Duration: 1 hour
WordPress gets some very important things right, and their hold on this market is proof. There are 11.4 million active installations of WordPress software, compared to only hundreds of thousands of Drupal installations. We need to get our act together, raise our standards, and lower the barrier to entry.
Come join me in talking about what this community needs to do to ensure its survival. What should we really be focusing on in Drupal Core for D8? What should you do with your own modules to prevent our CMS from being abandoned in favor of something else?
About the Presenter:
Jen Lampton is currently a developer for Chapter Three LLC in San Francisco, CA. Jen has been actively working with Drupal since 4.7. She co-teaches Drupal Training workshops at Stanford University, and is a very active member in the Drupal community. Jen helps out on IRC and maintains several modules on drupal.org. She's a regular face at the Berkeley users group, an occasional attendee at the San Francisco Users Group, and drops in on other Drupal Camps around the country. Jen is a coordinator for the BADcamp events, and was also on the organizing committee for DrupalCon San Francisco.
Comments
Ouch. Scary! But important!
Ouch. Scary! But important!
Sounds good.
Looking forward to this.
Application Areas Word Press Vs Drupal
In your presentation I would like to hear emphasis on the type of application people using WordPress Versus Drupal. That will show the area of strength of one from another.
It's not about application areas
You're right, the majority of WP users is a very different segment of the population from Drupal users, but that's not really the point. They aren't doing anything we can't accomplish, we just haven't done it. There are some simple things we can do to move forward in leaps and bounds, and there's no reason we can't appeal to their audience too.
http://www.jenlampton.com | http://twitter.com/jenlampton | http://jenerationweb.com
Graphical Chart to Help Choosing a CMS
http://is.gd/d7FtM
via http://twitter.com/robertDouglass
¿ are you netsperienced ?
♥ follow me @decibelplaces ∞
HA! I might agree with the
HA! I might agree with the slides if I hadn't spent the better part of the day trying to get #%&%* custom post types to work!
CSS I get. PHP makes my head hurt!
Later,
Catherine (a friend of mine who uses Wordpress)
¿ are you netsperienced ?
♥ follow me @decibelplaces ∞
Wish list of wordpressy drupal improvements
I'd start with:
2 of those are already happening...
I doubt there will ever be a wysiwyg in drupal (well, never say never), but maybe wysiwyg api.
Please take a look at Drupal 7, where this is now possible. I agree it's an awesome feature and I'm really excited for all of the amazing features that are going to come with D7.
There has been a ton of work done on documentation over the past year by @add1son and a small army of volunteers, some of which won't really be easy to appreciate until the redesign is finished (and now that @Drumm is on the case I think it'll get done pretty soon),. It sounds like you're passionate and excited about documentation, so why not help out? It's super easy to request to become a part of the documentation team, and they/we are always looking for more help!
Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg
ZivTech: Illuminating Technology
I doubt there will ever be a
D8 has ckeditor in core;)
http://ckeditor.com/blog/CKEditor-Joins-Drupal
http://buytaert.net/from-aloha-to-ckeditor
https://drupal.org/project/issues/drupal?text=ckeditor&version=8.x&compo...
Inch by centimeter we'll get there:)
Some places to start
Hello, pdcarto,
There is work underway on streamlining the installs of wysiwyg editors - if you want to make this happen faster, this is where to start:
This is the tip of the iceberg, but issue #624018 has a patch that needs testing, and the Lullabot article contains a good starting point for writing documentation.
Cheers,
Bill
FunnyMonkey
You have to do first
I think the big succes of wordpress was that they are giving an easy way of creating a blog with high quality. I know that drupal has decided to create drupal garden to give free blog. However, I think it have been done before because the users are used to working with wordpress. Therefore, their users is not going to change and the worst thing is that they are going to recommend it for their friends.
For this reason, they could get more developers for their project or their developer can work more to improve it. I think someone has to reinvent some way to compete with wordpress.
Althought, developer can improve drupal, wordpress can copy the idea to lose the market.
I can give a personal example for my websites,
On the one hand, I developed a spanish website creartest.com and I got that a lot of visits because I was one of the first website in Spanish version. Therefore, they can find my in google with hacer test or crear test
On the other hand, I did freeonlinequizzestests.com two years later and I have never got any results because there are lot of english websites about it. Therefore, I can't believe that I can get any result.
How can we compete when we arrive late?
wysiwyg
Am i the only one who gets constantly annoyed with the Wordpress wysiwyg?
------------------------------
Pride Web Design Cork
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wp is ok for a basic blog.
wp is ok for a basic blog. drupal is awesome for a full blown cms system that can manage a huge site. problems i see are:
iis compatibiltiy has been limited.
important modules note being maintained and upgraded / available in new versions
Please stop the repeating "wp is for this and drupal for that"
Please stop the repeating "wp is for this and drupal for that" thing, which is already taken thousand of times in thousand of threads in the web since almost 5-6 years and doesn't really help it.
