How WordPress Took The CMS Crown From Drupal And Joomla (2011)
This article first appeared on Smashing Magazine, Nov 29, 2011.
Summary: According to W3Techs, almost 55% of the 1 million most visited websites that are run on a content management system (CMS) are run on WordPress. WordPress is a darn fine CMS and is stable and easy to use, but so are Joomla and Drupal. So, why does WordPress have the lion’s share of the top 1 million websites?
Update: The original article states that “about 50% of our projects are in Drupal and about 35% in WordPress”–and this was true at the time. In the early 2000’s we built a lot of sites on Drupal–building our very first on D5. Over the years we kept pace with new releases, spoke at Drupal cons (all over the world), created custom modules, and more recently have been helping folks with very old Drupal sites move to other platforms that better meet their current needs.
Since 2011 we’ve been building sites on WordPress; it is currently our “go to” platform for the majority of our clients because of its flexibility, security (when managed properly), and (relative) ease of use for client teams.
Our Most Recent Websites Include
2023 - Supply Chain Traceability Matrix (branding & website design/development)
2023 - Yale Open Access Data Project (website redesign/development - move from Drupal > WP)
2022 - Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts & Sciences Website (website redesign)**
2022 - ecoRI (website redesign/development)**
2022 - Solitary Watch (website redesign/development)
2021 - Theatre Lab (website redesign/development)
All of the sites listed were custom designed and built on WordPress by the Gravity Switch team, with the exception of Harvard GSAS which is built on Drupal by one of our development partners (pod consulting). Sites marked with ** won design and/or usability awards.