Creating a new website using a powerful content management system can make your job a lot easier. You can add, create, update and delete the content of your site easily. You can perform your basic administrative tasks without even delving deep into any programming language. Although you may need a developer’s expertise if you want a technically sophisticated website.
As a beginner or an inexperienced user, you should always opt for a platform that can offer you easy-to-use tools, tons of customizations options and other out-of-the-box functionalities to help you build a top-notch site on the fly.
Since there are hundreds of CMSs available on the web market, it becomes quite difficult to pick out the best one out of the pool. However, the features, functions, customization options and drag-and-drop solutions may vary from one CMS to the other, but selecting a particular option becomes crucial if you are representing a web business to the World.
Usually, people get confused between the WordPress and Drupal when it comes to developing a new/next web project. Not doubt, both the platforms are amazing, but you need to choose the one that suits the nature of your website/business the most.
So, here we bring you an ultimate comparison between these two CMS platforms that will help you make the decision quickly and easily.
Meaning
WordPress
Although WordPress commenced its journey as a blogging platform back in 2003, now it has turned into a fully-fledged content management system – all thanks to its extensive range of themes, plugins, and other built-in tools. The framework is powered by PHP, JavaScript, CSS, and Ajax to let people create anything on the fly.
The platform is by far the easiest content management system that allows users to create, update and customize a website, without ever getting your hands dirty in coding. It comes with simple and intuitive user interface that lets you add posts, pages, images and other types of content at the drop of the hat.
Since the WordPress is a free and open-source platform, you can easily learn the core functionalities of the system. You can even hire a WordPress developer if you want to host a more technical website for your business.
Once you start developing your website on WordPress, you will understand why people choose this platform over any other CMSs.
Drupal
Drupal is one of the most powerful and full-blown content management systems that empowers users to create and manage more complex websites. However, the system is more developer-friendly, but there are tons of top-notch modules that will help the non-developer user to create a feature-rich website with ease.
This CMS platform is powered by PHP framework and is built for high performance – thanks to its default caching, scalable databases and InnoDB functionalities. You can also integrate multiple third-party applications with REST, SOAP, and JSON.
Although Drupal is more complicated as compared to WordPress, it can be an ideal CMS platform choice for those who are more concern about their site’s security.
Ease of Use
WordPress
WordPress comes with a simple and intuitive interface that makes it super easy for you to add new pages, posts, and other content on a site in a matter of few seconds. You don’t need to edit the code or learn any programming language to customize your site.
The platform comes with a ton of themes and plugins that will help you enhance the overall design and functionality of your site in minutes. You can even manage your site right from your dashboard with ease.
This clearly means WordPress is a simple, user-friendly and easy-to-use/learn content management system on the web.
Drupal
Drupal is a great platform but only for those who love to learn and sprout their web development skills – it is basically a developer-friendly software. If you are running a business and want to set up a new website instantly, then Drupal won’t be an ideal choice for you.
You should have a bit knowledge about programming languages if you want to get started with this platform. That is the main reason why beginners choose WordPress over Drupal or any other CMS option.
Functionality & Scalability
WordPress
Most of the people prefer WordPress because it offers a whole slew of free and paid plugins to let you extend the functionality of your site, without even generating a single piece of coding. Whether you want to add a contact/subscription/registration form or want to enhance the performance & security of your site, WordPress is an ideal choice for you.
There are thousands of WordPress plugins that will help you take the functionality of your website to the next level. In short, WordPress plugins can serve your purpose in minutes, without any coding.
Drupal
Drupal is also a great choice when it comes to extending the functionality. The platform offers a ton of modules to help you create a custom website with ease.
If you want to add a shopping cart into your site or want to optimize your site for SEO and high-performance, then you just need to select a module(s) that is relevant to your specific needs.
However, Drupal offers fewer options as compared to WordPress, but its customizable modules can help you scale your site as per your business requirements quite easily.
Customization options
WordPress
Alike free and paid plugins, WordPress offers a plenty of beautiful and purpose-oriented themes to let you customize overall look and feel of your site in seconds. Most of the WordPress themes comes packaged with a ton of exciting features and customization options to help you tweak the color, fonts, layouts, headers, sidebars and other aspects of web designs on the fly.
You can even use a robust WordPress theme you can to make your site responsive and mobile-friendly so that it will run smoothly on different devices and screen sizes, without any heavy lifting.
Drupal
Drupal also gives you a plenty of customization options, but it is a lot easier to customize the web design in WordPress. No doubt, Drupal comes with a ton of intriguing, responsive and feature rich themes and templates, but using WordPress themes are extremely easy – all thanks to the drag-and-drop interface.
Search Engine Optimization
WordPress
WordPress uses simple and clean code which makes it easy for search engine bots to read and index the site’s content. Apart from this, the platform offers various SEO- driven tools and functionality to help you optimize your site’s content for search engines with ease. You can even optimize your web page, post, images, meta data (meta title, meta description, meta keyword) using Yoast SEO plugin (on of the most popular SEO plugin for WordPress).
The WordPress platform helps you embrace your search engine optimization efforts so that you can see your site on the top of SERPs.
Drupal
On the other hand, Drupal can be more complex when it comes to optimizing a website for search engines. Although the platform offers a plenty of SEO modules, it can be difficult for a beginner to optimize each page, post, image and other content of a site for getting a higher ranking.
Security
WordPress
Since WordPress is the most popular CMSs on the web, it is more vulnerable to the security threats and attacks. Although the platform doesn’t offer any robust built-in security measures, you can integrate a powerful security plugin to protect your site from hackers and spammers.
You also need to keep on updating your core WordPress, installed themes and plugins on a regular basis if you want to strengthen your site’s security.
Drupal
Drupal is known for providing tight security and security reporting feature that can help you prevent your site against security vulnerability with ease. Since the platform is for big enterprise sites, it tends to render more security-enabled features to its end users.
The Ultimate Winner: Which platform is right for you?
Both the WordPress and Drupal are incredible Content Management Systems on the Internet. But when it comes to user-friendly, simple and intuitive platform, then WordPress clearly wins the race.
If you want to create a site from your own, then WordPress is an ideal choice for you in terms of customization, functionality, flexibility and SEO benefits. But if you want a complex or technically sophisticated website, then Drupal can be a great option for you. It is more secure, scalable and flexible platform that may need a developer’s assistance for further customization.
So, make sure you analyze your web objectives, budget, and your business requirements before making the final decision.
