So I developed a few web sites between 2008 - 2010 with Drupal. I think it was Drupal 6. Though I don't remember for sure. I am not a coder nor programmer. But I found Drupal very scalable and easy to work with especially once you add the right modules.

Now my question is in regards to Drupal 8, and more importantly Drupal 8 vs. Wordpress.

I have not needed to develop any web sites since 2010. So I have been out of the game, as it were. I don't know really what has changed with Drupal.

Very soon I will need to begin developing new web sites. Hence, with seeing that Drupal 8 is right around the corner, I am asking myself whether it is better to begin from scratch with Drupal or Wordpress on these new web sites I plan to start developing in a few weeks.

I have some previous experience with Drupal as mentioned already.

I have 0 experience with Wordpress. But playing around with demos of Wordpress.. it was VERY easy to use Wordpress out of the box. And like Android OS, it seems like Wordpress has a module (app) for everything!

At the same time I generally have always thought of Drupal as being more powerful and secure than Wordpress. Plus, I have some Drupal experience toboot.

Here are my questions (sorry it took a while to get to this from the introduction)
- Will Drupal 8 be able to automatically update itself and it's modules. Or will I need to manually do the updates like in Drupal 6? For me this was the biggest annoyance with using Drupal. Whereas, with playing around with Wordpress, I see that it can update itself.

- Do you people think on November 19 that there will be enough modules working properly for Drupal 8 that I will be able to make a pretty slick blog web site without having any coding experience?

- I know this is the Drupal forums, but of course, I would always appreciate any honest advice about the old "Wordpress vs. Drupal debate." Of course, there are a lot of Wordpress vs. Drupal debates on the Internet. But most of the threads are old. With Drupal 8 actually being released very very soon. I hope someone can give me a bit of updated insight into the differences between the newest versions of these two major CMS platforms.

Imagine you're me.. you've used Drupal before.. but in recent years you like what you see when you play around with Wordpress. Which would you choose for starting brand new web site projects in November, 2015? These are important projects for me that I am starting. A few different blogs on a number of topics near and dear to my heart. I will also be sharing a lot of content on these sites as I will be sharing a lot of writing I have done as well as photos from Flickr, etc. and I need to make sure my Twitter feed for each site's Twitter account is visible.. and decent theme options without having any technical capability to theme myself.

Comments

drm’s picture

I just converted a Drupal 6 site to D8 for a customer. We decided we could do this because it was a simple brochure site. The little custom code the old site had is going to be dropped. It really did not provide anything useful, and some of it could be done by core in the UI if you knew how.

Overall I would say I had a positive experience, but key to this was that we needed almost no additional modules. When I tried adding one contrib module that was in "dev" status, it killed the site and corrupted the database. I had to reinstall. Of course you should not run into that if you only use beta or better modules.

So I think using D8 for a site that needs to go live soon really is only for sites that can get by mostly with what is in core now. But remember that D8 core is far more capable than any past Drupal core. If the slickness your site needs is all in the theme, then maybe you can use 8.

Even if you don't, maybe you should use Drupal 7. But I've never used Wordpress so I can't compare for you.

adam_bear’s picture

I'll continue to use Drupal 7 for the next 5+ years, or until D8 can catch up in performance (2x better than WP, 5x worse than D7), which is doubtful unless php7 magically triples object vs. array performance. If that happens, the migration path to D8 is fairly straightforward since I don't rely on too many contrib modules.

For ease of use WP wins, although D8 does have a slightly better interface than D7.

Kind regards,
--Adam

lance1572’s picture

I built a few professional sites with Drupal 6-7. I moved over to WP for a bit but always looked back at Drupal with longing ;) I was excited to hear that 8 was coming around awhile back but frankly I'm a bit worried. I have to do a site that will cater content to logged in users. My first instinct was Drupal. Drupal is powerful enough for that but then I remember all the headaches I had with Drupal 6 and 7. Mainly upgrading. I mean, its like do or die. Surely there can be something that can happen at the click of a button instead of manually overwriting files??? Well i hopped on Drupal and found 8 is out and yet still isnt rock solid like 7. I'm just noting the wording next to the download buttons. This makes me worry since I have a huge site to build out coming up in which I want to use Drupal. I am confused and hesitant.

Anonymous’s picture

For some obvious reasons I tested Drupal 8 on my virtual server. The installation interface had some touch of elegant blue, with core language options. After the usual set up, there it was in all its glory. But to be frank there's still work to be done on not just the Drupal 8 interface but on Drupal as a whole themes and modules too. WordPress has built it's community for years Drupal can.