Drupal is one of the most popular Content Management System. Ever since its introduction, Drupal has come a long way. It has developed into one of the most complex open source content management systems. It has been used to develop sites for famous brands like Harvard, Ubuntu, MIT, Sony Music etc. Today Drupal supports 182 languages and is used by people in 228 countries.
Drupal uses a very sophisticated programming interface and has a tough learning curve. It is considered more of a developing platform than simple CMS tool. It also has an in-depth report generating tools for advanced admins. Although no programming skills are required for the basic use but the system is generally used by more advanced Drupal developers and administrators. This is the reason why most of the basic users go with the more basic CMS platform like WordPress, although they can create basic sites simply using Drupal.
Like every other technology, Drupal too has its share of pros and cons. Few of them are discussed below.
Advantages of Drupal
• It has all the basic features one can need. It has a set of standard features that includes- user account registration and maintenance, RSS-Feeds, menu management, system administration and page layout customization. All these basic features are sufficient to create a basic website, single or multi user blogs brochure ware, forums, community website and more.
• It has great building tools and templates. It provides basic building blocks of websites in a module styles format where content and rules can be created quickly. It has themes and templates that save you from starting from the scratch, no matter if you are building a simple site or a complex one. It also provides pre-defined configurations feature that help users to build a complex site rapidly. Thus it saves time to build in extra features.
• It provides flexible and robust content creation. It provides users the flexibility to create and manage different content types including: video, polls, user management, text etc.
• It has advanced administrator controls. It provides the option of setting up new user accounts and user permissions.
• It also allows you to create your own dynamic designs. Although Drupal offers many themes and templates, but it also allows users to design their own dynamic Drupal designs.
• It helps to organize content easily. The content can be categorized through path urls, create custom lists, associate content and create defaults.
• It has over 7,000 plug-ins that help to boost the building capacities of a site.
• It also allows your users to collaborate with you. Drupal- based sites engage users to contribute while giving the administrator the ability to create, view, publish, administer and otherwise control the social content published to the site.
• It has tools that make it easy to connect with your audience. Drupal has tools like network integration, feeds, and search engine optimization tools etc that help you to connect with your viewers easily.
Disadvantages of Drupal
• It is not very user friendly. It has a tough learning curve and is tougher to use than WordPress and Joomla. Although Drupal 7 has improved the usability to certain extent.
• It does not have a good backward compatibility. Since it is a relatively new system, it is not compatible with other software. If you are accustomed to some other systems and programs, then Drupal might not be for you.
• When it comes to loading and scalability, Drupal is a little behind than WordPress. The slow loading is because of the number of tools and capabilities.
(Have been liking our posts for a while? Subscribe now! We’ll make sure that you never miss an update. And talk to our Drupal experts now if you need professional help with your Web strategy.)
Pros and Cons of Drupal as a CMS Solution | Blog@PixelCrayonsâ„¢ Pretty nice post. I just stumbled upon your blog and wished to say that I have truly enjoyed surfing around your blog posts. In any case I’ll be subscribing to your rss feed and I hope you write again very soon!
Great Post
Thanks for such good post. Can you write same point for joomla and wordpress. I will really appreciate for this.