WordPress vs Drupal - what is better to choose?

Most modern websites operate using content management systems (CMS). The most popular of them are WordPress and Drupal. These platforms offer many settings and additional functions that allow you to change the structure of the site without writing a special code. But which is better for creating a new site?

What do WordPress and Drupal have in common?

All these CMS are freely distributed and are open source, which means, if you have the necessary skills, they can be edited. Evaluate the site's capabilities, the tools required to develop its functionality, and your skills to make a choice in favor of a particular CMS.

What are the commonalities for WordPress and Drupal?

• These platforms are created in PHP.
• All of them allow you to use MySQL as an built-in database management system. In addition to MySQL Drupal can work with other databases.
• For each of the platforms technical support is available — official communities, developers’ blogs and forums on this CMS.
• These CMS apply templates to display sites, as well as modules or plug-ins to increase functionality.
• Each platform has many additional tools to add unique features to the site.

Although there are many similarities between the two CMS, in some aspects they differ. These differences can have a decisive impact on a user's choice to apply WordPress or Drupal on their own site.

WordPress vs Drupal — compare the differences

WordPress is the most popular content management system. Even a beginner can use it. Today almost half of all sites created on a CMS are on this platform.

The second most popular CMS is Drupal. This is one of the most powerful and widely available open source CMS, but you need certain technical skills for operating it.

• Appearance and design of the site, from a calling card to an online store

Both of the platforms allow users to change the visual display of the site using templates. The design of the new site can be transformed in a couple of clicks, but for an existing project you will have to check each page and possibly edit the content with a new template to crop a picture and format the text.

• Free and paid WP templates

WordPress contains pre-installed themes from the developers of the system. If desired, in the admin panel, you can select the item "Add new" in the menu "Appearance > Themes" and activate the template you liked from the official report.

In addition to free themes, users are given a wide choice of premium themes from third-party developers. For example, on the online platform Themeforest.net there are twice as many themes as in the official WordPress directory.

• Free and paid templates Drupal

The official Drupal repository contains nearly 2,500 ready-made templates, which can be sorted by the status of development and tracked by their versions. Nevertheless, when searching for the theme you want, you will have to rely on a textual description of the functionality of the template and check the design when installing the theme.

Due to the lower popularity and increased complexity of Drupal, the number of paid themes for this platform is small, on themeforest.net there are about 500 templates.

• Site design on WordPress vs Drupal

All things considered, CMS WordPress offers the most free themes and a huge number of paid templates that can be adapted to any subject of the site. A convenient and visual representation of the design plus demos for previewing themes make this CMS the leader in the visual design of Internet sites.

• Additional functionality — SEO, forms, site functionality

WordPress is equipped with a much larger number of plug-ins and templates than any other platform. The official catalog alone offers about 50,000 plug-ins, which allow you to create resources from a simple blog to a large portal. Thanks to the wide popularity of WordPress, its developers are creating free or inexpensive new extensions that will help equip a theme-based site, SEO-optimized for promotion on search engine. Premium versions of plug-ins are also available, which will allow you to apply for support to developers and get additional features to customize the site functionality (i.e. the basic functionality of the plug-in is available for free, and additional functions are available in the paid version).

Drupal has a similar difficulty with installing templates and modules. The webmaster should find the necessary add-ons on a third-party site, and then set their address in the "Modules" or "Themes" section to activate. Drupal is easily configurable with the help of a lot of available modules - on the official site there are about 37,000. It is possible to directly edit files in the website footer, which is convenient for those users who make significant changes in the structure of the site due to its development.

Sites on Drupal, generally, are characterized by improved productivity — the site load speed faster and have a shorter response time than resources developed on WordPress and Joomla. Part of this is due to the fact that this CMS does not require significant resources, an expensive server or hosting. Keep in mind, as with all platforms, installing a large number of third-party modules can reduce the speed of the site.

The use of plug-ins and modules makes it possible for any CMS to make sites on almost any subject from landings and business cards to large portals and online stores. In the case of using WordPress, you can find a suitable template for any purpose. For a website on Drupal it is necessary to tinker with the settings — this platform is more suitable for advanced users.

• Communities and useful information

Accessible technical support is necessary for beginners in site building, because when creating a new site, there are usually various questions. Both platforms provide useful information on the installation and management of sites.

If there are problems with the site on WordPress, it's easy to connect to a community of millions of developers and experienced users who already use and develop this system. Help can be found in official WordPress documents, codes, reference books, blogs and any forum on site building and web design.

Drupal is characterized by a very active user community and provides extensive documentation, news and updates, support forums and chat rooms, where you can find answers to fairly complex questions.

• Best localization and translation

A significant number of websites that are created every day are multilingual or written in a language other than English. Both platforms support the development of multilingual sites and allow you to configure in different languages.

WordPress provides more than 50 languages ​​in the admin panel. New languages ​​are installed in one click. This platform does not support multilingual sites by itself, but you can connect special plug-ins that allow them to be created. The most popular templates and plug-ins are also available in several languages. Their developers actively respond to the call for help for translation into other languages: if you made such a translation, you can offer it to the developer and get a discount on this product.

Drupal is equipped with built-in capabilities for processing multilingual websites. You will need to add modules to select the local content language. The languages ​​of the admin interface are configured in the configuration section.

• What is the difference between the security of sites on these platforms?

Pay attention to such important factors as security when choosing a platform for website development. Almost any Internet resource is vulnerable to hacker attacks. WordPress portals are often hacked, due to the prevalence of this platform in the world. However, the WordPress community quickly finds possible vulnerabilities in the system. Sites are updated when a new patch appears, and they are additionally protected by two-factor authentication and other advanced methods. The mechanism for displaying updates in the admin panel allows users to monitor security and respond in a timely manner to any problems.

Drupal practices a serious approach to securing sites. The development team publishes vulnerabilities on the official site as they are discovered and corrected. There is an observation that Drupal is the most secure in comparison with other platforms, however this may be due to the fact that the platform is not as widely used as WordPress.

• Installing the CMS on the server

All platforms are easy to install and compatible with most hosters. Many hosting service providers provide a fully automated installation of any of the two platforms in one click. The archive with the installation distribution of WordPress or Drupal for manual installation can also be downloaded from the official sites of these CMS, and the installation takes 5-15 minutes.

Install Wordpress

The distribution with WordPress needs to be unpacked and connected to the database. Then all the files using the file manager must be transferred to the root folder of the site. The installation is started by the command from the address bar of the browser. The whole process takes about 5 minutes.

We offer hosting for WordPress with automatic installation of CMS in 1 click.

Installation Drupal

Drupal allows you to specify non-standard database settings. Installation files are also downloaded from the official site and unpacked to the server in the site directory. After connecting the database, the installation is performed from the browser window to the website address and takes about 10 minutes.

We offer hosting for Drupal with automatic installation of CMS in 1 click.

Which platforms (WordPress or Drupal) to choose?

WordPress is the best choice for beginners due to the ease of use of this platform. It is well suited for small and medium-sized websites, blogs and simple business cards. Drupal is the most complex, but also the most powerful CMS. Its use requires a good understanding of HTML, CSS and PHP, so this system is best for professionals.

If you want to quickly start working on a simple website or blog, choose WordPress. If you know that the resource will develop and require significant modifications or writing add-ons from scratch, look to Drupal.

A comparison of the basic parameters for the two most famous content management systems is shown in the table — WordPress vs Drupal.

As you can see, all CMS’s have their own strengths and shortcomings. This comparison will help you to find out the best CMS for your site. Choosing the best platform and the right hosting provider you will ensure a good online presence. Have not you made your choice yet? We are here to help you make the right decision!