Support for Drupal 7 is ending on 5 January 2025—it’s time to migrate to Drupal 10! Learn about the many benefits of Drupal 10 and find migration tools in our resource center.
By allimac on
I am taking on a project and I need to decide whether to develop it in Drupal or WordPress. I am slightly familiar with WordPress and not at all with Drupal. I know there will be an initial learning curve but I am most interested in finding the tool that supports my needs in the tightest/built-in way.
My site will have some pages that are public (about page and news page). It will then have a password protected section for kids and teachers to post text,videos etc and comment on each others work. Then we want collaboration between schools in a region and then eventually among different regions as well. There will be some pages that are available only to teachers and not students.
Other notes about functionality: We need the teacher/student pages of posts to be separated by category/subject. We need some organizations to enter information about grants in a specific format and then need to display that information. Need to keep track of contact information of these organizations. Needs to link to Paypal for donations.
Any thoughts about the best tool for the project would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you
Comments
I would do that in Drupal.
I would do that in Drupal.
Having said that, my personal view is that Drupal sites are way more work to build, maintain, and update, and take far more server resources. When I host a low traffic Drupal site for example, on the basis that it should be really fast, I charge five times what I charge for a low traffic Wordpress site, and consider that a good deal. In building a Drupal site commercially I consider that you can almost ad a nought to the price for Drupal, and similarly with the effort, skill, time, debugging etc that goes into Drupal.
My starting point is that every site I do is Drupal or Wordpress, and the test is as follows. Drupal offers infinite possibilities incuding:
different layout on every page using blocks (with far greater flexibility with some additional modules such as panels)
programmatically assembled collections of content on a custom basis (with Views)
social groups (with Ogrganic Groups)
decent dicusson board
online store
mapping tools
mulit-lingual tools
Infinite customisable user roles (Wordpress has more than one role)
Customisable content types (Wordpress has two)
If you need any of the above I would be tending towards Drupal. If a site does not need any of the above, I advise a client that they can save themselves a lot of cost, time and heartache by going with Wordpress. I tell them they can do the same in Drupal but they should be prepared to expect hosting, maintenance, site building and customisation, and debugging, will cost a LOT more time and / or money in Drupal.
Digit Professionals specialising in Drupal, WordPress & CiviCRM support for publishers in non-profit and related sectors
_
excellent description of the selection process between drupal and wordpress! I don't think I've seen it described more clearly.
This is totally false in 2012!
Wordpress has BuddyPress which is far better out of the box than Organic Groups by leaps and bounds!
WordPress has bbPress, which is a very good forums plugin; it integrates seamlessly with WordPress.
How many store plugins does WordPress have compared to Drupal? Drupal has about two or three. WordPress has dozens.
Again, WordPress has plugins for that.
Again, WordPress has plugins for that.
Role Scoper...
That is flat out false. WordPress calls them custom post types and it is just as easy to build them as content types in Drupal with the plugins Custom Post Type UI and Advanced Fields.
So everything that you said which makes Drupal better than WordPress is totally inaccurate. I want to point out the obvious here. If you say that a Drupal site takes far longer to create and more resources to maintain than WordPress, and WordPress can do everything that you claim only Drupal can do (which I proved isn't true), then why NOT use WordPress instead? Sure, learning Drupal is fun, but I have found that I would rather make money creating and being productive, then just learn something for the sake of it, when there are other, more efficient tools that can do exactly the same thing with less time and actual work.
I'm not trying to hate on Drupal at all here, I happen to like it for it's good qualities, but just want to point people to the truth. WordPress is just as powerful as Drupal in 2012 and it's development is much more sane and fluid.
_
another truth... if wordpress were truly equivalent to drupal but easier and cheaper to use, then drupal would fade away and everyone would switch to wordpress. This is not happening, at least not yet anyway.
I am open to be persuaded.
I am open to be persuaded. Would like to know which of the tools brentini has experience using.
The lack of a Views equivalent in WP is a major problem.
