Using Alexa, a traffic ranking service from Amazon, I compared drupal.org's traffic with the traffic of other Free and Open Source content management systems' websites. The term content management system is used broadly here as the list of projects include phpBB, Plone, TikiWiki, Wordpress, Xoops, Mambo, PHP-Nuke, PostNuke, Typo3, Xaraya and Drupal friend CivicSpace.

Popularity is compared based on Alexa's daily reach-metric, which measures the number of users. Here, foo.com and www.foo.com are treated as the same site because they reside on the same domain. The results are presented in pretty graphs (generated by Alexa) and included below. Of course, the results must be taken with a grain of salt as the popularity of a product's website is not necessarily related to the popularity of the product itself, or the quality thereof. So whenever I write popularity that really means the popularity of the website as measured by Alexa. Regardless, a number of interesting observations can be made ...

  1. The popularity of most Free and Open Source CMS tools is in an upward trend. This implies that more and more people start using a Free or Open Source CMS to manage their website. The fact there is a clear correlation between the various growth curves (eg. most graphs show a dip in the summer of 2004) supports this observation.
  2. With a daily reach of 500M users, phpBB is by far the most popular community platform.
  3. phpBB, Xoops, Wordpress, Mambo and PHP-Nuke are more popular than Drupal. Plone, TikiWiki, Typo3 and Xaraya are less popular than Drupal.
  4. Drupal, Typo3, Xoops and Plone have comparable growth rates while Mambo and Wordpress are growing notably faster. Mambo and Wordpress have about the same popularity (i.e. a daily reach towards 300M users), yet Wordpress' growth is much more aggressive so it won't take long until Wordpress is much more popular than Mambo. Clearly, Wordpress is hot! Notable exceptions are PHP-Nuke and two of its derivatives, PostNuke and Xaraya, who have been steadily losing popularity over the past year.
  5. Drupal.org's daily reach doubled since the beginning of 2005. This might be a natural compensation for the fact we did not appear to grow much in 2004. The fact we had performance issues might have had something to do with that. At the same time, CivicSpace, a Drupal distribution, is slowly gaining popularity too. As Drupal is growing faster than CivicSpace is, closer integration is likely to be beneficial.

(Tease: we plan to make some changes to drupal.org to accommodate Drupal's growth.)

Drupal versus phpBB

Drupal versus phpBB

Drupal versus Plone

Drupal versus Plone

Drupal versus TikiWiki

Drupal versus TikiWiki

Drupal versus Wordpress

Drupal versus Wordpress

Drupal versus Xoops

Drupal versus Xoops

Drupal versus Mambo

Drupal versus Mambo

Drupal versus PHP-Nuke

Drupal versus PHP-Nuke

Drupal versus PostNuke

Drupal versus PostNuke

Drupal versus Typo3

Drupal versus Typo3

Drupal versus Xaraya

Drupal versus Xaraya

Drupal versus CivicSpace

Drupal versus CivicSpace

Comments

Gábor Hojtsy’s picture

Since the Alexa toobar provides the data for these measures, and that is Win IE only, quite some of the geeks interested in Drupal and others of these OSCMS-es are not counted here... It is still interesting however that Drupal is getting more popular amongst Win IE users, since it means it is more and more going mainstream.

killes@www.drop.org’s picture

Maybe we could check the accuracy of the Alexa data by comparing it to the logs from Drupal.org?
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If you have troubles with a particular contrib project, please consider filing a support request. Thanks. And, by the way, Drupal 4.6 will support PHP 5.

kbahey’s picture

This is a good idea killes.

I always had some reservations on Alexa's statistics, since it represents people with the tool bar only. I guess if one treats it like Nielsen's rating system of TV viewing in the USA, then it is OK.
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Consulting: 2bits.com
Personal: Baheyeldin.com

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potion’s picture

According to http://xaraya.com/index.php?module=stats&year=2005 traffic on xaraya.com doubled from Aug '04 to March '05, and has doubled again since then.
Aug 2004: 242K page views
March 2005: 451K page views
Aug 2005: 1 million page views
The Alexa graph doesn't seem to match the actual trend at xaraya.com.

dr05’s picture

Wordpress or B2Evolution are better than Drupal.
Iclude
- Easy installation in a browser!
- Automatic menue generation (based on content)!!!!!!!
- Style Switcher!!
- Automatic table of content!!
- Multilingual website (German/Englisch)
- Translation in German (the german file have to *import*... in the administration tool.
- German Forum
- Searchfunktion (dont run on my testsite)
- Easy content input with quicktags or WYSIWYG editor
- and more...

