By jaymz on
I'd love to see some comments from the Drupal community on this in-depth post advocating for Wordpress over Drupal as a CMS.
http://mikeschinkel.com/blog/17-reasons-wordpress-is-a-better-cms-than-drupal/
Mike argues that Wordpress is rapidly catching up with Drupal as a CMS framework, and offers many compelling advantages including ease of managing source code, better forward compatibility, and of course the age-old usability points
I'm with the non-profit he refers to at the end ;)
Jaymz
Comments
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He appears to be a frustrated ex-Drupal developer who has lost touch with the current state of Drupal's tools and development. Some (though not all) of his points would be more valid a few years ago, but not anymore. A reply to his post has already debunked most of his points, though I'm tempted to follow up as well with more.
He disguises his opinions as facts, and provides little to no concrete evidence to support his points, leaves out key information, or tries to deceive the reader with faulty evidence, such as point 16: Note he searched for wordpress themes which yielded 65,800,000 results, and drupal themes which yielded 1,030,000 results. He immediately draws the conclusion that these numbers in any way represent the actual number of themes available for each system (which of course is absurd), and then goes so far as to say the numbers also represent "high quality attractive themes". Of course, it's true there are more themes for WordPress, but pointing to the theme repositories for both systems would be relevant; pretending that every Google result returned that has anything to do with WordPress/Drupal + theme represents the number of themes is faulty.
If I can set aside time to do a thorough job, I'll post a solid reply with additional points to counter his. Mind you I love WordPress too... but his anti-Drupal post was unwarranted, and incorrect.
Yep, definitely an EX-Drupal developer, but No Longer Frustrated
Yep, I am definitely an ex-Drupal developer, but no longer frustrated since I no longer work with Drupal. Well, at least not frustrated BY Drupal anymore.
Not sure I know which reply you refer to. If you'd like to debunked said points maybe you could do it here?
The pot is calling the kettle black here, it seems. I don't see any "facts" on evidence from you either.
Srsly? I tried to "deceive" readers? I gave them my opinion and I explained (part of) the evidence I have for that opinion; how is that an attempt to deceive?
If you don't think a google search results are a litmus test then that's fair but I would ask you to present a better litmus test that would disqualify mine?
The irony is it doesn't take that litmus test to determine that Drupal indeed has far fewer good themes, one only needs to try to find some decent Drupal themes. I can find literally hundreds of off-the-shelf themes I would consider to be at a professional level of design for WordPress yet I can't even find 10 at that level for Drupal. The reference to google search results was just a good way to gut check what was already very abundantly clear.
And if I am wrong I challenge you to list 10 themes I can purchase for Drupal for < US$100 that you consider to be high quality, ones that you can launch a professional site without needing anything more than a logo design.
So it seems your entire criticsm of my analysis is based on my use of Google search result numbers as a gut check for themes. Weak. Why not address some of my other 16 points too?
Based on the lack of evidence you present your claim that my "anti-Drupal post was unwarranted, and incorrect" is also, opinion, and not fact.
Anyway, I know that I am certainly persona non grata here but I am just tired of the assumption by people who have not implemented both systems that Drupal is a better CMS simply because Drupal did a better job of positioning itself as such even though there is really is a poorer choice than WordPress in most (but not all) cases.
Stuck with Drupal
On some projects our web team is "stuck with Drupal" since the investment in learning, development and the depth we've gone to using it. We've attempted to migrate an existing CMS to Drupal 7.
My experience is that I spent 3 months learning, tweaking & coding by reference on another smaller website using Drupal 7, & then one day I got fed up with it and I just dabbled in Wordpress and built the same site in ONE DAY using downloadable modules.
I'm not saying Wordpress will work in every case, but in some of the most general website cases, it's just more responsive than Drupal.
- The code seems easier to use
- Documentation seems easier to use and understand (codex)
- The community seems more available to help & give more than just canned answers
- Wordpress seems to be looking at Drupal and actually implementing some of the same features, but in a usable, understandable way.
- We paid a highly regarded Drupal consultant to work with us, but he walked out without looking back.
I think something needs to be done. Action, rather than simply refuting or arguing why Drupal is better. Show me how I can build a website in a day the Drupal way, otherwise I can't use it.
Documentation of what modules actually do is a big problem. It's great to have 'building blocks', but what to do with it. eg. to a normal user, what does 'entity' mean? Nothing...
The frustration I find with Drupal the most is when I ask a question, and no one knows the answer or actually has the incorrect answer.
If it's that easy to use, someone should know? I persevered on the chats & I offered to pay for a solution and then finally someone showed me how to do something in the interface. I have since learnt that the best way to perform that action was to use a hook in code. It just gets convoluted...
Anyhow, I continue my Drupal journey, but I'm not really that impressed by ease of use, performance, community etc. I'm trying to be a part of the solution by offering some free help & I'm pledging some free Drupal resources from my website, but by comparison the investment in Drupal seems to outweigh Wordpress at the moment & without that satisfying feeling.