Martin’s last blog post..Blogging impacts on formal academic output

I once had a project where our company was taking their design inspiration from a WordPress site and trying to design it in Drupal. When the deadline approached they fell back to Dreamweaver because there were 4 times as many people who could help meet the deadline using Dreamweaver.

David’s last blog post..Mists of Fog

“may be considered apples and oranges, but then again, they are both fruits.”

Then you should agree that automobile and aircraft are both vehicles ;)

Max’s last blog post..Simple Sidebar Navigation Plugin for WordPress

I’d have to say I have had the reverse experience with documentation; I get lost in the drupal site, and I almost never look at WP’s docs besides looking up functions. It’s interesting how varied experiences are. hmmmmm

In my opinion you can’t really compare 2 systems – it just doesn’t make much sense unless you compare similarities in their functions. You can’t compare automobile with an aircraft – which one is better? I think it depends on the way they’re being used.

Drupal’s flexibility allows non-programmers to create very custom web sites with different functionality that WP is not able to provide. But nothing is perfect, sometimes you get stuck and have to tweak things, and of course, there is a learning curve. Drupal is definitely a more complicated platform for a novice, non-techie user. But I think Drupal has far better documentation at api.drupal.org than WP. Even though I work with both and like WP for simple projects, I can’t stress enough how bad and limited is WP documentation.

BTW, if some one is interested in Drupal, you should check out their showcases – you’ll find out that many universities, libraries, government sites, online stores, portals with thousands of users, video social networks and others successfully using Drupal. NASA has a web site based on Drupal, so as MTV in the UK – you’ll find many awesome examples that a simple blogging platform like WP is not able to handle, just because it was never designed for it.

So, if you want a really nice and cool blog or a small business web site that doesn’t require custom functions outside of the WP plugins scoop, I say – go with WP and you’ll probably won’t look back. If you need far more flexibility, customization and functionality in your platform, granular user administration and access management, then Drupal may be your answer. Drupal is a web development framework and cms, so it’s only limited by its developer’s imagination.

Max’s last blog post..Simple Sidebar Navigation Plugin for WordPress

The commonality that I think pushes this beyond Drupal people being programmers is that it’s all about wanting/needing/thinking tight structure. CCK allows you to create much more structure for a site in a way that, I think, strongly echoes Object Oriented programming (though you don’t need to know OO to use it). And Views lets you work with the structure you create in complicated ways. If you love structure, you’re more likely to be a Drupal. If you love the opposite, you’re more likely to be a WordPress. Has anyone ever accused Jim Groom of being structured? :)

So in some ways Drupal is not at all Edupunk — it needs someone to dive into the structure (and sometimes code) to make it do what it needs to do, and general users shouldn’t have admin privileges where that structure is created, they should just be able to use it. WordPress lets people do some of those admin things, but at the loss of the tight structure.

Then again, if there could be such a thing as well-structured Edupunk, Drupal would be the tool for that.

Patrick Murray-John’s last blog post..Talked with Talis

For most people, when it comes to technology (in digital or other forms), it’s not about how it works but what it does. If you want to blog and can do that by picking the default Blogger theme, have at it. If your idea of a great afternoon is futzing around with code, have at that.

I remember a guy explaining endlessly why Beta videotape was inherently better than VHS, long after the last Beta tape had disappeared from the video store. Yes, they use Beta in broadcast — but most of us aren’t broadcasters. And those who are, use Beta.