While there are many blog platforms to allow people and organizations to get their point across, I will be looking at two in particular.
Wordress: WordPress was designed to allow a great deal of flexibility and ease, designed from the ground up to be highly configurable, and easy to customize. According to WordPress.com, there are over 73 Million WordPress sites. This large fanbase allows not only for enormous amounts of plugins, themes, and other customizations, but a vast knowledge base of users to point out bugs and suggest improvements.
There are some pitfalls with WordPress. Because WordPress is far and away the largest blogging platform in terms of use, it is often the target for hackers. Because of this, WordPress requires frequent updates, and these updates can break plugins, causing them to be erratic, or not work at all. By the same token, themes need to be constantly updated, to reflect changes in WordPress’s core code.
A typical example of what WordPress can do is illustrated on The Official Blog of the NFL http://blogs.nfl.com/ . As you can see it provides great flexibility on the content, as well as different kinds of links to social media sites.
WordPress Pros: Small learning curve, Large install base
WordPress Cons: Frequent updates, Target for hackers
Drupal: While Drupal does not have as large an install-base as WordPress, it is still a powerful Content Management System. So powerful, in fact, that The White House uses it for its website. According to http://engineindustries.com, as of 2010, there were approximately 7 Million Drupal websites.
Drupal is not as intiuitive as WordPress, and it does require some knowledge of HTML, CSS, and other coding. Drupal calls its add-ons “modules”, and these modules can be adapted and customized, provided you have knowledge of coding. Drupal has not had much exposure outside North American, and this is one of the reasons for its smaller user base. The Whitehouse.gov site shows hat Drupal can do, and is more suited for a more specialized, coded page.
Drupal Pros: Powerful, Suited for customization via code
Drupal Cons: Little exposure outside North America, Large learning curve
Comparison: Both WordPress and Drupal and free and open source Content Management Systems (CMS). WordPress is a better all-around choice, due to the flexibility it offers with its hosted version, or installable version. It is also highly configurable, with a smaller learning curve than Drupal. While WordPress provides greater flexibility and has a smaller learning curve, it’s more suited for all-around use as a personal site, or for a corporate site, like the NFL.
Drupal is for users and organizations which require more customization, and are more accustomed to performing back-end customization via coding.
In order to truly compare different blogging platforms, it’s necessary to see both the front end (visual appearance) and back end (administrative interface). One site that allows you to do this is Open Source CMS