Why Drupal 7 will Kick WordPress' Butt
Drupal is awesome. I've been a big fan for a couple years, now, and I'm convinced that there's nothing it can't do. It's biggest problem, however, has been the learning curve. With the latest version of Drupal 7 out on the horizon, I think we finally have a WordPress-killer, since getting a website design up and running is now just as easy as the famed blogging platform. Don't get me wrong, WordPress is great, but it has a very narrow use-case. I think with Drupal 7, we'll see many more web designers venturing into what was once Programmerland to create stunning, beautiful and versatile websites.
Drupal's other big drawback was the inability to perform out-of-the-box. Drupal's modular system makes it extremely flexible and powerful, but the bare-bones core installation just didn't do too much. Now, in Drupal 7, you can have a new website up and running immediately, without any additional modules.
I had a look at the Drupal 7 Alpha release recently and I think there's a lot to look forward to! Combined with the much-improved usability and out-of-the box performance, here are my top 5 reasons we'll see more designers jumping into Drupal 7 for their next website:
1. Theming flexibility - as in previous versions of Drupal, Drupal 7 allows for custom theming by content type, block, region or field. Every area of your site can be laid out and customized however you wish! Whereas in Wordpress, you're stuck in the same "frame" throughout your site, with little ability to customize the type of content other than custom fields.
2. Starting from scratch - Drupal 7 ships with a "naked" theme so you can start your CSS theme from scratch. Drupal 7's built-in "content construction kit" will also allow creating truly customized websites with different content types. While WordPress allows the creation of custom fields, it's much more limited than Drupal.
3. CSS-friendly code - Drupal 7 is fixing past mistakes by not outputting inline styles and correcting other validation no-nos.
4. Image styles - this is a fantastic feature which had been available in the past as an extra module which is now built-in to the core Drupal installation. You can set image styles, such as scaling, cropping or even turning your images grayscale. This is perfect for people building a portfolio website, as you can specify different image styles for thumbnails and full-view images. Just upload one image, and Drupal creates all the other images for you!
Wordpress does have an add-on module for resizing and cropping images, but only within posts. Image styles in Drupal allows you to create a completely automated process. For example, if you create a content type called "Portfolio Entry" and upload your image, image styles will create all your image sizes (and keep the original file, too) right away!
5. Better menus - While wordpress does provide the ability to program how your menus are displayed, there have been many who simply hard-code their menus into their theme. Drupal takes menu-building out of the hands of developers and hard-coders to allow true menu management. Add menu items to whichever menus through an easy to use interface, and drag around the items to create the specific menu order you prefer.
Goodbye WordPress! Hello Drupal 7!
Are you looking for something that WordPress doesn't do? Have you tried Drupal before and been frustrated? Looking forward to Drupal 7? Please tell me your thoughts in the comments below.
Comments
Excellent article no doubt. But what I would like to know is that for wordpress there are several plugins available through which we can achieve the desired functionality with minimal coding. Will the same be possible for D7, 'cause D7 has deprecated many existing features and introduced newer ones ?
And yes, with D7 Wordpress should really gear up for a tough competition.
- regards
Suman Banerjee
Drupal has plenty of modules by which you can achieve pretty much any functionality! Drupal 7 has deprecated some modules by including their functionality in core (CCK, ImageCache, etc.).
There has also been a big push to encourage module maintainers to have their projects ready for Drupal 7 the day D7 is released, and many of them have that pledge on their project page.
If you rely on a lot of contributed modules, it would probably be a good idea to wait before upgrading to D7, and make sure the modules have been updated before you do.
-Tevi
Hey Tevi,
I've been playing with Drupal 6 for over a year now.
Do you know if there will be a speed increase with Drupal 7?
Also, what about the revolving door of constant mod updates?
It drives me crazy!
-sskully
Nice post Tevi.
I am a young web designer/developer and I have created websites in both Wordpress and Drupal. With Drupal7 and Wordpress 3.0 coming out soon, I feel it is the time for me to really push deep into one or the other. With all the hype Wordpress 3.0 has been getting lately it is great to read a post about Drupal7. I think I might reconsider my direction of choice.
sskully - Drupal 7 is supposed to have some performance increase. However, Drupal 6 has plenty of performance when configured properly! In large sites on a dedicated server, you can even use , a super-fast version of Drupal for high performance. Before jumping to PressFlow, though, make sure you compress, minimize and cache CSS and JS. There are other tips and tricks, as well.
Brett - Definitely excited about WordPress 3, too! I hate choosing sides, though! I do spend more time with Drupal, but only because I think it's more versatile. I still love and continue to use WordPress.
Thanks for reading!
-Tevi
Actually comparing the two systems are like comparing apples and bananas. Wordpress is a security flawed blog software. Drupal is a CMS used for websites whit a huge amount of content, like on-line newspapers.
