Drupal and WordPress are often compared. Here’s a summary of my summary of a comparison between the two platforms: WordPress is easier to get started with; Drupal has the advantage when it comes to more complex sites.
That was two years (and two weeks) ago. A lot has happened in those years, and early 2010 is a particularly busy and important time for both communities: Drupal and WordPress. If I had to provide a soundbite (blogbite? tweet?) right now, it would be: Drupal and WordPress are becoming more similar.
The best example of convergence from the Drupal side is Drupal Gardens, the slogan for which is: “Building Drupal websites just got easier.” It was indeed easy to establish a little outpost of the Changing Way empire at Drupal Gardens. ChangingWay.org runs on WordPress.com, of which Gardens is the Drupal counterpart.
Gardens runs on version 7 of Drupal. I love this line from Jacob Singh about developing Gardens on that new version, rather than on version 6: it’s like playing Jenga on a cocaine addled elephant riding a skateboard being jabbed in the ass with a hot poker.
WordPress is also in the midst of a new major release. In fact, this very post is a fringe member of a current and ongoing series about WordPress 3.0. Much of what’s in 3.0 (e.g., multisite) is already in Drupal.
The above account of convergence between Drupal and WordPress is very broad-brush. But it’s also about as long as I like a single post to be.
Comments – especially yours – are excellent for filling in gaps. They are also excellent for asking questions, and for offering me inducements to write more detailed comparisons of Drupal and WordPress and the communities and organizations behind them…
They really are getting closer to each other, but it seems like WordPress has a lot of catching up to do. New 3.0 features like role management, multisite, and menus are very basic aspects of Drupal.
Luke, thanks very much for the comment, impressively soon after I posted. All the best with fresh tilled soil – a Drupal-Gardenish name for the WordPress-oriented outfit.
I see that you’re in Waltham, MA – a place I visted a few times when I was based on Boston.
Anyway, all the best from Silver Spring, MA.
Although Drupal Gardens isn’t the first hosted Drupal site (RIP, Bryght), maybe it and Ver. 7 shows that Drupal is finally becoming as friendly to non-geeks as WordPress. Even in Ver. 6, there are just far too many exposed wires and knobs to trip up the wary. I still have some of the scars to prove it!
Hey, Adam, my former near-neighbor! By the way, we sold our condo in Rozzie – transaction went on record on Monday of this week.
Drupal Gardens is notable because it is run by the people behind Drupal itself – hence it’s the counterpart of WordPress.com. As I hinted, I’m considering a follow-up post about the osrganizations behind Drupal and WordPress.
Andrew, still subscribed to universalhub.com, months after leaving Boston.
I quite like being bi-platformed with a blog on WordPress.com (Psonar) and a broader content site/community (CandidCapital) on an increasingly elderly Drupal 5 (obviously not Gardens). I do like the flexibility of Drupal, but WordPress’s ease of use is admirable.
Yes, I noticed that the Psonar blog is, like this blog, on WordPress.com.
I quite like being bi-platformed with a blog on WordPress.com (Psonar) and a broader content site/community (CandidCapital) on an increasingly elderly Drupal 5 (obviously not Gardens). I do like the flexibility of Drupal, but WordPress’s ease of use is admirable.
Graat post…
Drupal Themes
How they two compare to Movable Type?
Good question, deserving of its own post. I’ll try to get to it in the next hour or so…
I am trying to start a blogging website, and I need help to choose one. I need to have individual sites like site1.abc.com , site2.abc.com , etc, and site1 is of user1 and site2 is of user2. How to implement this?
In Drupal, the working is like- one blog with many users , but in WordPress ms or mu, the concept is individual blog for individual user.
This is what i understood researching the internet. Everyone says it is better to use Drupal, but will I get the functionality I mentioned above,?
Also, many people say that, it takes too much time to load a Drupal based site. Is it so. How to makke it load fastet?
Drupal does support multiple subdomains on a single installation, so you could do site1, site2, etc., but, yes, it would be easier to have a single site where it’s domain.com/user1, domain.com/user2, etc.
But if all you want to do is have individual blogs, WordPress would probably be better – there’s a much lower learning curve. Drupal’s really good for more advanced “community” stuff (not that you can’t do amazing things with WordPress).
Right out of the box, Drupal might be a bit slow, but there are ways to speed it up (start by turning caching on, which involves some checkboxes, nothing complicated).
http://www.drupalgardens.com/ will let you play with Drupal.
Actually, I have a blogging website based on Drupal. But it is haveing blogs like http://www.abc.com/content/site1 or http://www.abc.com/content/site2 , etc.
I wish to change it to the one with subdomains, but was unsuccessful…..
how to change it to subdomains, and to make it to load faster.
Adam,
Thanks for answering the question so quickly. You have a lot more Drupal experience than I do. I do have a Drupal Gardens site, and agree that it provides a friendly introduction.
I’ve had great luck with WordPress for myself and for clients but I’m always looking out for development of better products for my clients. I’m developing some web apps and wondering if handling the admin back-end system and the user control panel and integrating with my main PHP component might be easier with Drupal.
Jared,
Thanks for visiting, and for leaving the comment. My own Drupal knowledge isn’t up to answering your question, though. Perhaps someone else can help?