The three most common CMS tools at the time this post was written are WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. All are cross-platform operating systems written in PHP and each has pros and cons. This article will explain the differences between them.

WordPress is a free and open source blogging tool that has a plug-in architecture and template system. WordPress is currently the most popular CMS tool.  As of August 2011 WordPress manages 22% of all new websites.

Joomla is a free and open source CMS publishing tool for the Internet. It includes features like page caching, RSS feeds, news flashes, blogs, and polls. Between 2007 and 2011 Joomla had been downloaded 23 million times and as of November last year has more than 8,600 free and commercial extensions available.

Drupal is a free and open source CMS that is used as a back-end system for at least 1.5% of all websites worldwide. Websites that use Drupal range from personal blogs to corporate, political and government sites. As of this month, more than 9,500 free community contributed add-ons are available that can customize the behavior and performance of sites run through Drupal.

This article will assess the pros and cons to each CMS tool…

Let’s start with set up.

WordPress definitely has the easiest set up / configuration and offers the lowest learning curve for web developers when paired with a user friendly development interface from gantry-framework.org. The only setting that WordPress requires is database information. It installs everything else for you and has all the basic site settings configured. The user can start customizing the website as well as posting on the blog portion of the website as soon as they sign up for an account.

Joomla is very similar to setting up WordPress but has options for more advanced settings. A novice may find the advance settings of Joomla confusing.

Drupal is the most difficult to set up because it requires a lot of third party modules to be installed for basic functionality of a website, and permissions to be configured. Many of the simple features that are offered by WordPress and Joomla are missing and a novice developer would have a very difficult time getting started.

User interface

WordPress has the easiest interface to use because it hides a lot of the more advanced features of a CMS so that novice users can easily understand the basics. The more advanced settings of Joomla offers a good mix of easy use and advanced features without being too confusing but would require a more advanced developer to fully understand how to optimize the features for content publishing. Drupal’s admin interface is more complicated and is best for advanced users or those who have had training for the interface. It automatically displays the most advanced settings, which can be confusing for novice users.

Plug-ins

Plugins allow for extra functionality that isn’t already included in the CMS tool. Plug-ins are usually free ware and open sourced so they can be modified or adapted to the user’s preferences.

Best News / Image Rotator Plugins that can easily be themed: Joomla

(See Awesome Inc  Site for Example – www.awesomeinc.org) Rockettheme.com provides a lot of free as well as paid extensions, which add great functionality to Joomla when displaying different types of content.

Best for Custom Content: Drupal provides functionality for having extra fields in custom content types, these content types can be used in several ways, image rotators, a way to display real estate property profiles, and much more.

Best for IT Managed Websites: Drupal

It is very easy to customize the core functionality to work exactly how the client wants. Unlike other CMS tools Drupal does not hide functionality from the user.

Best Built In Permissions: Joomla/Drupal

WordPress requires permissions plugins to be installed in order to edit permissions on users, content, etc. Joomla / Drupal have these permissions functions built in.

Worst Built in Permissions: WordPress

Joomla and WordPress have the easiest template to CMS conversion and are both currently supported by the Rockettheme.com’s gantry-framework, which allows developers to easily go from design template to CMS by using mostly CSS and limited HTML and PHP development.

For developers the easiest project transition is with Joomla and WordPress because if a company uses the Gantry-Framework the development process is standardized allowing for developers to take over a project without much time needed for knowledge transfer.

Drupal has the most configuration options because it doesn’t hold back any of the advanced features of the configuration of a website, allowing for optimal customizability. WordPress offers the least amount of customizable configuration options because it only shows the most necessary options for running a basic site.  Joomla has a mid amount configuration options.

For multi-site installs WordPress and Drupal are the best options because they allow for multiple themed sits to use one core install of the CMS tool. This allows the site manager to update the core and plug-ins with ease as they update on each site.

Your level of skill with development and the amount of customizing you’d like on your website will be defining factors in which CMS option you choose. The information above should be a good starting point for the decision. For more information please visit the sites below.

www.wordpress.org
www.drupal.org
www.joomla.org

www.gantry-framework.org

www.rockettheme.com

Apax developed the app to use the mobile phone’s GPS system to link the user’s location to surrounding deals, discounts, and happenings. iJonze is unique because the user is able to search for existing deals and also request deals from participating companies.

