There is a war going on. The rules are not clear, the participants might be slippery, and there is a lot of code involved, but in the end there is a single winner. This war is the CMS competition game and WordPress 3.x, Drupal 6.x and Joomla 1.x are the players.
You need to know from the start that this comparison is not from a strict technical perspective. It’s more like a general overview, and based on experience of building plug-ins with the same functionality for all three of them.
1. Documentation
WordPress is a mess.You can’t find anything useful and if you find something, it’s probably obsolete. Their site is lacking documentation updates and if you need anything you have to look at the source code to understand it. The only good thing is the community. You might get some help from them.
Drupal is much better at this chapter. Usually you find some article online with some starting tips and you go from there. It’s not perfect but it’s a way.
Joomla is almost as bad as WordPress. You get the impression they explain things, but in the end you realize you got nothing. If you have a question YOU have to find the answer for it. The community will not help with harder questions so you’re alone in the dark.
WordPress 5/10
Drupal 7/10
Joomla 4/10
2. Multilingual Support
WordPress doesn’t support multi-language integration. All you can do is save the information in the same database table and try to use different templates to display the information. Another solution is the WordPress Multilingual Plugin (WPML) that can do this job for you.
In Drupal you just need to activate a core module named Locale: multi-language support. It’s there from the start but it’s disabled. After this you can start translating the content in different language from the interface.
With Joomla, you will need an extra module to do the work for you. The solution it’s called Joomfish and it’s very easy to install and administer. Because it’s not in the default core this is however an impediment.
WordPress 3/10
Drupal 9/10
Joomla 6/10
3. Code style / learning curve
WordPress is a procedural framework. You use hooks to add functionality. You are not forced to use the procedural style and you can still use oop for your classes but the overall feeling is that you are using a rudimentary framework.
Drupal it’s better then WordPress but it’s still using hooks to interfere with the normal work-flow.
Joomla makes all the difference. You feel the processional and enterprise framework at work. It’s the first cms that uses a true OOP style for the core and it makes you use a MVC structure for your extensions. Truly awesome to work with.
WordPress 5/10
Drupal 6/10
Joomla 7/10
4. Extra functionality
In WordPress extra functionality it’s added via plugins. The website has a lot of them and you can find almost anything you can imagine.
In Drupal the plugins are called modules and you can use them to add extra features.
In Joomla they are called plugins, components and modules. Ya..I know.. The most popular are the components that work very similar with drupal and wordpress plugins. The Modules are something similar with the Drupal blocks. Their primary goal is to create blocks of content so you can show them to the end user.
WordPress 7/10
Drupal 10/10
Joomla 5/10
5. Administration Interface
WordPress has a very clean interface. It’s easy to navigate around and you can find with ease what’s your interested on.
Drupal is a mess. Every thing is put together in a few submenus and you will forget each time where you can find the option you’re looking for. You can customize the menu of course but we’re talking about things out of the box.
Joomla has a very sharp look. Usually it’s easy to navigate around but some times things might get a bit confusing. It looks good and it’s usable ; that’s an important thing.
WordPress 8/10
Drupal 6/10
Joomla 7/10
6. Helper functions / HTML
WordPress has zero support for html object. What I mean by this is you can’t just use a helper function to generate a dropdown list. You have to write by hand the entire html code.
In Drupal using something like a grid with pagination it’s really a pain. You can do it but until you understand how you will grow a beard.
In Joomla you have a lot of help. You can create a grid with pagination with very few lines of code. Also there is a special syntax for a lot of elements including a dropdown list.
WordPress 1/10
Drupal 6/10
Joomla 8/10
7. General look and feel
WordPress has a great look and feel to it. It’s simple and the advance feature are there but they are hidden from your first eye scan. For it’s purpose it clean and easy to use.
Drupal is really a clutter. Even the themes seem bulky and everything seems to run in slow motion. You need to put a lot of effort into making Drupal looking like a professional website.
In Joomla the feeling is somehow mixed. From the installation you feel this is something professional, but everything seems a bit to shiny and enterprise based.
