The last session I attended at Drupalcon DC was a comparison between Drupal, Joomla!, and WordPress.  Christine and Hagen Graf helped explore usage, features, and usability of Drupal, Joomla! and Wordpress.  The questions that they sought to answer included":

• Who is using it
• what are they looking for
• comparison
• cultural differences
• project competition and collaboration
• community engagement

Christine and Hagen used Google Trend as the yard-stick of Drupal “volume”.  I personally question the over-all validity of using the number of searches made for the words Drupal, Joomla!, and Wordpress as an accurate metric of use/flexibility and so on.  However, it did reveal that Joomla! is queried 3.5 times on Google than Drupal and Wordpress 2.85 times more often.

They went on to compare Insiders and Outsiders. Creators and consumers.  Finally, they defined “Normal” users in a non-technical way.  Those are the people who would just pick up the software, install it, and use it.

Joomla! is designed to be easy to install and set up even if you’re not an advanced user.  Many web hosting services offer a single click interface to make the process even simpler.

They concluded that Drupal is used by folks who love Drupal.  In other-words, the hard core usership and those who can afford to have someone else set a Drupal site for them. 

WordPress – extremely quick and easy to set up.  Anybody can do it.

So, what do people say about each of the systems?  Some example quotes include:

“I am so comfy with Wordpress.” 

“I’ve tried Joomla and is was not an intuitive user experience.”

“I’ve played with Drupal a bit and it seems very powerful, but its been tough for me to really figure out how to use it.”

Users are looking for:  Ease of use, Flexibility, and Adaptability

Installation

• Joomla! can be installed, out of the box, in different languages. It creates the database for you.  It provides a little example data. It has an ftp layer in the core software.
• Drupal installer in English, db has to be created in advance manually.  The system sets up with no example data.
• Wordpress installer in different languages, db has created in advance manually.  The system gives you one example post.

After installation

• With Joomla! everything is there—you have tagging set up, a WYSIWYG interface, and the system seems intuitive if a bit utilitarian.
• Drupal is empty to begin with.  You have to load up your “extensions” manually.
• Wordpress is elegant after initial installation.

Extensions

• Joomla installation via FTP, upload, URL and there are about 4000 modules. 
• Drupal FTP installation.  There are roughly 2000 modules in D6.
• Wordpress FTP.   There are about Wordpress 4200 modules.

Themes

All three are, by in large, WCAG/ADA. 

• Joomla! output is overwritable in the template.  There is no central place for templates.
• Drupal allows for themable templates.
• Wordpress doesn’t allow for themable templates.

Updating the Software

• No update system in Joomla! 
• Drupal has update module. 
• Wordpress has automatic installation.

Creating content

Joomla! allows content to be created through menus.  Drupal needs additional modules to have the same functionality.

Antispam – pretty much the same in each

Admin

• Joomla! has separation between front end and admin.
• Drupal no separation between front end and the admin out of the box.
• Wordpress has separation between front end and admin.

Clean URLs

• Not possible to create your own clean URLs on Joomla. 
• Drupal, you can out of the box and pathauto furthers that functionality. 
• Wordpress you can but it is preset.

User Permissions

• Joomla and WordPress are limited in permissions.  Drupal is extremely flexible.

Ecomm

• Joomla.  One option.  Drupal two options. Wordpress one option.

Evident Handling

• Drupal is the most flexible.

Content types

• Drupal gives you unlimited content types. 
• In Joomla!, just articles and predefined. 
• In Wordpress you can have only articles.

The Final Assessment

• Joomla! is pretty good out of the box. 
• Wordpress is the IDEAL out of the box blogging tool. 
• Drupal is the most flexible and the community is the best “feature” of Drupal.