Drupal vs WordPress – Choose the Best CMS for Your Business

Drupal vs WordPress – Choose the Best CMS for Your Business

There are several content management systems (CMS) to choose from when considering your business needs.  The two giants that spring to mind are Drupal and WordPress.  Each platform takes up a huge chunk in the market share of CMS and are perfectly reasonable choices for most websites.

But what distinguishes one from the other?  Which one is better?  Easier?  More functional?  Efficient?  What are the advantages and disadvantages to using one versus the other?

Although both systems allow users to create and manage content over one or multiple websites, there are major differences between the two. Understanding how these platforms work, what their strong points are and their unique benefits will help you to become confident in your final choice.  The goal here is to provide you with a complete overview giving you insight into the good, bad and the ugly so you can make an informed decision on which route to select for your website. 

WordPress

WordPress is perhaps the easiest and most powerful blogging and website CMS on the Internet.  It has 10 times the amount of users than Drupal strictly due to its popularity and simplicity.  Starting out simply as a blogging system, it’s evolution to a fully-functional content management system has positioned WordPress to be the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world, currently powering more than a whopping 24% of the web!

Using the WordPress platform is ideal for beginner blogger/website creators yet advanced techies and web developers can have lots of fun with all the creative ways to customize.

Here are the benefits along with the disadvantages and ugly side to using WordPress:

The Good

  • Highly flexible, with uses of websites, blogs, complex portals and enterprise websites, and even apps
  • Easy to learn without having to know HTML
  • Search engines love WordPress, making it great for SEO
  • Huge community support for Q&A
  • 100% customizable
  • Thousands of free (and paid) themes, plugins and tools
  • Upgrades completed automatically without owners having to do anything
  • Gives owners complete control of their site without having to wait for web developers
  • Manage your site from any computer/mobile device
  • Set up for multiple authors, each having their own access and capabilities
  • Feasible for any type of marketing content

The Bad

  • Due to frequent updates, some plugins may not adapt as quickly, preventing them from working efficiently if at all
  • Graphic changes do require knowledge of CSS and HTML
  • Permalinks are numeric until user knowingly activates the SEO friendly feature
  • Slower experience at times when handling large volume of content

Now…the Ugly

  • Extremely vulnerable to plugin viruses that can wipe content and pages.

Who Actually Uses WordPress?

Here are some well-known brands that leverage the power of WordPress and its benefits…

  • The Official Star Wars Blog
  • SONY Music
  • MTV News
  • New York Times
  • Best Buy
  • eBay
  • Yahoo
  • CNN
  • Ford
  • Mozilla Firefox
  • Fortune
  • Wall Street Journal
  • Hostaculous

Drupal

Drupal is favored amongst government, higher education institutions, NGO’s, and global enterprises proudly serving sites like The White House website.  It is an incredibly powerful framework that can serve as a solid foundation for virtually any type of website. 

The beauty of Drupal is that it was especially designed for search engine optimization.  It also places high value in security, reliability, and flexibility.  Although not boasting as many users as WordPress, Drupal indeed has a large friendly community that is highly active and responsive to inquiries.

This CMS is definitely for the advanced with developer expertise…it is not for all users like WordPress.  If you do not have an experienced web developer on staff, you may have to contract one for this project.  However, it is a webmaster’s dream because of its unique customization features. 

Using Drupal is indeed a great choice with the ability to create fantastic looking sites. Let’s examine the advantages as well as the not so good features of Drupal:

The Good

  • Advanced control over URL structure
  • Top notch enterprise-level security
  • Features countless modules, themes, and extensions.
  • Ideal for community platform sites that require complex data organization with multiple users
  • Great ability to handle large amounts of content
  • Supports multiple site stakeholders (admin, editors, logged in users requiring customized content, private groups, etc.)
  • Clean look, built for high performance
  • More robust features for complex jobs
  • Pages tend to load faster due to its defaulting caching features
  • Flexible with lots of versatility

The Bad

  • Requires technical expertise
  • Hiring a web developer to install is more expensive than WordPress installation
  • Upgrades need to be completed with developer knowledge
  • Premium themes and plugins (modules) cost a lot more than WordPress

And…the Ugly

  • It is difficult to install

Who Actually Uses Drupal?

  • The White House
  • The Weather Channel
  • Turner Broadcasting
  • Australian Government
  • Verizon
  • Popular Science
  • Fox
  • Dallas Cowboys
  • NBC
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
  • Warner Music Group
  • BBC
  • University of Oxford
  • gov.uk
  • Forbes

How to Choose the Best CMS for Your Business

The first step towards choosing which CMS will work better for you is to assess your current and future business goals and how can your website take you there.  If you foresee your site growing to hold lots of data (especially sensitive information), Drupal is a better choice because of it’s security and page load speeds.  If you plan to have multiple authors and want a platform that is simple to use (particularly for a team that may not be as tech savvy), WordPress is it.

Knowing which CMS is right for your business will ultimately save you time and money…both now and in the future! 

Drupal vs Joomla: In Search of the Best CMS

Drupal vs Joomla: In Search of the Best CMS

Drupal and Joomla web hosting in Uganda

While WordPress powers a whopping 24% of all websites on the Internet, it’s certainly not the only open source content management system (CMS) available. In fact, there are two highly effective software platforms, Joomla and Drupal, that warrant great attention when considering a CMS for your website. 