Digit Professionals specialising in Drupal, WordPress & CiviCRM support for publishers in non-profit and related sectors
_
i'm also open to be persuaded... but every time i try out the next 'better than drupal' cms I'm always disappointed. I've yet to find ANYTHING that even approaches the power and flexibility of views/panels/ds/fields in core.
I don't think my argument is
I don't think my argument is about the "next better than Drupal." All I said was that what someone else described as making Drupal better than WordPress doesn't hold up since all of those things can be done in WordPress too. As far as Views, it is my preference that display queries be stored in the theme itself, not in the database as Views does. All of those fields are already in the database, so why bloat the database just to display fields? Furthermore, from a developers standpoint, I don't see how it is possible to include a Drupal "view" in a theme which makes it somewhat difficult to sell my theme with the full presentation intact. There actually is a 'views' plugin for WordPress which generates portable php and xml and this can be included in themes. I'm not sure Drupal views can do that. As far as panels, there is a plugin called Visual Editor which is similar, except really better since it is per page and separate nodes are not required to be created first. But if you need to include php, shortcodes do the trick quite nicely, and once again, can be included in themes, thereby making them portable. In other words, I can sell all of this to my clients. To each his own but I will say that in 2012, there is nothing that I have not been able to do in WordPress that I can do in Drupal. It is flexible in every way, and in a lot of cases, I don't have to rely upon the status of a contributed module to fill in a gap. Vanilla Drupal isn't so powerful. By the way, WordPress 3x has fields in core too. I merely mentioned some UI's to make it easier to use. But what is awesome about WordPress is that custom fields and taxonomies are portable and can be included directly in themes (not the data of course, but who would want that?). WordPress calls custom content types, custom post types and these, along with all of their fields and taxonomies can be included in themes themselves. I have yet to see Drupal have this capability, although maybe I am missing something. So why are most theme developers developing for WordPress? I just told you some of the reasons why.
which views plugin?
Can you be specific about the 'views' and 'visual editor' wordpress plugins you mention? i'm looking for such things but there are many with that name.
My experience is that WordPress is easier to use and develop for. That's been enough for me to be happy with my choice to use it for 98% of the small business sites that I build. I have not found a good answer to the question of what Drupal can do that WordPress can't but i do love Drupal views so i miss that feature. I don't really miss anything else about Drupal.
As far as Views, it is my
Hmm... In case you are not aware, you can export the view and store it in a flat file. And that will be picked up as defaults by views, see advanced_forum.module for an example on how to do that. This should be the end of your development cycle. Otherwise whenever you override it, views will start to put it into database. But again you can always re-export and update your flat files, and do a revert at views UI to make it read the flat files instead.
love, light n laughter
How many store plugins does
You say that like it's a good thing.
I've found bbPress and
I've found bbPress and BuddyPress on Wordpress a bit, well, flakey...
There's definitely a wider user base on Wordpress, and a great deal of plugins of varying quality. Wordpress is great for knocking out sites quickly (which a lot of people do to create low quality websites), but Drupal seems more refined to me. Quality over quantity perhaps? There are downsides of CMSs such as WP from having such a wide hacky user base.
thanks
Thank you both for your detailed and confirming response. Helps to solidify my decision.
I'd like to suggest that even
I'd like to suggest that even though WP can tackle about the same needs as Drupal as both use the same tecnology ([L]AMP), their difference is in their architecture. Drupal is essentially a CMS and WP a blogging platform. I see that even though WP can be molded to whatever needs you have, you need a lot more of plugins and stuff to do the job while Drupal needs just a bunch and these modules are actively maintained to keep them running smooth with Drupal. I see a WP site can tackle the same needs you can tackle with a D-site, but with a different scope. When you think of large projects you need to see beyond the plugins or who can do this and that, you need to know that the project architecture supports the project requirements and that you can deploy it in a secure, fast enough and up-to-date environment.
That being said, I see WP being overreaching to look like a CMS, but its architecture is not one of this kind. You're basically converting a blogging site into a robust site, which I don't know how can it handle as a whole as steady as a D-site and how well is information quality handled for creating better views than with a D-site having multiple requirements. I see D-site modules (at least major modules) to be tightly linked into Drupal's core and the power of its API to easily adapt Drupal to your needs without messing with the core. Again I don't know how well does much of this holds true in a WP environment.
