After a couple of hours of running with Drupal as my blogging platform, there are some areas that are definitely behind WordPress as a pure blog-friendly system.
Comments. Typical blogs have "name", "url", "email" and "comment" fields. Drupal has an optional "Subject" and a "Comment" field. It works, but makes it harder to follow contributions in a conversation - you have to remember to put your name in the comment each and every time you post. Not friendlyI was a bonehead - there's an option to make this behave as expected, under admin/comments/configure.- Subscrbing to comments. Email subscriptions to a post's comments is the most powerful and effective way to maintain a conversation on a blog. The "subscriptions" module would work, but it only understands Drupal's users. The vast majority of commenters (i.e., everyone but myself) won't have an account in this copy of Drupal, so Subscriptions.module is useless to them. Close, though. All it needs is Anonymous user support, with a way to provide an email address. Not friendly.
- CoComment support. Lacking. I'm going to miss that, at least until I figure out how to properly implement it. Not friendly.
- Flicker Photo Album. There's a Flickr module that claims to do something similar, but it just isn't working for me. So, in the meantime, the "photos" link in the header nav bar points directly to Flickr. Not friendly.
- Flickr photo posting. There's a FlickrInserter module, modeled after Tantan's excellent Flickr Post Bar plugin for WordPress (which, in turn, is modelled after the awesome Flock Flickr Post bar). For now, I'm copying and pasting HTML directly from Flickr. Not friendly.
- I miss PodPress. Have to find a comparable solution for Drupal. Not fatal, but it sure was nice.
Of course, it's not all cloud - there is some silver in there. I did decide to switch, after all, and am not regretting it one bit (yet). Things that are good:
- MUCH better search function. Booleans. Filters. Lots of goodness there. Friendly.
- Tracking what's new since I (or anyone) visited the site - which comments are new? Friendly.
- Throttling. If the site gets hammered (yeah, right) I have it set to shut down the bells and whistles to ensure content still gets out. Friendly.
- Content types - not just blog posts, but forums, surveys, books, etc... Friendly.
- Unpublished content, and unpromoted content. I can stage stuff without it being public until I decide to make it so. More powerful/flexible than drafts in WP.
- Stats and logs within the admin interface. I can see what's working (or not) without having to go anywhere else.
- Blocks and menus. Very flexible ways to add functionality without having to hack a template or theme. Friendly.
- Lots and lots of other great stuff.