Joomla, WordPress and SPIP: Which CMS for what purpose?

Getting Started section Wolforg blog , I decided to republish an article dating from last year but is still current. This article was part of what is known as a "Guest-blogging" on the late Weezonaute.fr ie a site manager to ask other players to write an article on the site says imposed a theme or not ...
In this case the theme was free and I'm then launched into a mini-comparison "of a few CMS uses rather than focusing on functionality. But enough chatter, I let you read this article and feel free to troll D @ gir in the comments, they are here for.

As part of my work focuses on the CMS from the free software, we often wonder what tool I prefer and why. When I did the hardware the same question came in as recurring about machine and the answer is pretty much the same to say: It depends, is why?.

Joomla, WordPress and SPIP:

Strengths:

Joomla is powerful, very powerful, and even sometimes too powerful. Its design has baffled many, and personally I have a good time to understand why there was a section concept in addition to traditional topics, but with Joomla you can do almost everything that you want except maybe the flash generated on the fly with php .

The engine is stable, templates and plugins are very numerous and updates are frequent. Plugins Joomla Components are call'd although there is also a notion of plugins that are call'd bots (I told you that AC could quickly become complicated), among the most commonly used include Fireboard who can manage a Forum fully integrated with Joomla, Community Builder , which creates in his Joomla community type "social network" Joomfish site that turns your "standard" multilingual site RSGallery that allows you to easily manage a complete image gallery without forgetting the fabulous Joomla Pack to backup, restore or transfer your Joomla in two or three movements.

Spip is one of three CMS in this test which has the longest (2001 so that WordPress and Joomla happened in 2003 in 2005) which is not it a quaint nearby CMS. SPIP is not old it is mature. It was he who introduced me to the CMS one morning in May 2004 and my family can confirm that it was a real shock (I had to do about THAT Spip for 18 months from the ladle).

SPIP has since version 1.9 a concept of plugins in the proper sense of the word, ie they do not touch the heart of the little squirrel, before that there was a similar but less specific (what forks). In terms of templates (it is said in Spipiens skeletons), the selection is smaller than for Joomla or WordPress but it is sound and supported by real teams such BeeSpip or Maguzine to name a few. But the two major strengths are its simplicity of SPIP (I saw the beast master grannies little after two hours of training) and its extensive community, you'll find super sharp developers, advanced users who test the Candidate Releases SVN on for days to report bugs before the final users and editors who are still single original methods to format their content ( UCI gave me dirty moments for example). This community is overwhelmingly francophone and it is noted that SPIP is natively multilingual.

WordPress is my most recent discovery in terms of CMS, I met him the summer of 2007 on the occasion of opening a blog for a friend ( Raoul , if one day you read these lines, of thee I speak there). Before this blog to my eyes was an infamous dung that was on Skyblog which was strictly forbidden for over 14 years .

I began by comparing with WordPress Dotclear and quickly has become the first with a feature that neither Dotclear nor any other CMS mentioned above does: the possibility to classify a publication in several categories, it can seem trivial to you but as someone who has never had to make the tough choice of single category in which an article must be cast the first stone.
The strong points are its multitude of WordPress templates (as they say WordPress themes and I even heard that some communities translators themes were built), plugins outnumber the grains of sand at the Petit Travers (if you are not the Herault, do not try to understand), its frequent updates (who says too frequent), its simplicity editorial which equals that of SPIP (despite some problems with line breaks) and especially its Francophone community that manages to be very effective (EN versions out less than 48 hours after the original version), despite the disadvantage of using the software non-Francophone and unite as many people for the good of many. Two examples: The French forum and Wordcamp .

Weaknesses:

The overview of the weaknesses of these three CMS will definitely be quicker than the strengths or they would not be worth the trouble of talking to them, but they all have their little flaws that are most often directly related to their qualities (okay, you're still following this?)

For Joomla the biggest concern is its relative complexity for those not glued to their screens behind logueur day (and they are more numerous than one might think), and I do not install or but setting editorial content, or WordPress Spip there or take you for a maximum two clicks on the interface is still a little longer with Joomla and then must decide whether to accept or decline this publication on the home, and then change the parameters of this home, because with the length of the track, three columns that he too is better to spend two and finally short, if a site is in addition to "many hands" can quickly become tedious ca "why did you put your paper into a home and not mine right? Just because you're admin you got all right, eh! "Etc., etc ...). So as I tend to pro Councillor structures with one (or several) computer (s ) in their premises if it is rather a blow to the disgust of CMS than anything else although there are exceptions to every rule (dedicated to magalex).

SPIP has also some defects, the most obvious being that it is less easy to customize than its competitors (if one can speak of competition between OSS), one of the biggest criticisms that has been done is that squirrel we might end up with a uniform web sites which all have a little family resemblance, it arranges with the default 2.0 version that comes after months of gestation but is unfortunately still far from templates or Joomla WordPress.

WordPress has its lighter side defects (always my little point of view) than the other two, it was necessary to find one that would be located at its HTML editor that sometimes ... very weird behavior.
It compensates with publishers alternative ( FCKEditor instance) but it can disrupt the beginning and above all it is quite difficult at explaining to a customer

Conclusion

Without systematic I tend to say that:

• For the site of an individual, a small business or association, WordPress is a good solution and Spip.
  The editors will be able to quickly take pleasure in publishing without too much take the lead with technology.
• For a more substantial sized company, an administration or to a portal, Joomla is suitable subject to one or more computer are integrated into these structures.

PS
Obviously there is a thrashing CMS and purpose of this article was not to make a comprehensive list that exists, there are sites dedicated to this such as CMS Matrix or Open Source CMS and purists will tell me: "Uh, but now you did not talk about Drupal and CMS Made Simple is not in the bar rather than dung eh, eh, and Ez Publish, why you say anything about Ez Publish?". To which I answer two things:

1. And the comments, so what's the use? If you have something to add you do not bother, "loose your comm 'as they say at Blogspot
2. Do not you think that this article is already long enough like that, seriously?

Re Gissons @ p @ rticipons ...
Didier