WordPress 9/10
Drupal 5/10
Joomla 7/10
8. Text translation
Wordpres and Drupal have both went the same way. Using similar function like _e or __ WordPress will look for locale translations when it’s necessary.
In Drupal to translate your plugin you actually need to install another plugin , create PO files and translate them. This seems really difficult. Every text you need to translate will be put in a function like this t(‘Translate me’) and then when time comes this text will be extracted from your file and you can translate it.
In Joomla the translate process is really great. All you have to do is write an abstract text in a function like (‘THIS_IS_THE_TEXT’) then in a separate ini file you can write the translations.
WordPress 5/10
Drupal 5/10
Joomla 9/10
9. Database support
WordPress only works with mysql and there are no future plans to improve this.
Drupal works with both postgresql and mysql. There is a level of abstraction that you can use to save information into the database. You have to be careful with the syntax and use generic SQL syntax for everything to work on both of them. Even the recent core had a problem because of this and you need to apply a patch to do a search in postgresql.
Joomla works with mysql. The good news is the PostgreSQL and PDO drivers are on the way and for this Joomla is deserving an extra star.
WordPress 4/10
Drupal 8/10
Joomla 6/10
10.Internal API
WordPress problem it’s the lack of back compatibility. With poor documentation you will have to dig a few hours before finding and understanding how a function should work.
Using the internal Drupal API is a pain , you need all kind of hacks to resolve your problems and a good example is the Form Api.
Joomla has a good API but the lack of documentation makes it hard to understand.
WordPress 6/10
Drupal 7/10
Joomla 7/10
11.Unit testing
Wordpres has a good description of the process “Basically all you need is to checkout the tests from SVN and to create a database and a wp-config.php.”. PhpUnit is the WordPress choice for unit testing.
Drupal – SimpleTest is very well integrated using an internal module. You write your tests and then run them from the Drupal administration menu. Works pretty well, it’s easy to install and use.
Joomla supports – PhpUnit. What you need to do is download the latest version from their repository and in there you will find a test directory. You can write your script in there and the bootstrap file will be included for you.
WordPress 7/10
Drupal 9/10
Joomla 8/10
12. Who is behind ?
WordPress has a GPLv2 licence.Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little were co-founders of the project. WordPress is closely associated with Automattic, the company founded by Matt Mullenweg.
Drupal it’s an open source project. Dries Buytaert is the original creator and project lead for the Drupal.
Joomla has a GNU licence. Joomla was the result of a fork of Mambo. Open Source Matters, Inc. (OSM) is a not-for-profit formed under United States and New York state law that provides organizational, legal, and financial support for the Joomla! open-source project.
TOTAL SCORES
WordPress 60/120
Drupal 77/120
Joomla 74/120
What should you choose and why
WordPress is not really a CMS. It started as a blog and you should see it’s limitation. Of course with the next version it might make the gap smaller but this is not the moment. The true intent for this web application is to have an easy way to create a professional blog, with a great interface to administer it. Don’t try to hack it and start dreaming of great application because the effort to learn it will not make it worth it. You are much better with other alternatives. So keep it simple, if you want something simple and clear use it, if you need a lot of customization then use something else and don’t kill the developers.
Drupal is really a great solution. But again the target is pretty clear. You need to be a good php developer in order to use it. You can’t just start installing things and hope they work. The learning curve is much steeper but in the end the Cms is very powerful. The only problems is, it might feel a little sluggish and counter intuitive. A very big menu, with very many options and one million available plugins that might or might not work. Don’t try it if you don’t have a basic php knowledge and some server configuration skills.
Joomla seems a great solution. It’s a true CMS that just works. It’s easy to use but seems ahead of it’s time. From the installation screen to the article publishing you will be pleasantly surprised. It’s very strange there is no buzz about it. It’s like they keep it to them-self and the community doesn’t feel so close and helpful like the Drupal community.
What’s your favorite CMS ? Any opinion regarding the best one around ?
I agree with most of Drupal’s criticism. However, comparing it to the previous release it is just a great CMS. It is mature and you can see corporations rely on it every day.
