Increasingly our customers are asking us which Open Source CMS they should use. There are many choices, but the current state of the art points to two rapidly growing platforms: WordPress and Drupal.
WordPress is meant for small to medium sized websites & blogs, whereas Drupal is slightly harder, but also the most powerful CMS used for building big and complex sites.
WordPress was primarily a blogging platform and evolved into a dynamic Open Source Content Management Solution. The learning curve is considered fairly tame by most new users. It is easy to use compared to Drupal, and is currently leading with more than 60.7%1 of CMS websites using WordPress.
Drupal is developer-friendly CMS and is great for developing intricate sites. Being a powerful application, development with Drupal requires a certain level of expertise and experience. Most new users claim that Drupal has steep learning curve. That is expected to be mitigated to quite some extent with the release of Drupal 8. Once a site is live, managing content is easy. Usage figures show that Drupal is powering 5.1%1 of CMS backed websites.
Are they competitors? Not, really. The fact is, each website will require something different, and one should consider needs before choosing the right platform.
How does one choose: Drupal or WordPress?
Numbers are here but is that full story?
Can one pick a platform for one’s next website just by these numbers?
| WordPress | Drupal | |
|---|---|---|
| Popularity | 60.7%1 CMS websites | 5.1%1 CMS websites |
| Plug-ins available | 26,000+ | 8,000+ |
| Installation Complexity | Easiest | Easy |
| Web Development Process | Easy | Certain level of expertise required |
| Content Management on Live Site | Very Easy | Easy |
| SEO Integration | Possible | Possible |
| Websites using the platform | BBC America, Sony Music, ebay Inc, Best Buy, Xerox, Fortune, Google Ventures | Economist, NBC, White House, IKEA, The World Economic Forum |
There a lot of considerations, but here are few easy checks:
- Will you need fine grain user level access control? Yes -> Drupal
- Will you need custom third party web technologies integration? Yes -> Drupal
- Do you want to keep your maintenance cost down? Yes -> WordPress
- Do you not plan to add much more than marketing functionality to your site? Yes -> WordPress
- Is it just a blog -> Definitely WordPress
These are just rough guidelines. Both CMS can be retrofitted to be a solution to your needs but the perfect solution requires detailed deliberation. At KUWARE, we build both Drupal and WordPress sites. We believe starting with a platform agnostic clean slate is the best way to do a fair evaluation. You cannot go wrong by first analyzing the business needs, then choosing the platform. Need help deciding? Call us! We will be happy to help.
References –
1 – http://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_management/all/