You are saying essentially,
You are saying essentially, that Drupal is better than WordPress because WordPress requires plugins to function in the same way that Drupal can perform with modules. But that is not an argument. WordPress does not require hacking core any more than Drupal does. In fact, the two are quite comparable these days. My argument is not that one or the other is better. That is your argument. I am saying that WordPress can do everything that Drupal can in 2012, and most theme developers agree that WordPress is not only easier and more enjoyable to work with, but also more user friendly and more portable as far as including specific usable functions directly in a theme, as compared to Drupal. To say that WordPress is not a CMS at this point is untrue and exposes the fact that you have not realized the scope of WordPress 3x. WordPress 3 introduced custom post types which allows any type of post type in the system, along with custom taxonomies and custom fields. This is in core WordPress. And this is highly flexible as it allows developers to include this in themes directly. So it is not at all necessary to use a plugin for this functionality in WordPress at all. Prior to Drupal 7x, a module was necessary for this same functionality. Since 7, it is included in core, along with a UI. WordPress does have UI's as plugins for CPTs, but they are hardly necessary and coding them is very easy. Again, they can be included in themes and child themes, hence, no core hacking involved.
So these anti-WordPress arguments are simply untrue. I like Drupal but find that WordPress is a delight to work with and can do everything that Drupal can do in a fraction of the time for development. To each his own. By the way, not all contrib modules are well maintained at all.
Not true. WordPress 3x can be whatever you want it to be. And Drupal can be a blogging platform if that is what you want it to be.
The argument that Druapl is a cms because of a few included modules while WordPress requires a few plugins for essentially the exact same functionality holds no water, sorry. When those modules are not enabled what good is Drupal? That is your argument, that WordPress is simple without plugins. WordPress actually requires zero plugins if you want to have a very robust system. All php includes can be included from within the theme, making the cms portable and here's the clincher...sellable. That's right, I can add all of the functionality I need without any plugins and make a nice profit. And this is why most theme developers are developing on the WordPress platform, not Drupal.
This worries me. I agree it
This worries me. I agree it is tough to make a profit building Drupal sites. Easier to make a profit building Wordpress site. I need to experiment with using Wordpress on more complex sites.
And yet for larger more complex sites Drupal is still finding plenty of users. Is this really only because Drupal people have too shallow a knowledge of Wordpress? Maybe....
Digit Professionals specialising in Drupal, WordPress & CiviCRM support for publishers in non-profit and related sectors
I've been reviewing what
I've been reviewing what Wordpress has to offer and I really like some features in the version 3. I see WP has evolved nicely and I found in an interesting blog post that whereas Drupal is aiming to be as user friendly as WP, WP is aiming to have the horsepower of Drupal. And now I'm believing it. I develop sites in Spanish and it's a hassle to deal with translation issues, especially with plugins/modules. I see Wordpress has many multilanguage plugins which is a nice addendum from its developers but I have one question... is the learning curve to develop/mantain both modules/addons and themes using both core's apis + extra apis from plugins/modules in both systems similar or which one is harder to master?
Define community site
Ever heard of WordPress Multisite/BuddyPress/bbPress for building community sites? Again, I really see nothing that Drupal can do that WordPress cannot. And there is one GIANT thing to keep in mind with WordPress vs. Drupal: backwards compatibility. Drupal upgrades can be very painful. Typically not so with WordPress.
To answer your question specifically, I think it is just a matter of loyalty with some people. They have loyally declared that X is better than Y based upon what Y performed like 2 or 3 years ago when they switched to X. That really is not allowing for very good perspective 2 or 3 years later though is it?
Re : Define community site
lol, i have seen these type of comments from wordpress lovers on joomla forums too.
they are annoying most of the time. wordpress is good (i dont like it personally. never compatible with large and complex websites even 3.x ) for those who wanted to built small website but drupal is better.
i am not sure you if you will come with new arguements. but 1 most important question is why wordpress needs to claim to be best if it is?(trust it is not :P) and i have heard most of wp lovers saying it can be converted to a robust website. it is true in the case of small websites. but you have to accept wordpress is basically a bloging oriented Application.but not in the caseof drupal/joomla. and arguement never works
Is Wordpress flexibile as Drupal?
