Let me start with a note on my bias – I love WordPress. This said, I have tried not to let it color this post that attempts to highlight when and where to choose between WordPress and Drupal. No matter, I look forward to some solid comments from all sides on these ramblings.
This evaluation really comes down to a definition of the task you desire. I have found that WordPress is the ideal selection for any blog. I have also found it to be an excellent choice for a small to medium Web site. Why? In two words, elegant simplicity.
On the setup side, WordPress is so simply to install, create themes, add enhancements that it is easy to get an excellent site up and running in a very short time. Then on the administration side, the user experience is an excellent one for those who are not familiar with technology. I have been able to bring luddites up to speed in WordPress post, page and comment management in mere minutes.
Drupal I have found to be more suitable to larger Web sites that require a greater level of development for custom applications, multiple themes, multiple languages and other aspects you would expect of a full bore content management system. For a blog or small Web site I find it to be overkill and adds a level of complication that adds too great an expense to sites that so not require custom applications.
This difference is apparent in the extensions to WordPress and Drupal. Drupal features a large set of modules to extend features. WordPress appears to offer many more. The difference comes not just in volume, but types. Drupal has a set that is clearly more technical in nature than WordPress. Also, a good number of the modules are seen as jumping off points for custom development. This is far different from the WordPress plug-ins that are targeted to the Web site maintainer who has little if any programming knowledge.
And this comes to the real difference I see with these two platforms. Drupal is clearly targeted first and foremost to code lovers and developers. This is readily apparent in the language used on the Drupal site, its blog postings and in general. Development discussions on the site are highly technical and constantly refer to a mix of PHO, JavaScript and JQuery as minimal requirements for Drupal development.
WordPress on the other hand has a greater balance between the average Joe that wants to have a blog/site and the developer. Surfing to wordpress.org you find that this is tailored much more to the layman than Drupal.org. WordPress also has a broad commercial path to get started via wordpress.com. Then when you do dive into development, you find that with minimal PHP skills you can customize and modify themes.
I find that this separate target of hard core a developer (Drupal) to the general population (WordPress) is clearly evident in area of theme management. In Drupal, the themes are all managed external to the Drupal interface. You compile and create the various layouts on the backend (as you do in WordPress) and then must manage these from the back end. In WordPress, you have access to theme templates form within the interface for modifications. This distinction is key. There are two levels of expectations here. In Drupal there is the expectations that the framework will usually require far more coding and management than should be permitted via the interface. WordPress on the other hand considers the possibility of editing templates to be something that should be permitted to the administrations right from its graphical shell.
Again, this comes back to suitability of task. I would not want a large scale site with numerous complex templates to be accessible by any old administrator – hence Drupal. However, if I have a small site where the admin, maintainer and developer are likely the same person and the theme is straight forward then the interface access is reasonable.
Here are some other side-by-side comparison.
Editing Interface
I hate the Drupal editing interface. The listing of pages without any management options means it takes me a long time to find and then adjust content. The content listing and editing options in WordPress are simply far more elegant than anything offered in the Drupal core or via any add on modules I have found. For this interface reason along I prefer WordPress.
Comments
WordPress has focused for years on its comment moderation capabilities. They are top notch. Drupal’s are rudimentary at best. Having now used both, I would have to eliminate Drupal as a blogging option for a site that expected high comment volume. Drupal is a fine technical solution. Drupal is simply not up to the task when it comes to the associated workflow.
Simplicity of Free Themes and Theme Design
WordPress and Drupal take a few minutes to install. Getting started with adding a free theme for WordPress takes a few minutes to find tens of thousands of items to get started. Drupal then takes quite a bit to customize even free themes. This difference real comes to the forefront with my experimentations. I can transfer an existing site with drop down menus and a couple of area designs to WordPress in half a day. The same effort took me (and an experienced Drupal developer) a week.
Media Library
WordPress offers a simple but elegant media library. And a couple of plug-ins really push it to an even better solution. Drupal’s media management is barebones. Media is considered a node or content element just like any other item such as a page or post. This is excellent when you want to develop a larger application on top of the framework. However, it falls short for a simple site.
Plug-Ins
WordPress offers not just one plug-in for everything imaginable – there must be three or four. The modules that extend Drupal are simply not as varied and there are less options for each task. More to the point, adding, testing and tweaking just seems to be so much faster and easier in WordPress than the developer focused interface offered via Drupal.
