Comparative CMS analysis: the hunt for an optimal system for creating corporate sites

Hello!

I want to share the result of my own research conducted by me during the week in the environment of existing CMS. My goal was simple and pragmatic - to choose the best system for creating corporate websites. This need arose in connection with the ever-increasing number of orders for sites. On the one hand, this is not to please, but on the other, it makes it very careful and responsive to the choice of the engine, which will have to accompany the not-too-experienced programmer on the issue of creating websites.

So, the object of my analysis was the seven CMS according to the Rating Runet http://www.ratingruneta.ru/cms/2011/opensource/

CMS	Official sites	Russian-speaking community	Stable version
Joomla	www.joomla.org	joom.ru	Joomla 2.5
Drupal	drupal.org	www.drupal.ru	Drupal 7.15
Modx	modx.com	modx.ru	MODX Revolution 2.2.4
Wordpress	wordpress.org	ru.wordpress.org	WordPress 3.4.1
Typo3	typo3.org	www.typo3.ru	TYPO3 4.7.2
ImageCMS	www.imagecms.net	www.imagecms.net	ImageCMS 3.3.6.72
CMS Made Simple	www.cmsmadesimple.org	www.cmsmadesimple.ru	CMSMS 1.11

Testing was carried out according to the following parameters: ease of use of the administrative panel, speed of site development on the engine, the ability to write additional modules, the implementation of basic features when building a corporate website for the company. For example, let's take the winner in the Runet Rating in the section “Services for Business” ( http://www.ratingruneta.ru/awards/services/ ): http://www.loadstar.ru/ . All tests are conducted on a set of distributions (Apache, PHP, MySQL, Perl, etc.) from Denwer.

CMS	Last Release Date:	Unpacked archive weight, Mb	PHP version
Joomla	June 19, 2012	31.2	5.2.x
Drupal	August 01, 2012	14.1	5.2.6 and more
Modx	June 15, 2012	31.7	5.1.2 and more
Wordpress	June 27, 2012	14.9	5.2.4 and more
Typo3	April 25, 2012	84.7	5.3.x
ImageCMS	Aug 07, 2012	10.5	5.3.x
CMS Made Simple	July 28, 2012	13.8	5.2.4 and more

System requirements

Joomla : Zlib support, XML support, database support: (mysql, mysqli), String Overload is disabled, INI Parser support, JSON support
Drupal : gd, PHP XML extension, Hash and JSON, Php Data Objects (PDO)
Modx : zlib, SimpleXML, checking the limit of allocated memory (must be at least 24 MB)
WordPress : MySQL 5.0 or greaterThe mod_rewrite Apache module
Typo3 : openssl, gd
ImageCMS : curl, json, mbstring, iconv, gd, zlib
CMS Made Simple : md5 Function, GD library

Installation

Joomla, Drupal, Modx, WordPress, ImageCMS, CMS Made Simple : completely web-based, easy installation in several stages.
Typo3 : it was not possible to install on my own the first time, I set openssl for Denver, but errors started to occur further, in the end the installation hung and produced a white screen. After the reboot, a lot of errors appeared, then I decided not to waste time further.

Russian localization of the administrative part

Joomla : download the Russian localization file from the official Russian site: joom.ru , install via the Extension Manager, then install by default using the Language Manager. In general, the whole procedure took about 2 minutes.
Drupal : made a big mistake, not choosing a language file during installation, it was not possible to register it from the administrative panel later. I deleted the distribution kit, did the installation correctly for the second time, downloaded the language file from localize.drupal.org/translate/downloads and uploaded to the / profiles / standard / translations / folder
Modx : when installing, select the Russian interface. You do not need to download anything extra.
WordPress : the Russian version of the installation script was downloaded, the entire installation was immediately in Russian.
Typo3 : testing was not conducted.
ImageCMS : fully Russian-language development, respectively - and the administrator interface in Russian.
CMS Made Simple : without problems downloaded the file from the link dev.cmsmadesimple.org/project/files/6#package-618 , then unzipped to the root of the system. After that, the configuration could choose the Russian language.