As I thought, may understanding Jen right, we should rather discuss optimization of Drupals weak points and drupals presentation, to win new drupal developers in future.
One thing I thought many times last 2 years was a missing real working wordpress content migrate option. As I sad: One, which really works! I studied all optional modules and non of them really works right out of the box. I know ... "right out of the box isn't the ..." but let me explain: I think, the range of wp users isn't only about drag and drop blogging kids only. I would say more than 20% of them have tried to tweak wp to its limits for use as a modern cms, are php experienced (now or also before) and have brought wp to its new expanding version 3 with their requests. And now they are looking for a way to grow. Drupal could be an option for thema and they could be an option for us. But how to migrate the 200 articles from their wp site into the new drupal 7 installation? This will fail. And I think here we should pay A LOT attention too! To fall in love with drupal needs more than one look, so we should make sure that these extended wp users look twice! When I change from IE to Firefox, Firefox asks me to import the boomarks. So if we would have something like this on our side, I'm sure Wordpress would loose one of the strongest parts of its community, the experienced bug-reporters changing to dp7!
Another point is a simple one: The search at the drupal.org website and look of the filter options. A new drupal user will hang over here for the next days first and will encounter many problems to find the right way into the drupal univers. That needs re-work, if you ask me.
Sorry if my english isn't the best, hope this comment helps.
A developer from Berlin, Germany
best regards, Digidog
http://maroqqo.com
This Wordpress Verse Drupal Contest is really old and dumb
I Think it is a little ridiculous to keep comparing Wordpress and Drupal.
Of course the barrier of entry into wordpress is lower than drupal.
It is not as complex as drupal.
Its like telling a php developer who has been just writing plain jane code all the time, and expect them to pick up developing in Zend Framework within a week.
I think making the search a little bit easier is not the solution.
Drupal is going the right direction, and what better example than the white house using it, or the emmys etc.
Yes Wordpress has more installations. But for what? Blogs?
When users think of a serious site setup with demanding fluid CMS needs, they hell don't think wordpress, they will either go joomla or drupal.
Lets stop comparing the god damn blueberries of wordpress to the giant pineapple drupal is.
Tired of it, because the feature set and goal of each one is completely different, and cater to different audiences.
I agree on small parts of what you say
fcefalu: I agree on small parts of what you say. It def. is not useful to compare them. Thats what I sad (or meant) in the beginning.
But what you sad all after that, is a lil' bit - please don't get me wrong, sorry... - kind of "ignorant". This is what Drupal doesn't help and what is exactly the image of drupalianers outside of drupals world, sadly. There have been many other hopeful starts of CMS', but with the same mistake in the middle of the road and a hard landing on the bottom of reality.
And Wordpress' ain't nothing to do with blogs only no more. This is completely wrong. There are many even more complex newspapersites using a tweaked version of wordpress 3 to combine it with the blogs of the newspaper-authors, to have a platform the authors are familiar with. With some php-knowledge you can easely tweak wordpress to a well working small social web cms. I know it, because me and many others around me already did it, because of the wishes of customers.
And Joomla is far behind wordpress today. To put Wordpress on on side and Joomla with Drupal on the other side, is completely wrong. Again. Even the new version of Joomla 1.6 is still missing thousands of community requests they have been waiting for since ages and versions. Even Wordpress can handle custom fields more easely and has good plugins to extend user-roles etc. Joomla still lacks on this parts.
It is not about comparing blueberries and apples, it is about: why should the for some solutions better CMS stay in the shadow of another one, which gets tweaked and tweaked to come a little closer to the first one? Because of people only know it better? SO BEEN SAD: I still stay with what I sad: The entry have must been made easier for them. And I've already described some smaller parts of it above, thats from my experiences when I came in 3 years ago.
BTW: That the White House is using it, is not a good example. It may impresses you. But, to be honest: Not me. Because of, the White House can build their websites on what they want, even on Wordpress or Joomla if so, because they have the people to tweak it.
http://maroqqo.com
Staying Focused
The discussion started off rather well with the prompt by jenlampton
Excellent points made by:
pdcarto
Alex UA
et al.
If I try to sum up what I like about wordpress that drupal would do well to emulate. Wordpress just makes you feel like everything you need is right at your fingertips and you don't need to look far to find exactly what you want. There seems to be an endless supply of themes and widgets/plugins. However as elaborate as wordpress sites can become when they get tweaked, I still don't think they have the substantial feel a drupal site has.
Let's face it: The drupal learning curve is considerably steeper...