Here are some other articles for thought
- Consider using Drupal and WordPress. WordPress for the blog and Drupal for the application side of a Web site. This appears to be in use by companies such as The Bivings Group –See http://www.bivingsreport.com/2009/integrating-tweetbacks-into-your-wordpress-blog/
- An Apples versus Tanks analogy – http://www.elithecomputerguy.com/content/drupal-vs-wordpress-blogging-comparing-apples-tanks
- A kind of funny video version http://blip.tv/file/829821
- An article also about suitability but brings into the fact that the Drupal arena does not focus on marketing of its own efforts in a manner that encourages broader appeal. http://graduallythensuddenly.com/2008/05/04/wordpress-drupal-irrelevant/
- Here is one that has found a clear reason why Drupal may have an advantage over WordPress http://www.danmyers.name/wp/2009/02/drupal-vs-wordpress-why-i%E2%80%99m-having-second-thoughts/. Then again I have used a WordPress plug-in for two years that fixed the problem he has been having without ever having to do any programming
- Here is a side by side list of features http://mydrupal.com/drupal-vs-wordpress. I do not agree with the bulleted list of statements. One I find funny is this one. It says to choose WordPress “If you want ease of use and Navigation…” Okay, is this not one of the basic all time requirements of everything that has to do with any sort of Web site.
- A nice balanced evaluation is at http://www.thesitewizard.com/general/wordpress-vs-drupal-vs-expression-engine.shtml
- Some fun as folks snipe at each other on the Drupal site at http://drupal.org/node/257065. One person claims that WordPress has a “less active development community.” Personally, I have found this to be the reverse. I have found far more global WordCamps and help with WordPress than I have found from Drupal and its more limited meetings. In fact the tone is entirely different. The WordPress folks have been generally welcoming to newbies and encourages exploration by neophytes. My forays into Drupal have been met by cold responses that I should improve my PHP and CSS before I ask questions. Kind of like a family response WordPress) versus a clique (Drupal)
- A nice simple evaluation and balanced perspective from a developer who does not mind getting into the down and dirty of things http://www.webdesignstuff.com/web/designers/03/2009/drupal-vs-wordpress/
#1 by drupal theme on June 4, 2009 - 10:36 pm
just what i needed on my theme drupals theme.
#2 by Mike on June 5, 2009 - 8:55 pm
This article was hit and miss for me. I think you hit the nail on the head when you said that WP is for slightly less technical people than Drupal is, but you’re completely off when you say that Drupal requires more coding. On the contrary, I’ve done amazing things in Drupal with no coding whatsoever. Just last week I set it up so that a custom content type dynamically created an XML file (using CCK and Views) which was then picked up by a flash file so that the client could edit the flash from within the Drupal node system, all with zero coding. Thus is the flexibility of Drupal and its API.
I’d also tend to disagree with you on your thoughts about the community. I always found the Drupal community to be very mentoring and extremely cohesive and powerful. Try going into the #drupal or #drupal-support (or #drupal-dev or #drupal-themes or #drupal-views or……) IRC chat rooms any time and you’ll see what I mean. There are always hundreds of people in there waiting to answer questions.
#3 by Mujtaba on August 16, 2009 - 1:38 am
Drupal is best suited for large community sites which need a forum-ish functionality, while wordpress is the best choice for hardcore bloggers,,,
#4 by Webster on August 21, 2009 - 9:56 pm
I too have done amazing things with Drupal websites and I know zero PHP.
Even if a site starts small, there may be the need to grow and expand if things take off. Drupal accommodates this nicely.
#5 by Zendevi on August 25, 2009 - 5:21 pm
As a WordPress fan and Drupal hater, your side-by-side comparisons definitely hit home with me! Given how robust WordPress can be, I don’t see a need for any other CMS software outside of niche site building.
Go WordPress!
#6 by Newbie on September 27, 2009 - 7:17 pm
What about for a site that hosts region-specific content, some of which would cross regions. The content includes press releases, hi-res photos and video clips, tv program schedule information. Needs to be password protected for a mix of content type and permissions. Needs to have a user registration interface that can be searched, sorted, etc. What would you use for that? And it needs to be simple so publicists can post via iPhone, etc.
#7 by roselynn on October 28, 2009 - 7:44 am
i have been on wordpress for years, i think its time to try drupal….