Steven’s picture

Are you here to spam or just to be annoying?

Everything you have said is either available with Drupal now, or being developed:
- Easy installation in a browser: Adrian is working on this.
- Automatic menue generation: Menu on the fly module.
- Style Switcher: easily implemented with $custom theme. See http://themes.drupal.org/ .
- Automatic table of content: sitemap.module
- Multilingual website (German/Englisch): internationalization (i18n) module
- Translation in German: downloadable from this site, can import with locale.module.
- German Forum: set one up, we don't have enough German speakers here now. It's certainly not something you can blame us for.
- Searchfunktion: works fine if you read the installation documentation, and set up cron/crontab correctly.
- Easy content input with quicktags or WYSIWYG editor: use htmlarea, fckeditor or quicktags module.

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If you have a problem, please search before posting a question.

dr05’s picture

A blogsoftware (Wordpress) is more popular than Drupal? Why?

- In drupal the essentially functions are not activated.
- Drupal look like a blog.

Style Switcher on http://drupal.org/project/Modules ?
The language module I found is for articles only, not for the hole website..
The search function in wordpress works without big tutorial.
No quicktags in drupal (standard).

Take a look on http://www.papoo.org/
- Sitemap (include/activated)
- Styleswitcher (include/activated)
- Search function (works well)
- Forum (include/activated)
- Guestbook (include/activated)
- Open Source
Small, easy and It works.

Are all the needed funktion (for a general accessible website) icluded in the next release of drupal?

Mamboserver.com use to mutch table elements (and the drupal website also). Typo 3 is to big.

killes@www.drop.org’s picture

So let wordpress be more popular than Drupal as a blogging tool. I really don't care and I think that Drupal is underused if you want to do blogging only.

I think that most Drupal contributors want to move towards being a more general Content Management Framework. You will still be able to use Drupal for blogging, but you cannot expect that we will gear our distribution towards bloggers.

Having more than one distribution would be a solution, but I am afraid we don't have the manpower and/or infrastructure for this yet.

--
If you have troubles with a particular contrib project, please consider filing a support request. Thanks. And, by the way, Drupal 4.6 will support PHP 5.

moshe weitzman’s picture

that phpbb numebr does not pass my smell test. i suspect that each phpbb install contains an image or other call back to the home phpbb.com site. that way, every *user* of any phpbb site is being counted.

Dries’s picture

It looks realistic to me. phpBB.com has 170.000 registered users and 1.400.000 forum topics. Furthermore, a Google search for 'phpBB' yields 31.000.000 results. For more information, check this interview with phpBB founder James Atkinson.

samo’s picture

"With a daily reach of 500M users"... is that the number that doesn't pass your small test?! You are correct. 500 is the number of Alexa users per million that visit phpbb.com.

bertboerland’s picture

the number of people searching for a term with a specific browser and plugin might be an indication of the popularity of that term.

people writing on the web about a term (cms) is another. the last one can be easy counted and is less biased since it is depending on servers instead of clients ... with an os... a browser.. and a plugin.

following gmetric for some time (rss available but only for a 7 day period), is imho a better way. see gmetric on drupal
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groets
bertb

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groets
bert boerland

bertboerland’s picture

see here
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groets
bertb

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groets
bert boerland

media girl’s picture

One thing that might be boosting WordPress's stats is that they've been benefitting from a proliferation of one-click installations. Whether that's a deliberate marketing effort on their part or just hosting services' wanting to offer a popular program, I don't know. But WordPress is damn easy to install on my host, that's for sure.

It's also incredibly user friendly. The admin panel has simple interfaces that provide easy wasy to manage settings, blogroll links, basic colors....

OTOH I prefer Drupal because of its greater flexibility and functionality.

Still, I'm convinced that the main reason Drupal isn't higher up is that the barrier to entry -- knowledge or willingness to learn some MySQL, some PHP, not to mention having to manually edit configuration files -- is too high for the vast majority of bloggers, web admins and users. I really do not think that the disparities between Drupal and "market leaders" would be so great if that barrier were lowered, because once it's up and running Drupal is quite easy to manage, and I would argue easier to customize than those others.

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mediagirl.org

VesperDEM’s picture

I don't think the one-click install has a lot to do with WP's popularity. If you have ever installed WP, you would know that it takes very little effort to install. Literally about 3 minutes.

My host and most that offer "Fantastico", offer many CMS's other than WordPress including Drupal.

