Comments on: Drupal vs WordPress: Which one is right for you?

By: Lauren Bacon

Lauren Bacon — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 04:42:08 +0000

Marlene, I haven’t used Squarespace, but from what I know of it, it’s a bit different from the way we use WordPress & Drupal, because it is a) proprietary (i.e. closed-source) software, and b) a hosted application. It’s less flexible for these reasons, so while I have heard good things about Squarespace, our preference is to work with open-source software and to have the freedom to host our sites where we like.

There’s a decent comparison of the Squarespace and WordPress over here, though as it’s on the Squarespace site, it is unsurprisingly weighted in favour of Squarespace fans. :)

By: Marlene

Marlene — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 01:18:13 +0000

Hi there. What about squarespace instead of wordpress? Are you familiar with it? Pros and cons?

Thanks!

By: Lauren Bacon

Lauren Bacon — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 19:01:03 +0000

Hi Beverly — I think depending on what you mean by article submission, Drupal could definitely do the trick for you. Drupal allows you to set up different levels of site users with different levels of access/permissions, so for example if you wanted people to be able to set up a user account and submit content to you for approval, but retain editing & publishing permissions for admin users only, you could definitely do that. Drupal is quite refined in terms of the types of tasks you can allow different users to perform, so you could allow some users to create new content, others to edit existing content, and still others to publish — or you could have any combination of those permissions exist in any given user type.

Historically, Drupal hasn’t been all that strong with regard to workflow management for content, but that functionality has been evolving quickly. So if you wanted to track revisions, etc. that is something you could do with Drupal as well.

Hope that helps a bit. Let me know if you have any more specific questions and I’m happy to share more info.

By: Beverly

Beverly — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:33:49 +0000

Thank you Lauren I appreciate your suggestions and I will look around for someone who is competent in more than one CMS. I don’t think Drupal or an CMS can duplicate certain functions on my site like the appointment scheduler, it’s just important that it can be integrated I suppose.

But do you think that Drupal can help with converting my articles section into article submission capability with a backend management system? You see, I’ve seen sites who have article scripts for such a thing, but again, we are dealing with yet another type of CMS. I’m trying to avoid CMS on top of CMS, if there is such a thing.

Thanks for your help.

By: Lauren Bacon

Lauren Bacon — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 02:03:23 +0000

Hi Beverly — thanks for your comment. It’s a little hard to say whether Drupal will work for you, especially given your comment about having “all kinds of functionality”, but Drupal is definitely a robust CMS and I would suggest you contact a web developer or firm with Drupal experience, and they should be able to walk you through the capabilities of the system. From what you’ve said about wanting a member management / user login feature, I would say Drupal is far superior to WordPress for that type of thing.

In terms of converting a site to Drupal, that’s not something that most non-technical people find is within their capabilities. Drupal is a powerful system but as with most powerful systems, it requires an expert at the wheel to make sure it is set up effectively. I think at this stage you’d be best to consult with someone with whom you can discuss the current and future functionality requirements of your website, and the pros and cons of working with Drupal as your CMS.

A word to the wise: I would suggest you seek out someone who has experience with CMS’s other than Drupal, so that you can get a more objective opinion; there are plenty of Drupal evangelists out there who will tell you it can do anything you need it to, but depending on your priorities you may find that another CMS is a better fit. Look for someone who is fluent in more than one CMS so that they can advise you on the pros and cons of each.

By: Beverly

Beverly — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:58:47 +0000

Hello Lauren,
I have website that’s been around now going on 11 years with all kinds of functionality on it and I think I should probably more seriously think about Drupal to convert it to rather then Wordpress. I recently did install WP for my blog, which I added to my site, but it’s growing in it’s functionality and I intend on add more functions to the site, may have to end up adding a membership, log-in/log-out feature due to certain type of content I will be adding.

I just don’t know how to go about converting my website to a Drupal CMS. I also need to convert my articles section to a articles submission function rather then just being contect I have added over time in various categories. I manage this area through a control panel, which is whimpy and I need something more powerful and clean. I have an appointment scheduler which needs some work, but don’t know if Drupal can handle that as well. It’s time for me to clean the site up and get it under one Control Panel. Right now I have about 3 maybe for control panels I use to manage my site.

Any suggestions?

By: Lauren Bacon

Lauren Bacon — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 06:55:30 +0000

Hi Rex,

Yes, we’ve poked around in Joomla a bit, though I’ve yet to be convinced it has much to recommend it over WP & Drupal. My impressions of it (though admittedly, my experience has been quite limited) have been that it’s a bit finnicky to install & configure compared to WordPress, and it doesn’t seem to have the flexibility or feature richness of Drupal.

I’m always interested to hear what people love about their CMS of choice, though, so I’d love to hear your thoughts as well.

By: Rex

Rex — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 07:58:31 +0000

Two thumbs up.
Just wanted to ask if you guys have also looked at Joomla and what do you think of it.

By: Caroline

Caroline — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:11:57 +0000

Great article!

For creation of multiple blogs, you can also turn to WordPress Mu (which I’m told is being rolled into the regular WordPress platform soon).

At my university we customized WordPress Mu to be used as a content management system and it works beautifully–all for the cost of one programmer’s salary. A great value compared to an out-of-the-box CMS!