Wordpress vs. Drupal

Two of the most prominent tools to create websites are Wordpress and Drupal. Both of them are well developed PHP-based open source content management systems. When people start websites these days, they need to pick an appropriate framework first. I'll try to explain when Wordpress is more suitable, and when Drupal would be advisible.

The common preconception can be summarized in two prejudices:

(1) Wordpress is just for blogging

(2) Drupal is a complicated CMS with a very steep learning curve

This is not true. Wordpress can be, and has been, used for full-blown websites, and vice-versa, you can do amazing things drupal without in-depth knowledge.

Wordpress might be slightly easier to set up with its famous 1 minute install, but once you've installed the database and start creating your site, your main limitation is how well you know the respective universe. Yes, the wordpress community and the drupal community are that big.

There is a large amounts of themes to choose from, so you're likely to find what you're looking for.

Practically, what really matters is the availability of plugins, because you don't want to program every extension by yourself. Let's list a number of common tasks you want to perform using plugins that are available for both platforms. Just go to their plugin directory and download it directly from there. In most cases, there are several plugins available, free or premium, and you pick what fits your needs.

1. Facebook integration
2. Social bookmarking
3. Most popular posts
4. Google Maps integration
5. SEO
6. Form creation
7. Custom data types
8. Slideshows
9. Lightbox
10. Email newsletters
11. Chat clients
12. Translation interface
13. Picture galleries
14. custom taxonomy (here, drupal is clearly better designed)
15. Flickr, Youtube, Pinterest etc. integration
16. Database backup
17. Import of blogs / CSV
18. RSS readers
19. Powerful editors like TinyMCE
20. Performance optimization (compression of .JS / .CSS files, minify, caching)

Only when it comes to very advanced search functionality or API-integration, the drupal-community might be ahead of Wordpress. Of course, these plugins should be convertible in some ideal world, but as for now, you have to throw hours of research and coding at it if you want to add truly new functionality to any CMS.

I run several Drupal-sites as well as Wordpress-sites. For anything resembling a blog, portfolio presentation, or a simple online community, I'd recommend Wordpress / Buddypress. For larger websites with critical bandwidth usage, security issues or e-commerce applications, I'd go for a Drupal installation, and take advantage of some of the latest plugins.

Enjoy your new site!

Posted in: blog,CMS,drupal,e-commerce,open source,theme,website,wordpress