I choose WordPress over the others for it's ease. I was using ExpressionEngine prior to WP and found EE way more complicated than I wanted. WP is very simple to operate yet pretty powerful in of itself. The only major feature it lacks (in my mind) is multiple blogs per installation. Since it's footprint on my webhost is so small, I don't have too much of a problem installing multiple instances of WP for multiple blogs.

As to the barrier to entry you mention, WP requires a little MySQL and PHP in order to make the Plugin's that are so popular these days. Otherwise, you don't need to know any of that in order to get your site up and running.

Onno’s picture

I have installed quite a few of the above CMS'es but must admit that while WP is among the easiest to install, Drupal is a bit harder to install since you have to do it yourself (no webbased install).

When set up, the possible options/destinations in the WP admin are clear: post something, create a category and so on. For Drupal it is much less clear where to go. Sure, there is the link 'create content' but site maintenance and setup is a lot harder.

My guess is that a new admin interface and webbased setup could make a big difference for Drupal user experience, especially if the setup enables the user to add some basic settings to the system that lets her start blogging in 5 minutes.

Personally, I think Drupal is much more powerful than Wordpress, but should not be afraid to learn of its succesfactors. Because ease of installation and use are decisive, not technologial superiority.

Rainy Day’s picture

Well, it can't just be ease-of-install limiting Drupal's popularity. CivicSpace install may be closer to "twenty-click" than "one-click," but it's all done through the web and a whole lot easier than standard Drupal!† And CivicSpace comes with "value added" modules, so it has more functionality out-of-the-box. Yet, CivicSpace is less popular than standard Drupal. (Of course CivicSpace hasn't been around very long.)

I feel ease-of-install is an important issue, a barrier to many, and needs to be improved at least to the level of CivicSpace. But it is not the only factor limiting growth. "Marketing," ease of use, ease of administration, grace of design, performance, perception, flexibility, documentation, availability of (and ease of creating) themes, and ability to do what the webmaster wants/needs are all factors. Drupal excels in some of these areas, but not all.
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† Given the CivicSpace installer, IMO, there really is no excuse any longer for Drupal not to ship with an installer. At the very least, take the CivicSpace installer and modify it.

sepeck’s picture

Drupal is very easy to install. I can install a Drupal site in 10 minutes on my servers (this counts downloading my standard modules).

CS is a targeted package install. Many people do not need all of the functions of that package, so it would naturally have a smaller user base. I also note that CS installer does not work for me, nor do the manual instructions so I cannot use CS. (Yes, this has been reported).

-sp
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Test site...always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

tvst’s picture

drupal is very easy to install:

1) copy the files
2) create db table
3) edit your conf file (there's only 3 or 4 lines to edit)
4) you're done! log in as root and tweak at will.

steps 1 and 2 are necessary for any cms. 4 is not really a step, i just included it for fun. the only step that could be made any easier is step 3 -- i guess it could be done through a web-based interface. but that's it. i don't see what the installation fuss is all about.

judah’s picture

I can get a drupal site up pretty quick as well after doing about 3 or 4 installs. But you have to know mysql or phpadmin, ftp operations, drupal site creation philosophy (which seems to be getting a lot of attention lately). This isn't a problem for us but for someone without that knowledge one click install is pretty attractive. First install took me about 1 day after taking 2 weeks full time to setup php, apache and mysql locally. It took me about 1 to 2 months in my free time to understand how to connect pages in drupal to the navigation.

aqua@plastik.us’s picture

the problem here is it sounds as you as well as most of the general public ... dont read!

if you look at the install.txt file it tells you the exact commands to run. so this really shouldnt be considered complicated.

and for your mysql/apache/php setup, it woulda taken you just as long if you were setting up civicspace, or wordpress, or ANY other cms. so this has nothing to do with drupal.

http://plastik.us

Rainy Day’s picture

No, it's not just that folks don't read carefully today, although that is true enough, it's that the install process should be easier than it is.

A command line install is inherently more technical, and more error prone. Although i know my way around a CLI quite well, and generally read carefully, i much prefer to install CivicSpace. For someone who doesn't know their way around a command line, the difficulty of the Drupal install can be a show stopper.

The more barriers which exist for a non-technical user, the lower your market-share. Ease of install is important if you want to build Drupal market-share.

sketch1’s picture

wait you have to edit config files?????? um i didnt do that ive never used any programs like this but i will say that the installation only took me about 10 mins if that and my site is working (at least as much as is expected from a fresh install)

Heine’s picture

Please check the date, the Drupal he installed was not the Drupal that we have now.
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The Manual | Troubleshooting FAQ | Tips for posting | How to report a security issue.

xmacinfo’s picture

Drupal easy?

