In late March of 2009 there was an event billed as “The Ultimate CMS Showdown” It was originally presented at SXSW – South By Southwest Interactive in March, 2009, pitting three teams of all-star Web developers from the Drupal, Joomla! and WordPress communities against each other to develop the same Web site in each of their chosen open source content management platforms.
The competition was intended to provide folks with decision-making tools to use when trying to determine which of these open source content management systems might be a good fit for their individual needs.
It was envisioned as a bloodless battle between Content Management Systems to determine the Destiny of the concept and it was a good idea but probably a little before its time. There were still companies like WordPress that did not know that was the business they were in or would be in eventually. Now years and trends later we have a bit of a better perspective to judge.
Having extensively used Joomla, Drupal and WordPress I have a fairly good idea what is working. I have personally settled on WordPress and still need to give tumbler a tumble.
My opinion is whatever works. Not all sites are alike, therefore they may need different things and that is great when different solutions are doing different things in different ways. Something that works well for me may be exactly what you hate about another approach. We can handle more than one. It is just too bad that they are worlds apart and incompatible. This is what I had hoped Open Source APIs would change. Oh Well!
In the pits were staunch fans of Joomla, Drupal and WordPress. To say it was a “no decision” is fair. No bodies were found in container bins and no kneecaps were broken. So I would say its time for another go round. There are a few more contestants and the audience is bigger as is the need.