Hi Folks
Recently I have had more people asking me for a "Wordpress" site, where more often than not, what they actually mean is a site built on a CMS. Whether it's Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, etc they really don't know the difference. It seems that the name "Wordpress" is starting to encompass the concept of a CMS.
So that obviously starts the conversation of how Drupal is different to Wordpress (my usual answer: "they're similar but different - Drupal is a lot more powerful")
I've also had the conversation with designers and marketing peeps who outsource the web development. They are aware there are different platforms, but don't really know the difference and tend to go with Wordpress 'cos it's one they know. But there are occasions when one platform is more suitable than the other.
My question to you all is: without being too biased towards Drupal, does anyone have a simple list of pro's & con's for Drupal vs Wordpress. A guideline on when you should use A vs B. If not, let's draw something up!
I don't know if it's a South African trend for people to talk about a "Wordpress" site when they mean "CMS", but I think it is up to us to educate people about the difference, so that they start looking specifically for a Drupal site.
I already have one client in mind that I'd like to send a document to, as a nice way to explain the difference, so she can stop telling her clients, in meetings, with me there, that I am the one building their WP site... (cough) it's Drupal!
Comments
This post by Dries might help
This post by Dries might help explain what drupal is: http://buytaert.net/help-needed-what-is-drupal (see the comments).
Um, Wordpress vs Drupal (hehehe).
* Views
* Flexible content types (awesome fields api in D7)
* Panels
* Isn't getting hacked every two minutes. :P (sorry that one was probably below the belt)
* Drupal 7's usability is awesome
* On the other hand Wordpress does have the Hello Dolly plugin, that may be a selling point if random strings of Jazz are your forte :P
^^ my two cents :D.
you forgot drush ... Why the
you forgot drush ... Why the hell would anyone want to create a cms without that piece of magic. Wordpress has some damn good marketing going for it but it kinda fails in my view as a comparison to drupal. Its more for blogging and standard sites, but with the added functionality you can get with drupal i dont see why anyone would use it instead.
Drupal, in South Africa still, is like a industy secret. I sometimes feel like i am doing insider trading - the power and ease should be illegal ;)
I also got asked to do a wordpress site , becuase they want "that functionality" ( jumping lol cats when a user logins in ... kidding) .Isn't WP only now using taxonomy. Can you image creating a database driven site without taxonomy, I would just feel really confused about it all.
lol yes. woops my bad i
lol yes. woops my bad i forgot about drush. hehe and i use it every day.
so any drupal/wordpress argument should go like this: "drupal has drush [PERIOD]". hehe.
yeah taxo in wp has been around in many forms since the beginning but it is not that easy to use. i run my blog on wordpress (oh the shame) because i can set it up in 5 minutes and plug a nice theme on top easily. but i wouldnt recommend it for a proper website. but i run everything else on drupal (7 mostly)
How about a consumer/business perspective?
The posts so far have mentioned a few items that only matter to developers (views/cck/drush/etc.) I don't believe that is what the OP was asking.
What about the differences in features from a consumer/business perspective? For example, which one handles i18n, forums, user/role management, etc. better than the other? What are the use cases where one is better than the other?
I've never worked with wordpress so I struggle coming up with a short and easily understood pitch I can give clients when they ask if a site should be Drupal or Wordpress.
Ask yourself the question
Ask yourself the question and then you go answer the client.
If you know Drupal, and you specialize only in that, then what's wrong in selling Drupal?
People tend to think that other CMS systems are better because most of the time somebody told them about it. 90% of the time, it is because they don't know better. And it is your job to go sell Drupal.
Wordpress is a blog system trying to be a CMS. Nothing wrong with that and I respect the sites I see out there build on WP and Joomla, etc.
But WP, like Joomla falls short of what Drupal can offer. IMHO (and I'm baised :) ).
Selling point that I use if I have (and had to in the past) to compare Drupal with WP and Joomla, etc. is that a) Drupal is much more scalable for future upgrades and b) my experience in creating Drupal sites easily out perform with what I had to do with other CMS's.
I'm a Drupal specialist, and I will sell Drupal to my clients. It takes a little more effort from my side sometimes to sell Drupal, but I have the confidence to do it.