Why won't it install on my Mac while CivicSpace will?

When installing Drupal, I can't create the admin account. No admin account, nothing will work.

CivicSpace install script will let me install and create an admin account very quickly and efficiently. And it works everytime on my Mac.

Furthermore, why would I need to configure a mail server on my Mac just to install Drupal?

On a real server, Drupal installs the quickest. However, since I test on my local Mac and that I can't run Drupal, I publish all my sites with CivicSpace so that my test config (TEST) is the same and my production config (LIVE). I use CivicSpace even for very simple sites.

CivicSpace is really the same as Drupal, not a branch. It's just the folks at CivicSpace made a more efficient install script. I can always use a theme or a module downloaded from Drupal and it will work.

kbahey’s picture

Automated install is on the list of things the developers are working on. Not for 4.6 but will happen at some point in time.
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Consulting: 2bits.com
Personal: Baheyeldin.com

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Drupal performance tuning and optimization, hosting, development, and consulting: 2bits.com, Inc. and Twitter at: @2bits
Personal blog: Ba

sepeck’s picture

Please note that the CivicSpace installer does not work for me, nor does their manual install process so your experiance is vastly different from mine. :)

You need an smtp server somewhere for production but Drupal will install without one. At least it has for me. Most comments I see regarding Drupal on a Mac end up being htaccess file issues of sorts, but I don't have a Mac to valdate that.

As to the use of pre-packaged distro's, good. Their work is fulfilling a need.

-sp
---------
Test site...always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

xmacinfo’s picture

Unfortunatly, CivicSpace is not pre-packaged. It's exactly the same instruction to install Drupal and CivicSpace on either Linux, Mac OS X or Windows. It's one file for all.

The big difference is that, once installed, the first installation script is different on CivicSpace and Drupal. On Drupal your computer need to have a SMTP server working to create the admin account. With the CivicSpace install script, you can directly create the admin user without any need for setting up a SMTP server.

Although Drupal and CivicSpace are almost of no use without a SMTP server in a real use over the Internet, when testing, you shouldn't need a full equiped computer.

Wether the user is installing Drupal or CivicSpace on Linux or Mac he will need to learn how to configure Apache with httpd.conf and .htaccess. Without this knowledge, Drupal and CivicSpace may not work on first install.

Having a Mac or not is not an issue here. Once you know Unix, using vi, Apache or configuring a Virtual Server works exactly the same on Mac and Linux.

Does Drupal ship a version for the Mac? No. Neither CivicSpace.

sepeck’s picture

We have a slight misunderstanding of terms here. There is one download of Drupal for a reason. It works the same on all supported platforms.

Drupal is a prepackage distro of very specific core modules with only a few turned on by default. CivicSpace is pre-packaged for political activism. It is a selection of core modules activated and some additional contributed modules added to the base download. It includes an installer script to aid in that instalations on those sysems that it works. DrupalEd is prepackaged with modules for use in an educational environment.

The System requirements list that a web server with php installed on it are required. I have installed Drupal in a number of test configurations on systems without an SMTP server. It installs and creates an Admin account just fine, when the account is created, I click the logon button and make sure I change the password, or it gets difficult to log in later when I don't remember the password. :)

As to

Having a Mac or not is not an issue here. Once you know Unix, using vi, Apache or configuring a Virtual Server works exactly the same on Mac and Linux.

, I was commenting on this.

Why won't it install on my Mac while CivicSpace will?

If you search the forums, most problem installs on the Mac, seem to resolve around htaccess issue's. There are several posts specific to installing on OS X. You are welcome to search or not, it was merely an observation from watching the forums.

Drupal and CivicSpace only needs one download in my opinion. It is the site admins/web masters responsibility to ensure that the web site is prepared for the installation of the CMS. There are far to many diverse installation setups to have multiple downloads for different Operating Systems, Red Hat Linux ver x, Fedora Core, Debian, BSD, Windows. Then we come to php version, Web Server; Apache or IIS?

I have installed that one download package from Drupal onto a Linux/Apache system, Windows/Apache and Windows IIS. I have had a friend who set it up on the Mac OSX/Apache just fine. Once the server is setup, I only needed an OS specific tool to extract the tar.gz package and a text editor. There doesn't need to be seperate downloads, it would be a waste of resources to have them.