I am not an expert but I think.
Drupal = PHP 's flexibility + Thousands of talented programmers power.
Let me explain my idea.
PHP's flexibility means you can still use PHP, populate anything on the databese with Drupal's api functions. Even that you don't need to write a piece of PHP code most times, or you can keep a balance between the two approach.
The power of talented programmers You don't have to care creating database tables, new php functions for example for updating, inserting, deleting the records. Just focus on the problem that is it. You don't need to code error prone functions that actually re inventing the wheel, let Drupal core and module programmers do the most of the job and enjoy.
For Wordpress I know little about WP. If WP is some kind of equavalent what I have experienced with Drupal and has some plus benefits of course use WordPress.
I certainly feel that
I certainly feel that Wordpress is the better site to start with on a simple site. But this one sounds like Drupal would still have edge. Sure, I can imagine BuddyPress would do much of this, but the Drupal user permission system is still superior.
I wrote up a more detailed comparison of Drupal and Wordpress here: http://techczech.net/2012/07/28/drupal-wordpress-choice
As a side-note. I hope I'm
As a side-note. I hope I'm not coming across as a wordpress hater. It's not that at all. I believe that each system is suited for specific needs and it's important to study a sites requirement to decide what to use to build it in. I think the drupal and wordpress should coexist happily together. Unfortunately, there's fanboys on both sides that will fight to the death over what to use at the detriment to the client.
In case anyone turns up the
In case anyone turns up the thread again I share my current view: if you need to ask this question get WP. If you need more advanced stuff or just find Drupal more fun you will not need to ask. Written from Drupalcon Munich.
Digit Professionals specialising in Drupal, WordPress & CiviCRM support for publishers in non-profit and related sectors
drupal has no limitation...
drupal has no limitation... drupal rock \m/
The difference between WP & Drupal
Both WordPress and Drupal are built in PHP, so from a developer's standpoint neither is capable of anything that the other is not. The key difference is that WordPress is designed to allow non-technical users to easily create and maintain a website. It works right out of the box as a blogging platform, and can easily be re-purposed as a CMS. Drupal is a CMS with no purpose, so it can be anything to anyone...but it is not designed with non-technical users in mind.
In short, the difference between the two can best be explained like this:
http://mynewsitepreview.com/images/wordpress-vs-drupal.jpg
Drupal in 2001
I first came across drupal in 2001 but had no clue how to use it and although was terribly curious just
couldn't seem to understand so went back to flash based websites.
Now over 10 years later I've returned to drupal and am really thoroughly enjoying learning it and feel
quite privileged to be surrounded by a community of very clever minds. I guess I think if I stick
around long enough a small part of it might somehow rub off on me.
LOL. That picture is just way
LOL to sscovil. That picture is just way too much exaggerating. You didn't sound to try a Standard drupal install, nor any other installation profile, like commerce_kickstart, openenterprise, etc. You sounded like you always install Minimal :)
love, light n laughter
Both Drupal & WordPress are Good
Haha, the image really describes the difference between Drupal and WP, but it will also scare away many newbies who want to try Drupal.
Drupal is very powerful, no websites it can't be build in the expert hands, perhaps the sky is the limit. We can use it to build a very simple blog too. But using a hi-tech robot for cleaning your house floor is too overkill. Drupal is powerful, to able to use the 'real' power users need to have good technical skills. For simple websites and blogs, using WordPress is enough and it can be developed faster and easier to maintain.
Hmmm, I don't think the above
Hmmm, I don't think the above image describes drupal. As a drupal developer I don't start from scratch for every project. Why not build and reusable features etc.
How about that: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8192130/wordpress-vs-drupal.jpg
This shows IMHO the reality about drupal, with respect for wordpress.
– Greetings from Frankonia –
"A decision is mostly a good decision if it leads to more opportunities.”
Heinz von Foerster (Kybernetiker)
I have to agree I think that
I have to agree I think that's a more accurate image.
