[wp-hackers] Post/Page "Types"?

[Mike Schinkel]

Jennifer Hodgdon wrote:
>> I read this thread on Drupal vs. WordPress with some interest (for sites
needing custom content types beyond Posts and Pages). I say: use the right
tool for the job at hand, and I use both Drupal and WordPress, depending on
the job.

Thanks for the comment Jennifer, and in general that's great advice! I
actually have a lot more experience with Drupal than with WordPress and
that's the same advice I give my clients. Sometimes I suggest WordPress and
other times I suggest Drupal all depending on their needs and any other
relevent factors.

However, it's not always clear-cut which is exactly the "right tool", you
know?  Sometimes a project is a 75% right for WordPress and 25% right for
Drupal, and other times vice-versa.

In my current particular case I've been brought in on a project that was
already partially implemented on WordPress by a WordPress-centric web
designer who the client selected before selecting me. That designer's skill
set is perfectly complementary with mine; she's handling the design aspects
which I simply can't do and she has a lot more experience with available
WordPress plugins than I have. I OTOH have the expertise to both help the
client understand how best to use web technology to achieve her business
goals and I also have the PHP/MySQL programming skill to develop needed
plugin functionality.

So switching from WordPress to Drupal really isn't an option for this client
nor, if I were given the authority to switch them to Drupal, would I
recommend it.  Their site really would benefit much more from WordPress IMO
than from Drupal even though they have the need to have a list of "Company
Profiles" as well as possibly a few other custom content types in the
future. Given that their site in general fits WordPress better than Drupal I
starting thinking how nice it would be to have a "CCK-lite" for WordPress,
hence my discussion.

As an aside, the client discussed wanting something like
http://crunchbase.com (for different types of companies than Crunchbase
covers) and I told them if they wanted to launch in 2 weeks that wasn't an
option. I did say that if they really wanted a site like CrunchBase then is
would be something much better suited to Drupal than WordPress and that we
could consider doing it once their main site is launched is launched on
WordPress.

That said, I've been saying the site was "more of Wordpress site" than a
Drupal site and I feel the need to quantify that.  Here are my impressions
of WordPress' strength thus far:

-- WordPress has excellent admin usability whereas I cringe whenever I think
of turning over a Drupal site to a non-technical person to administer.

-- WordPress has a large number of plugins designed to optimize driving
traffic to a site using many different approaches from SEO to Twitter
plugins to Video plugins, etc. whereas Drupal's modules are more broad-based
CMS, community-oriented, and generic functionality like CCK & Views.

-- The WordPress UI pattern fits news-oriented sites better IMO than Drupal
if for no other reason that so many more people are using WP that
vistors/readers/users have come to understand them better thus making them
more usable (not sure which is the cause and effect here; usability or
ubibiquity but at this point does it matter?)

-- WordPress is much easier to theme than Drupal thus so many more designers
know how to theme WordPress than Drupal. There are also many great themes
available for WordPress but few for Drupal.

-- And while this is subjective, I've found the WordPress community to
generally be much nicer than those in the Drupal community. It seems the
latter has too many people with chips on their shoulder who are not civil
when it comes to people who needs that differ from their own perceptions of
need. WordPress people OTOH are just, in general, nice!

Of course there are positive things I can say about Drupal and negative ones
about WordPress there's no reason for me to go into them here. :)

So though I'm sure I forgot to mention something those are my reasons for
preferring WordPress for this project (and many others.) Thus I am very
interested in seeing WordPress' add the ability to support use-cases that
call for simple custom content types especially since WordPress doesn't seem
that far off from being able to support them!

>> The only drawback to this approach is that you have to become an expert
in both Drupal and WordPress in order to satisfy all your clients. 

For me that's not a drawback, I already know Drupal and am learning
WordPress in depth now. :-) Also, I think it helps to know more than one
because it allows a person to recognize more than one way to achieve a
solution; case in point how I'm looking to solve this problem in WordPress
by taking what I've learned from my experience with Drupal!

Anyway, thanks for your (and everyone else's) comments; you've all been
great.

-Mike Schinkel
http://mikeschinkel.com