Choosing the Right Website Platform Part 3: Drupal

Our next item is Drupal. Drupal is another big name in website platforms capable of a lot of customization through plugins similar to WordPress and Joomla. Drupal is open source, so everything can be edited freely to create complex functionalities and versatile websites. Drupal has countless contributed plugins available to be used on the platform to extend the functionalities Drupal can bring to your site. Currently Drupal is used for approximately 2.3% of all web sites wordwide, ranging from simple blogs to political and government sites. The platform is able to create such a wide diversity of websites through its contributed module system and it’s community. The Drupal community is extremely helpful to users who may have questions. However, although Drupal is so customizable and has a great community to back it, it does have a much higher learning curve than that of other website platforms. While WordPress and Joomla can be operated and used effectively with little to no technical knowledge, Drupal has a much steeper learning curve. Additionally, Drupal is resource heavy so any sort of shared hosting solutions won’t be much of an option to get the site to run fast. Ultimately Drupal is a great option for any website, but it will require more planning and knowledge than setting up a website using Joomla or WordPress.