WordPress vs Drupal: Comparing the Two Most Popular CMS Platforms
WordPress vs Drupal is an ongoing discussion as both platforms have become increasingly favored in the past few years – companies of all sizes are migrating from their legacy website systems to WordPress and Drupal as both content management systems (CMS) follow industry best practices for website development.
With CMS’ gaining in popularity, in recent years, there’s been a proliferation of options, causing many to wonder, “Which CMS is right for me?”
To help you decide between WordPress vs Drupal, here’s a guide comparing the two popular content management systems, to help you make up your mind.
WordPress vs Drupal
While WordPress may be the best-known CMS, with 28% of websites worldwide employing the popular CMS platform – being several times as large as the closest competitor, Drupal. Each CMS platform has its constituency, its loyal followers, its prophets, acolytes, and advocates.
Both WordPress and Drupal are some of the best-known CMS’, with each having its own benefits. Knowing which CMS will be right for you and your organization depends on what business or industry you’re in, your website and eCommerce needs, strategy for mobile optimization, site security, and more.
WordPress and Drupal are both reliable CMS platforms, each having specific uses built for businesses and organizations of all sizes. WordPress might be best for smaller or mid-sized businesses, blogs, and small eCommerce sites, due to its ease of use.
Drupal is the most powerful CMS on the market, however, with the highest security settings built-in, which is the reason why almost all government agencies are migrating to Drupal.
Which CMS Is Easiest To Use?
If you’re not that comfortable with web technologies, and you’re just getting started on your first business website, WordPress is likely to be your best bet. Drupal development is deep, vast, and powerful, with Enterprise capabilities, for those savvy enough to know how to use it.
Another advantage of WordPress development is the vibrant community of users and developers who have fearlessly gone where you are trying to go, and are usually more than happy to help you with whatever technical problems you might be having.
Drupal has a vibrant community, as well, but smaller than WordPress’, being more comparable to technical forums like GitHub or Stack Overflow. Drupal is not designed to be a cookie-cutter CMS, Drupal has a steep learning curve, so we highly recommend having an experienced Drupal developer on standby.
Updates are another thing to think about. Typically, WordPress upgrades itself automatically, making it as easy to keep your website up-to-date so you’re not having to contact your web developer regularly. Drupal, on the other hand, will need to be updated manually, so we highly recommend updating Drupal’s core/modules only if you’re experienced with the process. The good side of Drupal’s manual updates, however, is you can decide which updates you want, for full customizability.
Site Customization
Themes and plugins/modules are the easiest way to customize WordPress and Drupal sites, especially if you’re new to web development. If you’ve not yet gotten into learning custom HTML, CSS, and PHP, WordPress has a lot to offer, in regards to Site Customization, with an extensive community of web developers offering over 30,000 themes and plugins – many of which are available for free.
Drupal offers a similar level of customizability, on-page, but does so without using plugins. Drupal uses modules instead of plugins, and there are almost as many Drupal modules as there are WordPress plugins, so there’s plenty of options to choose from based on your specific website requirements.
Weighing Cost
While both Drupal and WordPress are free to download as they’re both considered open source platforms, Drupal can be a bit more pricey, in the site building setup, as you’ll likely want to hire an experienced Drupal developer and project manager. WordPress can easily be set up with minimal experience as it’s slightly more user-friendly and requires fewer resources overall.
Security
As cyber-security becomes an increasingly hot topic, by the day, wondering which CMS platform is most secure is a pertinent concern. By and large, Drupal is the more secure of the two. With WordPress being so popular, security is a subject that website owners need to constantly stay on top of.
Ironically, third-party plugins are also a way to make WordPress more secure. Drupal, on the other hand, by default, is already highly secure making it the clear choice for enterprise-level security.
Google Ranking
While Google ranking is not platform specific, per se, the way WordPress and Drupal are set up allows developers and SEO consultants to streamline the site building process as both CMS’ are SEO friendly.
Drupal was built specifically for prime SEO performance, but WordPress can easily perform just as strongly, via 3rd party plugins. Drupal also tends to load faster, another factor that Google looks at for SEO ranking. Drupal has an easier time handling large amounts of content, which is something else Google looks at for SEO ranking.
Mobile optimization is an important factor in SEO ranking. While there are tons of responsive WordPress Themes out there, ready to go, Drupal is even better suited for mobile development, especially since the release of Drupal 8. Drupal 8 is structured to be fully mobile responsive out-of-the-box.
Who Uses WordPress Vs Drupal
Both The New York Times and CNN run on WordPress, but The White House, NASA, and Harvard University use Drupal. If you’re just looking to set up a website as quickly as possible and begin publishing, WordPress is going to be your best bet. If you’re looking for a fully customizable, scalable CMS, with enterprise-level security, Drupal might best for you.
Still wondering which of the two most popular CMS platforms are right for your organization? Get in touch with our web design agency today, and let us help you pick either WordPress vs Drupal for your website project.