Wordpress or Drupal?

Question

I am planning to build a training site which will accommodate multiple users. It will also have lots of custom pages with videos in them. Which CMS/CMF is better suited for this project? Please advise..

Answer 1

I prefer WordPress because of its extensibility and easy install and modifications.

Version 2.0 has introduced a bunch of features (like custom post types) that makes using it as a CMS easy.

Answer 2

Wordpress is mostly use for blogging and Drupal is used for creating websites. YOu should consider using drupal for that ;)

Answer 3

Wordpress is designed from the ground up to be a blog, but also to be modular. Drupal is designed to be a complete CMS out of the box, but there are also extensions for Drupal too. Both are CMS systems, but again, Wordpress is really designed to be a blogging platform. Also, Drupal is a little more complicated at first and has a higher learning curve.

However, you can do what you are trying to do with either one. In addition to out of the box functionality, you can customize both Drupal or Wordpress. People tend to specialize in one or the other, and the choice comes down to personal preference (people make a living off of being Drupal or Wordpress developers, that's what's great about open source!). Once you become proficient in PHP and the CMS platform of choice, you can build your own extensions/modules and have a very custom website, but I would minimize customization to only what you absolutely need. If you are creative in using the framework and freely available modules, you may not need to write any code.

Lastly, Drupal is getting a complete re-write with version 7, which people have been waiting a long time for! If you want to get into Drupal, you may want to look into the newest version.

Edit: Personally, I prefer Wordpress, I think the admin section looks great, gives you a lot of control, but without being overwhelming (however, my opinion doesn't really matter). I really think Wordpress has a lower learning curve. I'm also pretty sure, although you haven't given many details, but if you are planning on having simple pages with videos on them, and want access to those pages to be restricted only to authenticated users, I'm pretty sure you can do that without any custom PHP coding, just some HTML.

Here's a couple helpful links for Wordpress:

• Restrict Page View to Authenticated Users
• Setting your Posts or Entire Blog to Private

It can be confusing trying to decide which CMS to dive into; I hope that helps a little!

Answer 4

With the new release of WordPress 3.0, I would have to say WP. Many useful updates just came around the bend (menu system et al) that make it even easier to create a "site" out of a WP installation instead of just a "blog".

Drupal is extremely powerful and accommodating to the time-allowed developer, but falls short on the ease-of-use-side of things (at least from my experiences.

In short, if you're looking to make a site that's easy to install, update, and maintain - especially for posting media, go with WordPress.

Hope that helps.

Answer 5

Read both JohnB's and Lance May's answers. The choice is quite tricky so the only way you can make a good decision is to do your own feature comparison/score matrix.

List all the features that you need and assign importance score to them - then objectively go through both systems (or ask again on so) to get their scores.

This will also help you if you have to justify your decision later.

In the end both are good, both have quirks and both will get the job done.

Answer 6

WordPress is just easy to understand, for both the developer and the content editors.

WordPress is best suited for sites with:

1) Typical CMS needs - Pages, Posts, Menus - I would also include embedded videos in this list

2) Low to Moderate Traffic Loads - I know there are sites like Smashing Magazine that user WordPress under high-load, but I am sure there is some custom code added to introduce a better caching architecture and multiple servers

3) Hand off to Client for Content Editing - In my opinion, the best feature of WP is the admin user interface. The sleek visual design, smart use of ajax controls, and the simple layout makes it possible to hand off content editing to "non-technical" people

When I start a WP site, I create a new theme with two files, index.php and styles.css. Then I build my own, custom theme, that is uniquely designed for my project. Examples of my work are http://perqworks.com, http://janemonheitonline.com and http://generalordersno9.com. As you can see, these are not blogs, but CMS sites. I agree, WP was a blog platform, but it has proven itself as a CMS-lite application.

Answer 7

You may be lured to WP immediately from how quick it is to get started. But in the long term, do yourself a favor and use Drupal. It's a proven CMS framework and less prone to security issues from contributed modules. I can count on two hands how many times a WP plugin has bit me in the ass, even highly rated ones. It has very granular security also, so you know exactly what your users can and cannot do.

I've used both and Drupal is just easier to extend and configure. I don't get why people think it has a huge learning curve.

Answer 8

The answer is Drupal.

I've been running various websites, and few years ago I decided to use Drupal as my mine CMS engine I never looked back.

I used Joomla, phpNuke, Mambo and WordPress before and nothing is as flexible, as maintainable as Drupal.

My biggest website – www.mugen.pl has 14853 registered users so I can confirm Drupal is just perfect for big, heavily used web portals.

Drupal has few wonderful 'social-networking' modules I make an excellent use of to make sure my users are keen to stay on the website, sneak preview: (sorry, I've got only screenshots in Polish):

Unfortunately for Drupal, sometimes it takes a while to understand this system. Some theming stuff is not that obvious at first, but the online community is huge and always helpful.

Additionally, Drupal has excellent support for SEO. It’s built-in “path” module allows to set custom URLs for every item on the page, and other available modules (i.e. Nodewords) allow to set custom meta data for every subpage.

When you decided to go with Drupal, you should have a look at the following modules:

• Content Construction Kit - http://drupal.org/project/cck
• Views - http://drupal.org/project/views
• Custom breadcrumbs - http://drupal.org/project/custom_breadcrumbs
• Last Node - http://drupal.org/project/last_node
• Nodewords - http://drupal.org/project/nodewords
• Fivestar - http://drupal.org/project/fivestar

Go with Drupal ;-)

Answer 9

I also think a big deal breaker is the end user experience - WordPress makes it just so damn easy to manage your website, all whilst looking (in my opinion) rather beautiful at the same time.

Every client I've handed a WP site to has been impressed with it's simplicity - as the iPad put it;

You already know how to use it!

Answer 10

I prefer Drupal over Wordpress . Drupal is made for flexibility . But you must know how to do it , ie all . You may need some time to read how to do with that module x and how to with module Y . But once you have learned you will be comfortable to do any site.

The main advantage of Drupal is CCK and Views . Wordpress 3 have come with CCK , but Drupal has it from version 5. Now we are moving to 7, and it still misses Views :) . Yes ofcourse wordpress is a wonderful tool for blogging with ease. But when talking other than blog, you may want to opt for Drupal . Once you have learned how to do with drupal , you will never say wordpress .

If some one is against Drupal then he may have not used or learned it to the extent :) . So my suggestion for you to checkout Drupal 6 for now , as Drupal 7 is still in alpha for the present time.