...But what do you expect from a full fledged CMS? - which by the way wordpress is not! I stopped using wordpress years ago, not because I didn't like it, I like it very much, rather because I wanted to invest my time in learning an industrial strength CMS.
Drupal really does serve a more esoteric niche which is likely why the drupal install factor looks a little shakey relative to wordpress. My dog could setup and maintain a wordpress blog. My cat could probably setup a drupal site, however she just lets the dog blog for her. My point.... Drupal is taking what wordpress serves as a CMS "to the next level" (or 2)
My apologies ... I have not really said much, personally I don't think the comparison is really necessary but I do support jenlamptons' original premise.
There is no harm in understanding why wordpress is so popular and using that data to wax drupal till it shines even more.
Best
not always the best software
not always the best software is also the most used, windows is better than linux?
perhaps, to increase the spread of drupal, it is necessary to authorize the sale of modules nofree to attract many programmers and to increase the variety of modules
we had to destroy the village in order to save it?
You are free to sell your drupal module or theme as long as you do not violate the GPL.
But it sounds like you are suggesting that we ignore the values and legal licenses that have made drupal what it is in order to "fix" a rather non-existent problem. The diversity of modules is great and the size of the programmer community is huge. The issue is that we need to become a bit more end-user centric, which is going to be a cultural shift and will take time -- but things have been moving in that direction.
Backing away from strict adherence to the GPL would be the death of drupal.
The reason Drupal is less
The reason Drupal is less popular has nothing to do with it being 100% open source, but all to do with the level and scale at which Drupal is meant to operate. If Drupal starts making it acceptable for people to charge money for modules I will honestly abandon Drupal as quickly as possible.
If all you want is a blog and a few pages: go for wordpress. It's easier, simpler and there are more people who can program it; hence cheaper and easier to find a developer.
If you need a web application, dynamic content, advanced features etc. but you do not have the money (or performance need) to build it entirely from scratch: then go for Drupal.
Drupal is a medium to large-scale website solution. Wordpress is great for small websites [and medium if you push it but it starts breaking at that scale]
If your budget is 500 to 2,000 stay with Wordpress; if you have a budget of 2 to 20k, think Drupal... they are totally different and shouldn't be compared in my mind.
Now where Drupal CAN improve A LOT is in its usability, interface, documentation, and theming experience. Drupal was made by, loved and cherished by developers; so we need a positive injection of Designer, Usability and IA's to join the Drupal-love and to help Drupal 8 (9 and beyond) to become easier and more "fun" / "intuitive" for admins to manage.
On all my projects I take extra time to make a special role called a "content admin" which is my client, and for them I make them a custom menu, inline edit buttons for all nodes and blocks and generally do a ton of UI improvements purely for the content admin so that when my client gets their website and they use it they are like "sh-t Sebastian, this is really easy and intuitive to maintain!" nothing helps better to make a client happy [and come back to you again-and-again] then them having a warm fuzzy feeling every time they edit the site -- but you don't get this out of the box, I have to add extra time to customize each Drupal install to make this happen: so this is a very obvious area where we can make substantial improvements.
I hope my input has been of use,
Sincerely,
Sebastian.
--
Fountain City Inc
Creative-Technical solutions
Beautiful websites built with Drupal
http://fountaincity.tech
Oh and I should add that the
Oh and I should add that the demand for Drupal developers is so extremely high, that I don't entirely understand what the problem is... obviously people love it, or we wouldn't be in such high demand.
I know I heart Drupal, and I have zero shortage of work; I just keep saying "no" at least several times a week to new prospects... so making Drupal "more" popular would just increase demand further! If I look here in Portland there is not a single person who is looking for work, we are all overbooked and all constantly need more developers... So if anything we have a luxury problem.
--
Fountain City Inc
Creative-Technical solutions
Beautiful websites built with Drupal
http://fountaincity.tech
datarazor, show me how
i have a decent job where i get to build great things in drupal, but i dont have jobs banging at my door. any tips?
Drupal will have a difficult
Drupal will have a difficult time catching up with Wordpress for the simple reason that Wordpress has already surpassed Drupal, at least where it matters most. Simple is the power behind Wordpress and as we all know Drupal don't do simple. I see a future Wordpress slogan on a t-shirt "we got this CMS". It's funny too, because it doesn't matter how much power is behind a CMS if it's not simple to use. Drupal prefers what's good for developers not what's good for everyday users, rocket science as opposed to user friendly. I don't think Drupal will ever convince the many Wordpress users to switch, it's many years too late for that. What they can do is make Drupal more simple to use for the current users and not taylor to only developers which seems to be it's primary user target.
Sound like you possibly
Sound like you possibly haven't the privilege of developing or managing a complex Wordpress site.
I've had the pleasure and can say that Drupal is a lot more "simple" when you have lots of custom features and functionality.
