When it comes to CMS, there are two names that stand out: WordPress vs. Drupal. It is common knowledge that WordPress is easier to use and more popular as compared to Drupal. Is this the only difference between two? Well, no. Drupal, despite having a smaller yet quickly growing community holds many advantages than WordPress. Today, in this discussion you will get to know why Drupal is better than WordPress and why it is our favorite!
But, before diving into the discussion, let us discuss what actually a CMS is and what’s new in Drupal.
A CMS (Content Management System) consists of three parts: the content, creative design, and technical design. All these parts are independent of each other, thus, any change in one part does not affect the others. The content part includes writing, editing, and some HTML and PHP code. The creative design part includes the layout of the pages, the site design etc. The technical design constitutes the database of the CMS and some custom programming. The CMS creates all necessary code to produce the web pages that access the content and deliver it with our design.
Drupal is a CMS which is used to organize, present, and update a website. It is an application framework which can build other apps. It is powerful, flexible, extensible, reliable, configurable, stable and secure. It is what every content manager, content creator, business, and site developer needs. Drupal is developed and maintained by one of the largest open source communities in the world. It is the power to connect with our target audience and build a community. The latest version of Drupal: Drupal 8 (D8) is reaching heights with better features such as better user-friendliness, better content presentation, multilingual capabilities and mobile responsiveness. It is benefiting users, marketers, and developers. Drupal is driving many business organizations and their brands worldwide. Thus, it is a boon for everyone.
10 Advantages of Drupal over WordPress
- Drupal has a robust framework
As we said that Drupal is more than just a CMS. It offers a flexible framework that can be customized according to one’s business needs. Just like WordPress, Drupal also supports plugins which are called modules. They are available for free and provide the same functionality as WordPress plugins. But WordPress is still more of a blogging platform. Drupal, on the other hand, can support a number of pages and can handle complex projects better. Drupal gives the freedom to build any kind of digital experience.
- Drupal offers a better Security to its Users
While establishing your website security always remains the most important issue. Nobody wants to take chance when it comes to the security of the websites. Drupal 8 makes it a win-win situation as it comes with a secure environment. It uses Symfony PHP which provides a secure platform to the developers. It also has a security team to look after the vulnerabilities and provide support immediately. It is due to the high security level that sites like www.whitwhouse.gov, www.nasa.gov, www.grammy.com use Drupal.
- Drupal offers better functionality
Both WordPress and Drupal have their own APIs. WordPress is considered quite minimalistic, easy, and simple while, Drupal is considered complex. But, this complexity allows multiple functionalities. It involves learning if you want to access the best of its capabilities. One built-in capability of Drupal is the responsive design. Drupal 8 offers a responsive design which can literally fit into any screen size. All of it’s themes are responsive and fit automatically according to the device screen size. Hence, it becomes much easier for the site developers as they do not have to provide any customized code for responsive website design.
- Built-in Multilingual Capabilities of Drupal is what you need
Want to establish a multilingual site? Drupal 8, no doubt, is the best option for you. Drupal 8 supports multilingual capability which is developed and supported by Acquia, the enterprise vendor of Drupal. With Drupal 8 one can translate their site interface to almost any language. Drupal automatically detects the browser language and converts the site interface to that language. Hence, in this way, we can give amazing digital experience to our audience in their native languages. With WordPress, one can have multilingual sites but, with the help of third party plugins. Yet again, they open up security holes and affect the performance of the site.
- Drupal 8 includes advanced access control and user controls
Drupal 8 handles our needs in a better way. We can create various options for working with the users in Drupal. We can add site admins, content editors, and individualize access to pages or certain content. User roles are much advanced in Drupal 8 as compared to WordPress.
WordPress does not support user-defined rules. The rules are built-in for managing the blogs and unlike Drupal we cannot set permissions for watching certain content. However, we can use third party plugins for this. But, again, they can affect the security of the website as the WordPress code is not handled under a single repository unlike Drupal, where all code is handled under a centralized repository.
- Drupal is a boon for content creators
Drupal 8 offers great performance when it comes to loading the pages and site speed. Every business organization wants to make their website a great experience for the users. With increasing competition, demands and high-tech customers, it becomes really important to deliver more engaging content. The built-in caching capability of Drupal is thus, a plus point.
It caches all the entities and loads JavaScript only when required. Thus, content is not required to reload again and again, and page loads much quicker as compared to WordPress. WordPress again, on the other hand, uses plugins to cache pages and content. Not only this, Drupal 8 includes the big pipe feature in the core which makes loading of pages much faster. Hence, Drupal 8 enhances the user experience in a positive way.
- No hassle for non-techies as well with Drupal
You must be thinking that Drupal is not for you because you are not a techie. Well, this is not so. It is for everyone. You don’t need to know much code to create your website. The CKEditor that is already built in Drupal 8 includes the capabilities of styling, adding widgets, image captions etc. The built-in themes of Drupal 8 can be handled easily from anywhere and anytime. One can also access the drag and drop layout with Aqua Lightning.
- Drupal is Innovation meets Technology
Drupal 8 includes Twig, which is a fast, secure, and flexible template engine for PHP. Twig templates are less complex than PHP templates. Thus, it gives developers a chance to create beautiful Drupal web sites easily. Along with this, Drupal 8 can be used by large and small types of organizations. It is much scalable and helps in developing your business. The restful API of Drupal allows it to connect with other applications as well.
- The sky is the limit for developers
With some technical knowledge, Drupal can be used to create advanced websites. Drupal 8 is built on the Symfony2 Framework which is well suited for high load websites. Developers can expand the functionality of Drupal very easily. The Symfony components use PHP libraries, hence, any PHP developer can very easily understand Drupal and there is no such need of being a specialized Drupal developer for creating Drupal web sites.
- Drupal has a Massive community
The Drupal community is growing every day. The community involves various developers who constantly share experiences about Drupal. One can get solutions really easily in minutes. Hence, Drupal 8 is not a tricky task for non-developers either. The Drupal community is supporting, updating, troubleshooting, and enhancing the Drupal platform further every day. Not only this, Drupal 8 comes with a fully explained documentation. The Drupal Handbook contains all the necessary information and examples to make the users more comfortable in using Drupal.
WordPress, on the other hand, is also used by many websites and business organizations. The choice of using a CMS basically depends on one’s requirements, what the business owners expect from a CMS, what they want to deliver to their customers and how they want to deliver it. We have shared 10 amazing features of Drupal which makes it a better CMS, more than a CMS. In the end, we would like to conclude all these advantages by saying that Drupal is much SEO friendly, powerful, and massive than WordPress.
And, it is just the beginning. Drupal is yet to come up with more improvements, updates, and a great digital experience. If you are planning a business site with a large amount of content or even a small business website, Drupal can enhance the digital experience of your site users. If you are already using Drupal, how do you find it? We say it is the right time to move to Drupal. Are you ready for the change? Do share your experiences about the CMS you use.
Author Bio:
Himanshu Dixit is a Digital Marketer & dissertation help expert at Godissertationhelp. He writes for a wide variety of topics including Digital Marketing, Health, Fitness and Technology.