-sp
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Test site...always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

xmacinfo’s picture

I have installed Drupal in a number of test configurations on systems without an SMTP server. It installs and creates an Admin account just fine, when the account is created, I click the logon button and make sure I change the password, or it gets difficult to log in later when I don't remember the password.

This is exactly what I can't do with Drupal 4.5.x when trying to install on a test computer not configured with SMTP. Is the admin account created automatically? Did I miss something in the installation instruction?

I’d be glad to install Drupal and develop small portals with it on a closed environment.

[...]most problem installs on the Mac, seem to resolve around htaccess issue's.

Apple wants it’s users to buy the Mac OS X Server to install Web Apps like Drupal. this is why a lot of doors are closed on a regular Mac OS X client and why a lot of PHP apps won't install. This is not a Drupal issue. The end user needs to configure it's Mac OS X client for use with PHP.

Usually it’s easier just to install a new Apache 3rd party binary distribution. Some of these distribution will install Apache 2, MySQL and PHP. Other distribution will let the user download and install separately Apache, MySQL or PHP.

All these 3rd distributions won't modify the Apple own versions of Apache, MySQL and PHP. They will simply install in other directories and enable these installations instead of the Apple ones.

Onced installed, there will be some configurations to do in httpd.conf and .htaccess to make Drupal or any other CMS working on the Macintosh. Usually you need to make sure that SSI are enabled as well as mod_rewrite.

I never understood why Apple choose to complicate things in regards to Apache, PHP and MySQL. Furtunatly, a lot of 3rd party solutions are available to bypass the Apple supplied installations.

sepeck’s picture

Maybe.

Is the admin account created automatically? Did I miss something in the installation instruction?

I click the create account button to create the first account. Enter a name for the first account and email address. Then click create account. Some page with the password in bold shows up and there is a login button. I click the login button, edit the account immediatly to change the password.

I can' remember if it throws an error about the smtp address or not, but it does work for me when testing some stuff.

-sp
---------
Test site...always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

Steven’s picture

If nothing happens after submitting the registration form, you are experiencing a problem where form input is not being processed correctly. Do some searching to fix it, it's a problem with your setup.

Really, it strikes me as odd that people think it's normal behaviour for a form not to return any results on screen after you submit it.

--
If you have a problem, please search before posting a question.

Rainy Day’s picture

Apple wants it’s users to buy the Mac OS X Server to install Web Apps like Drupal. this is why a lot of doors are closed on a regular Mac OS X client and why a lot of PHP apps won't install.

I don't think this is the case at all. Those so-called “closed doors” are just a misunderstanding about the NeXTstep flavor of FreeBSD under-the-hood of MacOS X. In MacOS X, it's actually very easy to turn on PHP, and it doesn't even require touching the httpd.conf file. In fact, Drupal (with URL re-writing) can run on MacOS X without using .htaccess files and without altering httpd.conf. All you have to do is read the Apple doc's and understand their spin on Apache configuration (hint: it has to do with user configuration files).

Although i learned standard Apache configuration under OpenBSD, i prefer Apple's way and wish it were industry standard. For those who understand what Apple has done, you realize it's all about making things simpler and more modular. It has nothing to do with trying to herd folks into buying MacOS X Server. That product can sell itself on its own merits and doesn't require M$ sales tactics.

fkdsfodsf’s picture

This is the stupidest statement I've heard on this board.

Going into PhpmyAdmin and creating tables is easy FOR YOU AND ME but if I tell my fiancee to do it she would have no chance.

As a new drupal user I KNOW FOR A FACT the reason drupal isnt as popular.

It took my fiancee an hour to do a wordpress installation with absolutely no experience, she figured it out on her own. At the end of the installation she had a complete site, including a site menu, a cool theme, categories. It took someone with NO WEB DESIGN experience ONE HOUR to have a COMPLETE SITE.

Myself, with years of experience have spent atleast 30 hours to get my site setup. Many of these hours were spent digging through missing or wrong documentation/forum posts to figure out the most basic things such as the taxonomy system.

I've going to spend many more hours building a template because there is no suitable template avaliable.

If you look at the popularity stats (with provide only a general guideline) Drupal is MORE popular than more complicated CMS, but LESS POPULAR than very easy systems such as wordpress and mambo.

As a community we have to decide if we want to be a complex prosumer level community/news/portal/blog tool or a simple blog. Right now drupal is in the middle and it is hurting new users (like me).