I agree however that Drupal should be focussing on a more user friendly core and maybe even hide the "developer" features by default, it's probably easier for a dev to switch them on rather than allowing a new Drupal user switch em off.
Anyone up for building a "Wordpress" distribution?
Is simplicity the goal for Drupal? I hope not.
I would like to think that the purpose behind Drupal is not to be the simple wysiwyg development tool. Simply put, if everyone could do it, why would anyone need developers? I think Drupal walks the line very well between programming and point-n-click. Your comment "it doesn't matter how much power is behind a CMS if it's not simple to use" makes no sense. You are looking at it from an end use perspective instead of from a developers perspective. If you are developing the client's (or your) site correctly, it WILL be simple to use for the end user. However, you have all of the power and flexibility that Drupal has to offer. If you are at the point where Drupal is not working the way you want it to, then it is in your best interest to work harder to learn more about Drupal. Fact is, if you want something powerful and flexible, you are going to have to work for it, whether it is Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress, or whatever CMS you are using. If you don't want to work and learn for it, then you are likely an end user, and not a developer.
I couldn't agree more. And as
I couldn't agree more. And as an actual employee working on Drupal Gardens, I can say that while there are "simple" blogs, there is so much more. Drupal is extensible out-of-the-box in ways that Wordpress is not.
Do you realize how large the Drupal community is? Drupal is not aiming to be like Wordpress, if you want simple software, then by all means go to Wordpress, it's great for it's main function: blogs. It is not a full-fledged CMS without it's plugins, Drupal has core modules that already allow it to have that functionality.
I honestly think this is a silly discussion, if you really want to help the Drupal community, then why don't you jump on in to help? Drupal 8 is in development.
Have you realized that Drupal is used for more than blog sites? Have you seen just some of the sites that are in the showcase?
http://showcase.acquia.com/
The White House, Twitter, major Universities, American Red Cross, the list goes on and on, that's only a sampling.
I take a quick peek at the Wordpress Showcase---I can't see a single recognizable brand, name or company.
http://wordpress.org/showcase/
Please go take this to the Wordpress forums where you can tell them how awesome Wordpress is. I have no qualms against Wordpress, but you're comparing oranges to apples.
The conversation misses the boat
I was recently on a thread here on Drupal.org about UX where the participants talked about the the steep barrier in using Drupal.
In this case, the discussion was centered on the concept, "How do we get more designers and product managers to participate in the Drupal community?"
This is a very important segment of the Drupal community that is not being leveraged to its full potential. And in many cases there is a certain level of language by some folk that suggest "if you don't know what you are doing, you shouldn't be here at all." (Thankfully not from the NYC Meetup crowd which has been enormously generous and open.) But that is the feedback I have heard from others when discussing Drupal.
If the barrier were less steep, there might be more quality themes out there.
Furthermore, when I participated in that thread, I noted that with modules, the instructions are simply "Install". After that, you are pretty much on your own. Most modules don't even come with screenshots which is something I use all the time when choosing WP plugins in order to evaluate whether I want to even TRY to install a module.
I've seen some WP plugins that have links to the configuration section of their module right from the plugin page. (This is very useful, especially when you have a large build with tons of modules.)
I'm working in D6 with a TON of modules and the Admin Menu installed. The wording between the Admin Menu, vs the actual menu settings on the admin site is different. (And sometimes the URL paths are also different.) This can make things doubly confusing. I know a lot of this has been fixed in D7.
Asking people to go on IRC to get help? Really? My brother used that extensively in 1993. There is quite a barrier to get onto IRC in the first place, and you have to sit and wait for someone to respond, IF someone responds at all. And you might miss the response if you aren't actively watching, instead of multi-tasking like most of us do.
There are a lot of problems that should be remedied. The first goal is to not stop making Drupal a developers platform, and instead try to make it accessible so it is at least an experienced web professional's platform. (I understand Joomla is that way.)
Help using Drupal
If using IRC or forums is too much to ask for a free, powerful, open source cms, there are plenty of other alternatives out there which have comprehensive tech support. You wouldn't have to wait for a response to your problem, you would just have to pay a hefty fee, wait on hold for a half hour, and then talk to someone who probably knows less than you do.
I admit, I have had issues with not being able to figure something out, or get an immediate answer to my issue. What I realize, and other people need to realize, is that Drupal is free and powerful. If it is too much to ask for people to do some research or deal with a learning curve, then those people should pay for some other product. Complaining about something that is free not being easy enough to use is like looking a gift horse in the mouth. (A saying I have never understood but its free and I don't complain about it)
You can't expect everything for free.
Here lies the problem
A great deal of the Drupal community do care about usability and bringing in non programmer/developers. This is something near and dear to people like Dries and such.
The reason why some of these technologies are a high barrier is because there is virtually no documentation that is comprehendable.
