WordPress powers 55% of all websites being run using Content Management Systems. Joomla with 8.9% comes second followed by Drupal which has a 7% marketing share among CMS users. In other words, majority of websites which you browse through everyday are being run using a CMS platform. However, when it comes to governmental and public sector websites, Drupal is clearly the king, powering close to 24% of all governmental websites in the world. These statistics reflect a lot about the fundamentals of these content management systems and in this article we shall study some of these features which make Drupal popular among the governmental organizations and WordPress among the masses.
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Drupal – The ‘Official’ Content Management System
As mentioned earlier most governmental organization in the world especially in the United States prefer to use Drupal for building their websites. The infographic which was recently released by Acquia clearly shows the how major Federal Government organizations in the United States such as the US House of Representatives, Department of Homeland Security, NASA, White House, Department of Defense and the Department of Energy are using Drupal to manage their websites. More than 150 Federal websites are being run Drupal. This popularity isn’t restricted to the United States alone as other organizations using Drupal include the United Nations, NATO, The World Bank, and World Economic Forum. Other governments making use of this CMS include Prime Ministers of Australia, Thailand and Belgium.
There are several reasons for the popularity of Drupal among government websites and some of these are –
- Flexibility – Drupal is an immensely flexible content management system which allows organizations to build websites in phases. The modular architecture of Drupal eases this process. It has an array of tools allowing Drupal developers to integrate various functionality into a website. They can create highly interactive websites which is one of the key requirements for e-governance.
- Large Traffic – One of the key features which make Drupal popular is the fact that it can handle large volumes of traffic simultaneously. This is one of the basic requirements of any governmental website as thousands of people visit these websites every moment with different sets of queries which need to be processed in real time. It also works equally well for small organizational websites with limited information and functionality.
- Government Grade Security – Security is one of the prime concerns for any governmental website. These websites face regular attacks from hackers and thus need to be shielded against external attacks. Drupal has a comprehensive security mechanism which thwarts attacks prevent classified and sensitive information from falling onto unauthorized hands. Customized permission levels can be set for the users to prevent any pilferage of information.
- Automation – Compared to most other Content Management Systems in the world a lot of functionalities are automated in Drupal which allows developers to easily deploy complex backend functions in the website for the benefit of the users.
WordPress – King of Content Management Systems
WordPress, on the other hand, is the king of Content Management Systems with more than half of the market share. From corporate blogs to small business and personal websites it is the first choice CMS for most developers around the world. Many Fortune 500 companies around the world such as Sony, Samsung, Starbucks and Caterpillar use this to post their corporate blogs and stay connected. If you are still wondering why WordPress excels and stands ahead of its competitors here are some important things that you should know –
- User-Friendliness – WordPress is the most user-friendly Content Management System in the world which makes it easy for people to set up a website and manage it even without having any knowledge of coding. A user doesn’t need to lose sleep over hundreds of line of codes as the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor allows them to build a website with texts images and multimedia elements. The web based user interface allows the administrator to access the website from anywhere in the world.
- Choice of Themes – Whatever be the genre of a website one can easily find a suitable theme for it in WordPress. Being an open source content management system there are thousands of free and premium themes for you to choose from. These themes can further be customized to meet the niche requirements of the business. Apart from this one can design a customized theme from scratch using PSD to WordPress conversion technique.
- Blog Factor – WordPress started primarily as a blogging platform and then developed into a full scale website building tool but till date blogs account for much of its popularity. The easy interface allows users to easily post blogs and connect with their users. This CMS even allows one to post a blog by simply sending an email to an admin id.
- SEO Friendly – This is one of the most deciding factors for any business website choosing WordPress as the preferred CMS to manage a website. WordPress generates clean codes which are easily recognized by search engine crawlers which index the website resulting in higher search engine rankings.
Finally, both the CMSs have their own advantages and it wouldn’t be right to call one less than the other. But yes, Drupal 8 is due next year. Let’s see if it can turn things around for the CMS that is popular among governments, Drupal, as far as the market share is concerned.
