Healthy Competition Between Drupal, WordPress & Joomla

WordPress 3.0 has been released and the platform war is starting again.

I have already seen several articles comparing it with mainly Drupal, but also Joomla. Then of course we get to the comments where it is like going back in time to battles between Amiga and Atari users. It was fun for a while, but quickly got boring when the superlatives gets out of hand and everyone loses focus.

Why is this Happening?

Why does it get like this? Why is it that people get so carried away about something and often overreact as soon as someone says something bad about something they use?

I believe it boils down to passion. Both the Amiga and the Atari was a lot about passion and it was in an era where everyone was discovering computers and finding new ways of using them. It was also about testing limits, getting the most performance out of it, in a way that very few does with computers these days.

When I think of it, I believe Open Source and the Internet is what replaced that era. Especially the Internet.

The Internet is the New Playground

The Internet gives everyone a voice. Creating a website or starting a business doesn't have to cost a fortune. You already have a computer and Internet connection. If your ISP doesn't offer you free webhosting, there are thousands of hosting companies offering it for next to nothing per month.

Then there are almost an unlimited amount of free information and other resources to teach you how to build a website, how to blog and so on. All is there, you just have to look for it.

At some point you will end up selecting a platform instead of building the site from scratch. The alternatives here is either to use a ready to use hosted solutions such as wordpress.com or drupalgardens.com or install the software on your own hosting account.

Protecting Your Investment

Whichever platform you select you have made a choice. The last thing you then want is for someone to tell that you made the wrong choice. Especially after investing so much time learning how it works and how to use it.

It is about protecting the work and time you have invested in the platform. You need to justify that you made the right choice, sometimes without having enough experience or knowledge to back it up with.

I also think it is a reaction to "Oh, I made the wrong choice and now I am either stuck with what I have or have to start over from the beginning learning a new system". After all, most of us hate having to learn something new if what we already have is working OK:ish...

Don't Regret Your Choice

When I made my choice I had spent quite a bit of time researching the alternatives, talking with friends and so on. Most of my friends recommended WordPress, none of them even mentioned Drupal or knew very little about it when I asked them.

In the end I opted for Drupal due to that I thought it would offer me more flexibility for the website ideas I had.

I haven't regretted my choice. Sure, I quickly learned that it takes longer to get something done in Drupal than other platforms. It has also been times when I questioned my choice. In the end though I am happy with my choice and does not see the time I have invested as wasted compared to if I had opted for a platform that was easier to get started with.

Open Source Communities is a Wonderful Place

I have been a member of the Drupal community for about two years now. It is a community I enjoy belonging to as I have come in contact with a lot of brilliant people from all kinds of backgrounds. Hopefully also done a little bit to give back to it.

Within the community we do keep an eye on WordPress, Joomla and other WCMS platforms, but it is on a very sensible level. Its about "keeping an eye on the competition" and bringing good ideas to Drupal.

Sure, the odd flamewar does pop up within the community. It would be surprising if it didn't considering the Drupal community is getting closer and closer to one million members (about 840,000 right now). But these things calms down very quickly and can't be compared to what we see in other places.

Competition is Healthy

Competition, on the other hand, is healthy. I want WordPress, Joomla as well as other WCMS to do well. There is plenty of room for them. Without competition progress slows down. Just look at Internet Explorer. When it was completely dominating the browser market, Microsoft shut down any further development. It wasn't until Firefox was released that something happened again. I am quite sure the web would have looked very different now if it wasn't for Firefox. Forget HTML5 to start with.

It is the same for WCMS. The different platforms are pushing each other and it is a constant cat and mouse scenario.

When the planning for Drupal 7 began, the knowledge about the competition was used, together with usability tests and lots of other stuff. This resulted in the decision that making Drupal easier to use out of the box was a priority, together with several others.

I have had very limited experience with the WordPress or Joomla communities, but I am sure that a lot of influences for the new releases comes from what the competition offers. If the competition have some killer features, then maybe it would beneficial to have that in the next release.

Looking at WordPress 3.0, many of the new features are clearly influences from Drupal and I am just fine with that. It is a giving and taking, especially in the Open Source arena.

Personally I hope the competition will go on for many years since I know that will bring even better functionality to the market, for all platforms involved.