Drupal is from Mars, Wordpress is from Venus: Finding your library's CMS soulmate

Drupal is from Mars, WordPress is from Venus: Finding your library’s CMS Soulmate
Connecticut Library Association
May 3, 2011
Sharon Clapp
Polly-Alida Farrington

Overview

What We Hope to Cover
What a web content management system is (& why your library can’t live without it)
What open source software is (& why it’s best)
Comparison of Wordpress & Drupal
Currently, the 2 most popular open-source web CMS’
Help in making decisions about which to choose

Content Management System
http://www.flickr.com/photos/atibens/4578260998/

Content Management System
A web content management system (WCMS) is a software system that provides website authoring, collaboration, and administration tools designed to allow users with little knowledge of web programming languages or markup languages to create and manage website content with relative ease. A robust WCMS provides the foundation for collaboration, offering users the ability to manage documents and output for multiple author editing and participation.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_content_management_system

www.flickr.com/photos/subcircle/500995147/
Open Source is Unlocked

www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/170691672
Open Source is Community

Some WordPress Examples

Some Drupal Examples

WhiteHouse.Gov

A quick look inside WordPress

A quick look inside Drupal

Drupal Gardens Example: D7

Running Drupal & WordPress

“Out of the box” Hosted Versions
Drupal
DrupalGardens.com
WordPress
WordPress.com
EduBlogs.org

On your own in-house server
Drupal
LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) "stack“ preferred
WAMP (Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack ok, not great
WIMP (Windows, IIS, MySQL, PHP) doable, but a lot of extra work
WordPress
LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack preferred
WAMP (Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP) ok
WIMP doable, not ideal

Commercial Hosting
Drupal
Available on many general shared commercial hosts, if using lots of modules (=memory), can run into problems
Best solution = find a good "Drupal-friendly" host or a "Virtual private server"
try Acquia, Hot Drupal, ANHosting, check Drupal.org forums)
WordPress
Available on many shared hosts
Library-specific: LISHost

Sandbox Site
Drupal
A good idea for Drupal learning/training, testing modules, etc.
Easiest to run "local stack" on your own computer
Download DAMP stack installer (Drupal, Apache, MySQL, PHP) from Acquia - Win/Mac/Linux OS
WebEnabled.com
WordPress
Usually not needed
WebEnabled.com – free test site for 1 month

Compare: Themes

Themes in WordPress

Themes in Drupal: http://drupal.org/project/themes

Base Theme: Superstars = Zen, Fusion, AdaptiveThemes, 960

Comparing Features

Out of the box easy?
Drupal
No
Exceptions: Drupal Gardens.com, "Drupal distributions" like OpenPublic
WordPress
Very easy
Installs with some sample content to help novice get started.

Community & Getting Help
Drupal
Community - Excellent
Getting Help - Good
WordPress
Community – Excellent
Getting Help - Good

Size & Scope of Site
Drupal
Can run very large & complex sites
WordPress
Easy to run small to medium sized sites

Accessibility (Section 508-compliantHandicapped accessible)
Drupal
Good - depending on modules, themes & how you add content
WordPress
Depends on modules, themes & how you add content
Admin interface – plugins to make it accessible.

Mobile Friendly
Drupal
Excellent
WordPress
Excellent
Requires Plugins
Examples
WP Touch
Mobile Press

Extensible? Integration with other systems?
Drupal
Unlimited extensibility
Excellent integration with other systems
WordPress
Extensible with plugins
Not as easy to integrate with other systems

Comments
Drupal
Excellent
WordPress
Flexible control
Spam filtering
Blocking by IP, email, language, etc.

Events Calendars
Drupal
Lots of options
Date module
GCal Events / Agenda modules
Evanced integration module
Ubercart integration
Whole conference website distribution (COD)
WordPress
Not included in core
Many options via plugins
The Events Calendar (free)
Event Espresso (free & fee)

Web Forms
Drupal
Webforms = any type of form you want to do
WordPress
Can construct basic HTML forms
Better support via plugins
Contact Forms 7 (Free)
Gravity Forms (Fee)

Slideshows, Images, Galleries
Drupal
Many, many options
jQuery is part of Drupal
WordPress
Core support is ok
Plugins provide many options

Compare: Building Navigation

WordPress: Custom Menus in 3.0

http://www.mobiledrupal.com/content/overview-mobile-modules-drupal

Drupal: Navigation by Menus

Drupal: Navigation by Taxonomy (Categories)

Compare: Custom Content Types

Drupal - Custom Content Types
1 of the most important & powerful concepts that was developed by the Drupal community
CCK contributed module = “Content Construction Kit”
Became part of Drupal 7’s “core” functionality (as “fields)
Many things we put on the web aren’t “pages” as much as they are listings of information
If we could take that information apart, then we could reassemble it and combine it with other information more easily
Like giving webmasters Lego blocks

Example: Staff Directory
1 big list = 1 new or retired employee, you have to retype the whole list (web equivalent = 1 web page)
1 entry for each staff member means that all you have to do is add a record or delete one (Drupal equivalent = custom content type “staffmember”)
The list is dynamically assembled (in Drupal, the Views contrib module allows you to display information however you want)
Custom Content Types can have different characteristics, different categories applied to them (taxonomies in Drupal)
Staff members can have departmental category terms applied to them, for example

Compare: Managing User Roles

WordPress – Core & Plugin
Core Support
Support for multiple roles
Admin, Editors, Authors & Contributors
Adequate for many sites
Role Scoper (Free)
http://goo.gl/nmlrm
Control individual user access
Create & control groups of user
Highly granular permissions

Drupal– Core
Core
Create whatever roles you want
Allow roles to do various functions (very granular)
Assign users to roles
Add-on modules:
Control access to subsections of site via content classification or individual nodes
Get even more sophisticated & granular for collaborative teams, publishing workflows, etc.

Picking the right tool for the job!
flickr.com/photos/robinson-rhora/

Thank you!
polly@pafa.net
Sharon.clapp@ct.gov

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Drupal is from Mars, Wordpress is from Venus: Finding your library's CMS soulmate

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Drupal is from Mars, Wordpress is from Venus: Finding your library’s CMS soulmate — Presentation Transcript