Personally I want drupal to go more in the "plone" direction. If I want a blog I can sign up on blogspot, the reason I go to drupal is because it offers a complex prosumer level community/news/portal/blog tool.

dougal’s picture

As a WordPress developer I'd say that the bulk of our popularity comes from three major factors:

  1. It really is easy to install and use.
  2. We've gotten a lot of good press from several "A-List" bloggers.
  3. We got a lot of attention as a free (beer+speech) alternative back when there was all of that hoopla over the licensing change for MovableType.
  4. Using WordPress makes you more attractive to all the hot chicks/studs.

Oh wait, that was four factors.

Seriously, though, "popularity" should not be confused with "usefulness". WordPress will not serve every purpose for every user. Neither will Drupal. Or MovableType, Xoops, Mambo, etc. Every tool has different strengths that will make it more attractive to various users.

Just as some simple examples, MovableType will be more attractive to those who prefer Perl over PHP. Likewise for Plone and Python. Drupal is more complex than Wordpress, but it is also more flexible and has stronger content management features.

I am definitely happy to see statistics which show a rapidly growing WordPress user base. But I'll be one of the first to recommend that you always use the right tool for the job. And conversely, the most popular tool isn't always the best one. Look at your needs, and look at the feature sets of the tools. Compare the ones that do what you need, and pick the one that works best for you.

aaalex’s picture

I definitely love WordPress, and I use it even more for simple project since it has the "page" module. It is also easier to write a WP plugin then a Drupal module. (I haven't tried to write a Drupal module yet)

Drupal is my other favorite for now (after WP, when a project is more complex), since it is much faster than Tikiwiki and the templates are easier to configure than almost any other CMS. It is also way easier to install than, let's say, Typo3.

As a french speaker, I really enjoy Drupal being almost completely translated in French, whereas WP 1.5 has some english left here and there. But, that's a matter of implication. Free (speech) sofwares rocks !

aalex on IRC
web, php, photos

kc’s picture

I agree with mediagirl. No doubt Drupal is a very flexible and powerful system, however requires a bit of familiarity with php, and touching some files. I had to recommend a different solution to a friend of mine even though Drupal would have fit his needs perfectly, simply because he was not comfortable with php, editing stuff here and there, databases, etc.

An easier installation will definitely make it even more popular since it maybe turning some off.

My two cents.

KC


chueewowee’s picture

I've started and ugraded to 4.5 and now 4.5 in my testing. I'm going to stick wth drupal, it is much better flexibility and I like the development. That means better customisation too. This is from the point of view both offering web development services, and hosting my own sites.
I almost switched because of lack of familiarity, to wordpress. I still use zencart, but may drop coppermine if after all I can do what I want to with drupal in that area. The others are MUCH faster to get used to. What I mean here, are the updates with cvs and patches, as well as the clarity in terminolgy used.

A useful thing would be a breif intro to both areas in plain speak. Changing the generic term node something like 'Category', and explaining a categories can extend to a sub-categories (called a taxonomy), and these may be interlinked (for what purpose..eg. searches, display?) so each category functions as a 'node', along with inbuilt FIXED categories in drupal, such as blog, page etc. It doesn't have to be called a node, which though correct in terms of function, is too vague for most people: Each node, (terminal, category..). is in drupal foremost a category or it doesn't yet exist , and so a category permits the function of a node. 'Category' suggests a group word assigned to something. 'Node' is too abstract, an undetermined (no term) function . People have to read about nodes in the forums, and get confused.

However I'm comfortable now. I still have problems with modules. I have spent a lot of time getting familiar with my .conf files and the terminal etc, and reading posts that are outdated and difficult to read. Speeding up my work routines, with the right software.

Anyway my message is that drupal is an exciting peice of work, and I'd like to be a part of it an dhelp in areas I have spelled out. 4.6 RC is great.
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"It's never too late to have a happy childhood."

sepeck’s picture

I am a little confused. I have been playing with Drupal and using a few of the contributed modules for over a year now and I still don't know php. I really don't know mySQL either. I keep meaning to get around to learning php, but never seem to have the time. I have been trying to get more familier with css though.

-sp
---------
Test site...always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

kbahey’s picture

Dries

Nice comparison, and a comprehensive one too.

But I guess that it may be overly broad. For example Drupal is more like Mambo PHP Nuke, Post Nuke and Xaraya.

phpBB is more of a forums only thing. Wordpress et al are more for bloggers.

Wordpress is becoming popular for that very reason: blogging is all the rage now, and everyone wants to get into it.