First of all, I checked the administrator parts for the possibility of implementing the site’s functionality. As we can see, the site is bilingual, we have six articles with services in the left menu on the inside pages, three articles in the top menu. So we need to be able to create two menus. We also have a page with contacts, where in addition to information there is also a feedback form. The news section contains: a list of news sorted by date.

Creating static pages

Joomla : in the top menu in the "Materials" section without any problems created the page "About the Company" and filled it with the necessary text.
Drupal : I really liked the solution with the editing mode while viewing the site. In the top menu, easily added the page “About the company” and in the same place assigned it to the top menu. No visual editor, just tags or html, good or bad? I bow to the fact that for an inexperienced user - is bad.
Modx : in general: this system is of a completely different level, rather CMF, as the developers themselves are positioning. You can customize anything, make a large portal, but for this you need to spend a lot of time exploring all the possibilities. For this task, a novice programmer probably won’t work - it’s a pity.
WordPress : created the page “About the Company” without any problems in the Pages section.
Typo3 : since the installation failed, I tried to look at the demo version: demo.typo3lab.ru . Everything is very confusing, I will not go further, to create such a website you need very fine-tuning by the hands of a typo3 specialist. But since the site is very simple, most likely - the system will not work for me.
ImageCMS : in the top menu in the “Content” - “Creation” section without any problems created the article “About the Company”.
CMS Made Simple : created the page “About the Company” in the “Content” section. Ibid assigned it to the top menu.

Create news section

Joomla : without any problems, created a category in the "Materials" section, then also added news in a short and complete form.
Drupal : I could not create a news section, although, I guess, this possibility is somewhere in the creation of dictionaries, because there is a similar functionality.
Modx : testing was not conducted.
WordPress : in the "Entries" section created a rubric, also without difficulty.
Typo3 - testing was not conducted.
ImageCMS : in the top menu in the “Categories” - “Creating” section without obstacles created the “News” category.
CMS Made Simple : there is a special news section where categories are created and news is added. There he created the category "News" and added a list of news there.

Menu creation

Joomla : in the “Menu” section, created the “About Company” menu item and assigned the created article to it, the necessary item immediately appeared in the top menu of the default template. Also created a menu item on the category "News". The only thing - I think the settings are too many: to add the menu item "News" you need to select a bunch of parameters.
Drupal : menu items are assigned to content immediately upon creation.
Modx : testing was not conducted.
WordPress : Appearance - Menu - easily created a menu and assigned it all the necessary items.
Typo3 : testing was not conducted.
ImageCMS : in the “Menu” section, you easily created the “About Company” menu item and assigned the desired article to it, you can also assign a menu item and a category.
CMS Made Simple : it is not clear how the menu is created. It is worth digging into the templates.

Feedback

Joomla : using the module "Contacts" created a separate contact, registered all contact information and in the menu item set up the output of this data and feedback form. The problem was the need to display a variety of different contact information - I did not find such an opportunity. I drove into additional information, but it was all displayed below. You will need to look for a solution when editing the template.
Drupal : a feedback form was created using the Contact module. I made a block, in the settings of which I indicated “to show on the contact page”, you can write all the necessary information in this block.
Modx, Typo3 : not tested.
WordPress : There is no feedback in the database. Did not find a good plugin. But in principle there are quite a lot of them, so there will certainly be a suitable one.
ImageCMS : there is a working module "Feedback", which implements this feature. Also, no problem passes the installation in the top menu link.
CMS Made Simple : FormBuilder module failed to install.

Bilingualism

Joomla : there is no built-in feature for bilingualism, you need to look for additional modules. As I understand it - a little trouble with this, the most popular JoomFish module with version 2.5 does not work. The others, it seemed to me, were very raw, so I decided not to spend time testing them. If bilingualism is needed, it is better to use earlier versions of Joomla and the JoomFish component. I read the JoomFish documentation a bit - the description didn’t like the fact that it was necessary to edit the content in another language of the module used, and not directly from the article. Although, perhaps, someone finds it convenient.
Drupal : in the database did not find where to translate content. Although, there are guesses that there are special modules, or additional settings.
Modx, Typo3 : not tested.
WordPress : not in the database. Did not find a good plugin. But there is enough information on the Internet, so customization is possible.
ImageCMS : multilingual also available in assembly. After creating a second language when editing menus, articles and categories, it became possible to translate them into another language. That's just not yet clear how to insert a language switch on the site.
CMS Made Simple : you can download the module from here: dev.cmsmadesimple.org/project/files/955#package-972 . Personally, I could not install, and the descriptions on it are few. While everything is very sad, I hope that the templates will be able to surprise in the future.

