Although I have worked with Wordpress a number of times over the years, I have never used it for my own websites. It’s time, though, for my personal blog to make the switch from Drupal to Wordpress.
I am really a designer by nature, so my expertise lies more with HTML, CSS and Photoshop – not PHP, which is the primary code for both Drupal and Wordpress. I’ve found that while Drupal is a powerful platform, it’s really more strongly geared towards the programmer and less towards the designer. Since I don’t rely on anyone else to create or maintain my websites (aside from the husband helping me on more technical issues), it’s important for me to have something that is as easy and hassle-free as possible.
Here are a few reasons why I am making the switch.
Intuitive administrative interface. I’ll admit that the current Wordpress interface is not as good as it could be (although they’ve recently been surveying Wordpress users on ways to improve the admin navigation), but for the most part it is simple and straightforward. I really appreciate the welcome screen when you log in – you can find out immediately if any comments are awaiting moderation, as well as if there is any important news from the Wordpress team. I also love the WYSIWYG editor when you are creating or editing posts or pages. It’s nice that the editor comes bundled with Wordpress, because it doesn’t with Drupal which adds another layer of complexity to that system if you really want it.
More themes to choose from. Since I am the type of designer that prefers to take a theme and essentially re-skin it (hack away at the CSS, insert my own imagery, etc.), I like to have a good number of themes to choose from. I can literally spend hours looking for a theme that has the right visual balance and layout. Drupal has a decent number of community-developed themes, but no where near as many as Wordpress. Type in “free wordpress themes” in Google and you’re easily going to be sifting through thousands of options. There are also many great themes that you can purchase that are often, but not always, higher quality than the free ones.
Plugins galore. Being able to extend Wordpress and have it do exactly what I want with minimal effort (okay sometimes it takes a lot of effort) is a huge bonus to me. Plugins that are really high quality are also usually well maintained and less likely to be abandoned by their creators. Additionally, the creators behind Wordpress develop their own high-quality plugins (Akismet, a plugin to manage spam is one example).
As much as I have enjoyed working with Drupal, and as much as I know I might stick with it if I was a programmer, I really have to switch to something that’s ultimately more user-friendly and that has more flexibility for me as a designer. I still have to troubleshoot and dig into the code, but it’s vastly more easy to figure out than Drupal. If you’re a designer or someone who isn’t as familiar with the inner-workings of blogging platforms, I’d highly recommend going with Wordpress as it is extremely easy straight “out of the box”. Of course, even easier would be to go with Wordpress.com, but that’s a whole other topic for another time.
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