However it is a little incomplete. I don’t know about Joomla! and WP in this but Drupal has a lot of open-source added platform functionality such as Open Atrium for creating intranets… and that’s just a killer not to say e-commerce, publishing and e-learning platforms that just can easily integrate into Drupal’s core.
I see Drupal has a very solid data integration and some advanced IT services such as Business Intelligence and data warehousing can be used with it, although both are advanced topics beyond this scope, but they mustn’t be ignored. So for creating robust sites with platform integration and some advanced functionality, Drupal speaks for itself. To me that’s real stuff to compare the CMS with today’s market needs. And today’s market needs are very complex.
In other aspects of your review I think there’s a little more digging needed related to best practices as for backwards compatibility which can lead to a technical mess for users and developers in the long run as they have to develop for two or more platforms at once. I still got users who can’t understand why Ms Word docx documents can’t be opened with older versions of the suite, so it’s better to force everyone somehow to keep up to date for the sake of stability and best practices. There’s no licencing costs in the long run and users really need to know why would they need upgrade their site to D7 other than to keep the core to date. Today D6 is a more robust system than D7 as of all existing modules and problem solving documentation through it’s life.
Your conclusion is just right about Drupal. Amazing post.
I disagree with your analysis and conclusion over WordPress. With version 3.1 to describe it as “not really a CMS” is nonsense. This is an out-date analysis.
i agree ….. i only use WP for my customers.
This analysis IS out of date. The author is clearly working from an impression of WordPress that was formed in the <2.9 days. The HUGE advantage of WordPress is the user interface, which, in my opinion, trumps all the other limitations. Beyond this, the flexibility of WordPress is why developers use it. Also, the plethora of custom themes and plugins, not to mention the ease with which plugins can be customized. There is simply nothing that can be done in PHP that cannot be done in WordPress.
Code Style / Learning Curve – you marked WordPress unfairly – as it is easily more easier to learn and code style is good – better than joomla.
Internal API – WordPress wins hands down.
Documentation – WordPress popularity has created so many books and community support that finding answers is really easy. A lot more support than either joomla or Drupal.
Extra functionality – jeez! WordPress deservers 10/10 not drupal. Have ever actually tried WordPress.
Also the headings that you reviewed the three CMSes are not of equal value. Helper functions is not as important as features for example.
From a site designers point of view – I rate WordPress far higher than your review. Which is unfairly biased towards drupal & joomla.
Everybody is entitled to his own opinion. Thank you for your good points regarding WP. However I worked with all of them and I know first handed how things behind the curtain really work. I don’t expect everyone to agree with the post, but I appreciate everyone’s input.
I’m a little surprised at point 4, “Extra Functionality”. The values out of ten are completely arbitrary, and you offer no reasoning behind them. The only thing that is clear from your review is that all three offer extra functionality. You should probably just exclude point 4 altogether unless you are willing to explain why you gave Drupal a 10/10 or why Joomla!, (which is usually praised for the quantity of add-ons), is only deserving of a 5/10.
“The rules are not clear, the participants might be slippery, and there is a lot of code involved, but in the end there is a single winner. ” I would suggest rethinking this. A craftsman chooses his tools depending on the task at hand. It’s like saying, “Hammer vs. Saw – in the end there is a single winner!”
To elaborate a bit, I read another article on Geek Gumbo that stated the differences between Joomla and Drupal very well. Joomla has an underwhelming framework with an overbearing CMS. Drupal has an overbearing framework with and underwhelming CMS. Out of the box, each one will be stronger in different situations, as both play slightly different games of “give and take”. As for WordPress, it was designed to do one thing really well, and that’s blogging. It’s difficult to consider it as a complete development framework and CMS, but it is very elegant, and fulfils its purpose in a very polished fashion.
I am very surprised at your findings and STRONGLY disagree when you say WordPress is not really CMS. ????
Over the past year and with the release of WordPress 3.1 I no longer touch Joomla or drupal simply because I can give my clients everything they desire with wordpress and from start to finish my work is done in half the time.
