When comparing Drupal Vs. WordPress we find several important differences. WordPress is generally a CMS that beginners can learn quickly due to its ease of use, while Drupal is a more complicated software that requires some experience.
Choosing the right CMS for your new website is extremely important. If you’re building your first site, then you’ll probably be using a CMS to help you design and manage your site.
But for you?
Drupal and WordPress are two of the main contenders in the CMS world; together they comprise more than 60% of the market.
They each have their own dedicated online community and loyal fan base. Furthermore, both Drupal and WordPress make some of the largest websites in the world possible.
In general, WordPress is easier to learn and has a larger community, but beyond that, how do these two tools compare?
Below we will see a comparison of Drupal vs WordPress. Read on for answers to the following questions:
- Which is easier to use?
- How do you manage the content?
- Which is faster?
- Is one platform more secure than the other?
- Which CMS offers more flexibility?
Choosing between Drupal and WordPress can be a difficult decision. Hopefully, by the end of this tutorial, you’ll be ready to make the right decision for your new website.
And if you want to try them out, both can be installed with just one click on all of our plans!
Drupal vs WordPress: Which is Easier to Use?
One of the main reasons to use a CMS is to make it easier to create and manage your site. The rise of content management systems allows anyone to create an attractive and functional website without the need for technical skills.
Below, you’ll learn how easy Drupal and WordPress are to use, and which one comes out on top in our WordPress vs Drupal showdown.
Drupal
If you are using a , you can install Drupal very easily. Within the backend of your hosting environment, you will have the option to install several different CMS, including Drupal.
Drupal also has several facilities called . You can choose one of these instead of a blank Drupal installation if you know the type of website you are going to create.
Once you have installed your , you will have a variety of customization options at your disposal.
But, at this point, the learning curve begins to accelerate. Beyond very basic site customizations, most additional changes require you to know how to program in PHP, HTML, and several other languages. If you don’t know how to code, then you’ll need to bring in a developer at this point.
Even things like keeping your site up to date require technical knowledge, as you’ll need to tweak your code to make sure every element of your site is compatible with the new version.
wordpress
One of the main reasons for the wide popularity of WordPress is that it is incredibly easy to set up and use.
You can in your hosting in a matter of minutes. Most hosting environments offer a simple one-click installation that will guide you through the WordPress installation process.
Once you have WordPress up and running, you will be greeted by an intuitive dashboard.
This is your home base where you will install themes, plugins, create content and update your site.
All your theme customizations are handled from the “Appearance” tab. Also, if you want to make building your site even easier, you can always install a drag and drop page builder like Beaver Builder or Elementor.
Creating content is very easy. If you’ve ever used a simple word processor, then you’ll feel right at home.
Adding posts and pages is as simple as typing directly into the editor, dragging in images, and clicking post.
Verdict
If you want to make creating your site as easy as possible, use WordPress. Not only can you install WordPress in minutes, but the intuitive dashboard makes it easy to install themes, plugins, and create content.
With Drupal you can do a lot, assuming you know how to program. The installation process is simple. But, once you start customizing your site, you can run into trouble if you don’t have the technical skills.
Drupal vs WordPress: Manage your site
Now, your site is created, you have uploaded your content and it is published on the Internet. But, your work is not done yet.
Aside from creating your site for the first time, you’ll still need to do regular updates, fix any issues, along with things like optimizing your site for SEO.
Below we see how each platform performs.
Drupal
Keeping a Drupal site up to date can be difficult if you are not a developer. You cannot update Drupal from the user interface itself. So the task should probably be done by an experienced developer.
But, beyond the difficult upgrade process, Drupal does a good job with SEO. The CMS has been created with SEO best practices in mind, such as integrated advice. In addition, you will find a variety of extensions that can further improve your SEO, such as Yoast SEO.
The community behind Drupal is very collaborative and helpful, but it is much smaller compared to WordPress. It also seems that the community is generally full of developers, rather than first time users.
wordpress
WordPress makes it easy to update every aspect of your site. From your theme to your plugins, and even the . Everything can be done in a few clicks, all from the WordPress dashboard. It is important to keep all aspects of your site up to date, as this will help prevent any security issues.
But, beyond ensuring your site is always running the latest version, you probably have other concerns too, like traffic.
Fortunately, WordPress is pretty well optimized for SEO from the start. Additionally, you can install plugins like Yoast SEO, to take your optimization efforts even further.
Finally, whatever issues you run into, be it plugin conflicts or you want to add a certain feature to your site, you can always rely on the great WordPress community.
Verdict
Overall, WordPress makes it incredibly easy to manage and update your site. While the easy SEO integration and supportive community make it an easy decision for those building their first sites.
Drupal has great SEO capabilities and an engaged community, but the difficult upgrade process makes it very difficult for beginners to reliably upgrade their sites.
Drupal vs WordPress: Which CMS is Faster?
Having a site that loads fast is an absolute necessity both to rank high in the search engines and to delight your visitors.
You could have the most beautiful site in the world, but if it takes too long to load, your visitors won’t stick around to see it.
Below, we take a look at what each platform does to ensure maximum performance.
Drupal
Drupal can help produce fast-loading, high-performance websites. A main reason for this is that the CMS is not very resource intensive. This allows ultra-fast communication with the server and faster response speeds.
Also, this makes it better equipped to handle websites that have thousands of pages. You’ll also be able to add more extensions to further improve performance, like enabling website caching.
wordpress
One of the biggest drawbacks of WordPress is its speed. That’s not to say it can’t be fast, but many webmasters end up not optimizing their website the right way. If you know what you’re doing, or even take the time to implement WordPress performance best practices, you can end up with a very fast website.
Or if you decide to use , then your site will be super fast as it will be running on a fully optimized server environment for your site.
Essentially, WordPress can deliver incredible performance. But, if you do things like use too many plugins, have a poorly coded theme, and fail to optimize properly, loading speed and performance will suffer.
However, if you use a , choose a , and download a , you will have a very fast website.
Verdict
Drupal is probably faster out of the box; it is definitely a lighter CMS. However, setting up and configuring your site to reach its performance potential will be more difficult.
WordPress can either offer millisecond load speeds or end up taking forever to load. It all depends on the webmaster, the hosting and if you have correctly optimized your site. The good news is that even complete beginners can easily optimize their WordPress sites for better performance since usually only a few plugins need to be installed and configured.
Drupal vs WordPress: How Secure Is Your Site?
No matter what kind of site you’re creating, you want it to be secure. Now, nothing on the Internet can be 100% secure. Instead, your goal should be to try to achieve the highest level of security possible.
Below, you will learn how each platform handles security and which one is actually more secure.
Drupal
Over the years, Drupal has built a reputation for being one of the most secure content management systems available. It used to be used by and other US government websites, so you know it has high security standards (fun fact: they moved to WordPress).
Drupal has had its share of security issues in the past, mainly SQL injections, but these types of issues have been quickly fixed.
One thing is certain, Drupal takes security very seriously. Now, there are fewer sites running Drupal and it has a smaller market for themes and plugins, making it less susceptible to hacking attacks. But still, their security standards remain extremely high.
wordpress
WordPress core is very secure. However, the prevalence of third-party plugins and themes creates more security holes.
Also, since it is an extremely popular CMS, you are much more likely to be exposed to security threats. In fact, WordPress is . But don’t let that scare you.
You can overcome these security vulnerabilities. Hacker attacks often occur due to webmaster omissions or using an outdated version of a plugin, rather than vulnerabilities in the CMS itself.
With WordPress, you are dealing with a massive ecosystem of plugins and themes, so there will be a greater chance of installing a wrong plugin or theme…
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