#8 by peter on November 2, 2009 - 11:48 am
I have been working with Drupal for about a year when I decided to check out Wordpress. I found that Worpress has a few definite pluses:
* ease of installation
* new themes can be added from user interface
* built in editor
* built in image and multimedia support
After that, it was downhill. Many of the comparions between Drupal and Wordpress say that a Drupal site requires much more custom coding than Wordpress. I found that was not true. I had to start recoding the Wordpress theme to duplicate very basic functions that Drupal peforms out of the box.
For example the core Drupal installation lets you create custom menus which can contain any items you want (pages, external links, taxonomy terms) arrange in any way you want using a simple drag and drop interface. The Wordpress default top level menu was a list of pages in alphabetical order. The only way I found to customize the display was to edit the php code in the theme file.
#9 by Martin, 1 Website Designer on November 5, 2009 - 9:19 am
I’ve found that WordPress is slightly quicker to get going with the basics and does have an in-built editor which helps, however like Peter, I found that whenever I wanted to do anything new, it got seriously complicated.
Learning Drupal took a bit of time, however it’s now possible for me to do a huge range of things easily and when I set up a new site, I just copy all the modules across and it’s quick to configure them.
Also I don’t know what you mean with regard to the Editing interface, in Drupal every page once you’re logged in has an ‘Edit’ button, which you click to edit that page – it doesn’t get much easier than that. Alternatively, go to /admin/content/node and you can filter content by a range of criteria to find the content you want to edit. Again, this is pretty intuitive.
My vote’s for Drupal any day!
#10 by Rick Adlam on November 19, 2009 - 6:44 am
I enjoyed your article, but I feel that whilst WordPress is much easier to get along with and use, especially as a blogging site like this one, that building a more heavy duty website with more fuctionality, then Drupal wins hand down.
I have just started to use Drupal to build a social networking site. And getting my head around how Drupal works was a major frustration. Once past that, however It starts to become seductive.
Like you I love WordPress, but I feel that if I can get over the learning hump that is Drupal, then massive sites and great functionality are possible.
IMHO Drupal does need better documentation, and better accessibility for non technical people like me. I understand that Drupal 7 [due for release around spring next year hopes to address some of these issues.
Comparing the number of modules available is a little unfair. Some of Drupal’s modules contain five or more modules within them, and that means that they are capable of greater flexibility and customisation. Some of Drupal’s modules set it apart from WorPress,i.e., there is no comparable modules available in WordPress.
That said, WordPress will always be more popular than Drupal in my view, because quick and easy, beats better and more complex for the average Jill and Joe, and that includes most of us.
#11 by Bram Moreinis on January 18, 2010 - 3:54 pm
The difference between “developer focus” and end user focus” is correct – developers (the people who code PHP programs) love Drupal.
But you imply that happy developers have nothing to do with the quality of the code. That’s wrong.
Developers like things that WORK, that are built properly, that integrate well, that are extensible. They don’t want unnecessary complexity, and they don’t build things to charge more money.
Watch the old movie “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House”. That’s what happens when you have the client deciding what to do without consulting a developer.
If you want a modular home, buy one! Be happy with the styrofoam fireplace, and enjoy the faux shutters and other non-functional options you can pick out of a catalog.
But if you want a green home, you’ll want to build function into the basic plans, not around them. Yes, it will cost more.
If you don’t need the functionality of a Drupal site, it would be foolish not to use Wordpress. I agree there.
-Bram
#12 by Jafar on February 12, 2010 - 3:51 pm
I really enjoy using Drupal because of it’s flexibility. I applaud Wordpress because it has a clean interface and so do many of it’s templates. Wordpress and Joomla are good in the beginning, but what happens when you want more control? You have to rely on developers and that’s where Drupal’s plugins specifically, CCK, Views, Panels, and Image Cache, help solve design and layout needs.
Drupal documentation could be better and the jump from Drupal 5 to 6 and now 7 will definitely lessen the attraction to Drupal. However, Drupal is not for every website maker, it’s for people that want something customized and don’t want to pay for the development side of things.
#13 by Eric on March 9, 2010 - 2:54 am
I think you made some good points here and would definitely agree that Wordpress is very simple and easy to use but the one downside to your argument is that small to medium sites will always fit into this category. I’m in the boat that says even if you only plan to have a small website, there might be a need to really expand in the future and you don’t want to have to completely revamp your website. And while Drupal is slightly more involved and somewhat more difficult to get up and running, you will learn a lot more about the build of a website which is never a bad thing. Just my 10 cents, great blog post!
#14 by xx on March 9, 2010 - 8:11 am
Well, this explains why wordpress sites are hacked so often