Key Points
Research suggests Dru (Drupal) is a strong choice for high-performance CMS needs, especially for media companies with 100,000 daily page views, due to its scalability and efficiency.
It seems likely that Joomla is also viable, but evidence leans toward Dru for better performance under heavy loads.
For AWS cloud infrastructure, a setup with EC2, RDS, ElastiCache, S3, and CloudFront is recommended for optimal performance and scalability.
CMS Selection
Recommended CMS: Dru (Drupal)
Dru is recommended for its robust performance and ability to handle large-scale content, making it suitable for your media company's needs. It offers extensive customization and a strong community, ensuring support for your specific requirements.
Why Dru?
Dru is known for efficient handling of high traffic and large datasets, crucial for 100,000 daily page views.
Its modular design supports scalability, ideal for growing media operations.
It provides strong security features, important for protecting media content.
Alternative Consideration: Joomla
Joomla is another option with good performance, especially for easier initial setup, but may require more optimization for high traffic compared to Dru.
AWS Cloud Infrastructure Design
High-Performance Setup on AWS
To host Dru effectively, consider the following AWS services:
Web Servers: Use EC2 instances with NGINX for serving the CMS, paired with an Application Load Balancer (ALB) for traffic distribution.
Auto Scaling: Implement to handle traffic spikes, ensuring performance during peak times.
Database: Use Amazon RDS with MySQL for reliable and scalable database management.
Caching: Leverage Amazon ElastiCache (Memcached or Redis) to reduce load times by caching frequently accessed data.
Storage: Store media files on Amazon S3, and use Amazon CloudFront as a CDN for fast content delivery.
Security and Monitoring: Utilize IAM roles, security groups, and CloudWatch for secure and monitored operations, with HTTPS via ACM for secure connections.
Backups: Set up RDS snapshots and EC2 instance snapshots for data recovery, ensuring business continuity.
This setup ensures your CMS is both high-performing and scalable, meeting your media company's demands.
This detailed analysis explores the selection of a high-performance Content Management System (CMS) and the design of an AWS cloud infrastructure for a media company with approximately 100,000 daily page views, aiming to replace WordPress. The focus is on performance, scalability, and suitability for media-specific needs, with a thorough examination of options and AWS setup.
The process began by identifying CMS alternatives to WordPress, given its current usage and the need for enhanced performance. Popular options included Joomla, Dru (Drupal), Ghost, Craft CMS, ProcessWire, and Storyblok, among others. Given the media company's requirements, the analysis focused on CMS platforms capable of handling significant content volumes and traffic.
Initial research highlighted Joomla and Dru as strong contenders due to their established use in media and high-traffic environments. Further exploration included modern options like Ghost (Node.js-based, focused on blogging) and headless CMS like Storyblok and Sanity, which offer flexibility but require custom front-end development.
Joomla: Known for user-friendliness and flexibility, Joomla is suitable for content-heavy websites. Performance benchmarks from 2025 comparisons suggest it performs well out of the box, especially with caching, but may lag under heavy loads compared to Dru. It has a large extension library, beneficial for media features, but some useful plugins are paid, potentially increasing costs.
Dru (Drupal): Dru emerged as a top choice due to its scalability and performance, particularly with caching enabled. Benchmarks, such as a 2006 comparison by Dries Buytaert, showed Dru serving 67 pages per second with caching versus Joomla's 21, a 319% performance advantage for anonymous users. Recent 2025 analyses confirm Dru's strength in handling complex, high-traffic sites, making it ideal for media companies. Its modular structure supports extensive customization, aligning with media needs for news publishing, blogging, and media galleries.
Other Options: Ghost, while fast and simple, is primarily for blogging and may lack features for broader media operations. Craft CMS and ProcessWire offer good performance but require developer expertise for setup. Headless CMS like Storyblok and Sanity provide flexibility but demand additional front-end development, potentially exceeding the user's resources.
Given the 100,000 daily page views (approximately 1.15 requests per second on average, with potential peaks), Dru's ability to scale and handle large datasets was deemed critical. Media companies often manage extensive content, including articles, images, and videos, and Dru's flexibility in managing these, supported by its community and modules, made it the preferred choice. Joomla remains a viable alternative, especially for easier initial setup, but Dru's performance edge under load was decisive.
The design of the AWS cloud infrastructure aimed to support Dru efficiently, ensuring high performance, scalability, and security. The architecture considered web server needs, database management, caching, storage, and monitoring, tailored for a media company's traffic and content demands.
Web Server Layer
EC2 Instances with NGINX: Dru, being PHP-based, requires a web server. NGINX was chosen for its performance advantages over Apache, especially for serving static content. EC2 instances provide the compute power, with instance types like t3.medium or larger recommended based on traffic analysis.
Application Load Balancer (ALB): To distribute traffic across multiple EC2 instances, an ALB ensures load balancing, improving availability and fault tolerance. This is crucial for handling traffic spikes, common in media with breaking news or viral content.
Auto Scaling: Implementing auto scaling adjusts the number of EC2 instances dynamically based on CPU utilization or other metrics, ensuring performance during peak times without over-provisioning during low traffic.
Database Layer
- Amazon RDS with MySQL: Dru typically uses MySQL, and RDS offers a managed solution with automatic backups, scaling, and high availability. Instance types like db.r5.large are suitable for initial setup, with read replicas for read-heavy operations to enhance performance.
Caching Layer
- Amazon ElastiCache: Using Memcached or Redis for caching reduces database load by storing frequently accessed data, such as page content or user sessions. This is vital for improving response times, especially with 100,000 daily page views.
Storage Layer
Amazon S3: For media files (images, videos), S3 provides scalable, durable storage. Configuring Dru to use S3 via modules ensures efficient media management, offloading from EC2 instances.
Amazon CloudFront: As a CDN, CloudFront caches static content globally, reducing latency and improving load times for users worldwide, enhancing user experience for media consumption.
Security and Monitoring
IAM Roles and Security Groups: IAM manages access to AWS services, while security groups control inbound and outbound traffic, ensuring only necessary ports are open (e.g., HTTP/HTTPS).
HTTPS with ACM: Using AWS Certificate Manager for SSL/TLS certificates ensures secure connections, critical for media sites handling user data and content.
Amazon CloudWatch: Monitors performance metrics like CPU utilization, latency, and error rates, with alarms set for thresholds to alert on potential issues.
Backup and Recovery
- RDS Snapshots and EC2 Snapshots: Regular snapshots ensure data recovery options, with automated backups for RDS and manual snapshots for EC2 instances, supporting a disaster recovery plan.
This architecture leverages AWS's scalability and managed services, ensuring the CMS performs efficiently under load, with cost-effective scaling and robust security.
Additional Considerations
The choice of Dru over Joomla was influenced by performance benchmarks and media-specific needs, but Joomla's ease of use could be reconsidered if the team prefers a shorter learning curve. Modern CMS like Sanity were evaluated but deemed less practical due to front-end development requirements. The AWS setup is standard for high-traffic CMS, with potential for further optimization based on specific traffic patterns and content types.
| CMS | Performance (Cached) | Scalability | Ease of Use | Media Features |
| Drupal | High (67 pages/s) | Excellent | Moderate | Strong (modules) |
| Joomla | Moderate (21 pages/s) | Good | High | Good (extensions) |
| Ghost | High (Node.js-based) | Limited | High | Limited (blogging) |
| Craft CMS | Good | Good | Moderate | Moderate |
(Note: Performance figures are based on historical benchmarks and may vary with optimization.)
Key Citations
