Drupal is rapidly overtaking WordPress as the next dominant CMS on the internet. Check out this great comparison of the two CMS.

1. Could Drupal Become The Next WordPress?
Blog URL: https://www.cloudways.com/blog/drupal-the-next-wordpress/

2. Ah, here we are. Back to the CMS battle. And what better
candidates to pick for this battle than Drupal and WordPress.
Both are immensely powerful with different strengths. On
the surface, both may look the same. However, if you dig
deeper, you’ll start to notice that they lie at the opposing
sides of the user preference spectrum.
In these slides, I will take a look at the differences as well as
the future of these two CMS. Let’s start.

3. •
1) SEO
It’s no coincidence that the first topic I’ve picked for the battle between these two is SEO.
Search engine optimization is probably the wheels that make the internet run. With the
omnipresent search engines being the most important websites on the internet right now,
it’s vital that your website ranks higher up in SERP. This is an essential element of improving
website’s reach and visibility.
Note that I won’t go into the details of modules and plugins and will only highlight the bare
basics of both the CMS.
Drupal
Right out-of-the-box, there can be no doubt that Drupal is much more SEO friendly than
WordPress. For example, it supports native caching which enables it to be very fast, an
important consideration for high SERP position. By adding modules to the mix, this
advantage is further enhanced, taking Drupal further up the SEO ladder.
WordPress
Out-of-the box, there aren’t any native WordPress SEO functionalities. However, you’re not
exactly doomed in the SERP competition. Some excellent modules such as YOAST SEO
plugins can make your WordPress website a lot more SEO friendly.

4. •
2) Performance
Drupal
This is yet another feature where Drupal takes the lead. As I pointed out in the
last section, native caching capability makes Drupal websites faster. Not only this
but since Drupal allows you to tinker with the core, a good programmer can
wring out a lot more of performance boost from your Drupal website. It is also
worth noting that Drupal mainly caters to the enterprise market, and as such, it is
well suited to handle websites with a large volume of data and thousands of
pages. A well managed Drupal website rarely goes down and slow downs are rare
events.
WordPress
Even though WordPress falls behind Drupal in this department, it still isn’t
any slouch. Although the point to be noted here is that you will have been on top
of your WordPress website’s management to ensure it stays optimized and no
theme or plugin slows down the speed.

5. 3) Ease of Use
Drupal
Ease-of-use is one area where Drupal is often placed second to WordPress. However,
there is a pretty good reason for this: Drupal has focused on experienced enterprise
level users rather than lay users. The learning curve is much steeper than WordPress. It
is to be noted, however, that Drupal has slowly been adding features that enable it to be
more user-friendly. Things like an easier setup of modules, themes, and content are
paving the way towards a more user-friendly Drupal.
WordPress
One of the main reasons for WordPress’ immense popularity is its ease of use and the
overall CMS structure that is designed for average users. On the surface, WordPress is a
lot more user-friendly and a lot less complex than Drupal. However, everything that
sparkles isn’t a diamond, and the user-friendliness of WordPress comes at the cost of
customization issues. Since WordPress’ main aim is to cater to individuals and newbies,
several areas of the WordPress core are locked. For experienced developers, this is a
major obstacle in customizing the core platform to the project’s requirements.

6. 4) Updates and Upgrades
Drupal
Drupal always have problems in this area simply because it doesn’t support automatic
updates of the database. This means that every major update adds significant changes
to the codebase of the CMS without doing much for the database. The biggest example
of this being Drupal 8, that was such a massive change that many Drupal loyalists opted
to leave the ecosystem altogether. However, ever since, Drupal has been slowly but
surely making its update and upgrade system better and merging the update and
upgrade paths. This way, the minor updates of version 8 will be automatically upgraded
when the new version 9 rolls out.
WordPress
WordPress has a great update and upgrade systems that ensure that all new major and
minor versions are seamlessly integrated with the existing core. The changes to the
code and the database happen in the background and all the user sees is a notification
when the new changes have been integrated successfully (or unsuccessfully!).

7. 5) Security
Drupal
It’s time for Drupal to take the lead back from WordPress in this last section. When it
comes to security, Drupal is the king! This is why Drupal powers a significant number
of government websites throughout the world. Security is the reason why high-profile
websites such as The White House and The Economist prefer Drupal. The cherry on
top of the cake is that Drupal is very secure right out of the box, so you do not have to
waste hundreds of man-hours on beefing up the security measures.
WordPress
WordPress lags behind Drupal in the security department by quite a margin. A simple
Google search for “WordPress attacks” or “WordPress vulnerabilities” turns up a lot
of incidents of WordPress websites being compromised. This is mainly due to the
huge library of plugins and themes, were bad code goes unnoticed until a security
breach occurs.

8. Final Verdict
So, what are the takeaways from this comparison?
Well, Drupal is leading WordPress in most of the major departments, with the
ease of use being the only major point going for WordPress.
I’d say that with so many new features being added to Drupal, and with the
feedback from the community being taken into consideration, Drupal only
needs to work on making its learning curve shallower in order to be more
accessible to newbies. If it can do that, it won’t be long before Drupal
becomes the choice of CMS for non-technical people in addition to the
technical ones, see Why Drupal Should Power Your Next Web Project.