Five Tips to choose between WordPress web design template Vs custom made Drupal web development.
And it's a tough one
Most customers don't understand the difference between WordPress and Drupal when developing websites, two of the largest cms in the world currently. Both have their strengths and weaknesses, but it's not easy to choose the right one for your business. Decision on the right tool to develop your website is about understanding your future needs, winning over your potential customers, and stand up from the competition. Both Drupal and WordPress are currently the best tools to achieve this. Yet, Drupal requires more technical experience than WordPress, and the costs associated with using these platforms vary widely. Learn more about these two platforms, how to use them, and the benefits of each.
Background
WordPress
WordPress currently powers around a third of the entire internet, and it's still growing. This powerful platform comes with thousands of customization plugins, some of which cost money, that help you grow your website in ways that suit the needs of your business.
Drupal
While Drupal only hosts around 4% of all websites, but that includes some high-profile clients including a number of esteemed universities, huge corporations and most government websites around the world e.g Harvard University, JKR Malaysia and more. You can use it to host and develop all kinds of content, including blogs, videos, social groups, and possibly online application.
Customizable
WordPress
With WordPress occupied so much of the web, it's inevitable that the chances of design from the same industry appeared similar. But it is easy to customize the design of your template using the wordpress’s setting without any technical background. As it was formerly a blogging software, most of the websites on WordPress were appeared to be just blogs with text and images. Today, it's easy to create any sort of website you need on WordPress.
Drupal
Like WordPress, Drupal comes with many customizable modules to help you create the perfect user experience. But unlike WordPress, Drupal doesn't start with a fully developed design template, it's usually designed from plain mobile responsive framework then personalised to your liking. That is why the possibility of Drupal's customization on web development is endless.
Easiness of Development
WordPress
One of the biggest benefits of using WordPress is that anyone can learn to use this platform in just a few minutes. It has an extremely easy settings with lots of design templates available for every industry. After choosing a template, you can basically start to copy/paste your content into it, upload images and create pages. Any business owners without technical knowledge can start right away by uploading their content without having to hire a professional web designer. This is why WordPress has been boosted in popularity over the past few years.
Drupal
While WordPress is great for beginners, Drupal requires some technical know-how. Even some experienced developers may have trouble using the platform for the first time. You’ll need to hire a professional website developer with Drupal experience if you plan on using this CMS, which will affect your budget for the project.
There are a number of complaints about Drupal, including that it is not exactly user-friendly or that it can impact the overall performance of your website if not properly optimized. These are some of the most common complaints users have when using Drupal.
A web developer without too much experience on Drupal could impact the overall performance of your website. An experienced web developer is required to make it user-friendly for the backend user, especially when simultaneous functionality is involved.
Budget and Cost
WordPress
While WordPress is free, the plugins and features are not. Plugins and themes could easily cost an additional sum of money if the template is not what you required. You will need to spend some time to evaluate each themes and templates carefully before purchasing. Wrong template end up costing more, as you will need to buy more plugins to fit your requirements.
Drupal
It’s easier to determine the overall cost of your website using Drupal. While using the actual platform might not cost as much as WordPress, you’ll need to pay more for a professional developer when using Drupal, with that being said, the initial cost with WordPress are much lower.
Security Updates
Both WordPress and Drupal update their codes regularly, which are great as it prevents your website from stop working or being hacked. But updating WordPress and Drupal are completely different story.
WordPress
While WordPress being a mammoth in creating website, a simple upgrade could change the layout or usability of your website. Some of these upgrades could also pose a security risk, it requires time and money to keep your website secure. Sometime, it is just easier to buy a new template and start it all over again.
Drupal
Drupal is known as one of the most secure CMS platforms around, which makes it a great choice for publications and organizations that need to keep their content secure and online 24/7.
Additional Info
Mobile Friendly
Both of them are effective in creating a mobile responsive website. As for today’s standard, developing a design without responsive framework is just a no-no, Google and other search engines also penalize any websites which are not user friendly as user-experience on mobile is an important aspect when ranking websites.
User Permissions
Drupal makes it easy to assign individual user permissions to each of your team members. You can make sure each user are capable of doing something and what they should not. This is especially useful when you have a team of each who has different roles on your website. By default, WordPress comes with 5 roles and you will need to install additional plugin for the same features as what Drupal is capable for.
Migration to one another
It's easier to migrate from Drupal to WordPress, as there's available modules for this. WordPress plugin to migrate to Drupal is not clear however, at the time of writing.
Resource / Server Requirement
Drupal as what it is capable of, required greater resources to run perfectly. The web developer is required to, at least know-how on caching and optimizations on the server, or a greater server is needed in order to run smoothly. Although quite unlikely, similar problems could also happened to WordPress, especially WordPress sites with a lot of plugins, or ill-written plugins which are not recommended.
Conclusion
Clear Understanding of what you want is crucial. WordPress cost you mainly on service fee and plugin. The more you want to customize your website on WordPress, the more it will cost. For Drupal You will need to hire a developer from the start. At the end of the day, it’s all comes down to how much is your budget and what is expected of your website.
For a simple blog/ website as fast as possible, go with WordPress. For complicated website or a future expansion is in mind, hire a web developer with experience in Drupal.