The Frame Room

Content Management System or extended blogging software? What do you use for your photoblog or imaging application? As I’ve been working with typical examples of both recently in the form of Drupal and Wordpress, I’ll list the pros and cons as I see them.

Themes – Drupal has the edge on configurability and control with the block and authorisation systems. The Wordpress widget system is currently nowhere near. Wordpress does however seem to have the edge on choice of themes and aesthetics, particularly if you are going for a relative simple blog look.

Functionality – Drupal is a mature CMS and really has the edge with the number and range of modules available. It is easy to configure for multi-functionality, for example a combined blog/gallery/e-commerce/reviews/weblink site is perfectly possible. Wordpress is catching up in this area, but tends to have a lot of similar plugins targeted towards aspects of the core blogging function rather than the wide range of functions offered by Drupal. When it comes to blogging, Drupal does have a built-in basic blog module, however, as you would expect, Wordpress rules supreme in this area.

Content creation – Wordpress beats Drupal hands down here. Due to its evolution from basic blogging, posting, even straight out the box is very good and very easy. There is for example a standard option to post content directly from email. The editor and particularly image handling for posts and pages is streets ahead of Drupal’s clunky node system. Drupal can be made much slicker using add-on editors and field/image/gallery modules, but it really should not be this hard. On the up side, once you have taken the time to sort Drupal out, there is very fine control over what you can do, and display is very manageable using CCK and the Views modules.

Which one to use? It comes down to horses for courses, there is no clear winner. If you need a sophisticated system that is capable of developing in almost any direction go for Drupal if you are prepared to do the work. When you need to get something going quickly, or just need a relative simple but good-looking configuration, Wordpress would be my choice.