Clients are able to upload their own video, images, text, add new pages, add new menus and categories without calling my team for assistance.
If this is not managing content then what is????
This article can be viewed as a misleading report.
I think when posting a report with a rating system do a survey and get some feedback from other developers. Or let your audience vote, This report comes across more like one persons personal opinion as opposed to public opinion across developers. This takes away from its credibility.
(By the way we have just build such a voting system in wordpress which allows users to vote on their favorite musician, one vote per IP address).
My team of five developers unanimously rate WordPress 3.1 superior to both joomla and Drupal for start up businesses and the CMS is the simplest to use. We now only recommend wordpress and only work with joomla or drupal on request (we have had none).
in 2009 this would have been a very accurate report. But in 2011 WordPress has definitely come into its own. Take a closer look.
Thank you for taking the time to write this report, very easy to read and laid out quite well.
Folks, thanks you very much on analyzing of those CMS. It was very helpfull for me and I belive for other future developers and web designers.
Best Regards from Serbia
I think it’s funny that someone actually made a comment “Have ever actually tried WordPress.”
Duh… this very page is using wrodpress, look down
What about SEO functions?
I’ve used wordpress in the past and its All in One seo pack etc. I found it all reaaly good.
How easy is it to optimise Drupal and Joomla? Do they support URL rewriting, canonicalisation etc?
Thanks for this comparison between Joomla and Drupal (WordPress, which I’m somewhat familiar with, doesn’t have all the features I’m looking for). I’m about to dive into a project in which I probably have no business – but what the heck, that has never stopped me before – and information such as what you’ve posted here help me move one step closer.
Let me preface my comment/question with the fact I am a marketing person that was tasked to build a company intranet with zero budget….
We chose mojoportal last year and it was working for us until we had 2 drives go into complete failure and now we need to start over. So – for the non-programmer, how does WP and Joomla compare to mojoportal? We liked it because we did not need to know how to write code, etc. It seems like drupal would not be an option for me.
Before I jump back into mojoportal, I would like to see if there is a better alternative. Thanks for any advice you can give!
You kind of cover this with administrative UI, but that’s always seemed huge to me. We’ve had multiple clients who aren’t technically minded who get overwhelmed by Drupal’s admin areas. You really have to make specific admin pages for most non-technical users, and even then the structure of so many of the pages such as create content, etc either default to confusing things, or are nearly impossible to change. Things that a developer can glance past, but a non-developer owner of a restaurant say, is not going to get. Meanwhile we put people onto WordPress and they just get it and are able to immediately jump in. It makes a HUGE difference to the end user.
One difference I didn’t read you mention though was about users. If you’re going to have multiple users, even hundreds of users, interacting on forums, in blogs, etc, then I think Drupal is a step above the others, with it’s permissioning, roles, etc. It’s much easier to segment out Drupal than it is WordPress where while you can create roles and such, is much more limited. I wouldn’t want to develop a WordPress site that allowed random people to do anything more than comment on a blog.
WordPress “Not Really CMS”!!!! This is an absolute OUTRAGE!!!! Never have I been so insulted in my life!!! My family are now pan-handling on the street because of this atrocity! I quit my job as a public defender and now I’m hustlin Rocks on the street! All because my faith in WordPress, being a full-fledged CMS, have been crushed by the words of a true developer! Now, I live near a dumpster by the Airport, selling my Pet-Rocks for a nickle. My parents beg me to return, but I have to deny their very existence! “Steve? Steve is under the termat, polishin the rims of the Aero-Planes, Stranger.” I can no longer sleep at nights knowing that the SEO functionality is not up to par to the standards of the Inter-web! Why!!! OH WHY!!!!!!
Just Kidding…love the review!
I miss one major point and for that is a crucial point why I choose WordPress as my main CMS.
For the end-user (the stupid people where we build websites with a CMS for) WordPress is the most friendly or less terrifying one. I never had 1 client who couldn’t work in the WordPress back-end to change text, ad/change photo’s or even make extra pages.
Ans that is in my opinion the most important feature of a good CMS
I am a developer and user of all three!