Clean markup: Wordpress wins hands-down
From a designer's perspective, I find it far far far easier to design for Wordpress because out of the box, if one chooses a responsive theme, the markup that is generated is going to be pretty clean and easy to target for css. In contrast, out of the box, Drupal generates excessive numbers of generic sitewide non-specific classes and divs nested as much as 17 levels deep. It makes doing best-practices modern css, especially css3, extremely difficult.
Having read a book on Prototyping in Drupal, I know that if your developer does not install at least one special module, you are going to end up with spaghetti html to work with.
..at least one special
fences comes to my mind. Currently it does a great job to trim down markups at field level in line to HTML5 markups. Or mothership theme if you want to start clean from theme level.
love, light n laughter
From another designer's
From another designer's perspective, if you make your own theme probably you don't have that problem with spaghetti html. If you make a theme based on another theme it will happens mostly times, because Drupal themes are prepared to be adaptable for more than one content type in mind, in Wordpress most themes are prepared only to blog post, in Drupal you can create a lot of different post, with different fields. Maybe that is the reason of the spaghetti.
So if you don't want to have that problem just wrote your theme from scratch or based on a minimal starter kit theme. Personally I've found a great tool in Drupal because I don't have to touch php (I'm designer not a programmer, I'm not a php expert) if I don't touch the code probably it will reduce the chance of error or security issue. And that is a big problem in Wordpress, because all tutorials say touch here and there the php code.
Although you can do this site
Although you can do this site on either platform, I think Drupal will be your best bet here. My rule of thumb is simple sites get Wordpress, and everything else Drupal. Here's a link to a Views plugin for wordpress http://wp-types.com/ in case you're interested
I tend to agree. Having
I tend to agree. Having developed sites using both platforms, I think it comes down to how much time you have available before rolling out the new site. One earlier contributor mentioned the additional complexity that comes from developing sites in Drupal. I would add to this by saying that when I have created Drupal sites, I have always provided the client with a very detailed user manual and I still find the need to go over basic usage steps further down the track. But when it comes to developing sites for my own use, I am happy to work with either platform.
I, also agree. Drupal is
I, also agree. Drupal is better, and Wordpress easier.
DRUPAL
Why? Because I've been using BOTH Drupal and Wordpress long enough to know them both really well.
I have a very very complicated site on Wordpress, which is crashing my server every few hours. The plugins I use for it are in Drupal CORE. That being said, look at what you need, then look at WordPress core, and Drupal core, and figure out which suits your needs. If you want lots of content, a social network, some complicated user dashboard, a forum, a shop, etc etc on ONE website, save yourself the stress and do it in Drupal. It's hard to learn, but it pays off. And all those pages you'll need to create in conjunction with a plugin on WordPress to show posts on a topic/tag? Yeah Drupal views FTW. No pages, just create a display and add in a path, and BOOM. You're done.
I know this reply is late, but someone else might be reading it for the answers. Hopefully, what I have to say will make an impact.
I have used WordPress and
I have used WordPress and Drupal both. I am not an expert in either. However, Drupal has pushed me to learn. It has truly opened doors and forced me to dig in and start learning things that I never would have before. With WordPress, it seems like I was just installing plug-ins and trying to find a theme that fit and customizing a little CSS. It almost felt like I was getting lazy. Lazy with HTML and continuing to learn PHP. I feel that Drupal is by far superior, but maybe that is because I have become more intimate with it. A Drupal site feels like something you create. A WP site feels like something slap together in a hurry.
I agree with this. It makes
I agree with this. It makes Wordpress quite suitable if you are working for clients who have a small budget. This is even more true if you care about the client's long-term costs because in my experience the cost of supporting Drupal is a lot higher. This is not all Drupal's fault: once clients get such a flexible system, they want more complexity on their site. It is partly due to Drupal's overall much greater complexity, and partly to do with the way clients react to Drupal by wanting more and more features, which in the days of static sites, they would not have thought of. For a range of reasons, I get enquiries along the lines of 'please fix my broken site' with Drupal but rarely with Wordpress, which I decided to use for low-budget jobs to save clients money.
