Conclusions

Each of the three CMSs has its strengths and weaknesses. WordPress is particularly recommended for blogs, news sites, and websites that frequently publish new text. Thanks to the clear-cut user interface, getting started is particularly painless. In return, site operators have to retrofit many functions with the use of extensions.

Joomla is much more universal and offers a wide range of functions. Sophisticated, finely adjustable user management stands out as one of its strengths, which allows the easy implementation of private member areas. This flexibility also dictates a longer learning curve and a somewhat less agile work process. The confusing online documentation also makes training difficult.

In Drupal, site operators decide which content the CMS should store and present and exactly how this will happen. Therefore, authors do not have to somehow squash a recipe (for example) into the format of a post or look for an extension that implements a recipe collection. Drupal is therefore worth a closer look, in particular if the planned content does not consist (only) of simple posts. However, even with Drupal, users cannot avoid long training periods, although the good online documentation helps.

If the items in Table 1 do not address a feature of interest for your website, that does not mean the respective CMSs cannot accommodate it. The number of modules, plugins, and extensions is huge. The function may already be waiting somewhere for you to find it.

If this is not the case, other open source CMS alternatives might offer exactly the capability you are looking for, including TYPO3 [7], the Magento [8] shop system, Contao [9], or the Django [10] framework, to name just a few.