Although Drupal can be a blog, it is far more than that. Not only does it have forums, comments, ...etc. but it is a poweful, flexible, and extensible framework for web applications. Plone would be the only competitor in this category.

So we are comparing fruits here, not apples to apples only.
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Consulting: 2bits.com
Personal: Baheyeldin.com

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Drupal performance tuning and optimization, hosting, development, and consulting: 2bits.com, Inc. and Twitter at: @2bits
Personal blog: Ba

carlmcdade’s picture

---------------------------
Hivemindz CMSopdedia
__________________________
Carl McDade
Information Technology Consult
Team Macromedia

kbahey’s picture

I don't know why it shows as italics, but I did not put it there.

If you look closely, even the title of the comment is italics!
--
Consulting: 2bits.com
Personal: Baheyeldin.com

--
Drupal performance tuning and optimization, hosting, development, and consulting: 2bits.com, Inc. and Twitter at: @2bits
Personal blog: Ba

kc’s picture

I did not open it but will try to close it:-)
Hmm, did not work, I tried putting a closing tag since there is one left open in a previous comment.

Another fine use of Drupal: Phoenix Arizona Real Estate Agent

dr05’s picture

Yes plone ist good.

Have Drupal?:
- RSS Feed/Comments
- ATOM Feed

Is Drupal?:
- Section 508 valid
- W3C AA valid
- W3C CSS valid
- RSS valid
- ATOM valid

The officiall drupal website use table tags.. Why?
Is plone better?

bertboerland’s picture

yes, drupal can do all that. not out-of-the-box but give it a try and you will see that that is in fact the power of drupal!

comment rss module
atom module

as far as validation goes, that is up to the theme. drupal has a very good record as validation for different protocols goes. Take a look at the themes and you will find that most of them do validate (not against multiple browsers, but against the standard)
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groets
bertb

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groets
bert boerland

eka’s picture

Hi all

Please go to www.cmsmatrix.org and compare

Drupal, Mambo and Wordpress

please give you feedback

also i think that their drupal features info is outdated

Eka

tvst’s picture

i believe the aim should be to make drupal better fulfill the need of its current users, rather than to try and attract more and more people. this is not a popularity contest, really.

for my site, of all cms's, drupal makes the most sense. if another cms appears that is considerably better for my purposes, i will definitelly move.

in the end it doesn't matter which software you use, as long as it makes you happy.

drupal makes me happy. :)

judah’s picture

That is such a key principle. You desire and aim to make something right and everything will be added to it. M6:33

Bèr Kessels’s picture

Great comparison.
first of all, the fact we can do such a comparison indicates Drupal belongs to the Big Boys.

However, I am a bit afraid of the conclusions of these tests:

  • Foo is bigger, so there is work to do. Do we want to be the biggest? I for one prefer to be a bit smaller, that helps tracking and maintaining the project a lot.
  • If Foo is popular because of feature Bar, we need bar too.I disagree. If wordpress does it better, because its easy to install, then so be it. Its their unique selling point. Drupal has other USPs. Do we ever want fifteen completely unique CMSes out there? Please not. Every CMS has pros and cons, so that the whole group of OSS CMSes together make everything possible.
  • People are moving from Drupal To Foo. We need theme back. Do we? If people move to wordpress because that one has an installation feature, so be it. FRankly I do not care about the users that only *want* things but never *offer* anything. Really, for Drupal itself, one useability expert, Developer, designer or debugger is far more interesting then thousand people nagging about an installtion system.
  • Users find Drupal too hard to learn. Off course they do. And so do they find typo3 and prolly some more frameworks. Drupal is no blogging tool. We are working very hard on making drupal more friendly. But thats a hell of a job, because of the nature of Drupal. Drupal is a framework, development tool, and a CMS. so making it more useable without loosing focus of Drupals real power: flexibility, is very hard.

What we really need, is a part of the market that is interesting for us, not the biggest part, regardless. We need users that want drupal. because of what it is and might be, and not those that need all sorts of things that Drupal is not and never will be.

What we also really need it less competition between CMSes. I do not see this happening very soon, but maybe, in some future we can start working on some more cross CMS suites and APIS. HTMLare is already is an example of this.

I also beleive that we, as Drupal, should be more actively embracing interesting projects/CMS-alikes to collaborate. I am thingking of writers of Jabber front-ends, the phpcollab people, crm developers, etc.

--
If this solved you problem, please report back. This will help others whom are looking for the same solution.
Next time, please consider to file a support request.

