My Thinking
Wow, I’m getting most of my search engine traffic from the keyword “WordPress vs. Drupal” so I feel compelled to provide something more compelling than my Legos vs. Duplo analogy.
I’ve delivered many Drupal CMS training sessions the last two years for non-technical client admins. Most people agree that WordPress is simpler and some argue that it is easier to use. The beauty of Drupal is you can make it what need it to be, which means you can also make it easy for clients to manage. My advice for agencies is to consider the admin user — not just the front end user — and take the time to finish the backend. Here are a few recommendations:
- If you’re on Drupal 6, install Quickbar and create an admin menu with only the items a client needs. They don’t need the classic Drupal 6 black toolbar with millions of options. (I hear Drupal 7 improves this a lot.)
- Move Blocks, Taxonomy, Nodequeues and possible Views under Content. To a client, they’re all related to managing content.
- Train your client with real examples and make them click and type. (too obvious?)
- Show your client things in Drupal they won’t, or shouldn’t ever, touch, like how to configure a complex View. It’ll help them better understand the concepts of nodes, nodequeues, taxonomy, filters, styles and more.
- Dumb it down. I tell clients that a Nodequeue is needed “when alphabetical or chronological order isn’t enough.” Makes sense, right?
My only complaint is that I wish it were easier to apply or clone styles on Blocks and Views in Drupal. Let me upload my own CSS like I can in WordPress, or at least clone the style when I clone the View.
WordPress is simple, yes, but the power of Drupal is in its granularity and raw form. I suppose that’s why I prefer Drupal…it’s more complicated, but it’s more powerful and flexible too.
