WordPress Vs. Drupal: Choosing between two platforms

If you have been bogged down by the option to choose between WordPress and Drupal, then we can help you. While WordPress is the open source content management system that is powering 23% of all the systems on the internet, Drupal is not far behind. Both of them have some amazing features that set them apart and made them the top choice.

While many people still use WordPress for only blogging, it has come a long way and now evolved as one of the biggest content management system that you could find online. Drupal is still developing and WordPress is already popular but both have their own sets of pros and cons. Since drupal came a couple of years after wordpress, it has 10 times larger follower base than wordpress. Some might find wordpress as the best while others would like to go for drupal, let us present you with arguements from each side and the choice for the best is left with you. May the best CMS win!!

Which one is easier to use?

Ease of usability is one factor that is primary and cannot be ignored. If you are new to the use of CMS and cannot handle complicated background options, then Drupal won’t be your best choice. Drupal has a very complicated back-end software and if you are a layman, you would have a tough time figuring those technological jargons. On the other hand, WordPress is user-friendly, thanks to its WYSIWYG editor which will help you in blogging within minutes.

Another factor that tips the scale in the direction of WordPress is the community. You have a large community at your disposal when you get stuck anywhere. And they are ready to help you with their hands-on experience. So, you not only get help for your issues but you get to interact with like-minded people and learn a lot. Drupal obviously has a community but it is not as big as compared to WordPress.

Upgrades are important and both the CMS does it every few months. But, with WordPress, you don’t have to worry about a thing as everything is taken care of by the upgrade. Drupal, on the contrary, will require you to have a bit of information about the technology and might need a whole new design.

Both have an interactive user app but WordPress gets better as it has a mobile app and it makes it using your app anytime, anywhere.

Which gives you better customizing options?

After the easy use, your website’s aesthetics matter. And for that, you need to have a great theme and lots of customizable options. Wordpress again gets a brownie point here. It has around 37,000 themes which are either free or premium. They are enough to make your blank canvas into something interesting. When it comes to themes, the free ones give you a lot of options to customize and change the entire look and functioning of your website.

Since WordPress was developed for blogging, they are more flexible for themes and plug-ins. They have a huge open source community. And you can use it for displaying your blog, portfolio or run a business.

Drupal has limited themes and this puts it at the backseat for creating a beautiful site. Moreover, instead of plugins, Drupal uses modules which are not free.

The design of the CMS

You will be adding images to your site without a doubt and this is where you need to look in the responsive design which each CMS offers. The image sizes, for that matter, are something you will need to handle in both the CMS.

While WordPress uses .PHP extension where you will have to scale the image for your site, Drupal offers an admin response with which you can work on your images. The admins of Drupal might take time to load but they are easier to work with when compared to the extensions of WordPress.

Managing SEO

None of the sites were designed keeping in mind the tools required for search engine optimization which is an important factor. But, with Drupal’s high end back software and plugins, a layman can get really confused and ruin the site. WordPress has a lower rate of error thanks to its easy to use plugins. There are factors which make or break the SEO of any site.

• Time taken to load a page: with the distinctive caching features of Drupal, they are easier to load and this is not the case with wordpress.
• The content deliver network of each CMS is good and it helps you get the content distributed at a faster rate and efficiently.

How much you need to invest?

Both of them are free to download, but until you are a technological wizard, you will need to hire a developer for building your website, The developers for Drupal come at a higher price than WordPress because Drupal needs a lot more time to get used to. And those who have mastered the use of Drupal have invested their significant time in doing so, that is why they are expensive.

Then, there are premium plugins and themes which you will need to purchase. For WordPress these plugins and themes are cheaper. And Drupal will cost you more.

Which one is better secured?

This is where Drupal beats WordPress. WordPress is more popular and hence more vulnerable to hackers. Hackers can easily attack the WordPress free plugins if they are not updated on time by the website owner. If you want to have your WordPress website secured, you will have to install third party plugins.

This is not the case with Drupal. They are more secured because it was developed to be used by large enterprises and this is why they have tight security. Government organizations uses Drupal because it gives in-depth security reports.

Size matters

Since WordPress was originally designed for bloggers, it fails to handle a large volume of information. If you want to upload a lot of files and run an organization that has multiple readers everyday, then Drupal will be your best choice. If you upload a lot of information on wordpress, it will become slow and the user experience  is affected.

Does Google like it?

Both, WordPress and Drupal have SEO on them. And there are subtle difference between the two. Like Drupal was meant to be search engine friendly and this enhances its user experience. But WordPress is not far behind and it has plugins which can update its features.

While SEO is important, the amount of content the CMS can handle is also important and Drupal wins there. On the other hand, Drupal creates a subdomain for mobile users. And if you use the site from the main domain on the mobile, then it would be slower to load. There is no such issue with WordPress because it is by default mobile friendly.

Multiple Authors

There are many sites which involve the participation of the visitors. Like a publishing site, where people can publish, submit and edit articles. If you are creating such a site, then wordpress is a good option for you. There will be different types of users who will have different levels of power.

Drupal on the other hand is a good choice if you want multiple authors working on the same page or article.

Loyal users of each

Here is a list of all popular users of WordPress:

• Digg
• Wall Street Journal
• Ebay Yahoo
• Playstation
• Sony
• Mozilla Firefox
• New York Times’
• Samsung
• People Magazine
• Ford

And still counting

The number of top Drupal users are:

• Warner brothers record
• The Economist
• Digget
• Amherst College
• The White House
• Symantec Connect
• Popular Science

Drupal is popular among organizations and people who have power and control over technology. They are either themselves technologically advanced or have the resources to hire top developers who will do the job for them. This is the reason why they are popular among top institutions and organizations who not only have resources but need to protect their huge amount of data and confidential records.

WordPress is popular because it is used by bloggers and small businesses who can handle the simple plugins and customize their site themselves.

The decision is yours

Which one is better? This is a question which you need to answer. The various factors which you would look into before creating your website has been discussed and the arguements on each side have been presented. You are a better judge of the CMS you want to use because you know the type of site you want to run.

Before choosing a CMS, consider all the factors mentioned above as the last thing you want to do is change your CMS after years. You have to keep in mind the future of your website and weigh the pros and cons of each CMS and then take an informed decision.

The one thing you need to look into are the upgrades. For wordpress, the upgrades happen every 3-4 months. And there are no heavy codings involved. So, both the CMS hold their sets of advantage but the bottom line comes to the fact that WordPress still rules the area where bloggers and small business organizations are concerned and this will be the case for the coming years.

Drupal has its own small but substantial base of followers. Which one you want to follow depends on you and the site you are about to create. Good luck with choosing the best one.