For a different perspective, we’ve written up why we’re backing Drupal, and we’ve also set up http://drupal.neemtree.com.au for those who want to take Drupal for a test drive and get a peek into using and administering Drupal.

Thanks for the great perspectives on Joomla and EE. I agree Joomla is too much for most clients. I didn’t spend a whole lot of time on it.

I’ve struggled a bit with getting to know EE, but haven’t given up on it as an alternative to WP if necessary. I hear it’s quite extensible and if I had to judge solely on the front-end of some of the sites using it (like veerle) it looks as though there’s not much it can’t do.

Like with any other open-source trend, after a few years the cream rises to the top. The cream these days being WordPress and Expression Engine. I don’t think those two can be touched in terms of web standards, clean separation of data and presentation, smart templating, a wide choice of plugins and a good community writing them. Difficult to say that about most other CMSs on your list, though MT is close. Joomla has potential, but is too clumsy and bloated for most developers to trick out and too complicated for end-using clients to feel comfortable with. The Joomla community’s progress on making better code and features has become stale, while WP and EE have gained huge momentum this past year.

Re: using WP as a CMS. 90% of client work for me consists of medium-sized businesses who seek a “news” (blog) feature, a calendar, maybe a thumbnails/slideshow page, and the ability to manage flat content pages. This can be whipped up with the almighty WordPress in a matter of hours if you’re comfortable tweaking plugins and exploiting WP’s template tag system. Unlike most others on your list, WP is built on a programming framework that we designer dummies can take apart and put back together again. Some developers will swear WP is still not a “proper” CMS, but – someday it will be, and bastardizing it in the meantime is part of the fun.

I’ve also been experimenting more with EE’s template tag system. Here again, once you learn the template patterns and syntax, you can soon put together mini-applications with a few custom fields, and without core knowledge of PHP. Very powerful.

I strongly recommend avoiding any platform that has no themes except the default, unless you’re a pioneering contributor type.

I’m not sure I would dismiss a CMS because it didn’t come with pre-fab designs. Despite the sheer number of them available, I haven’t had a single client who didn’t seek an appropriate custom design for their site. If they’re serious about their business identity, none of them want a free theme (just my experience).

I’ve also got two projects right now which are being wrapped around WordPress. :) I think most clients really like the idea of having the freedom to change content at will.

WordPress is by far my favorite platform too. I have used it to develop fairly static websites – as a CMS – so clients can maintain the site themselves. I’m actually finishing up two of them this week.

@Will – true WordPress is not often thought of as a full CMS (and it doesn’t claim to be), but people have found ways to morph into one, and seems like it’s becoming more prevalent all the time. I wonder if the devs will note the demand and add more CMS functionality with the release of 2.5 next year. Would be cool!

Even though WordPress isn’t know to be a full blown CMS, it really is. With the right template, template pages and plugins you can make it do pretty much anything the other guys can. In addition, I prefer the template system better. I like being able to just upload a folder to the site, activate it, and do a few tweaks. However, as you suggested, one should definitely check out all of the options out there before settling on one.

A word of warning Charity. It’s ‘WordPress’, not ‘WordPress’. Not that I care, but if Lorelle finds you writing it that way, you’ll be in big trouble! ;) (joke)

By the way x is the best CMS and y is absolutely perfect if you’re just going to blog. Although I think y might end up becoming a CMS one day. ;)