You can't tell people to help themselves by using x, y, z tools, and then provide them no instructions on how to get onto x,y,z tools. It is not the most constructive point of view to take.
Here in lies the root of the
Here in lies the root of the problem
It's comments like these why people hate IT's. They make things complicated just so employers will have a reason to keep them around.
I don't think anyone is expecting Drupal to do anything that it shouldn't have already done to begin with. Clearly the focus is on making things harder so the client has to pay more which I think is a poor excuse for making things harder. A web designer has to learn how to code to work with Drupal, a real PITA. I like the MODX method of separating code from the design, that's how it should be. Designers shouldn't have to be programmers.
Learning Curve is so 80's, nobody has time nor the desire to spend months trying to learn code that they have no interest in learning in the first place. Site owners want to be able to set their site up themselves and as quickly as possible. It's about the content, not the coding. I get that developers want to make a few bucks on the side but in today's economy more and more site owners are doing it themselves and looking for simple solutions. Simple is the future!
Drupal does things the rocket scientist way so it only attracts people who fantasize about code and being a coder. Seriously, they still call it a node ?
There are some who think Drupal 7 was a step backwards, it didn't impress me even with all the hype, will be interesting to see what's in store for Drupal 8.
Let's hope by D10 that they will have made some good improvements, but by then Wordpress CMS will have evolved even further.
"I'm yelling for society"
You are quoting my opinion as if it is the mantra of Drupal, which is moronic. Obviously you did not read or comprehend any of the remainder of my post.
What exactly would you call a node? Its not a post, its not a product, an artist, or whatever the node ends up as. You could call it a content, but that wouldn't even always be correct. Node was obviosly chosen as an arbitrary word that describes a very simple concept.
It takes 30 seconds for any person with mediocre intelligence to understand what is meant by node. You could call it a widget and it would still mean the same thing.
Is it really too much to ask in this day and age for people to do a little research or study to achieve goals?
A man who just picked up hammer does not deserve to be a foreman.
Fact is that there are plenty of other packages out there that are easy to use. No one is stopping you from using them.
Im no drupal elitist. I've only been using it for 2 years and im not even that great at it. However, I don't develop drupal so the last thing I am going to do is use their powerful free package and sit back and complain about how I would do it better.
Do more work to get better at drupal, go use another package, develop your own cms, but don't bitch and complain about other people's hard work.
Have you actually tried it?
I have been using drupal for about 5 years now and building some great sites.... I have never written a single line of code?
I find your lack of faith disturbing.
Wordpress is for people that want an out the box solution. With Wordpress you can buy or download a theme and as long as that theme does exactly what you want then you're fine. Clearly you've never taken a second to think that someone coded all that functionality into the theme...
Drupal out the box might not be so great for a new user (lack of WYSIWYG among other things). But these are minor issues for someone willing to do a light amount of research, it's not 'rocket science' (unless of course using a search engine is too complex for you).
With modules such as:
http://drupal.org/project/cck - in D7 core.
http://drupal.org/project/imagecache - in D7 core.
http://drupal.org/project/views
http://drupal.org/project/panels
http://drupal.org/project/ckeditor
http://drupal.org/project/imce
http://drupal.org/project/ds
http://drupal.org/project/contemplate
You have a pretty awesome development environment right away.
Starter themes like:
http://drupal.org/project/omega
http://drupal.org/project/zen
Make theming a breeze (even for the most PHP challenged individual).
Your statement of 'making things harder so the client has to pay more' is quite a nonsense considering all the for-mentioned projects are free...
On that note, Drupal is free. Why on earth would the community benefit from 'making things harder'.
You sound like someone that really needs a prepackaged easy solution (for probably rather basic requirements).
These guys are pretty good:
http://www.elegantthemes.com/
Enjoy!
I've more than tried itI've
I've more than tried it
I've been using Drupal for many years so I have the right to say what I want about it. Oh and regarding the term "node" I still hate it so no, I'll never get use to it.
@vizulefliry - It's just like a Drupal fanboy to take what is said out of context. The title of this thread gave the impression that it was open to honest opinions. Instead of jumping to conclusions, how about listen to what others have to say be it for Drupal or against. I'm a fan of Drupal but I also recognize it's flaws too. Wordpress is the leading CMS and rightly so, so why shouldn't we examine why and make adjustments to Drupal to improve it.
As for the "there are plenty of packages to choose from" that's old and dated. This thread is not about go find something else if you don't like it, the topic is wordpress vs drupal. I still think Drupal could be the CMS but not anytime soon, too many thick heads who refuse to change.
@seanmcginley - Try this, remove all that php code in the template and see how your website looks like. You either A. only use the boring stock templates and never have modified it or B. You have had to change, remove, add certain bits of code to custom your theme. You can't create a custom them without having to look at code. Although you are not writing code, you still have to deal with code, you have to know which is which and location, etc.
