Dries Buytaert

CMS code base comparison

Drupal

A graph showing the growth of Drupal's code, comments, and blank lines from 2000 to 2007.
Source: Drupal statistics at Ohloh.

Joomla!

A graph showing the growth of Joomla! code, comments, and blank lines from 2000 to 2007.
Source: Joomla! statistics at Ohloh.

Wordpress

A graph showing the growth of WordPress code, comments, and blank lines from 2000 to 2007.
Source: Wordpress statistics at Ohloh.

Plone

A stacked area chart showing the growth of Plone's code, comments, and blank lines from 2000 to 2007.
Source: Plone statistics at Ohloh.

(These graphs depict statistics for the core of each project, and do not include contributed modules, extensions or third-party plugins.)

Conclusions

  • All projects have been growing in size. No exceptions.
  • Drupal has, by far, the smallest code base. It's lean and mean. Joomla!'s code base is about 8 times bigger than Drupal's. Even Wordpress's code base is larger than Drupal's.
  • Of all tools, the WordPress code has the fewest code comments. Drupal and Joomla!, on the other hand, have the best documented code.

— Dries Buytaert