Wordpress vs Drupal

Posted on September 14th, 2007
By Todd Zeigler in Bivings, CMS, Technology, Tools

At this point, nearly all of the websites we build at The Bivings Group are either in Wordpress or Drupal. Sure, we build custom applications on occasion and sometimes do Flash work that really doesn’t fit in a Content Management System. But mostly we use Wordpress and Drupal.

Both are fantastic open source blogging platforms/content management systems with robust user communities. Both systems have their strengths and weaknesses. They are great alternatives to closed, paid platforms and much more cost effective than custom builds. As a web development shop, using Drupal and/or Wordpress allows us to focus our energies on design and strategy as opposed to reinventing the content management wheel.

After implementing a variety sites using both Wordpress and Drupal over the years, we’ve sort of developed our own unwritten rules as to when to use each platform.

Single Person / Group Blog (Use Wordpress)

If you are building a straight on single person or group blog, I think Wordpress is the way to go. It has all the base functionality you need built in and a robust set of plug-ins if you need to add on. The admin interface is dead simple - anyone with basic computer knowledge can master it in a few minutes. The install of the software is also simple and the templating system is not difficult to master.

Anything you want to do in Wordpress, you can also do in Drupal. But Drupal is more complicated from a design/install perspective, and has tons of features you’d end up turning off/not using for something simple like this.

A good example of a blog like built using Wordpress is our modest blog, The Bivings Report.

Blog Community (Use Drupal)

At a certain point your simple blog sort of crosses a line and becomes a blog community. Here are the things I look for:

In some cases you are going to want people to navigate directly to an authors blog instead of the main page of the overall blog.
Your blog has 10+ authors.
There is the possibility that your commenters may themselves become contributors.

You can accomplish these goals by extending Wordpress. You can also use Wordpress Mu, which a community-version of Wordpress that we don’t think is quite ready for prime time. However, these kinds of sites are pretty much the reason Drupal exists. All the community-based features you need are available right away upon setup with little tinkering required.

A good example of a blog community is TechPresident, which we had nothing to do with building.

Blog Driven Website (Use Wordpress)

With its pages section and various plugins, Wordpress can be used as a full on Content Management System for blog-based websites. Lots of companies (including us) long ago abandoned the old fashioned press release and use blogs as their primary content delivery mechanism. Assuming your overall templating system on the site is pretty straight forward and you don’t have hundreds of pages, Wordpress works perfectly well for these types of sites.

Once again, Drupal can accomplish the same thing but it is a little more complicated to deal with and the admin interface is a little more complicated. It is sort of like driving a Ferrari in bumper to bumper traffic - you will get from point A to point B but you’d ultimately be better off weaving through traffic on a motorcycle.

The Washington Area Women’s Foundation is a good example of a Wordpress-based site that we built. In addition to having all the content editable through Wordpress, we also built a few databases as custom plug-ins.

Full Featured Website (Use Drupal)

At certain points, a site simply becomes too big for it to be sufficiently managed using Wordpress. If you find yourself bumping against any of the following scenarios, you should probably be using Drupal:

If you have multiple dynamic content types (press releases, news articles, blog posts, etc.). Drupal is great at allowing you to create this stuff on the fly, with Wordpress you are hacking things together.
If your site has more than a two template design structure (homepage and second levels).
If you have numerous content blocks on the homepage or in sidebars that you will be editing frequently. Drupal’s block system is great at this kind of stuff.
If you are trying to start small and expect your site to add tons of features/content moving forward.

We built a site for Monsanto Spain that uses Drupal as a full on Content Management System. This is a good example of this kind of website.

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Comments

Jason King

September 16th, 2007 at 2:45 am

Thanks, that’s a useful article. I’ve used WordPress on a dozen websites but will probably try Drupal for the next one.
Gordon

September 16th, 2007 at 1:20 pm

Currently looking at Drupal to build a directory focussed community site, have you guys built anything along those lines?
Lipo Blog Network

September 16th, 2007 at 1:57 pm

Very informative article.

I’d never even heard of Drupal before reading this article (sounds like then name of an over the counter cold formulation) . I have used mostly WordPress but I have been using Microsoft Live Writer to manage which rocks! The default WordPress interface is a disaster IMO.
Amnon - Drupal Israel

September 16th, 2007 at 3:27 pm

Did you notice any performance difference between the systems?
urbanmike

September 17th, 2007 at 11:09 am

I’ve now set up three sites in Drupal and two in Wordpress. My main site is in Drupal and my most recent project, a church website just couldn’t do half the things it does if it were a Wordpress page.

