Software Gadgets Moves to Drupal

The first stage of the move to Drupal (from Wordpress) is finished. Software Gadgets is up and running with categories and comments again functional. There is a new Index page where all posts and pages are indexed in alphabetic order -- no need to guess the category. The anti-spam features on the comments are working. More features will be added with time, but this site is operational again.

You are probably wondering why I switched from Wordpress to Drupal. There are several reasons.

First, I was getting tired of the ever growing bloat that Wordpress has become since I started using it a few years ago. Wordpress also uses a lot of CPU time for what it does, even with plugins like Supercache enabled. Drupal has bloat too, but how much of it is turned on is up to the webmaster as even core features are written as plugins that can be turned off if not needed.

Second, Drupal can be used for multiple sites, either easily with Drupal's builtin multi-site feature (which does not separate the web sites as much as I would like) or with the builtin multi-site feature combined with some unix-fu to create completely separate sites that still run off the same copy of Drupal code (see a more secure drupal [multisite] install for the unix-fu). As I am running other Drupal sites on this server and use APC (Alternative PHP Cache) on my VPS to cache PHP code, replacing Wordpress with Drupal meant that this site could run on the same cached code that my other Drupal sites use. Removing Wordpress freed up megabytes of cache.

Third, Drupal is a CMS (Content Management System) that works great as a blog but can easily be expanded to do many other CMS things, where Wordpress is a blog than can be used as a simple CMS with a number of plugins and some workflow hacks.

Would I recommend Drupal over Wordpress? That depends on your needs and your knowledge. Wordpress is much easier to get set up and running than Drupal, but Drupal is more flexible. You do not need a lot of experience to get a Wordpress site up and running -- if you can install it, your blog is ready to go. Drupal requires more knowledge and setup before you can get it to work like you want. You can do more with Drupal than with Wordpress, but if you just want a blog now, Wordpress is great.