I usually do a side by side comparison, Wordpress Admin in one tab and Drupal Admin in another tab and it amazes me every time. Highly recommend doing this, it clearly shows which one brings home the bacon. Wordpress is simple to use and with all the power Drupal has pretty much and with half the bloat, it is lacking in some areas where Drupal takes it but to me the user experience is far greater of importance than anything else.
Drupal does it harder because it was designed for developers and developer wannabes, that is its target audience whether they want to admit it not and if that's the case, the wordpress vs drupal debate should end because there's no comparison. Wordpress was made for everyone else and that's why it's more popular.
I would never recommend most of the modules on your list to a site owner, they are complex and also very bloated and performance hogs. Views is definitely rocket science, many of those modules you listed are not for the faint of heart.
And don't get me started with stater themes, you need a Phd just to figure them out, a real PITA to work with. Better off creating your own theme clean and lean.
You have a pretty awesome development environment right away.
-I disagree, you have more potential for database error right away, again typical site owners don't want to be developers.
End of discussion....
Ok so Wordpress wins
It sounds to me like you would be happier with a nice book. it's very simple... you don't even have to turn it on, just flip the pages. Of course you do have to know how to read, or maybe that's too much work too.
Your arguments are far from lost on me, and I would like to make something perfectly clear... I do not consider myself a developer nor a wannabe, I do like to get my hands a little dirty though, for my own and no-others pleasure or paycheck. I have found drupal more flexible and more fun than Wordpress even if I have to cut and paste code till I'm blue in the face. My point... I am not defending drupal nor attacking wordpress, as you said, this thread is supposed to be a conversation contrasting and comparing the two, hopefully with an eye toward encouraging the great developers who make things easier for people of my ilk, to continue to improve on an already pretty fabulous project. (thanks for every millisecond of your time folks!)
I am everyone else, I have used both, and I still prefer drupal... so go figure... I'm a freak!
Land of milk and honey.
I've heard news about Wordpress users. They have flowery meadows and rainbow skies, and rivers made of chocolate, where the children danced and laughed and played with gumdrop smiles.
I can only dream of such joy.
Maybe one day...
Drupal is for developers
First and foremost, I'm a big fan of Drupal. My organization's new website is built on Drupal7 under my direction. But I would not recommend Drupal to anyone who is not a developer or does not want to hire a developer because Drupal is for developers. The evidence for that is the usability tests that were done at the University of Minnesota where they are trying to make Drupal easier to use for developers. Not for designers, not for content creators, and not for end users. This is the fundamental reason why Wordpress will always be a lot more popular than Drupal and why that popularity will only increase. For non-technical users (over 90% of people), Wordpress makes it easier to build a website, maintain a website and create content.
If Drupal wants to increase its popularity outside of the developer community, those in charge of the strategic direction of Drupal should focus on usability for the non-technical user rather than the developer. Developers know what they are doing and can figure things out. The non-technical person who wants a blog or a website or just wants to update a webpage on the company website often cannot. Umbraco and Plone have caught on and are focusing on functionality and usability for the non-technical user. Drupal should too because it is very behind.
And for those that keep saying Wordpress is less capable than Drupal, please compare Wordpress 2 and Wordpress 3 and you will see the major improvements that were made. Wordpress is one major release away from being an enterprise CMS without the steep learning curve.
That's the crux of it
It is for Developers, but the people steering the direction of Drupal want it to be more accessible.
Anyone continuing on the bandwagon of saying it is for developers is clearly not listening to the ongoing objective of making it much more user friendly out of the box.
Proof is in the pudding
Yes, the objective is to make it much more user friendly. The flaw is that it is being done through feedback from developers. Please let me know what actions that you have "clearly heard" that will make Drupal 8 more user friendly out of the box. What case studies or usability testing for non-technical users have been done? Better yet, trying and get someone from your HR department or marketing department to create a simple webform with a few drop down menus for a Drupal7 website. Even after formal training, my team had to walk them through it the first 10 times before they could do it on their own.
Like I said in my first post. I'm a big fan of Drupal, and I'm not saying this to be offensive, but unlike some, I have no emotional attachments to Drupal or any CMS. I see Drupal as a very good CMS with many strengths but some weaknesses. To Dries' credit, he and his team are very open on their plans for the future development of Drupal. My impression of the strategic direction is that it continues to improve on what the CMS is already very good at while neglecting the weaknesses. Wordpress is very good at the usability and is catching up quickly on the functionality part. Drupal is very good at the functionality and should be focusing on usability.
"clearly heard"
Please take a look at this post from Dries regarding D8 -- especially step #2:
http://buytaert.net/8-steps-for-drupal-8
It sounded pretty clear to me.