Digit Professionals specialising in Drupal, WordPress & CiviCRM support for publishers in non-profit and related sectors
Your project sounds like it would go good with Drupal
Your project sounds like it would go good with Drupal and also with WordPress. But if it was my project, I would have opted for Drupal where I get lot more options and modules.
At the same time, this one can be done with Wordpress too, but using Drupal makes it simpler with additional functionality's.
Drupal vs WordPress
When we first started developing sites in 2007, every site we built was with WordPress. At that time, these sites were smaller and WordPress was evolving from a blogging platform to a full fledged content management system (CMS). The sites that we were developing had very minimal content types and the general WordPress page content block was sufficient to give our clients a clean page admin experience. Note: we often refer to the “admin” as the password protected web portal where clients update their content.
The saying is very true “if the only tool you have is a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail”. We hit up all of the WordCamps that we could and hung out at the Automattic office, back when it was on the unstable pier in San Francisco.
Along the way, our client roster grew and we encountered needs for more content types, a richer admin experience, and a more Enterprise Level CMS. That is when we started developing sites with Drupal. Today, we are an Acquia partner, and spend our conference time at DrupalCons.
Compared to WordPress, Drupal is an absolute beast! Drupal’s taxonomies and core structure took us a while to get used to. However, after building numerous sites with Drupal, we slowly and surely came to love Drupal as the CMS of choice for Enterprise level websites and web applications. If you have a web app, or any type of web project that requires user permissions, Drupal’s functionality is hardier than WordPress. Drupal is also more flexible when it comes to API development and its default caching features are more robust out of the box.
In this article, we will analyze key differentiators between the two CMS’s and help steer you in the right direction towards which is right for you.
Thanks,
The Cheesy Animation Factory - Architectural 3D Flythrough Services
Drupal .. Wordpress is for
Drupal .. Wordpress is for kids.. :P
What about the content editor?
I have a wordpress site now. I am thinking about creating a new site with drupal instead of wordpress. Here are some of my thoughts. Wordpress has a pretty nice built in WYSIWYG editor, but drupal doesn't have something built it. Also wordpress has an app which allows you to blog on your mobile device. I just don't know how is the user experience of drupal editor compared to wordpress. Also I want to add and insert responsive images into the articles from the content editor. I don't know if it is easy to do so with drupal.
I've using WordPress for Store
Hi!
I used WordPress for my Store for 2 years and always feel difficulties with add product system and defining the prices. Now i try to use OpenCart and think about Drupal.
Which of this CMS can better help me?
My site http://wearandgo.com.ua
Best Regards, Semen
Drupal can do everything if
Drupal can do everything if you have the patience to learn it. Drupal is complicated so you need a lot of time to learn it unless you pay someone who is already skilled with Drupal. After you have studied Drupal for a few months or years, you can really do almost anything with it.
Digit Professionals specialising in Drupal, WordPress & CiviCRM support for publishers in non-profit and related sectors
Drupal vs Wordpress
Drupal is a friendly tool for building complex sites. It requires technical experts and they are also capable of producing the advanced websites. Whereas, Wordpress is an original platform and no need of technical experience. Its very easy to use. I think Wordpress is much better than Drupal.
WordPress is suitable for:
WordPress is suitable for:
Simple websites for small and medium enterprises
Blogging sites or news sites
Those websites which need some quick scalability in terms of new feature additions
Serious publications which require content contribution from multiple authors
Drupal is suitable for:
Large scale, enterprise level Content Management Systems
Complex and advanced websites where scalability, stability is important than the user interface
Community platform sites where multiple users can access at the same time performing variety of actions
Source:
http://www.vemployee.com/blog/wordpress-vs-joomla-vs-drupal-real-difference/
Exactly. Wordpress is very
Exactly. Wordpress is very easy to use, but probably not only the best on small and medium-sized page. I know a large pages created on this system. Drupal is far more powerful and harder to use.
I am new to Drupal but love
I am new to Drupal but love it.
can anybody compare
wordpress to Drupal??