So, sell yourself, sell Drupal, and be confident that Drupal can do it.
Quentin
Concrete examples?
How is Wordpress "trying to be a CMS"? Where does it fall short? Concrete examples please.
I'd bet that other CMS communities have similar perspectives towards Drupal.
While I think Drupal is great...I don't believe it is the best solution for everything. Sometimes Rails makes more sense. Occasionally, I have a hunch that WordPress (or Drupal Gardens) would suit the customer's needs the best.
@dkingofpa - The features for
@dkingofpa - The features for clients and the tools used to create those features are in my opinion are one in the same. Its the developers that build the product and if there are more lego pieces with which to use you are going to get better features, as long as you have a bit of creativity and/or a clients need. The "drupal way" allows to you to essentially control your product through your own modules if you like and just hook into the backbone. And its this system of creation that in itself is a feature. You can say wordpress has a better blogging system but it you have a bit of time add views + ckk + rules + tigger + taxonomy + few social networking modules and I reckon you can create a much better system.
I think wordpress falls very short on security (although with its latest release it has stepped up abit) and scalability. I dont think the world bank will be using wordpress anytime soon (Data.WorldBank.org <- drupal) it is also build in mind for blogging and social networking were as i believe drupal had an idea of developing a community and the product that has become drupal is the result of what developers needed in real world applications.
"I'd bet that other CMS communities have similar perspectives towards Drupal" - well i am not to sure about this. http://buytaert.net/joomla-vs-drupal-business-models-and-commercial-ecos...
Drupal gardens is drupal 7 pretty much, so i dont really understand that. I think drupal gardens is trying more to sell itself has a complete platform with hosting and support.. but I am very interested to know when RoR is a better solution.
I started working with Joomla
I started working with Joomla than moved on with WordPress and eventually settled in with Drupal to build worldnewsbook.com. I spent months working with each CMS.
Joomla I found too many errors on too many pages. Its a great CMS but I felt it had too many cracks in it. Some of the extensions just caused more errors and did more harm than good.
WORDPRESS PROS
Wordpress has a great community and MORE people were finding my website easier. The plugins and support for WordPress are just great, I kept being told it was for a blog or standard 5 page website. It is a great CMS for beginners! There is always new plugin's coming out daily and you can build a site in less than an hour.
My WordPress site kept getting hacked and attracted thousands of bots trying to submit comments and users, yes even with captcha and denying comments! WordPress has very low security!!!
DRUPAL
Now I moved on to using Drupal CMS and found the depth of the website is not comparable. Drupal has the modules that WordPress cannot have.
Views
Facebook Style Statuses (take a look at this module)
Security
Better User Profiles
Panels
Content Types
Better more customizable Themes if you edit Style Sheets
Rules
CCK
Taxonomy
The list goes on...I used all these CMS's to build my website http://www.worldnewsbook.com and found Drupal is number 1! Convince yourself!
Wordpress dominates Drupal in
Wordpress dominates Drupal in terms of themes. I have been blown away by some of the themes I have seen made for Wordpress. I think this is probably because Wordpress is more known, thus more popular, thus more designers stick to it. But still, I wish Drupal had more themes with the same quality of WP's. There are some great themes for Drupal, especially for D7, but a lot of them cost money. I've seen some sites selling themes for $200+ , while WP theme sites go for like $20-40, of the same, some better, quality. (just to clarify one more, there are good themes for great prices for Drupal, but I think WP just owns this area, for now)
That said, Drupal is so much better than WP in just about every other way.
I remember trying to make content types in WP, using the Pods plug in. Eventually I could figure it out, but why bother, when I can install a module, create the content type, and be done!
Then there is Views, which is amazing. I can't imagine building a website without it.
Panels and Display Suite add all kinds of layers of flexibility to a site.
Wordpress has some great plugins, but I feel like they're just that: plugins. I feel like with Drupal you get some real Tools to work with and build some incredible stuff.
For the themes, if you are
For the themes, if you are running a business with web development, why would you want to use a theme that's been used so many times? Isn't it the point of Drupal to customize the theme? There's Omega or other skeleton themes that you can start from, but that's the point of Drupal. You customize it to look however you want it to fit the needs of your client.
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