@Avisby - Drupal also has it's security flaws, as does every piece of software, open source or not. The trick is keeping everything up to date. The two systems definitely have different use-cases, and that's my point: Drupal will take the market that is rightfully better suited to it. People seem to use WordPress because of it's super-easy set up.
Interesting stuff, I am in fact a designer who has "tried Drupal before and been frustrated". I did some experimenting in Drupal a while back and was confused and just didn't know where to start, then looked at WordPress and it's themes and CSS-based modifications much easier for me to get a handle on.
That being said I've done several sites in WordPress, both blog-centric and not, and while it works as a content management system it's certainly less than ideal for a lot of applications. I'm definitely interested in Drupal 7 if it's going to be a more designer/developer-friendly solution.
Now that Wordpress 3.0 is out, here's my not-very revised thoughts:
Wordpress 3.0 has some great new features, including custom administrative user name (so does Drupal) and enhanced administrative interface. It FINALLY implements a better menu management system, so no more hard-coding menus! Yay! Multi-user has been merged, which is also fantastic.
One of the bigger and best new features in WordPress 3.0 is custom post types. This will finally allow you to create custom content types, such as a gallery entry, real estate listing, or product. Combines with custom taxonomies, you can develop a really rich and custom website. While all these features have been part of Drupal for years, it's great to see WordPress moving into a more flexible CMS, rather than just a blogging platform.
The caveat, however, is building custom post types and theming them will require some development, as it's not part of the UI. Blah! Once again, I feel Drupal trumps WordPress for the all-around CMS solution.
Since I don't mind getting my hands dirty with code, though, I'm definitely going to try out WordPress 3.0 and see how the process goes.
I too have been trying out WP3, and I have to say that now WP is entering into CMS space it's easier to compare the too systems and boy WP is sooooo far behind drupal. What good is the ability to create custom contents when it involves code which as we know your average WP user can't do which is why they use it and not full CMS systems.
agree fully!
Drupal is getting slower.
http://2bits.com/articles/performance-benchmarking-drupal-512-drupal-66-...
wonder if there's an update to those tests. It's about 2 years old. Also, the tests themselves weren't indicative of actual live performance - no css or js compression, even!
I think that Drupal is moving in a great direction in terms of flexibility, functionality, tighter rules for things like apis, and user experience, and the next steps will be focusing on performance and making a better-engineered system.
We have developed CMS websites and online shops in both Wordpress and Drupal. I agree that Drupal it has great features. But I need to say that most of our clients don't want a Drupal CMS because of the crappy admin. It is stupid that in the content page I don't have a simple search and I still have the stupid filters. Sadly Drupal is build buy programers with no regard for usability. With the new Drupal 7 nothing radical changed. If the Drupal community will not start to understand the need for simple, nice usable interface I feel that most of the non core users will leave for other solutions. We are also forced by the clients to move to more friendly CMS systems. It is hard for a small company to support sites in both Wordpress and Drupal. I hate that I don't have a real choice.
Daniel,
I feel your pain about the admin! Luckily, other developers have come to the rescue - development seed has a great Admin module and coupled with their own theme designed for administration (Rubik and Tao), administration is *amazing.* I've had multiple clients switch from WordPress to Drupal after I demoed it for them. Also, better search modules exist to make browsing content more efficient.
Drupal 7 really has undergone many structural and usability changes. There was a dedicated push to make D7 much more user-friendly. Give it a whirl!
In a way it's annoying to have to download so many additional modules to get something done with Drupal, but as certain modules become more and more popular, they do sometimes get rolled into the next version (cck, for example, as fields in D7)
Yes I did tried the new D7 with the Rubik theme and it is a big improvement but it is not there yet. I hate to have a strong base, but the visible part is stil bulky. I like the infinite possibilities of Drupal, but I hate that for a simple thing I need hours of coding. For example I found a plug-in called elastic theme for wordpress, that allows me to build a wordpress theme structure with a few clicks. This is just amazing, it is stuff like this that i miss in Drupal.
Drupal for me is like the Windows OS stable, feature rich, strong foundation but at the same time with thousands of options, windows buttons. Stuff that can excite a programmer geek but not an inexperienced customer. On the other side wordpress is more of an OSX, more simple, clean on the surface but with a lot of options under the hood for the programmer that wants to get his hands dirty.
I know that the admin interface can be tweaked to accomodate the customer needs but we are a small web studio and we can't afford the time to do that and the client usually can't afford to pay us for that.
There's a definite ux tradeoff of flexibility vs complexity. I like to keep both tools on my toolbox. To each his own. Thanks for posting!
I cant see anything listed there that you cant do with wordpress or any reason why drupal kicks wordpress's arse, drupal is good tho but so is wordpress.
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