Content on Drupal and Wordpress

Before I found myself in marketing, I was a journalist. I have written many blogs and other journalistic articles in my career. Practically all of them were written either on Drupal or in Wordpress. Ok, there were exceptions, when I was writing for the newspaper, but we are talking here about writing for digital platforms. When I stopped being a journalist, I found my way in content marketing, where my focus is still on blogs. Therefore, I will compare Drupal and Wordpress regarding content.

There are a lot of different journalistic texts, but sharing and displaying content is nowadays usually connected with blogging. With all the modern technology, where practically everybody can let their opinion know, blogging has spread rapidly over the last decade. However, not every blogger uses the same content management system. I used Wordpress and Drupal (there are of course others), so I will compare the two of them.

 

wordpress vs drupal

 

Both are free and both have a large community support. Everything begins with the installation, so in this case Wordpress is easier to install (it takes you about 5 minutes). After installation you will probably want to choose your blog design, which is fun. On both content management systems you can do that on your own with the variety of themes and colours, so there are no big differences here.

Media library

The first big difference appears, when you start writing. Besides all tools that even some other pages, which allow you to write different posts, have (inserting link, bold, inserting bulleted list, headlines …) one catches your eye immediately. It's media. In Wordpress you can upload multiple media files. Besides pictures, you can also upload video files, audio files and documents. When you, for example, upload an image, you can automatically choose the layout and size of the picture (small, medium, large, original). Furthermore, Wordpress media library allows displaying and selecting from a list of previously-uploaded media files in to contrast to Drupal, where only pictures are listed in a simple table, exposing their raw file names with no visual representation of what they look like. The only possible solution is then to upload a new image.

 

Media library

Therefore, Drupal media experience is poor. It's true that there are a lot of media plugins that can help you (one is solving right the above problem), but to be fair, you have to know that they exist and most of the people that are not web developers just swing with their hands and say: »Too complicated. I will not bother myself with that. « But they should. Both Wordpress and Drupal have a lot of plugins, which can make your life easier. Wordpress has more of them, but some have to be bought in contrast to Drupal, where all plugins are free.

Plugins, tags and security

Drupal was built by developers for developers, so it, in contrast to Wordpress, easily integrates with other technologies. In Drupal you need a plugin for categorizing your blog post and you don't need it for code snippet. In addition, tags are also one of the great advantages of Drupal. They are not just for quickly telling readers, what your blog is about, but can help getting your content explored. Wordpress has only tags for searching on your website (plugin is needed for more). On the other hand Drupal has tags, which help you get discovered on web search engines as well. Although, it is true that not every tag written in Drupal is supported by every other web search engine, but there is no doubt that your content will get explored more often. After all, what is great content worth without being read, right?

 

Drupal tags

Drupal is also more secure. I will not get in to more details, regarding the name of the company and date, I will just say that our content was once attacked on Wordpress. I thought it may be an exception, but I read the opinions of many Wordpress users, who had the same bad experience. Moreover, Wordpress plugin viruses are also ones to be watched, especially because they can wipe your precious content. However, with constantly updating both your content management systems many security issues are long forgotten.

It's up to you

So, if you would like to begin publising content, I recommend Wordpress for a start. It's easier to install, easier to start using and you can quickly learn practically all of its features. However, when you'll get used to it, you will use it for some time, but then you will start wondering about improvements and other possibilities. I did the same and discovered Drupal, which widened my horizon, especially with options that help getting your content explored. You will then probably start exploring plugins and see which features you have and which you don't. If you are not too ambitious you will stay with Wordpress, otherwise you will probably switch to Drupal. But hey, who I am to judge that. It's up to everyone to decide by themselves. There's no general consensus what is better and probably never will be.