If you are wondering if there are good alternatives to the WordPress, I came across 2 recently. They are Joomla and Drupal. Similar to WordPress, they are free open source Content Management System (CMS), web-based program which allows users to manage and organise content, documents and multimedia files on websites and to collaborate and interact. To give an idea of the power of CMS, think facebook, MySpace & Youtube.

Joomla

I took a spin on the demo provided by Joomla on its website and became a convert. The interface is simple and user friendly. Users do not need to know anything about coding to get started. I put in some advertisements on the side bar and contents section without much of a hassle. There are also plugins, templates (themes), language selection and polls available.

Drupal

Visiting the Drupal and going to some of the sites using Drupal as a platform gives me an impression that it is more poerful than Joomla. One website I visited was a discussion forum, yep … created out of Drupal, here it is  http://www.fastcompany.com/ . Afterall, Drupal did won  the best overall 2007 Open Source CMS Award given by Packt Publishing. Joomla came in second. WordPress was first in the category for Best Open Source Social Networking Content Management System, in which Drupal came in second. Drupal is also better in community features and search engine friendliness. One drawback is that you will need to have a bit of web programming know-how to get around it.

Setting up websites in Drupal or Joomla platforms are definitely worth considering.