Like as
Wordpress theme
wordpress plungin
wordpress customization
wordpress vs drupal
I don't know if it's possible to do a comparison by customization, theme or plugins but you can see here https://www.similartech.com/compare/drupal-vs-wordpress what kind of website do choose drupal or wordpress that will give you idea which one is better for what type of website.
And if you want to use drupal you need good knowledge of php.
Fresh perspectives on an old debate - Drupal vs WordPress
This is certainly an old topic, but still a fresh debate for many of our potential clients. I have been working on a blog series that intends to dig into the differences between these two open source CMS projects. The third post in my Drupal vs WordPress blog series is live now and describes how Drupal and WordPress perform when put into action for a project that demands an enterprise grade development environment. At first glance the two can seem very similar due to their open source project structure, but the real differences become apparent when a project is underway.
That link doesn't work.
That link doesn't work.
Found it http://www
Found it http://www.commercialprogression.com/post/drupal-vs-wordpress-enterprise.... The summary is
Since I do use WP this is clear to me. The question for me is where is the cutoff point, as a project gets bigger, where the client will get better value or lower overall costs if I use WordPress; and how has D8 change that balancing exercise. The blog post refers to 'enterprise grade' and its drift is based on the idea that enterprise grade and continuous development go hand in hand.
If enterprise grade means projects costing >$500,000 that is probably uncontroversial. With small projects, WordPress is still a winner for client value. Somewhere there is a switchover. The blog post contains a nice graph of x axis showing stages in the website life cycle and whose y axis shows costs, and has $ and $$. Some numbers there would be nice ;-)
Digit Professionals specialising in Drupal, WordPress & CiviCRM support for publishers in non-profit and related sectors
Drupal vs WordPress CMS cost comparison
Thanks for engaging the discussion John_B, and for reporting the error in the link Jaypan, this is fixed now... but you did find the post I was intending.
I have also written another post directed at the cost comparison for Drupal vs WordPress. This post is formatted as a case in point narrative for a WordPress project that evolves into a continuous development project. For sure, every project is different and will have unique cost dynamics.
But I do like your question around the "cuttoff point" or a knee in the cost that would push someone from WordPress to Drupal. This can be hard to find for many website projects that evolve over a few years from a blog to a more robust web application.
If a project owner knew what they were trying to accomplish all up front, the cost inflection could probably be identified. Our experience is that web projects evolve and Drupal is capable of handling this evolution. To say that all web projects under $100k should be done in WordPress is a mistake. Very large and expensive websites can be handled by WordPress if the use case is a good fit.
Now that said, if you have $100k to throw down in one year of development, you can probably afford the flexibility of Drupal. Budgets for marketing directors get torn apart for content and other marketing endeavors. Some of my writing is an attempt to educate that audience to the nuances of development vs typical design considerations.
Interesting series. I'm not a
Interesting series. I'm not a WordPress developer, so it was interesting to read the comparison. Most of it was stuff I've heard/read over the years, but it was good to see it laid out.
I find Drupal...
I love Drupal community. That is probably the best aspect of comparing the two. Drupal community members are way more patient, and
knowledgableknowledgeable than Wordpress community: e.g. Drupal users seem to understand the language and basic syntax of web development, while Wordpress users do not. I started with Drupal years ago, then went to WP, now back to Drupal. I can't imagine a world without Drupal. Sure, there is a huge learning curve for Drupal, and a lot of hands on coding and quasi-coding, but man the pain was and is so worth it LOLDrupal
Yes, you are right. I like the way people support each other here. Very enthusiastic and patient.
I started form Drupal and
I started form Drupal and then moved to WP and now only sometimes miss Drupal. But I do miss it.
After several years of experience with both:
Drupal wins over WordPress in the following:
Taxonomy - No doubt. In WP you can create only 2 taxonomies Tags and Categories out of the box. Drupal give unlimited and handles it beautifully. Love it.
Security - Security team of Drupal is looking after the health of modules in a better way than the WordPress them. At least that is what looks form the outside the team.
Geeky modules - I just love them. Drupal has some modules for some features that an average WordPress user does not ever things of using, not that the similar plugins are impossible to create on WP. The community just does not think of them. Drupal community thinks of them.