With Joomla raking in over nearly 50 million downloads and Drupal housing more than 1,000,000 elite websites, these powerhouses are worth investing the time to see which platform will best serve your business and site goals.

Although each CMS provides the basic functions of adding, deleting, publishing, and storing various types of content, each tool has different strong points and weaknesses which should be explored prior to making your final decision.  The purpose here is to provide a comprehensive overview of Drupal vs Joomla to give you clarity for your next (or current) business website.   

Joomla

Joomla is becoming an increasingly popular content management system.   Actually, after WordPress, it’s considered the world’s most accepted CMS, currently supporting over 3 million websites.  Joomla has the power of being extended to provide state of the art functionalities. It has been presented with the Packt Open Source Awards multiple years in a row, making it highly credible to be used as a CMS for your web application.

When it comes to complexity, Joomla places somewhere between simple WordPress and comprehensive and advanced Drupal.  Using Joomla means that there may be a slight learning curve particularly for beginners, yet webmasters are usually very happy with the features it incorporates. 

There are many advantages including better architecture as compared to other content management systems.

The Advantages:

  • Simple to install
  • Knowledge of CSS, PHP, or HTML is not required
  • Manage users with various permission levels without switching tabs
  • E-commerce made easy
  • Several thousands of free extensions available for increased functionality and interaction for your site
  • Amazing support with programmer tools and tutorials for users
  • Advanced administration panel offers many functions for complete optimization
  • URLs generated are SEO friendly thus better positioning in search
  • Update installs are easily done through web browser
  • Application framework makes it effortless for developers to create sophisticated add-ons
  • Highly strong and active community support

The Disadvantages:

  • Although simple to use, beginners may initially be intimidated by the multitude of functions and possibilities…there is some learning involved
  • Some of the plugins and modules are paid
  • Limited adjustment options particularly for advanced users
  • May experience compatibility issues with some of the plugins, requiring some PHP knowledge to get the functions to work properly
  • Limited access control list (ACL) support

The Challenge:

The structure may seem complicated and you may have to go through a learning curve before you master the layout system.

Brands that Use Joomla:

  • IKEA
  • Greek Ministry of Education, Research and Religious Affairs
  • IHOP
  • Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
  • University of Notre Dame – Alliance for Catholic Education

If you have some experience with CMS systems and you’re looking for something more than WordPress, but you’re still intimidated by Drupal, Joomla might be a solid option.

Drupal

Currently over 1 million websites run on Drupal, widely known to service entities like governments, higher education institutions, NGO’s, and global enterprises.  This CMS proudly services The White House and prides itself on its top-notch security element.  Its incredibly powerful and comprehensive framework is suitable to house virtually any type of website.

The beauty about Drupal is that it was designed especially for search engine optimization.  Placing high value in security, reliability, and flexibility, this CMS is indeed the cream of the crop.  Its large robust community is also highly responsive to inquiries and concerns.

This CMS is definitely for the advanced with developer expertise…it is not for all users like Joomla.  Installing Drupal for your next project will require an experienced web developer on staff (or a contracted one).  Using Drupal is indeed a great choice with the ability to create amazing looking sites.

Here are the advantages, the disadvantages as well as the challenges users may experience with Drupal:

The Advantages:

  • Top notch enterprise-level security
  • Great ability to handle large amounts of content and data
  • Lots of functionalities including advanced menu management, polls management, graphics modification tool, and users management
  • Built for high performance
  • Advanced control over URL structure
  • Pages load faster because of its defaulting caching features
  • Features countless modules, themes, and extensions
  • Ideal for community platform sites that require complex data organization with multiple users
  • Supports multiple site stakeholders (admin, editors, logged in users requiring customized content, private groups, etc.)
  • Very clean, professional look
  • Flexible with lots of versatility
  • Stable and scalable
  • Downright powerful platform!

The Disadvantages:

  • Upgrades need to be completed with developer knowledge
  • Not user friendly
  • High learning curve
  • Requires technical expertise
  • Hiring a web developer to install is more expensive than a Joomla installation
  • Premium themes and plugins (modules) cost a lot more than WordPress

The Challenge:

It is very difficult to install…you will likely need an expert.

Brands that Use Drupal:

  • The White House
  • University of Oxford
  • The Weather Channel
  • Bruno Mars
  • Verizon
  • The Economist
  • Fox
  • Forbes
  • New England Patriots
  • NBC
  • Rutgers University
  • Twitter
  • Australian Government

Drupal is an advanced CMS system offering plenty of functions that make it possible to create simple or advanced websites, blogs, discussion boards, social networking pages, etc. However, it does require experienced knowledge of PHP and HTML languages as well as CSS.  For those with at least basic knowledge of these languages, there’s a very good technical support to guide them through the process.

How to Choose the BEST CMS for Your Business

Being clear on your business goals, objectives, and intentions is the first step towards selecting a CMS that is optimal for your business.  This clarity will guide you as to what type of website is congruent to your needs while better serving your unique target audience. 

Joomla is also a good option for small to mid-tier e-commerce stores or for building a community or a network with a membership features, newsroom, forums, articles, input from external authors. If you want something more powerful for large projects in which stability, scalability, and power are essential, or for more enterprise use, then consider Drupal.

Choosing the right CMS for your project will save you a great deal of headaches later.  A reliable web host also saves you from headaches. Fortunately, with Hostaculous you can get both reliable hosting and the CMS of your choice, be it Joomla, Drupal, WordPress, or Magento.

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