Independent report puts Plone Highly Ranked in CMS Comparison Review

idealware has issued a report comparing four major open source content management systems (CMS) commonly used in the nonprofit sector: Plone, WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. All have their strengths and weaknesses, and the report highlights twelve different areas and compares the four products. Plone, the CMS primarily used by Net Easy Inc., was highly ranked by the report, particularly in the areas of security and workflow. Plone received "Excellent" or "Solid" rankings in ten out of the twelve areas compared. The two areas where Plone was rated as "Fair" were "Ease of Hosting and Installation" and "Ease of Learning to Configure a More Complex Site." 

Net Easy would suggest that Idealware rating of "Fair" in the complexity is actually not an indicator of concern and actually demonstrates the platform is a product of professional development an architecture.  

Idealware states that WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal can be hosted on most web hosts, where Plone requires a specialized (and costlier) hosting environment not available on many web hosts. They feel that Plone is also the most difficult platform of the four to learn how to configure.  They suggest that one should hire a professional with experience in Plone in order to develop your site, particularly if time-line is an issue.  

Plone ranked as high or higher than the others in all of the remaining categories:

• Ease of Setting up a Simple Site
• Content Admin Ease of Use
• Graphical Flexibility
• Structural Flexibility
• User Roles and Workflow
• Community / Web 2.0 Functionality (Plone came in second to Drupal)
  
• Extending and Integrating
• Scalability and Security
• Site Maintenance
• Support / Community Strength
  

How the Others Ranked

WordPress

The report labeled WordPress as a good selection for simple straightforward sites. It has a great number of pre-made themes available so it's a quick process to get a site up and running.

WordPress is not suitable for large-scale sites as it doesn't scale well. It is designed to handle two types of content -- blogs and pages -- so it's difficult to reuse content in multiple locations. It trails the other products also in user roles and workflow.

Joomla

Joomla is relatively easy to install and set up. It's fairly straightforward to set up even rather large sites.

However, it is not a good choice for situations where it is desired to have multiple content authors, as it doesn't have a workflow in place to handle locking down a section or particular content to particular users. Since content is tied to a particular page, it's more difficult than some other systems to reuse content in different ways.

Drupal

Drupal is a powerful yet flexible option that is able to handle fairly complex sites. It shines in Web 2.0 / Community functionality such as blogs and user-submitted content. It is quite user-friendly for content creators and editors.

For the administrator, Drupal is quite complex. Sometimes there are so many options in the control panels, it can be overwhelming to wade through the settings. More preparation and planning is required in order to determine which option provides the best path to take to accomplish the desired result. Drupal is not as strong in workflow as Plone and wouldn't be the best choice for sites requiring many different content creators and editors.

Additional Information

The report reminds the reader several times that "the person or firm that designs and builds your website is likely to be as important as what CMS you choose." Net Easy agrees that one should put emphasis on an objective assessment of the requirements.  The current state of the industry is often that the product is driven by the skills of the consultant/firm and not the best solution for the client. Bryan Fogleman of Net Easy states that  "unfortunately, consultants often pitch and employ what they know (e.g. often their skills), not what is best for the solution/client."  It is best to review scenarios from firms that are skilled on many platforms and languages, not just one language or environment.

Mr. Fogleman also points out that the report fails to explain some other features/benefits to Plone/Python.  The Plone platform is written on the Zope Engine in a langugae named Python.  "Python is probably one of the best languages, if not the best language, in the world for teaching computer programming skills" says Mr. Fogleman.  Everyone in almost any job today would benefit with some fundamental understanding of programming as it impacts about everything we encounter.  Python is easy to teach (children), has robust features and is employed in numerous scenarios: bio-informatics, system administration, application development, systems monitoring (Zenoss), modeling, mathmatics and the list goes on.   Python is free to use and is platform-neutral.  It is much easier to review (readability) and understand the code years later.  PHP is a nice language and easy to learn but basically is best used in web development. 

Conclusion

We trust that you'll draw you own conclusion by reading this and other articles, testing the platforms and readin some source code is so inclined.  If not, feel free to call or e-mail Net Easy for any additonal questions. 

Download the complete report here.

Net Easy, Inc. is an IT firm that specializes in objective assessments and consulting to best practices while staying within budgets.  Net Easy has long been a user and proponent of Plone and has hosted Plone, Drupal, WordPress and Joomla sites for years.  Net Easy both supports and develops for Linux, Mac and Windows voice/data networks.  Proficient in best practices and employing standards based solutions that are often under budget.