[Bèr Kessels | Drupal services www.webschuur.com]

aptanet’s picture

I'd say well done on the comparison. It is quite interesting, although I'd second the point about the usefulness of Alexa as a tool for doing this - I disable Alexa on any Windows systems I end up working on otherwise it irritates me too much when I do malware scans!

The thing that particularly impressed me wasn't so much the statistics as the fact that it was an honest comparison. When I clicked on the link I was half expecting to see a piece on how Drupal was much better than the rest, more popular, etc.. What I saw instead was a much more mature and open approach to the topic.

I can't remember what made my visit the Drupal site in the first place (beyond looking at various CMS style systems), but it has just been added to my shortlist to take a closer look at - along with Xoops, Mambo (both of which I already have experimental installs of) and Plone. The last is the only one I've spotted so far that makes a big thing of W3C complaince of the resulting pages which is important to my requirements - along with the ability to extend it, noteably sharing some content between multiple sites (e.g. news, for sale board, and/or links with the ability to only subscribe the site to particular subsections of each). Plone has the disadvantage of my irrational dislike of Zope though!

chueewowee’s picture

I'm a newbie, and in some ways I've found the last months struggle. Two reasons: 1) I wanted everything just the way I might imagine or need, and easy with it. 2) Upon taking up Drupal, I sensed more to it than what I at first expected of a cms, and how it functions. I had to think deply about cms. So I attacked it on all fronts, whilst trying to take on new skills that I hadn't yet accomplished.

Now I understand where you are at, and love you for that, and and the quiet purposeful way you work in spite of flack by the likes of me.
In a future generation being in the web will be easier for all, and that includes anyone participating with cms engines. I hope drupal will continue on its path and suspect that it will be one to set standards. Not the most popular now, but exciting and promising. Useful now,too. When I see a site like the publicly suported Terminus, I am inspired.

In competition, we may look over our shoulder and drupal developers look at other systems, naturally. But here I guess it isn't competion because drupal is a framework and a development tool, not merely a bogging tool. Let's face those tools arelimited even to a schoolchild in terms of expression. It's drupal's flexibility that I find so pleasing and exciting. It's why I am sticking to it, and why I didn't give up earlier. I could smell it in spite of my difficulties. I sacrificed family time for that. But in the long run I'll spend less time on web projects because drupal will most likely serve my needs due to its flexibility. Also, I will have more to offer people as a web designer. (I think I'm going to have to get stuck into a deal of php) .

Quote: "What we really need, is a part of the market that is interesting for us, not the biggest part, regardless. We need users that want drupal."

Well said..that attitude brings the right kind of results!

Thanks folks for collaborating in the way you do.

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"It's never too late to have a happy childhood."

dhom’s picture

Like other open-source genres, I discovered CMS almost by accident, but I quickly got frustrated because the solutions that were being offered didn't seem to give me enough flexibility. Trying them out (http://opensourcecms.com/) and installing one of them on my test server just seemed to confirm this. Another confusing thing was that the websites for most of these CMS systems didn't make it obvious how to get a list of features or examples of sites that had been designed around them.

Like chueewowee, when I got to Drupal's website, I sensed something different, probably because the site made it easy for me to see exactly what the features were, and I was impressed and how much control Drupal seems to give developers over building content as a community. I'm going to try it out, and if it doesn't work, I guess it's time to code everything on my own. Last hope... :)

Robbyn’s picture

macmend’s picture

I had never heard of drupal until i came on it in a reference on the wikipedia site, I use Xoops which interestingly has a wordpress module should you wish to use this popular blogging tool.

I am still trying to work out the advantages or not as the case may be of drupal. I think different CMs projects become popular as they are used and because they are able to promote themselves.

The problem is having previoulsy used invision forums, that many start free but end up as a commercial enterprise, asking you to pay for something which you have previously been using for nothing.

http://www.macmend.com
"the home of mac troubleshooting"

dsamuel’s picture

I spent quite some time trying different CMS systems, and rejected one after another. It came down to Drupal vs. WordPress.

I like WordPress, not so much for the one-click install, but for the easy setup after it is installed. It is the way to go if all you want is a Blog.

Drupal is harder to set up. Chances are you won't like it quite the way it comes out of the box (although it does come out of the box with a lot of great features) so then it's down the rabbit hole of extensions!

If you want more than a blog, Drupal is the way to go, but it requires a bigger time investment.

They both have their place. I prefer Drupal.

I find myself visiting the WordPress website more than the Drupal website because WordPress seems to raise more questions in my mind when it comes to tweaking.

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