At this stage, I am ready to refuse to work with two systems: modx and typo3. Then I took up the fastening of our open-back design to the control system templates. Accordingly, I need to display the main page in the specified format with a slider, all internal ones have a distinctive design from the main one. Information pages are displayed in one format. You also need to set up feedback.

Customize homepage

Joomla : all editing takes place in the index.php file at the root of the template, it is quite simple to change the display of the main one by writing the required code points and inserting the modules where necessary.
Drupal : you can edit the template in the folder: \ themes \ bartik \ templates. There you can simply change all the necessary blocks.
Modx, Typo3 : not tested.
WordPress : you can edit the template in the folder: wp-content \ themes \ twentyeleven. There you can change all the necessary blocks. You just need to find the appropriate files to edit the header, content, footer, etc.
ImageCMS : the main page is edited in the main.tpl file in the template root. There, without problems, all the necessary blocks change.
CMS Made Simple : work from templates from the database, only from the administrative part. This instantly closes the question of suitability for creating unique non-template sites on this system for me.

Customize the news section

Joomla : for the news section, you can assign a different template to change the display menu. All unnecessary parameters for display can be hidden from the admin panel. Next - customize the appearance using a css-file. If you want a completely unique setting with your css-classes, you need to edit each component in the appropriate folders, for example - for news: components \ com_content \ views \ category \ tmpl
Drupal : I did not find how to assign another template for a news section or a static article. You can, of course, put the right conditions right in the main template and achieve this result.
Modx, Typo3, CMS Made Simple : testing was not conducted.
WordPress : I did not find the standard means of implementing a separate design for a section or a separate page, but there is an article on the Internet: www.mykhailenko.com/blog/2011-07-27/multiple-templates-4-category-single-pages-wordpress. html . Not exactly a convenient solution, but at least something.
ImageCMS : I liked it a lot - for each category you can set your own display file for both the category and the general site template. Thus, the problem is solved without problems, that the main and internal pages have a different structure (without any changes to the system core and work with PHP functions).

Setting up a static article

Joomla : is assigned to another from the main template, then you need to edit: either the CSS file, or the code in the component.
Drupal : I did not find how to assign another template for a news section or a static article. You can, of course, put the right conditions in the main template and achieve this result.
Modx, Typo3, CMS Made Simple : testing was not conducted.
WordPress : I haven’t found standard tools for implementing a separate section for a section or a separate page, but there’s an article on the Internet: http: //www.mykhailenko.com/blog/2011-07-27/multiple-templates-4- category-single-pages-wordpress.html. Not exactly a convenient solution, but at least something.
ImageCMS : you can easily assign your template, or edit the standard one to customize the desired view.

Insert menu

Joomla : occurs by inserting the menu module into the template in the right place. The appearance can be configured using the css class or by editing the module code: modules \ mod_menu
Drupal : occurs by inserting special code that displays the menu.
Modx, Typo3, CMS Made Simple : testing was not conducted.
WordPress, ImageCMS : inserts simply using a special function.

Feedback setup

Joomla : you can customize the image by editing the file: components \ com_contact \ views \ contact.
Drupal : can be configured using \ includes \ form.inc and editing a php-file, or using the class-css.
Modx, Typo3, CMS Made Simple : testing was not conducted.
WordPress : customization is done by editing the plugin files.
ImageCMS : you need to edit the module template: application \ modules \ feedback \ templates. There is also a calculator module, which, with the entered three values, shows some intended result to the user. I tried to figure out how to create something with these systems.

