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We are always comparing things. Ever since we were kids we compared things. Nothing changes, even in the software industry. Windows vs Linux. PHP vs C#, MS Office vs Open Office, MS SQL vs MySQL vs Oracle. Joomla vs Drupal vs Dotnetnuke.

We are always comparing things. Ever since we were kids, we compared things. Do you remember saying, "My dad can beat-up your dad", or "My sister is prettier than your sister", or "My brother is a better rugby player than your brother". We are always comparing which is bigger, faster, lighter, smaller, etc etc.

Nothing changes, even in the software industry. Windows vs Linux, PHP vs C#, MS Office vs Open Office, MS SQL vs MySQL vs Oracle. Joomla vs Drupal vs Dotnetnuke.

I would like to find out your thoughts on the top three Open Source Content Management Systems. Namely, Dotnetnuke, Joomla! and Drupal. I choose these three as they were the top three in the Open Source CMS awards held late last year. Drupal taking first place, Joomla! in second, and Dotnetnuke in a good third.

Why should we even bother now when the votes are already in and the winner has been decided. Well I would like to see a Welsh view point, and perhaps a viewpoint of the average developer. How many of us even know of the OpenSourceCMS awards, let alone voted? By the way, if you did know about it, or you voted, Let me know. It will be interesting.

The Drupal project won the overall category and walked away with the $5,000 prize for receiving more than 20,000 votes.

Finishing in second place and receiving $3,000 was Joomla!, the youngest of the three finalists and a previous winner of the overall award. Judges were impressed with Joomla’s ease of installation and ability to get a website up-and-running in a short space of time.

Both the above are PHP and MySQL based. Mostly running on LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP)

In third place and receiving $2,000 was DotNetNuke, the only CMS in the final that is written in VB.NET for the ASP.NET framework. DotNetNuke received positive feedback from judges who were impressed with its ease of development and security implementation features.

The main reason for choosing Joola or Drupal over DNN would be the licensing costs of Linux, Apache, MySql and PHP (ie free) vs A Windows Server OS and SQL Server (a lot if you need to get a SQL Server enterprise license, but you could use SQLExpress) if the application is to be hosted in house or hosting costs if on a web hosting environment.

Joomla splits out admin much more from the client side application and it is a lot less intuitive than DNN. I use Drupal, the development environment for module creation is so much better, better IDE, RAD, and the skinning seems more flexible.

So what is it that makes a good CMS. How do you choose.

1. It should have a healthy community or company to support you and your website
2. It should be secure. Have good roles and profile management.
3. IT should be browser compatible (works in all major browsers)
4. It should be fast
5. Probably most important it should suit your budget
6. Also very important, should meet your needs
7. You must be comfortable with the platform. ie PHP, Window, Linux. MS SQL, MySQL.

So which one would you choose? Which CMS do you think best suites your needs? Which do you think is the better CMS.