Brian Chappell

WordPress vs. Drupal – Battle of the CMS

By Brian Chappell on January 31, 2008

WordPress and Drupal are two of the most popular content management systems being used today. Both CMS’s have their distinct advantages over the other. In this video I talk about the differences in the two and help pinpoint when to use one over the other.

Drupal Benefits:

• It is worth noting and understanding that Drupal is not exactly a blogging platform per se, as is WordPress, but it is a CMS construction kit. Hard core programmers can go to town on Drupal, front end and back end, and build it out however they like.

• The user profiles are extensible and allows for easy creation of membership sites and portals.

• The categorization of content in Drupal is innovative as well. However, it takes some time to understand the taxonomy of things, but once you get the hang of it, it really does make a difference.

• Drupal does a great drop of building out dynamic sites, something wordpress falters at.

• Drupal can be easier because the backend allows for themeing as well. If you want your backend to look like your front end for easability, you have that option with Drupal. People who are looking to design websites that they can essentially pass off to their clients might find Drupal to be a better fit. WordPress on the other hand has a set theme for its backend which cannot be changed.This can be a little confusing for the novice webmaster.

WordPress Benefits:

• Drupal can seem coarse for some bloggers, it is not very easy to set up for one, and modifying the code behind the scenes can be a nightmare for even some what savvy php coders. WordPress does a fantastic job of allowing for easy set up and creation, as well of modifying of code.
  

• There are literally thousands of free plugins and themes for wordpress. The community surrounding WordPress really does an outstanding job with this. Drupal doesn’t quite have as many plugins (called modules in Drupal) and themes to go around.

For further reading on this subject visit the Drupal community site.

I am curious on others thoughts, which CMS do you like to use and why?