Joomla is slowly but surely gaining market share as a free, open-source CMS. Image: Flickr / hagengraf / CC-BY
A content management system is the engine of a website, a way to manage the content and design of information presented on the web. For the last several years, WordPress has been the leader in content management. Joomla and Drupal are two CMS systems gaining in market share and adoption.
Defining a content management system
A website content management system is a program designed to manage work flow and display of content on a website. Blogging platforms are often considered a form of content management system, though there are often minor differences. Blogging systems usually display the latest posts in a chronological order, while “full” CMS systems have the capability of creating a website that does not “look like a blog.” The difference is minor, but one that does have a big impact on how a site looks, feels, and operates. For statistical purposes, blogging platforms are usually included in with all content management systems; even market leader WordPress was and, to an extent, is focused on blogging.
The problem of building a website
Just about every business, project or person should have a website. There are plenty of website builders out there, and many of them “work.” For those interested in building an effective and search engine findable (much less optimized) website, the options seem limited. Find a person who can build your website and hope it goes well, hire a company that “specializes” in building websites, or try and learn to do it yourself. Content management systems like WordPress, Joomla and Drupal are all systems that aim to bridge that gap by making web design accessible to individuals that don’t know PHP or HTML like the back of their hand.
Non-WordPress alternatives
WordPress is definitely the market leader in free, open-source content management systems, with over 60 percent of the top million CMS-run websites using that system. Joomla and Drupal, however, are slowly but surely gaining. Combined, the three systems have over 75 percent of the CMS market share, and all three are free and open-source. Joomla is slowly but surely becoming the breakout star of CMS systems. Over 2,600 government websites are using Joomla, and almost five times as many total websites as Drupal. Joomla is released on a six-month schedule, developed by a community and managed by three non-profit leadership teams. While Drupal is not nearly as popular, it maintains free, open-source code with a dedicated community of developers. In the end, all three CMS systems offer solutions that are effective and manageable. All three also prove that when it comes to building and maintaining a website, open-source and free will likely continue to dominate the market.
