Drupal vs. WordPress: A comparison

“Demand and supply are just like two sides of a coin. To fulfil the demand of the user there must be enough resource so as to meet the expectations of the industry. If you are not able to meet the ever changing demands of the industry then you couldn’t sustain in the market. Similarly technology should be always up to date so as to provide optimum service to the developer and hence the end user. Every technology strives to remain in the industry with newer and advanced features and to serve the industry in a meaningful manner. Content management system is one such platform that provides enough scope for the developers in developing enterprise quality web applications. It definitely reduces the effort of the developer due to its in built systematic architecture and hence increases the productivity of the software developer. Drupal and WordPress are two magnificent CMS software available in the industry to serve in an efficient manner. But, nothing is perfect in this materialistic universe and so the case for these CMSs as well. Let us discuss their advantages and disadvantages and usefulness from the developer’s point of view”.

Ease of Use: For CMS software, user interface plays an important role as a deciding factor. User interface is something that makes sense when we think about ease of use and easy to learn character of the software. The popularity of WordPress is around ten times than that of Drupal considering the fact that the population of WordPress user is ten times more than that of Drupal. This is due to simple user interface and easy to learn approach of WordPress CMS. But the case is different with Drupal; though it is efficient enough to handle complicated web applications but it needs more effort and time from the Drupal developers to learn and integrate all the components of the CMS whereas WYSIWYG editor of WordPress is much more user friendly to provide better accesses for the WordPress developer. In fact WordPress releases upgrades every three four months without creating any annoying experience for the developer whereas Drupal upgrades need effort from the developer to handle the code changes of the newer version.

Scalability: Scalability is something that enables the web developer in crafting enhanced web applications from scratch with less effort and with more efficiency. There are many options available in a CMS platform that extends the features of a web application like integration of advanced themes, templates, plug-ins and components etc. Again the ease of integration of these features matters a lot from the developer’s point of view. WordPress provides sufficient room for the developer to integrate better themes, plug-ins and components etc from a repository of millions of contributions of the industry whereas Drupal developers may not find enough open source templates and plug-ins for their application. But if we consider about the quality of customisation then the clear winner will be Drupal because of its highly optimised Architecture that enables the Drupal developer in building high performance web applications; but at the cost of effort and expertise from the developer. In short we can say the customisation features of WordPress are better for moderate standard web applications whereas Drupal is consistent enough for big content web solutions.

Security features: Undoubtedly the security standards of Drupal are par ahead of WordPress due to its highly optimised design pattern. A Drupal application is extremely secure and hence can be used confidently for any big data application. On the contrary WordPress is little loose from its score and hence it can’t be a trusted one for data driven application. Again due to larger community of WordPress, hackers love to show their talent in the bigger canvas. Hence the security threat is more for a WordPress website than that of a Drupal.

Search Engine Optimization: Search Engine Optimization is one of the most important features of every CMS. There are many third party SEO tools or plug-ins available in the industry along with the inbuilt SEO tools. There are more number of advanced SEO tools and plug-ins available in WordPress platform than that of Drupal. On the contrary, Drupal platform has less number of SEO tools available in the industry but due to its default caching features, it forces Google to give priority for a faster Drupal website. Again Drupal can handle larger volume of content without any hassle and hence it makes a lot sense when we think about search engine optimisation. So it is like a tie between both the platforms from two different angles.

Performance: It is needless to say that the performance of an optimised platform is always better than that of a loosely coupled platform and hence Drupal performs outstanding in the industry. Drupal is having a tremendous popularity in the industry as a tough yet powerful CMS and it enables the developer in building enterprise quality high performance web applications.

Futuristic i.e. Responsiveness and mobile platform support: Industry has understood the importance of responsive web design in building a larger audience community for its business. It can be well achieved with the introduction of smart apps and web apps for different platforms like Android, IOS and windows operating system. Fortunately both Drupal and WordPress provides enough scope for the developer in designing responsive web applications through dedicated mobile theme for their application. WPTouch is one such WordPress mobile theme for responsive web design. It is already revealed that building a responsive web application with WordPress is much easier than that of Drupal platform. Again WordPress handles both the desktop web application as well as mobile web application in a better way so that your website can be well visible on the search engine. In fact WordPress provides real time content editing feature on mobile and it is extremely helpful for updating your blog in real time and it can be done from a native mobile app itself.

And the Winner is: Both the CMSs are having some advantages and disadvantages with respect to different prospective. WordPress is better for a medium volume content application where as Drupal is powerful enough to handle any complex application. WordPress doesn’t require much learning and expertise from a developer whereas Drupal needs it from the very beginning. Drupal is highly secure and stable platform but WordPress is extremely simple and flexible. So we can say Drupal is best platform for complex applications whereas WordPress is a simple platform for quick web building that doesn’t require much expertise from the developer.

We, at Mindfire Solutions, are equally competent in WordPress and Drupal. If you have any custom WordPress plugin development requirements, or need the help of our senior WordPress programmers: please feel free to give a shout to us any time and we will be replying back within one business day.