Wordpress vs. Drupal in my situation

kburkhart84

New Member
I'm looking to create a relatively simple website for my video game development. It's main purpose will be to advertise and sell the games, though I will be using a "blog" as well to keep people in the know as to what coming up. I've tried website creation on my own, and I feel that I am much better off using a CMS, and these two are supposedly the best available. I've checked many * vs. * pages with these two, and there isn't a clear cut answer for me, and it seems like both would probably do what I want.

I'm wanting to use WP because it is supposed to be easier and more user friendly. What worries me is that I want to design for example a page for a game, with a scrolling screenshot thing, and in the same space(different tab) have access to videos of gameplay. I'd want hopefully on the same page to have access to blog entries related to the game. I'm almost certain Drupal can do something like this, but can WP.

Besides that, I'm certain either one can do what I need. I want a shopping cart, which provides a download after payment is made. I also want to be able to provide free downloads easily. I'm understand that Drupal is good at all this(with plugins) but that WP, though it was originally meant for blogs, also through plugins can all of this.

Well, does anyone with more experience have any advice here?
 

zipinel

New Member
Any of these 2 platforms can do what you want, but because wordpress is more easy to handle and more search engine frinedly and user friendly, I recommend to use Wordpress.
The thing is that you need to have some good knowledge about programming/coding to make these things functionally.
 

Edge

Member
We've done a lot of Wordpress sites and a lot of Drupal sites. We tend to use Drupal for larger clients with more complex needs. It's not the easiest CMS in the world to pick up but when you have mastered it, then it can be used to handle some really big projects. Out the box it handles search and user roles perfectly, which WP doesn't. I've found, though, that Wordpress is great for microsites and yes its learning curve is definitely not as steep. You can also purchase some great looking themes for very small amounts of money. However, when the needs get complex WP struggles.

As an aside a lot of the Drupal vs WP debates are carried out by groups of people who only really know well one of the CMS's and half nkow the other which they are slagging off. The differentiator for me is how WELL a developer knows the CMS not WHICH CMS.
 
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artimes

New Member
I would definitely go down the Wordpress route. It is a lot more user friendly. Drupal has a steeper learning curve but i'd say it's more versatile and can offer more in the ways of functionality.

But judging by what you need, i'd go with wordpress.
 

Phreaddee

Super Moderator
Staff member
By which i meant i'd rather eat dog poo than ever use it again...
And i'd never ever subject my “larger“ clients to such a miserable excuse for a cms.
It is counter intuative, in so many ways...
 

Edge

Member
By which i meant i'd rather eat dog poo than ever use it again...
And i'd never ever subject my “larger“ clients to such a miserable excuse for a cms.
It is counter intuative, in so many ways...

Posts like this merely add emotive language to the debate but no insight.

It's possible to build an incredibly simple, easy to use admin menu which uses the clients terminology and only has the options in it they need. See my blog post which has a screenshot of admin panel.
 

Phreaddee

Super Moderator
Staff member
yes, i know it does not contribute much, im just deconstructing a drupal site right now, and its frustrating the life out of me...
i know it “can“ be modified as you say.
Still it doesnt work out of the box like that.
And although that does simplify it for the client.
The drupal UI has always felt “cheap“ to me if you know what i mean.
Ive found it to be horrible for ecommerce sites particularly...
 
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Edge

Member
Agreed - out the box Drupal is very much a WTF? However we built a property website for a commercial property owner with 300 business parks and 3000 units overall, seven different editing teams spanned across the UK and complex search functionality that I just can't conceive could have been done with Wordpress in a robust and extendable way. Drupal allows us to develop functionality via toolkit and views without having to create custom PHP code whereas Wordpress makes you rely on plugins and custom PHP to fill the functionality gap as opposed to using a development framework which is what Drupal basically is.

One of the problems I find with Drupal is there are too many developers who implement it badly (especially the admin panel) because of its learning curve and so it get's a bad reputation because of that.

Short and the long of it - it should be used by experienced developers as a framework to build complex functionality.
 
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