In previous blog posts we have looked at the benefits of using open source software to provide the tools needed by your marketing team and, specifically, the reasons to use a Content Management System (CMS). The next question therefore is which CMS to use?

When we first started our business we were faced with the same choice that all potential CMS users must confront. Which of the many CMS offerings should I use? For us, choosing the wrong one would have had a serious affect on our business plan. For most potential users it may mean the difference between a website delivered on time and on budget or not.

There are literally hundreds of different CMS offerings on the market but, in general, they can all be put into one of 4 categories:

1. Major Open Source Offerings – The 3 big players in the open source CMS market are Drupal, Joomla and Wordpress. These offerings have been established for sometime and have extensive user, designer and developer communities to back them up.
2. Minor Open Source Offerings – There are a multitude of other open source CMS platforms ranging from the very lightweight to more specialised offerings. Generally these systems do not have the size of community that can offer businesses that use them the re-assurance that the software will be maintained and future proof.
3. Commercial off the shelf (COTS) Offerings – As you would expect, major software vendors such as Microsoft do offer CMS platforms but, as ever with COTS, they are expensive to implement and leave users at the mercy of the vendor when it comes to upgrades and maintenance of the product.
4. Proprietary Offerings – Many web agencies now offer their own flavour of CMS. Again, these can be expensive to implement initially and any customer is then tied to the vendor until such time as they choose to change systems.

Based on the reasons above, it seemed obvious to us that we should choose one of the major open source offerings. The next decision facing us was whether we should choose Drupal, Joomla or Wordpress? All three have well established active communities and all three have had similar impact in the market place. For us, the key factor that made us choose Drupal was its ability to provide a platform for every type of website, from simple information portals to full featured e-commerce and social networking sites.

Joomla and Wordpress are both good at providing simple information sites with, for example, a single blog and a few news stories. Where they start to struggle is when they are asked to provide a website that has requirements outside this simple structure model.

In contrast, Drupal can very easily provide these simple sites but can also be used as a platform for far more complex sites. It achieves this feat through a more open site structure and, crucially, by allowing the easy addition of modules that can extend and alter its functionality. This ease of customisation has allowed the community to build up an impressive array of additional “plug-and-play” modules that can provide anything from a simple change to the menu system all the way up to a fundamentally different way of retrieving and displaying the content data.

In conclusion, when we scratched the surface it didn't take us long to realise that Drupal was the obvious choice for a CMS and it has already proven itself to be the CMS for all purposes.