Your comments regarding wordpress not being a CMS is a little out dated. Without a shadow of a doubt from 3.0 it is a CMS.
Technically, with the right development you could accomplish the same in all three (wordpress, joomla and drupal).
However, recently I tend to be using WordPress more than the others, mainly due to the amount of existing themes and plugins available. The other two just can’t compete at the moment.
And i am a Drupal fan. Your scoring defiantly is not accurate. At present, WordPress is pulling away from the other two quite considerably. Just my two cents.
I agree, WP is pulling ahead at a quick pace, the admin panel is tight, plus I think they are going to bring the way pages can be edited to the next level with the new admin bar on the sites. Looks like they want to create the ability of front side editing online, that would be awesome for clients. To really have a great site, you still have to have someone that knows how to build them run them, but for simple edits, CMS’s are nice. Plus they create a great way to build database driven sites.
I started using WordPress over a year ago and found the documentation was awesome on their website. It is like a complete book online and like others said you can find books and answers for just about any problem. It takes some time to learn it, but I keep finding that you can do more and more with it every time I build a new website. Parent child themes, different page templates for each page, custom coded functionality, plugins and hard coded plugin functionality, not to mention the user interface is awesome. I have checked out all three and it would either be WordPress or a paid for CMS(Expression Engine, etc…), nothing else. Not to mention the development team is good, they also have this site (http://wordpress.tv/) that has some tips. WordPress keeps progressing quite well. Whoever wrote this doesn’t have much skill at developing sites anyway, they are using WP but are still a super hater against it, you can just tell. Use whatever CMS you want anyway, but find one and stick with it, don’t give up right away if you can’t figure something out, you will never get better at development if you do, but don’t try and know it all, find your skill or niche and focus to excel.
I think this post is pretty biased toward Drupal.
For me I use WordPress because the end user, the client, who usually doesn’t have much knowledge of web development at all can navigate a WP admin panel in minutes. I find Drupal’s admin and most other CMS’s (even EE) a useability nightmare in this regard. WordPress really keeps in mind its user, NOT developers but everyday people publishing content online. I think WP makes this the most accessible and enjoyable experience.
Thanks for posting though.
hi ,
Also been using both joomla and WordPress,
Must say, Joomla is my winner, and i am saying this, because all my developed sites is Joomla are on the first page in Google,
Whereby WordPress, isnt, at all, it could be my style of developing, and SEO, and management of the whole site,
Joomla clearly my winner
TOTAL SCORES
WordPress 60/120
Drupal 77/120
Joomla 74/120
/me looks down
running wordpress xD
Here’s my experience building websites with all three (and by building I really mean programming):
WP – does not have a rich API, if you want to do anything funky you have to build it from scratch. Good thing about WP is its pretty simple, but anyone who says this is a CMS is nuts. Its not, its a very simple blogging system that a lot of people have layered feature on top of.
Joomla – spaghetti tangled mess of code. MVC and OO mean nothing and lets face it Joomla is not MVC. I’ll take well documented smart procedural code over poorly implemented and silly use of OO any day. Good things about Joomla… sorry, can’t think of any right now.
Drupal – ah, now we are talking. Super rich API, endless hooks and outstanding API documentation. Its highly scalable but performance can suffer if you have too many modules enabled. Bad thing about Drupal is configuration management, however they are fixing this in the next version (WP kicks its ass in this area).
Finally, I don’t think there is so much of war going on – at least not a three way war, Joomla is going to loose out, no doubt here – the writing is on the wall for it because Drupal is now so powerful, has so many kick ass modules and is so easy to use there’s no longer any reason to use Joomla (unless all you care about is a theme – Joomla has way more and much nicer designs). WP will reign supreme for many years as the goto system for simple sites and blogs – Drupal will never displace the King of Blogging.
I think one thing you forget to mention is that 99.999% of all Drupal modules are FREE, work very well and are well supported. In Joomla you have to pay for anything half decent, and I think that is why people are switching to Drupal in droves (they are, believe me).
