Drupal Vs. Wordpress: Which is the Best CMS?

Drupal Vs. Wordpress: Which is the Best CMS?

When it comes to Content Management Systems, there are two names that stand out: WordPress and Drupal. Each has its own loyal community, a long list of popular websites that they power, as well as a wide range of features and functionality.

It is common knowledge that WordPress is easy to use and extremely popular, with some 409 million users worldwide.  Drupal also has a strong community but some people argue that Drupal’s learning curve is slightly steeper.

Aside from this, what really separates the two? Here we take a look at some of the biggest factors that distinguish WordPress from Drupal.

Search Engine Optimisation

SEO is of utmost importance for the health of your website. If your site does not do well in terms of page rankings and search results, your online presence will suffer significantly.

That being said, both WordPress and Drupal are good with SEO. In all honesty, Google and other search engines do not really care which platform you are using, as long as your content is well-written and of a high quality, and that you follow the SEO norms.

However, WordPress is a good choice in terms of SEO, as WordPress users have the luxury of many amazing plugins, including All in One SEO Pack, and Yoast SEO.

By installing one of these plugins, you’ll benefit from automatically-added metadata, which is incredibly useful for busy content creators. What’s more, you can edit and optimise your images for SEO to gain maximum exposure.

While WordPress is renowned for its advanced SEO features, Drupal also comes with SEO-friendly features. These seamlessly integrate a sophisticated all-in-one suite of search engine reporting, analysis and organisational tools into your site.

Drupal also comes with clean mark-up and standards-compliant. It offers full control over URL structure and path auto, as well as page titles and meta tags. It automatically creates an XML sitemap for submission to Google webmaster tools, and there is an SEO checklist module to ensure you do not forget anything.

Security

For anything on the internet, security is a concept that has never been more important, but can never be absolutely achieved. Nothing on the internet is 100% safe or secure – not can it ever be. When running a website, your goal should be to achieve the highest levels of security possible, and with both WordPress and Drupal, this is certainly possible.

Over the years, Drupal has earned a reputation for its secure and robust performance, and for the most part, has served well in combating security issues. The fact that major websites, including The Economist and The White House, choose to rely on Drupal, is certainly a testimony to the high levels of security offered by this CMS.

WordPress is also strong in terms of security, however the platform does receive far more security threats and malware attacks than any other software. While this is certainly an issue, it is much more to do with the fact that the platform is so popular worldwide, rather than to do with any potential lack of security practices.

Despite the robust security practices of WordPress, there is less margin for error in terms of security when using Drupal when compared to WordPress, simply because there is an immense number of plugins that are readily available for WordPress, which can pose a security issue for your site.

On the other hand, since the number of plugins is smaller for Drupal, there is less window for error.

Ability to Extend and Customise

WordPress is backed by a large number of themes and plugins, including both free and premium, which you can use to extend its functionality and features. For example, you can create e-commerce stores, news sites, portfolio sites and much more, by using the right combination of themes and plugins.

Drupal is also packed full of extensions that can help you extend its functionality. However, the amount of extensions available is comparatively smaller than those available with WordPress.

What’s more, many people agree that the learning curve with Drupal is much steeper when compared with WordPress. If you are already a developer, this will not be an issue and you will have the freedom and flexibility to create a truly unique and spectacular website or e-commerce store.

Content Management and Performance

Both Drupal and WordPress can do a great deal in terms of content management and performance, while both of these CMSs offer universally-supported resources. They are both coded in PHP, and both work well on less-powerful servers. Further, if you install too many plugins, you will likely experience a slow loading website on both CMSs.

Finally, it must be said that there are far more blog posts and publications across the internet for WordPress-related content when compared with Drupal, so it is much quicker and easier to learn about different facets of the CMS.

Drupal or WordPress?

As you can see, there are plenty of benefits to both Drupal and WordPress. As such, the platform that you choose will ultimately depend on your specific needs, skills and capabilities.

At EWM, a leading web development agency in Geneva, we help businesses to establish their CMS needs. Our team will support you in updating your CMS and ensuring all code is clean and up-to-date.

For the past six years, we have demonstrated exceptional expertise and leadership in CMS, and are able to support businesses at every stage.

Contact EWM. to discuss your CMS needs.