Several years ago we wrote a while paper discussing the relative merits of building a system using an Open Source framework or creating custom built code. You can read the article here or you can download our killer .PDF here.

Please note this was in the days before we had a designer.

In recent years the common wisdom is to use Open source frameworks as they are well supported and secure. We have recently used Drupal as the CMS framework to power a suite of iOS and Android applications allowing editorial sign-off at a number of levels as well as scheduled delivery of content.


We thought it might be of interest to share our insights into the why we might use Wordpress over Drupal or vice-versa:

Drupal

Pros

- Excellent CMS
- Secure (http://www.whitehouse.gov/ is powered by Drupal)
- Open Source (free) 

- Very active community of contributors
- Very extensible
- Lots of add ons available for site customisation 

- With a little bit of code/hooks, you can do a lot of tweaking/customising to meet your exact needs/whims 

- Lots of downloadable, free themes that work out of the box, or can be customised
- Scalable
- Brilliant PERMISSIONS AND USER/Role MANAGEMENT
- packaged command line tool for managing Drupal (DRUSH).


Cons

- Takes time to understand the architecture from an administrator’s perspective
- Could use a bit more documentation at times
- Might be an unnecessary overhead for smaller sites that do not require complex workflows.

Wordpress

Pros

- Easy to use
- Lead to mass adoption
- View Live stats here.

- Good customisation
- Same SEO benefits with pages and posts alike
- Good fit for the needs of most basic sites
- best for sites that do not require limited access and complex user groups.

Cons

- Possibility of outgrowing if you require more functionality in the future
- WordPress isn't ideal for an e-commerce solution
- Not ideal for in depth content
- Not the most secure of options
- User rights are not very well managed.

So in summary we use both Drupal and Wordpress for varying reasons. When heavyweight security or functionality are key we use Drupal and for smaller, campaign-lead sites we use Wordpress. We’d be happy to let you know which we’d recommend for any project you’re thinking of.