View in the Apple App Store :

View at the Android Market :

The apps are integrated with a SharePoint database to provide up-to-date health care information related to raising pigs. The apps also link to web views of 3rd party websites for both the commodity prices and local weather reports.

View at the Apple App Store :

View in the Android Market :

View in the Blackberry App World :

OuiWrite is an app that can format papers, resumes, letters or bibliographies. OuiWrite can also link writing to its original source and cite text for the user. Apax Software created 2 brains, one that performs a macro analysis of writing profiles and preferences of all OuiWrite users to deliver better results, and a second that performs a micro analysis delivering information from the Internet based on their unique writing type.

Through the use of powerful Javascript code and a mix of jQuery, APAX was able to add interactivity and breath new visual life into the home page and internal page templates of this site.

View OuiWrite in the App Store :

 View OuiBox in the App Store :

Apax Software created a database back-end and iPad app front end for UK Gluck Equine Research Center. Apax implemented a database model, including configurable studies/forms/subjects, for their back-end. Apax then configured studies, forms, and subjects for the user side of the app.

OuiWrite is an app that can format papers, resumes, letters or bibliographies. OuiWrite can also link writing to its original source and cite text for the user. Apax Software created 2 brains, one that performs a macro analysis of writing profiles and preferences of all OuiWrite users to deliver better results, and a second that performs a micro analysis delivering information from the Internet based on their unique writing type.

Through the use of powerful Javascript code and a mix of jQuery, APAX was able to add interactivity and breath new visual life into the home page and internal page templates of this site.

View OuiWrite in the App Store :
View OuiBox in the App Store :

The question then becomes, how do you display the results? By combining jQuery with the Google search you can quickly create a dynamic and user friendly search system for your site.

In this solution, we will be adding the Google site search directly to a pop up box on the page. This allows the user to search for content on your site without ever leaving the site.

The first step is displaying a dialog box using jQuery, and the jQuery UI (both are available at http://jquery.com/). The following code allows a link on a page to a dialog box:

$(function(){ // Dialog Box $(‘#dioalog_box’).dialog({ autoOpen: false, width: 600, position: ‘top’, resizable: false, draggable: false }); $(‘#open_dialog_link’).click(function(){ $(‘#dialog_box’).dialog(‘open’); }); });

“dialog_box” is a div layer on the html page that becomes the popup dialog. The .dialog method in jQuery UI, sets up the div layer to become the popup. After the div layer has been setup, the .dialog(‘open’) just needs to be called to display the dialog box.

“open_dialog_link” is the ID of a link on the web page that is clicked to display the dialog box. The .click simply provides us with the ability to open the dialog whenever the button is clicked.

Now that we have the dialog box opening, we just need to add the Google search to the dialog box. You can get the code for the Google AJAX search API at: http://www.google.com/jsapi?key=yourkeyhere, where you replace “yourkeyhere” with a Google Search API key that you can obtain from http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxsearch/signup.html.

Below is an example of the code to setup the Google search control on your website:

// Create a search control var searchControl = new google.search.SearchControl(); // Add in a full set of searchers var siteSearch = new google.search.WebSearch(); // Set the Search Control to get the most number of results searchControl.setResultSetSize(google.search.Search.LARGE_RESULTSET); var searchOptions = new google.search.SearcherOptions(); searchOptions.setExpandMode(google.search.SearchControl.EXPAND_MODE_OPEN); siteSearch.setUserDefinedLabel(“”); siteSearch.setSiteRestriction(‘www.yourdomain.com’); searchControl.addSearcher(siteSearch, searchOptions); // tell the searcher to draw itself and tell it where to attach searchControl.draw(document.getElementById(‘dialog_box’));

This code sets up the search, and draws the search control to the web page. SiteSearch.setSiteRestriction(‘www.yourdomain.com’) causes this control to be a site search. If we just omitted this line it would search all of Google. searchControl.draw(document.getElementById(‘dialog_box’)); actually draws the Google Search control to the pop up dialog.

Make sure you add the above code inside a jQuery OnReady function, so the control is drawn after the page has loaded:

$(function(){ // Google search code here }

One nice thing to note about this is that it uses the jQuery UI. This allows you to use jQuery’s themeroller to design the interface of the dialog box to fit the look and feel of the rest of the site.

A packaged version of this code can be found below. If you have any questions, or need help implementing, or modifying this solution please feel free to contact us.

Matt Smith VP Operations Apax Software Development