Pretty much I will always choose Drupal for any site, even for simple sites, mainly because simple sites have a habit of becoming more complex sites over time – this is where Drupal can really rock – because many of the free modules are interoperable and all hook into either core or a broad range of frequently used helper modules like CTools or other API type extension modules. This point should not be overlooked – I found building a site with Joomla extremely painful because one vendors extensions to not talk to another vendors extensions, so you end up with dozens of extensions trying to get the exact set of features you are after. In Drupal this is much easier – modules are usually small or allow you to simply build the feature you want, such as the “Views” module.
Oh, and yes, with Joomla I found myself having to pay for extensions, in Drupal they are all free. Also Drupal has a HUGE centralized community so getting help, even on really difficult to answer questions, is pretty easy. All I know about WP is that it looks great and is very elegant + the media handling out of the box is very good.
My website on WordPress works fine!
I tried Drupal and Joomla but returned to WP.
tried drupal for our nigerian news/gossip site but kept getting lost in the admin area, now we’re using worpress, and its great!!!
I am new to CMS and what attracted me to use it is item #7, which I definitely agree from the design perspective and ease of use for us newbie. Thank you for this article.
Wow, you clearly didn’t use the latest WordPress.
The very top priority of having cms are end users(that are filling site with info and editing it almost every day) not admins ! Everything else is less important.
It’d be funny to watch you teaching someone who can only type something in word processors how to do things in Drupal or even Joomla.
Also WordPress is good but i want to try Concrete5 soon, and maybe you should do the same.
How could you compare in this way? Are you serious? I have tried all 3 of them and WordPress is better from almost all points of view. What you have wrote here is not fair.
I think wordpress users need to take a look at other systems. WordPress is a blog that has stretched itself into a very limited cms, and that stretch is getting thin; it’s time for wordpress to completely rewrite their code if they want to be a real cms.
For example, the sidebar. If you want to create an area other than a sidebar…you create another sidebar? What? Wouldn’t it be better to rewrite the code so it can accomodate positions and not call them sidebar? Their editor strips out html code; totally unacceptable by ANY standard. And they don’t have categories for pages? What? If categories are appropriate for posts, they are appropriate for pages. For a small site, that might be ok, but for a site with 100s of pages, not having categories to sort content keeps worpress in the blog category.
Wordpress is a blog that can be a limited cms if you’re willing to jump through code hoops. If you haven’t tried Joomla, you don’t know what you’re missing, and as such, don’t know what you’re talking about. I have used both: WordPress = blog. Joomla = CMS / Website Tool.
I agree WordPress was created as a blog that is trying to be a Joomla or Drupal. Drupal is probably the best coded CMS but its messy and not professional. Joomla is my choice.
First, great post!
However it is not made clear whether you or your commentators are discussing WP.com or WP.org … or is it safe to assume that it is WP.org we are talking about here?
I am looking to create a couple of sites and would like as much control over them as possible. I am leaning towards Drupal but the road ahead is steep and looooooooonnnggg… and setting me back a lot of time… Maybe better to start posting now on WP while learning Drupal?
This is complete rubbish, I’ve used all three extensively while trying to settle on a default for client projects over the last three years, and by far WordPress wins hands down.
WordPress has the best support and documentation out all of these, the community and user base is huge, and from that stand point alone eats drupal and Joomla.
Joomla is clumsy plain and simple, from a development and user perspective, and Drupal to me doesn’t even rank when it comes to UI, its also plagued by core developers who can’t help themselves from having a bitch fight out in the open…. take your toys and go home, they fall short anyway.
WordPress is by far superior when it comes to performing as a CMS as it starts with the most important thing first, making content management easy, beyond that its is scalable and secure, as well as incredibly flexible, I’m yet to find a use case where WordPress can’t do the job, and do it well.
This post reeks of someone with only a cursory knowledge of WP, and a developer who knows how to code or machines, but not people.
WordPress. Its Just better, deal.
I offer WordPress as a first choice in most cases now for clients, mainly because it is simple and intuitive enough that they can manage things themselves. I also find writing plugins for WordPress to be a simple task. The main thing for me is that training clients takes a lot of time and the more time I have to spend on training, the less happy a client is generally. WordPress is by far the easiest tool for clients to use.
