The era of hand-coding PHP and HTML scripts has largely gone by the wayside, thanks in large part to Content Management Systems, or CMS’s– and that’s a good thing. Today’s site creators, however, are left with a tough choice: Drupal or WordPress?
When you’re trying to choose a database-backed, open-source CMS that can be easily managed by non-tecchies, the decision often seems to boil down to these two applications. While each side has its own advantages, drawback and supporters, we think that WordPress offers a better CMS solution.
Why? Two words sum it up: growth and ease.
WordPress.com growth (from dstevenwhite.com)
WordPress is growing rapidly. Since its release in 2003, WordPress:
- has been downloaded more than 32.5 million times
- powers more than 14.7 % of the top 1 million websites in the world
- operates 22 of every 100 new domains, as of August 2011
In contrast, only 1.6% of the top 1 million websites use Drupal. Its website receives about 55,000 unique visitors per month, as compared to 50 million unique visits each month to the WordPress website.
These figures emphasize WordPress’ more extensive support/code base and huge global community. WordPress was viewed as a blog engine, when in fact, 74% of WordPress installations are used as CMS, and not blogging.
As to ease of use, the comparison is even clearer. While both WordPress and Drupal are simple to install, once its configured, WordPress is ready to use – in as little as five minutes.
On the other hand, many administrators find Drupal’s learning curve confusing, overwhelming and steep. This is due in part to Drupal’s system of thousands of contributed modules; while they add flexibility, they also tend to have overlapping functionality.
Also, Drupal does not guarantee backward compatibility through revisions. While this reduces software bloat, it also may necessitate code rewriting, an activity that adds to your workload.
WordPress offers almost 1,400 themes, as compared to Drupal’s 885, and a range of user-friendly plug-ins, extensions and modules — about 17,000 to Drupal’s 9,000. WordPress plug-ins are extremely easy to use – just drop them in. In comparison, Drupal offers few ready-made plug-ins.
WordPress vs Drupal search references from Google Trends
Add a lower average set-up and customization cost – $250 for WordPress and $5,000 for Drupal — to a lower monthly maintenance cost – $250 for WordPress and $1,500 for Drupal — and WordPress looks even more attractive and practical.
For all but the largest commercial projects — which tend to require extensive customized developing — WordPress provides a better CMS solution.
SOURCES
- http://wordpress.org/news/2011/08/state-of-the-word/
- http://www.resourcenation.com/blog/comparing-the-numbers-wordpress-joomla-drupal/31988/
- http://poplarware.com/articles/drupal_vs_wordpress
- http://foliovision.com/2011/04/02/drupal-vs-joomla-mambo-vs-wordpress
- http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/drupal-joomla-wordpress-smackdown
- http://www.resourcenation.com/blog/comparing-the-numbers-wordpress-joomla-drupal/31988/
Tweet