On moving from WordPress to Drupal
Posted by: dnorman in general, tags: drupal, software, weblog, weblogsI've been spending so much time in Drupal lately that I've been contemplating moving my blog from WordPress to Drupal to take advantage of some of the flexibility in Drupal. I've even gone as far as migrating a copy of this blog, and it's basically working now - it may even look familiar.
But, I'm holding off on throwing the switch (I came within about 5 seconds of a full switchover, but finally decided against it). Why? WordPress is still nicer for individual blogging. Sure, it lacks the super-handy Book structure. And the better Menu and Page management. And a bunch of other cool stuff.
Drupal has far better searching - advanced searching with booleans - and better ways of organizing content (multiple taxonomies, tags, paths, etc…). It has better "website management" and a pretty decent upgrade process.
But, WordPress (for now) has better integration with things like image uploading, Flickr images, podcasting (via PodPress) and a bunch of other little things that tie into the "workflow" of blogging, as opposed to content management. These are all things that I use my blog for now, so it's silly to switch to something that doesn't currently rock at doing these tasks.I'm absolutely confident that I could eventually bend Drupal to do my bidding, but WordPress already does it now, so there's not a Super Compelling Reason To Jump at this particular moment. Also, the migration process isn't the smoothest one on the planet, and appears to be a one-way trip.
Update: I mentioned in one of my comments to this post that I was afraid of using the WordPress DBook plugin, because I didn't want to introduce any non-standard content types. I was completely wrong about what DBook does. It's sole function is to do the heavy lifting to provide better inter-page navigation between WordPress Pages. No new content type, no change to the database at all. Sorry for not checking facts better before posting that comment!
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D’Arcy,
I’ve been contemplating moving a few sites from WP to Drupal too- mostly because I didn’t really find a boolean search selector for categories- and because a few clients seem to think WP “Looks too much like a blog”- which I try to tell them- is a good thing.
Saw this plug-in- thought it might interest you:
http://lxtr.us.to/posts/dbook-plugin-page-navigation-and-book-pages-in-wordpress/
It supposedly provides the book structure of Drupal.
I also saw that Drupal 4.7 still doesn’t have trackbacks down quite right yet-
Thanks again for keeping your blog- I learn a lot from you.
D … I have actually been thinking the same thing. I want to be able to take advantage of the simplicity of WP, but I love the extended features of Drupal. I am curious what podcasting stuff you need in WP that Drupal doesn’t offer? Is it the iTunes stuff or is it something else?
One thing I have been thinking about doing is pulling down my Mambo front end at the root of my domain and installing drupal and using the URL /blog to point to my blog — managed by Drupal. I am ready to move on from Mambo, but the thought of running 2 CMS tools (Drupal and WP) seems silly. Keep us posted as I am getting closer.
I could also use some more robust features for things outside of pure blogging — publishing class related content for example, that seems to fit the book model so much better. Just random thoughts … but, it is interesting that I am hearing more people talk about this type of a move. I wonder if the WP community is making adjustments to their feature sets … people are now becoming much more savvy users of these tools and will start asking for them.
David - I saw that plugin, linked from the WP dashboard, and while it's very interesting - I don't relish the thought of more content hacks. I wonder how the DBook stuff is implemented - a new nonstandard content type, or something native to WP? I'd love to be using Books for longer writing - articles don't always make sense as dated blog posts.
Cole, I think the PodPress plugin for WordPress blows the crap out of anything I've seen in Drupal - doesn't mean there isn't a comparable module I just haven't seen one yet.
Also, I'm more than a little nervous about running a public blog without Spam Karma 2 and/or Akismet running interference for me. The Flickr post plugin I use rocks, and the image upload/post process is so smooth in WP2, as opposed to what I've been able to do in Drupal. Perhaps not fatal, but I think it would affect how I use the site.
Finding a “real” way to handle tags in WP– not the tagging, but a good facility to browse with intersection or search with intersections– is the killer feature I am missing in WP….
Hello, this is the author of DBook.
In contrary to what you have spoken here, DBook does not introduce any nonstandard content type. All data needed to make such a structure in WP is already available without any hacks. If you think more about it, the current page structure in WP is very much like a book, except it does not have easy prev-next-up navigation.
DBook does not introduce any new content type. No database structure is modified when you install DBook. What the plugin does is it searches which pages are the next, prev, child, and parent pages, and display them. Simple.
The motivation of my plugin is basically the same as yours - I want to use Drupal, but it lacks something, then I think I'll use WP, but it lacks something too. So I thought of strengthening the WP side (as the development of Drupal modules are too centralized for me to participate).
(also note that the data structure of posts and pages are identical, so implementing page-like hierarchy to posts is super easy and does not need database modification)
(also note again that the plugin is still in beta…)
Also: which modules do you use to enable non-anonymous comments? It is what I'm looking for!
Laexter - I totally misunderstood what DBook did. Sorry for adding confusion. It sounds like it’s a great plugin, and I’ll be recommending it to all of my WP-using friends
I am going to change to Drupal 5.1 which looks delicious. Does anyone know of a good tool that is up to date to do this from Wordpress to Drupal?
pazza - I haven’t seen an up-to-date importer, but there may be something mentioned on the Drupal.org website.