, and LifeType. A search on “Drupal” there returned Silverstripe, MediaWiki, and DotNetNuke as related CMS. While a search on “Joomla” returned DotNetNuke, SilverStripe, MediaWiki, TYPO3, Nucleus CMS, SOBI2, and Drupal. Interesting. And the Open Source CMS game continues.
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About the Author: Scott Frangos develops dynamic, automated WebSites at WebFadds.com, based on the WordPress platform. He is also a college instructor for CSS, XHTML and Photoshop courses and enjoys martial arts and digital photography. He lives with his wife, Pepper, and three dogs (Wisdom, Spirit and Steggman) in the Pacific Northwest.
About WebHelperMagazine: WebHelperMagazine is a digest of tutorials and helpful articles for WebMasters, BlogMasters & Social Marketers.
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Congratulations! you’ve done very good work in your blog .. It is very useful and intersting.
Awesome Post!I definitely learned something new today! Thanks Again!
Hey Scott,
Thanks for the comment and the invitation to join the conversation over here.
Based on your comment I’ve updated the post http://www.dewpointproductions.com/seo_blog/content-management-systems/wordpress-better-than-web-helper-magazine-makes-it-look/
with another graph and some interesting numbers to further highlight popularity.
Obviously we’re both big fans of WordPress I just think that there are more folks using WordPress than either of Drupal or Joomla and that the data of what’s more searched on doesn’t really tell us much about how many users each has.
Hi David — Good to see you over here joining the conversation. I think we really are in agreement that WordPress probably has the largest user base. Also, I believe more people have heard of it on the street — the “brand strength” referred to in the article above. Have you used all three? Tell us about your experience, when you get a chance. — Scott
I haven’t personally used all 3, but I believe Wordpress is still way ahead of the game in terms of users. I think this is due to just how simplistically easy it is to setup and use. Even people with no technical know-how can figure it out fairly quick.
just great.
Meh, who likes Drupal these days.
After see this i just say this SUPERB