Thanks for writing this up, I think a lot of people have a Wordpress-centric view of the web, and Drupal is a good solution for businesses and bigger sites.
n-blue

September 17th, 2007 at 11:55 am

Great post. I only have my hand on WP while my friend says something different. I think this is time to have experirence with DP.
toivo

September 17th, 2007 at 1:29 pm

what about

http://lussumo.com/

?
gestroud

September 17th, 2007 at 2:19 pm

Good article. There is at least one full-featured WordPress-based web site that always catches my eye:
http://www.about.com.

Almost hard to believe that it’s powered by WordPress - probably with a little code hacking, but still impressive.
Dragon Z.

September 18th, 2007 at 2:54 am

Thanks for the article. I was wondering whether you’ve given a chance to Textpattern - which basically can do whatever Drupal is capable, only it is smaller in size and way faster. Also, its UI is friendlier, has a robust tag-templating system, etc. Grown to be my favorite
Niko Neugebauer

September 18th, 2007 at 8:54 am

Good article Todd, basically i have the same experience as you, in short - one user or a very simple site(wordpress), in other cases Drupal is really superior. The number of modules available on the net will allow you to have a great start, way in front of Wordpress. For simple sites and blogs, drupal is just an overkill.
Dave

September 19th, 2007 at 1:01 am

great article, Todd! I am a current wordpress user and it has some really nice features. But you are right when you are trying to develop community website. Dragon Z, said that if you have used textpattern, I looked into it a while ago before trying out Drupal and I think Drupal is a better way to go for the purposes you were explaining it for Todd. Cheers
Pro Press

September 19th, 2007 at 4:23 pm

Drupal is best for complicated websites. You can do almost any type of community plumbing. I use it for a free press release distribution website. There are tonnes of modules which can build any kind of website. Wordpress is good for simple one person use. It is also a great blogging platform. But drupal can do manythings including blogging.
Sudar

September 20th, 2007 at 5:13 am

Very good writeup and thanks for sharing your experience.

–
Sudar
Sebastien

September 20th, 2007 at 12:11 pm

Very interesting.

> If you have multiple dynamic content
> types (press releases, news articles,
> blog posts, etc.). Drupal is great at
> allowing you to create this stuff on
> the fly, with Wordpress you are hacking
> things together.

Would you mind elaborating on this one, especially on the Wordpress side?
Thanks
Jonathan

September 20th, 2007 at 5:16 pm

Agree with Sebastien. Also, while I can see your point in the article, I don’t think you (and more so some of the commentors) are giving WP its due credit. Imo it does MANY things better than Drupal and it is much more intuitive to use. I think in the end, WP knows what it is, knows what it should do, and does it very well. Drupal basically doesn’t know what it is, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s the building blocks you need to create an online community. If you’re only wanting to build a blog, however, don’t reinvent the wheel. Out-of-the box WP does it better than any amount of Drupal tweaking could hope to. There are reasons to use Drupal over WP, but I feel like these are less frequent than you lead on. I’d only use Drupal after planning it out and admitting that it would be less work to “build” what I want in Drupal than to customize WP to work for me.
Todd Zeigler

September 20th, 2007 at 7:32 pm

Jonathan - I think we more or less agree. You are right, for a simple blog you would be insane to use Drupal instead of Wordpress. We’ve actually used Drupal together with Drupal for clients that wanted to use Drupal for the Content Management but preferred to use Wordpress as the blogging engine.
Chris Coyier

September 21st, 2007 at 8:16 am

I’ve always wanted to read a good article that lays it out when you use Wordpress and when to use Drupal. I’ve been hacking things together with Wordpress for too long and need to branch out with some sites that really need more of a Drupal system.
Bulletin News