Somebody defined CMS in a way that other one would defined in different. So, someone would say WP is a CMS while some would say it’s not. It doesn’t matter. Asking youself, what you need. WP provided a completed interface for you to login and manage the content which you wanted to show. That is your CMS. OK? OK!
Simply speaking, CMS is born as a platform to replace the static html pages for your website.
Thanks for the comparison of the 3 CMS. But I still like WordPress. I’ve been using WordPress for almost all of my projects and my clients are happy with it. It’s easy to use and manage and developer-friendly as well.
I have and do work with all three CMS. I will say I will use the right tool for the job based on my client’s requirements.
1) WordPress can be great for a pretty basic site that does not require much heavy lifting unless much programming is to be done. There is no hooks or API/Framework worth much to do the work. Admin side is easy to navigate, but for many of my clients, they require more from WordPress than what it will deliver.
2) Unless my client wants to pay me to maintain their site or is willing to watch for all security updates and put them into action immediately, I will strong suggest they steer away from Joomla. A lot can be done, but the code is severely mangled and not worth a hill of beans much less the handful Jack brought back from his cows.
3) Drupal is solid. Text is well sterilized before putting into the database and is translated on the way to output. This is not for your small site typically. I would say the reason that many corporations are using Drupal is because of the strength of the code Framework. It is highly scalable and is able to be put into a cluster environment much more easily than WP or Joomla. Not saying they can’t be, but there is more work.
All CMS have their pluses and minuses. They lend themselves to solve certain issues that the client has requirement and capabilities toward. The admin menu is not great on Drupal on its own, but can be made better with work up front from the developer of the site basing on roles and permissions. Joomla and WordPress are easy to get around from the start, but they have limitations of their own.
Think of it this way – a screw driver is a great tool. For hammering a nail, it will work, but not as well as a hammer. Pick the right tool for the job to get the solution that fits the end result the best.
I love WordPress for Blogging and simple websites. Drupal is an awesome CMS but I think is behind in plugins and Components. Joomla is a merge of the two and is my choice of the three. Again they all have there uses and they all great with SEO.
We use WordPress and Joomla and they both work great as CMS systems for Real Estate. Pick the CMS that works best for you and that you understand.
Migrate-ability is a key area that you’ve neglected. I’ve built sites in all three. WordPress will leave you with a broken site as soon as you try to migrate to a new version. Drupal will do the same. Joomla! has been successfully migrated all the way up the ramp. The problems with Joomla! migration are always associated with modules and plug-ins (which are maintained by third parties). But you can see which modules/plugins are supported in the newer versions.
I found your post interesting, but limited. WordPress is easy, but that’s about all. It has limited functionality for a fully functional CMS. Drupal is stronger, but incredibly complex. Joomla! has a proven framework that is kept up-to-date with a much more ambitious group of active developers. The CMS framework is solid, secure, and evolving rapidly. The learning curve is greater than WP but much smaller than Drupal. Most people get screwed up when they go outside the framework and start thinking in terms of “programming” instead of CMS. I’ve watched CSS programmers pull out their hair with Joomla! because they don’t accept the basic premise of the Joomla! CMS. (That premise is “get the template the way you want it BEFORE you load it into Joomla!”). The best solution to all these issues (WP, Drupal, or Joomla!) is to use a tool like Artisteer to develop the CSS, then upload the template.
I have tried and tried and tried to use Drupal–and yes I agree it is powerful, the interface and “how the F* do I get this to work like I want it” are exceedingly difficult. It’s certainly not something I would want to even think about turning over to a less-technical “end customer”.
I’ve tried Joomla but that seems like a big can on tinker-toys, mixed with legos, and bristle blocks. Yeah you can build a lot of stuff, but it’s clunky, complicated, and to me seems very un-elegant.
For simplicity WordPress has them beat, hands down. I agree that WP has made great strides in stability, etc. over the years. The interface is just “easy”. And for a CMS that might be the #1 trait.