White, Black and many greys in between
There are different groups of people that will use Drupal.
1) Developers
2) System Admins
3) Designers
4) Content Admins (some techie inclined, and some not)
5) End users
I'm pointing out that except for the 1 and 2, it is not very friendly. Designers know html, they known templating (in some systems), they know CSS, they know jQuery and other technical things. The point is, these are not exactly non-techie users. They simply aren't hard core developers.
While you do have some people who do eventually learn it WELL, that is no reason to dismiss the lack of usability for TECHIE inclined people who don't happen to be hardcore PHP or other type of developers.
Here is a discussion:
http://groups.drupal.org/node/152239#comment-508644
http://groups.drupal.org/node/152239#comment-507364
http://groups.drupal.org/node/152239#comment-507439
I'm gonna bet the biggest reason is that people don't know it exists. The problem is the enormous investment required in "learning" where shit happens, then how it happens, then dipping the toe in, occasionally getting burned, the maybe, if you are really really dedicated, you might have some success. You have to be crazy dedicated to get things done in Drupal, and its many times more crazy if you're a designer and want to contribute. We HAVE to lower these barriers - in fact we have to drop the barriers to near zero.There have been 3 formal
There have been 3 formal usability lab tests of Drupal core, most recent was for Drupal 7:
Report from the University of Minnesota Drupal Usability Testing: http://drupal.org/node/1175694
Results from the usability testing of Drupal 7's default theme at ideup: http://groups.drupal.org/node/163894
https://twitter.com/#!/jasonstamper/status/96158756710268928
We are not relying on developer feedback when changing the user interface but use these test results to inform the changes we make.
Not saying we're there yet, not by a long shot, but improving Drupal UX has been center stage for the last couple of years and will stay a main focus point.
I stand corrected
I stand corrected. At least I hope so. It's to everyone's benefit, including developers, that the product is easy to use for all user types listed in roseba's post. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the improvements from D7 to D8 is much better than D6 to D7.
Thanks for supplying all the links.
The Final Verdict
Seems like this thread has gone full circle. The final result is just like the OP said: WordPress IS better than Drupal. But that is only true from the perspective of the end-users and that is only for today. Clearly for developers and people willing to take the time to really learn the system, Drupal is far more robust. All signs point to more of a focus on the end-user UI/UX going into Drupal 8.
Is in really necessary to "catch up" to Wordpress? I've been a Mac user for (gulp) over 20 years. I recognize that it only holds a tiny portion of the OS market. But I have always found it to be an excellent tool. I'd rather use a system that helps me get my work done and not one that wants to hurry up and be more like Windows.
Simple to use - WP does not always win
Many times in this thread it is said that WP wins for non developers b/c you don't have to look too far to get your site up and running.
Yes, this is true with standard Drupal - it is a blank state. But that is why we have Install Profiles - it may not be a newbie thing to use install profiles, but many good install profiles let you set up a website with blog and social media etc quite as quick as setting up a WP site.
Perhaps we should be marketing the install profiles more than just the clean slate D.x , this may decrease the ease of use argument.
econpost.com
This topic misses the point about drupal entirely
Drupal never has been and never will (hopefully) be a mainstream product for the masses like wordpress is. And for the love of everything 1's and 0'oes, please don't turn it into one. Wordpress is a low barrier of entry blogging software. Drupal is a content management framework. Drupal is much more flexible than wordpress for delivering custom tailored web pages than wordpress will ever be.
I've seen a lot of theme developers release CMS solutions for wordpress. Given the huge crowd which is drawn into wordpress I can see why people want to do that over Drupal. But that is just because of wordpress large user base, it has nothing to do with how good it actually is for fulfilling that role.
Enough said.
Thank you for an objective view
thank you vonfaff for such an objective view, you have said it all, and nailed it.
considering that their are several audience out there with divers needs, this argument of making drupal like WP is not really w@ should be the focus.
windows is the most popular and most used operating systems, but does that make it the most secured and the best?
MySQL is probably the most-used RDBMS, but does that suggest it is the best RDBMS in the enterprise world?
As regards using WCM/CMS on PHP, I started with Word Press, and I have been enjoying it. One of the latest post i read this week on a popular forum says WP just hit 50 million hosted sites.
When I wanted to do some enterprise customization for a client, like a corporate web portal or website, university/college website I found it not suited. I moved to Joomla then to Drupal, and from my own perspective, WP is better suited for blogging than been used for creating a corporate web site like the ones mentioned earlier.
Nevertheless, as regards D8, I think we all need to put thought together in looking at what we are currently missing, how best can a newbie be introduced to drupal, properly laid-out downloaded documentation.