September 23rd, 2007 at 3:45 am

Dynamite blog post pertaining to ! Always enjoy this write ups.
Christoph Dollis

September 25th, 2007 at 10:41 pm

What’s wrong with notepad?
Martin

September 26th, 2007 at 7:19 am

Drupal is better in any case!!! Wordpress is focused only on blogging, however, Drupal leaves open many more options and flexibility to manage digital content (if you have ever taken a course in Finance you will know the term “Real Options” which hits the spot quite well). Since more and more technologies are springing up all around the web, we need to stay as flexible as possible with our content structuring. Blogs should be no short-term recreational experiment but an attempt to manage and structure digital data over the longer term and to become more productive by leveraging the internet technology. Blogging is just one technology - and Wordpress leverages that technology really really well. However, you will not be able to easily integrate other technologies with Wordpress- you cannot just include a Wiki or a forum which is based on the same taxonomy structures in order to manage digital data holistically. You cannot create custom content types on the fly; you cannot go beyond the regular structuring approaches and define multiple layers of taxonomies. That’s where Drupal comes in - it’s a system that is much more flexible than Wordpress. For any user, user-group or organization that is seriously getting into managing his/her/their digital content online, either via blogging or other technologies, Drupal is a better choice because of greater long-term perspective in managing digital content. OK, Wordpress is easier and faster to implement. However, Drupal is really easy as well. For the average user who can install Wordpress, installing Drupal will be a piece of cake. The admin interface is not so ajax-sexy, but there are various modules that have been developed by the Drupal user community that will let you work very effectively and efficiently in the admin backend. Admittedly, a Drupal downside is the lack of cool templates, but the community is doing a great job at changing this. The available templating-engines on the other side are a great Drupal advantage, for they allow you to define unlimited regions which you can then use to place any form of content. I will not claim that non of this would potentially be possible also in Wordpress (if you put enough coding power behind it) however, Wordpress has never been designed to manage digital content in a comprehensive way but just to serve as a blogging tool. The Ferrari-metaphor was a quite good illustration I think, although it should not lead you to believe Drupal is a faster system – but certainly a lot more powerful one!
Todd Zeigler

September 26th, 2007 at 9:50 am

Martin - good post. I agree with you more or less. I just think there are cases where you are building a focus site where Wordpress can do the job with no problems. It is more than adequate for our corporate site, http://www.bivings.com, as an example.
themegarden.org

October 10th, 2007 at 12:25 pm

Worpress is maybe simplier solution for single-user blog, but Drupal could handle that task as well.
On the other hand, if you need blogging platform for multi-user enviroment, Drupal could be better solution.
Mike

October 29th, 2007 at 1:35 pm

I think that WP is superior to Drupal when you consider all of the 3rd party support like templates and plugins.

Mike
Lelu

November 26th, 2007 at 8:08 am

Ich finde deinen Blog so geil tschuldigung fuer dieses Wort Bietest du ein Newsletter an?
mublimbbymn

November 27th, 2007 at 12:28 am

lol
lkdadsd
Feadaypaibeby

December 1st, 2007 at 8:09 pm

Thankiossi
It’s great
lallinomouh

December 2nd, 2007 at 9:02 am

Thankiosst
Great!
adendHedKab

December 2nd, 2007 at 11:23 pm

Thankiossk
Cool!
ratrigalify

December 5th, 2007 at 2:21 pm

thankiosso
Cool!
elorronse

December 6th, 2007 at 6:12 am

lol
thankiossp!
Frank Haywood

December 10th, 2007 at 1:50 pm

Hi Todd,

Thanks for sharing this. As usual I arrived on your sit elooking for something else and got drawn in.

Apart from my own blog, I’ve used Wordpress as a help site for my customers, and put a link into my software that takes them there when they need help. It also allows them to leave testimonials for my software.

That’s another use of Wordpress that I don’t think it was intended for (I could be wrong).

I also built my wife’s site around Wordpress but had the forethought to put it in a sub-directory. 12 months on and the blog is now getting a bit on the large side as (apart from a 3 week break to do the accounts) she posts almost every day, and has other people writing there too now.

(It’s amazing the search terms that people find her site with!)

Anyway, I think it could well be time to set up the main domain with a CMS. I’ll take another look at Drupal.

Thanks again for sharing.

All the best,

Frank Haywood.
Toby

December 12th, 2007 at 10:37 pm

Thanks for the summary, Todd! I’ve been an avid user of Wordpress, but I’ve also heard great things about Drupal!
latin twinks

December 18th, 2007 at 6:38 pm

I haven’t gotten anything done. More or less not much exciting happening. I’ve just been hanging out waiting for something to happen. I haven’t been up to anything.
neue webseiten-optimierung

December 21st, 2007 at 3:25 pm

Woher hast du diese Infos? Habe geschaut, ob du in dem Blog noch mehr Informationen zu diesem Thema hast. Aber leider nichts gefunden. Wenn du mir weiterhelfen kannst, dann wuerde ich mich sehr darueber freuen. Liebe Grue�e
Verbrenner

December 22nd, 2007 at 4:51 am

Thank you very much for this very interesting article! We had some performance problems before reading this article. Now all things speed up and the systemis working fine! - Yeah!
Vitali Köln

December 22nd, 2007 at 9:25 am

Great, thanks!
GotNintendoWii

December 24th, 2007 at 2:11 am

Great Thanks

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