Module creation

Joomla : You can find various articles on the Internet, so you can develop simple modules yourself with knowledge of PHP and the ability to read documentation. For example, the first article in search results: www.joomla-code.ru/j25-creat-module
Drupal : there are a lot of articles, for example, tutorials on creating modules for Drupal. Azbukaweb.ru/creating-modules-a-tutorial-drupal-7x
Modx, Typo3 : not tested.
WordPress : there are a lot of articles, the first of the issue of Google: www.presswordpress.ru/wordpress-plugins/wp-wordpress-gallery-easy-plugin . In general, you can understand and make the necessary module.
ImageCMS : found an article on this topic: wiki.imagecms.net/%D0%A1%D0%BE%D0%B7%D0%B4%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0BB_%D0%BC % D0% BE% D0% B4% D1% 83% D0% BB% D0% B5% D0% B9 , there are also links to the forum. In general, you can make the necessary module.
CMS Made Simple : there is quite a detailed article on the Russian community site. That is, the creation of the module will not be a problem for fans.

CMS analysis in the context of SEO

From the point of view of promotion in search engines, the CMS was separately tested by a promotion specialist. Conclusions made in this aspect are given below.
To understand how you can work with CMS data in the direction of promotion and optimization for search engines, we will analyze the standard features of the desired functionality and errors in optimization:

CNC;
lack of duplicate pages;
garbage pages;
visual editor for content (ability to add texts);
404 pages;
individual management tags title and description of all pages;
the number of additional modules;
Site Map.

Joomla:

CNC - generated from index.php, automatically inserted with title;
Doubles - when promoting there will be problems with index.php, this is indexed;
“Trash” pages - After turning on (Use URL rewriting - Yes) pages of this type /index.php?option= com_content & view = categories & id = 0 do not disappear;
The visual editor is there, paste the text on the main page immediately did not work. This can be done through the Global Configuration (Use URL rewriting - Yes), Featured Yes, but after that, everything that was created broke - 404 error;
404 - is;
Title - cannot be configured from the administrative part, besides, you need to look for why on all pages there is a 404 error after switching on (Use URL rewriting - Yes)
Description - for articles and main customizable,
Sitemap - no;
Plugins - 3 seo-plug-ins for Joomla (Custom Page Title, JCrawler, ARTIO JoomSEF).

Drupal:

CNC - not automatically generated, you need to enter manually;
Doubles - if you forget to manually enter the name of the link, the url / node / 2 will be created, replace it with the necessary link, automatically added
```
<link rel="canonical" href="/test1" />
```
/node/2#comment-1;
«» — /user/1 /taxonomy/term/1 ) Robots.txt, ;
— . , “p”, , . ;
404 — ;
Title — , . «article | front title». template.php.
Meta Descriptions — , . , ;
Sitemap — ;
— 8 (globalredirect, Meta Tags (nodewords), path_redirect, pathauto, transliteration, xmlsitemap, Search 404, Seo checklist).

— , “p”,

<div class=""region region-content""> 
 <div class=""block block-system"" id=""block-system-main""> 
 <div class=""content""> 
 <div id=""first-time""> 
 <p> No front page content has been created yet. </p> 
 </div> 
 </div> 
 </div> 
 </div>

Modx

WordPress:

— , — ;
— ;
«» — ;
— ;
404 — ;
Title — . title | front title, . header.php;
Descriptions — , ;
Sitemap — , ;
— WordPress SEO by Yoast.

Typo3:

, , , , ! , content.defaultHeaderType = 1 h1. .

ImageCMS:

— ;
— ;
«» — ;
404 — ;
— , ( , );
Title — , title « » > " " ;
Descriptions — , ;
Sitemap — CMS, ;
— , , . , , .

CMS Made Simple:

— -, Page Alias, Page URL:;
— , - ;
«» — index.php?page=test4 , ;
404 — ;
— ;
Title — . title | title front ;
Descriptions — ;
Sitemap — ;
— 3 (Meta Max, SEOTools2, SEO Tools), CMS.

CMS, description, title , Robots.txt, sitemap.xml, , :

WordPress ImageCMS;
Drupal CMS Made Simple - , Drupal ;
Joomla 404, ;
ModX — - CMF;
Typo3 — , , , . .

, . - , , CMS. , , , , - , — .

, :

Joomla.

. — , . , , .

Drupal.

. . . — , .

Modx.

, , .

WordPress

. , — «» . - .

Typo3.