WordPress wins over Drupal in the following:
Ease of use - Mainly because of availability of themes that match 1000's of user cases. Drupal can achieve all of them, but dent have them ready in the theme directory. Not even in the paid theme world.
Catching Google: Google changes and introduces a lot of new features. I personally feel that WP community catches up to Googles want much quicker then Drupal. These are the features like ease of site speed optimization, better SEO, structured data and rich snippets. Drupal 8 is making its way, but it might be late. But again, I feel this is happening for WordPress because of the demand from the market – which is attributed to the number of theme targeting specific user cases from the market.
Drupal is my first love and I always want it to will. This is how I feel it can win:
But then I feel Drupal is not supposed to win in this game. Its playing a different game of making a developer fall in love with creating geeky features. The thus created website is just an output and off course great website will come out. I think I like Drupal like I use to enjoy my computer class period in school. Wow – something is happening, and I created something. That is good by the way.
If Drupal wins the war with WordPress, everyone will start using Drupal and people like me will find another nostalgia.
How Drupal can lose forever:
If WordPress starts creating the geeky plugins, which there are some even as of today, Drupal loses. And that’s what happened today. I came back to Drupal for a new project but decided it must be either WordPress or completely custom code.
Comments on the other comments I read above:
There is not real substitute of the power of Drupal views in WP. There is a plugin called Query wrangler, but it is not as great as views.
Panels is generally not needed because of the so many visual editors in WP. But the comparison is incorrect coz what panels does is create templates – reusable – that means data form content edit form to front end page that is themed as per need. WP Visual editors have reusable templates, but data has to be put in individual containers – which is not the best way to handle the problem for sites with 1000’s of pages. Creating a new theme template is much easier.
$500,000 or $100,000 being change over points from WordPress to Drupal.
This money is big enough to start creating a new Drupal, a new CMS. In my view, with this much money anything custom can be done.
How to choose Drupal vs WordPress
All functionality can be created in both.
3 Factors
Skill
Resource
Emotion
Custom Code
High
Moderate to High
Very Practical
Wordpress
Low - Moderate
Low
Practical and Fast Moving
Drupal
Moderate - High
Moderate to High
Nostalgic to underdog feel
What I do hate with WordPress
What I do hate with WordPress is the fact that it's not free at all if you want to use any good and powerful plugins. And paying for a plugin before you even know if it's good enough is always a risk. And what's more is that even if you do pay good money for a plugin, you still might not get any updates after a year. Drupal has an amazing core and if you throw a couple of extra modules to that, you can easily create pretty much anything, and in my experience it doesn't take any longer than it would with WP.
I was just talking with a colleague about a project which is going to be produced on WP. His view is that it's only a good thing when a plugin/module is not free, as it means it's good, secure and up to date. I can see what he means with that, as WP is bloated with very bad free plugins, but I would not say that Drupal modules are not good, safe or up to date just because they're free.
What I do hate with WordPress
Generally the Drupal sites have signficantly higher maintenance costs (a lot of my work is Drupal and WordPress maintenance). I agree it is depressing how may WP developers keep the letter of FOSS whilst abusing its spirit. However, they are agruably saving their clients money.
Digit Professionals specialising in Drupal, WordPress & CiviCRM support for publishers in non-profit and related sectors
Drupal needs bit of technical knowledge and WordPress is easyis
Both are good. But Which one to use totally depends on your purpose of website and your technical expertise. You need to understand little bit of technical aspect of you want to use Drupal but WordPress does not require any technical know how. Anyone can easily create good website in WordPress.
In WordPress you will get lot of free awesome looking theme but in Drupal free good theme is rare. You need spend some dollar here for a good theme.
In WordPress you will get huge number of plugins both free and paid. In Drupal also there are plenty but comparatively less than WordPress.
Drupal is little bit difficult to manage in terms of installation and updates and sometimes you may stuck if you don't have good technical knowledge.
Apart from all these you will see good number of hugely popular websites being built in Drupal as well as WordPress. It is of course that those top sites are created and maintained by some web development companies. But if someone wants develop on their own then they need to choose carefully. I used Drupal sometimes ago for a website.