In this work, Zinc ferrite nanoparticles have been prepared by various methods, conventional (ZC), mechanochemical processing (ZM) and Sol-Gel (ZS) method, to compare their structural and magnetic properties. The cation distribution obtained from XRD shows the degrees of inversions are 4%, 14.8%, and 16.4% from the normal $ZnFe_2O_4$ structure. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) confirms changes in cation distribution of $ZnFe_2O_4$ fabricated by sol-gel and mechanochemical processing. The $^{57}Fe$ M$ddot{o}$ssbauer spectra of the samples were recorded at room temperature. The spectra exhibit a line broadening. The magnetic properties of the samples were studied by vibration sample magnetometer (VSM) at room temperature and the results show that the sample ZM has ferrimagnetic behaviour.