Structured Content in Drupal and WordPress

This talk examines how Drupal (7.x) and WordPress (3.9/4.0) handle custom content types, and use that to explore how the philosophies of the two platforms/communities differ.

Drupal had CCK going back to 5.x, and moved much of CCK into core in Drupal 7. WordPress had PODS in 2008, and introduced custom post types in 3.0 - but the two frameworks take very different approaches to creating custom content types.

Drupal's core implementation is much more robust in terms of the power offered to administrative users without writing code, whereas WordPress relies on code (plugins or themes) to create custom post types.

I'll also cover Blocks/Widgets, Taxonomies, and metadata, and how each can be added via code or managed via the admin interface.

Although I will use some code samples, the talk is more focused on how each platform/community deals with this question: what it exposes to end users, how users change the behavior, how other functional modules/plugins interact with content types, etc. Is there anything each can learn from the other?

It's not meant as a "this one gets it right; this one gets it wrong" but an even-handed exploration of what each does well and more importantly what each approach reveals about the underlying philosophy and community, and the impact that has on developers, site owners, content editors, and other stakeholders.

Experience level: 
Intermediate
Session Time Slot(s): 
Time: 
Sep 13 2014 - 11:00am-Sep 13 2014 - 11:50am
Room: 
165-69
Allowed Types: 
Session
Session Track: 

Session Tracks (NERDSummit 2014)

Sessions Topics: 
Speaker Bio(s): 
Currently CEO at 10up, a WordPress focused design and development agency. Long time Drupal and WordPress developer, open source advocate, Content Management System consultant.