Kings among Content Management Systems

In the world of Content Management Systems (CMSs), there is an array of options and choices so dizzying as to be completely overwhelming for the newbie, and sometimes even for the seasoned programmer or webmaster. These CMSs are capable of so much and they all have different things to offer. One major advantage of using a CMS is the ease with which you can set up and deploy a website! Using a CMS can save you a lot of building time and allow you to concentrate on creating content and marketing your website.

I have tried and played with many free content management systems to see what their different merits are, and have settled on two favorites on the basis of my needs – blogging and building content websites (for which I use either CMSs or hand coding).

For blogging, I definitely consider WordPress to be the master! With a strong community committed to creating themes and plugins, you can do almost anything with WordPress. It’s easy to set up and configure, and to add functionality to. With a little PHP knowledge, you can configure the files and play with them with ease.

For building larger content based websites, I declare that Drupal is King! I haven’t been playing with Drupal for too long, but I’ve been able to build some interesting websites, and have only glimpsed the possibilities. While many argue that Joomla is easier to use and has many more themes available, I am still enamored by Drupal. I will happily sacrifice the beautiful Joomla themes for the functional for the amazing functionality of Drupal. Granted, it’s not the easiest CMS to set up, but once you’ve mastered the basics, you’ll find that the possibilities will whet your appetite for more and more, and there’s an excellent and very helpful community of Drupal users at Drupal.org and all over the web.

In the next few days I will be creating a tutorial to walk you through creating a Drupal website, and will show you the different things you can do. This will definitely be a newbie tutorial of sorts, but will evolve with time as I learn the ropes of more advanced topics. So stay tuned and be sure to subscribe to the blog so that you don’t miss any of the tutorials.

In the meantime, here is a list of impressive websites built with Drupal to get you thinking, and to whet your appetite. While a lot of these websites have been heavily modified and themed, they show you what Drupal is capable of:

Drupal (of course)
BlogHer
Team Sugar
The New York Observer
Tipic
Pando
Best Credit Shop
AdoptionBaby

…and the list continues. If you have or know of any remarkable sites built on Drupal, feel free to share them here. And stay tuned for the tutorials.