To WordPress Or Not To WordPress

Here’s my R&D findings with my 3-day experience with WordPress. (And by 3 days I probably mean ~4 hours per day 😛 )

Basicall, WP is more user-friendly (e.g. the admin interface which is much more intuitive). It revolves around posts, pages, comments, links, categories and tags while Drupal has its single basic structure which is called the node.

Even the installation part is so much easier with WP.

Awesome link on how to install: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-install-wordpress-on-centos-6–2

If there’s no contributed plugin or built in function for it, that’s the only time you’ll code (obviously). I believe Drupal works in the same way but instead of plugins, they call it “modules“.

My WordPress Findings:

(1) Database

WP may be connected to 2 or more (MySQL) databases other than the default WP database. It is to be noted though that currently, the official WP distribution only supports MySQL database. =/

Example: $wpdb2 = new wpdb(‘database_user’, ‘password’, ‘database_name’, ‘localhost’);

With that, a redis instance may be used via predis client.

For example:

$redis = new PredisClient(”);

In depth example: http://phpmaster.com/an-introduction-to-redis-in-php-using-predis/

PRedis link: https://github.com/nrk/predis

(2) login/logout

Supported and customizable (it’s even “pluggable” !!! ). 🙂

Sample plugin: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/login-logout/

(3) upload/delete images

(4) upload/delete articles

Supported via add new post!

(5) supports multiple users AND roles 

This is supported. You can create and assign role of a user in the “Users” menu on the left sidebar. It’s very easy to use. Basically, the roles are: Super Admin, Administrator, Editor, Author, Contributor and Subscriber.

Here are the complete Roles and Capabilities that WP supports: http://codex.wordpress.org/Roles_and_Capabilities

(6) Forms 

You can use forms on top of the “post”. Meaning, you can easily add a “form” within the post. This means that you have to build your “form” first using textboxes, input boxes etc. 

Recommended plugin alert! I’ve tried WordPress Form Manager and it’s very easy to use. It’s like creating a form using a form. No need to code. 🙂

(7) display layout

Drupal offers much flexibility with templates. They call it “blocks” and it can be positioned anywhere on the page. Meanwhile, I did have problems WordPress because their “widgets” must be placed into specific areas (the sidebars).

– customizable via theme or even in the “Appearance” menu 

-Widget display below the post (not supported out of the box) 

-theme/files must be edited. See this: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/want-to-create-widget-below-content-area-also-spans-below-sidebsr

(8) Categories

WP offers easier list of categories and a post must be associated with a “category”. Drupal offers the same but their taxonomies are more complicated.

My two cents! (Not that anyone wants to read…I’ll write them down anyway)

Overall, the basic specs functions of Drupal are also supported by WP. WP is even easier to use. Even a non-programmer may easily customize it (assuming the specs are relatively easy). Drupal may be more difficult to understand but it’s more flexible in terms of just about everything. I believe that if a project will just do the basic uploading/posting/viewing, WP is the better tool because of simplicity. On the other hand, if a project’s scope is quite huge Drupal’s CMS features and flexibility will be a big help.

End 🙂