My advice to the house is that we all should look at how best can D8 make anyone have out-of-the-box site say a "blog site" just like WP. Then for some of us (developers/enthusiast), who need more functionality on their web site, they can extend drupal to whatever they which. The key is catch the newbie, and retain the experienced ones as well
Drupal is great. It's just cruel to both developers and users.
I totally agree.
Here's an example - add this plugin to a WP site
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/s2member/
I chose this one because it's extremely complicated, but the installation and configuration are extremely easy to follow, well thought out and documented. You can't really go wrong getting it up and running. This plugin by itself is about as complicated as Drupal is to configure.
Take a look at this quick tutorial for installing the CK Finder in drupal - something you don't even have to do in WordPress or Joomla.
http://www.ostraining.com/blog/drupal/add-ckfinder-to-ckeditor-for-image...
Drupal has taken something that should be relatively simple and made it into a configuration marathon with frustrating details that are easy to miss. A lot of people say Drupal is for developers.
I can't believe this over-complication is anything developers want either. Trying to add what could be a core function through endless trips back and forth through the admin menu isn't developing.
You can say it's free, so what do you expect. But if I was a company trying to decide which way to go - the amount of money I would invest in the learning curve and trouble shooting installation would make this free software very expensive.
Drupal itself is neither better nor worse than Wordpress, everything has it's place. Downloading it is free, but of the top three OS CMS programs, it is definitely the most expensive in terms of time and training. But once the expert developer is done with it, it's up to untrained or non-technical people to take it over.
In my opinion that's where drupal needs some attention.
Ed Andrea
Ostraining
Use OpenAtrium if you want something out of the box
I personally don't think Drupal should be extremely simplified right out of the box. I prefer having the option of building a website that isn't a carbon copy of a million other websites out there. Drupal allows developers to create unique websites (not just blogs) by modifying modules and themes to cater to the particular needs of the client. If you want a simple easy-to-use platform, check out OpenAtrium, which is built on top of Drupal and provides most of the capabilities of CMS. I actually started with OpenAtrium but ended up switching to Drupal because I felt limited with regard to the ability to configure the site and add new modules.
In sum, if you want something basic (i.e. blogs), use WordPress. If you want basic CMS capabilities but don't care about uniqueness, use OpenAtrium. If you want customization, use Drupal.
I like oranges more than
I like oranges more than apples.
Apples are...
...better with caramel.
Has the Bike Shed been painted yet?
Seems like it keeps getting repainted in this thread.
Can I point out as one of the very few who were actually at the session of the original poster (Jen Lampton) at DrupalCamp NYC that she never inferred that WordPress was better than Drupal. Her point was that we need to make it more user friendly like Wordpress. Wordpress is a blog and primitive CMS. Drupal is a framework. As Todd Nienkirk so accurately tweeted "Drupal's greatest achievement is its ability to perform as a platform and product simultaneously."
As for the usability concerns it should be apparent that it certainly is on the radar and should be part of D8's focus.
Is WP attract more traffic than Drupal?
I have learned from net, especially drupal.org and created my site http://vision4ife.in. Last month changed theme to acquia marina. I found many comments that Drupal is not easy to learn. I am a newbie and whatever you are viewing on my site I have learned from googling only. So, I dont agree it is difficult to learn or difficult to maintain Drupal. But I heard that WP attracts more visitors than drupal. Anyone have idea how to convert my site to WP? my site is in Drupal 7.12. basic/book/gallery/blog pages.
It doesn't make sense to
It doesn't make sense to compare site traffic since you can build any site in Drupal you can build in Wordpress, but not the other way around. You might try looking for SEO modules, nodewords is one that allows you to edit meta tags for example.
I read somewhere on net that
I read somewhere on net that WP has its own system and get more traffic. I dont know. I have changed my theme to acquia marina and look of the site is really changed. I have installed meta tag, page title etc, but dont know much how to configure. do u know how to configure page title to show Book-child page title? I mean first Book name - then current page title.
Lets believe and go further
We can look at this problem from different points of view.
User friendly: Drupal is difficult to use and understand for easy thinking people. On the other hand it is wonderful for educated developers, thay can create fast big complex sites.
Graphics: Drupal has terrible default graphics and it is quite uneasy to make the site beautiful in a custom way. On the other hand it is opened for any change for people who are smart enough.
To whom: I see Drupal as it is today ideal for smart developers. Maybe we can think about some Dru-packs for different groups of people according to their abilities (e.g. Easy-pack for just nice small blog). I think a majority of people want simple not complicated free site-maker.
We love Drupal: The best thing on Drupal is, that it is beloved. People like it, because of its freedom spirit and unique ability to make one's dream come true. If are there people who love to use it, it will surely grow up. The fact something is better than our Drupal is to stab us into butt so we move on.
Thank you Jen for inspiration
Its all about the community
:(