16 ms·

Why is Drupal so popular?

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
zdw 12y ago
It's quite a good CMS. Lots of modules that let it be easily extended. Has a cli management tool (drush) that allows for a lot of automation. Non-coders can build complex content sorting and display pages with Views, etc. It is a bit of a culture shock if you're using to spewing your PHP all over everything ala other lesser blogging tools, but once you've got your head wrapped around how it works internally, you can be very productive and do things that would be difficult/impossible in other systems with almost no code.
- pestaa 12y ago
  What a culture shock it will be once Drupal 8 comes out written on top of the Symfony framework. Hopefully the code quality coming from an average Drupal shop will increase. Now, can we fix the culture behind those other lesser blogging tools too, please?
  - notastartup 12y ago
    I wonder if Drupal will ever recover after this incident. I haven't used Drupal because the job postings usually advertise super low wages and I think I saw the code base and was totally freaked by how messy the modules and things were. I won't even consider building something with Drupal unless it was secure but I'm sure this makes sense only in hindsight.
las_cases 12y ago
I believe it is because at one point Drupal was a pretty solid foundation for a lot of project types and was greatly flexible. Right now WordPress is way more popular though.
- butterfi 12y ago
  Wordpress and Drupal have similar features, but typically WP is thought to be more of a blogging platform while Drupal has a platform for not just blogging, but online community, e-commerce, etc.
  - las_cases 12y ago
    Well, truth be told Drupal is 13 years old and WordPress 11 years old. I am sure that they both had a lot of time to add tons of features so I am thinking that the gap between them is more in theory, judging by their roots, and less in practice. I know that WordPress has for example BuddyPress for social networking / communities and a number of (free) e-commerce plugins as well.
  - ninjaplease 12y ago
    Yeah not really that much of a distinction these days. People have built just about anything on WordPress. Community & ecommerce are both covered pretty solidly by the plugin ecosystem.
    - dubcanada 12y ago
      You can build a skyscraper using a hammer, but you probably shouldn't. It's the exact same argument with WordPress and Drupal. Drupal is vastly superior for most dynamic website tasks then WordPress is. Views + content types provide that.
      - ceejayoz 12y ago
        Having recently attempted to migrate a D6 site to D7, I really can't agree. It was a nightmare.
        bluedino 12y ago
        Moving from Joomla 2 to 3 wasn't a walk in the park, either. Mostly due to modules that were installed that simply were not compatible with version 3 and didn't have replacements.
icecreampain 12y ago
Legacy. Drupal was quicker on the "different user roles CMS"-ball which left Wordpress behind. Now that Wordpress has caught up and come up with solutions to content access, I find that WP is far superior to Drupal in every way. The fact that Drupal doesn't allow classes as modules is a complete deal breaker for me - functional Drupal modules are a complete and utter mess.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

zdw 12y ago

It's quite a good CMS. Lots of modules that let it be easily extended. Has a cli management tool (drush) that allows for a lot of automation. Non-coders can build complex content sorting and display pages with Views, etc. It is a bit of a culture shock if you're using to spewing your PHP all over everything ala other lesser blogging tools, but once you've got your head wrapped around how it works internally, you can be very productive and do things that would be difficult/impossible in other systems with almost no code.

pestaa 12y ago
What a culture shock it will be once Drupal 8 comes out written on top of the Symfony framework. Hopefully the code quality coming from an average Drupal shop will increase. Now, can we fix the culture behind those other lesser blogging tools too, please?
- notastartup 12y ago
  I wonder if Drupal will ever recover after this incident. I haven't used Drupal because the job postings usually advertise super low wages and I think I saw the code base and was totally freaked by how messy the modules and things were. I won't even consider building something with Drupal unless it was secure but I'm sure this makes sense only in hindsight.

las_cases 12y ago

I believe it is because at one point Drupal was a pretty solid foundation for a lot of project types and was greatly flexible. Right now WordPress is way more popular though.

butterfi 12y ago
Wordpress and Drupal have similar features, but typically WP is thought to be more of a blogging platform while Drupal has a platform for not just blogging, but online community, e-commerce, etc.
- las_cases 12y ago
  Well, truth be told Drupal is 13 years old and WordPress 11 years old. I am sure that they both had a lot of time to add tons of features so I am thinking that the gap between them is more in theory, judging by their roots, and less in practice. I know that WordPress has for example BuddyPress for social networking / communities and a number of (free) e-commerce plugins as well.
- ninjaplease 12y ago
  Yeah not really that much of a distinction these days. People have built just about anything on WordPress. Community & ecommerce are both covered pretty solidly by the plugin ecosystem.
  - dubcanada 12y ago
    You can build a skyscraper using a hammer, but you probably shouldn't. It's the exact same argument with WordPress and Drupal. Drupal is vastly superior for most dynamic website tasks then WordPress is. Views + content types provide that.
    - ceejayoz 12y ago
      Having recently attempted to migrate a D6 site to D7, I really can't agree. It was a nightmare.
      - bluedino 12y ago
        Moving from Joomla 2 to 3 wasn't a walk in the park, either. Mostly due to modules that were installed that simply were not compatible with version 3 and didn't have replacements.

icecreampain 12y ago

Legacy. Drupal was quicker on the "different user roles CMS"-ball which left Wordpress behind. Now that Wordpress has caught up and come up with solutions to content access, I find that WP is far superior to Drupal in every way. The fact that Drupal doesn't allow classes as modules is a complete deal breaker for me - functional Drupal modules are a complete and utter mess.