WordPress vs. Expression Engine vs. Django

Posted by on January 28, 2009; This entry is filed under Uncategorized.
Share on FacebookShare on Google+Email this to someoneTweet about this on Twitter

One of my friends has built a Django site for a corp and wants to have a blog to accompany it. The blog will be pretty full featured with a lot of posts per day. His question: will he be better off using WordPress + plugins, buying Expression Engine, or rolling his own in Django using some of the stub apps out there?

9 Comments

  1. Hawke January 28th, 2009 at 11:54 am

    I’ve used WordPress and it’s good. If he’s got a basic scripting background and wants something really custom django is definitely the way to go. If you don’t want to mess with scripts, I’d say WordPress.  
     
    Not sure what features Expression Engine would have that would be a tipping stone for your friend, but really the above options seem reasonable.

  2. Kambiz Kamrani January 28th, 2009 at 1:13 pm

    WordPress is a solid option. It is easily themeable and has a robust content management system for comments, posts, pages, etc. I do not have any knowledge of Expression Engine but it costs money and WordPress doesn’t. I have had lots of experience with Django and just deploying Django apps is a huge pain since many webservers aren’t configured with Python.  
     
    Kambiz

  3. John Hawks January 28th, 2009 at 1:42 pm

    When I switched mine, I went with Drupal over WordPress mainly because it gave better ability to throttle bandwidth/cache/cut load times on a limited server. So if that’s an issue, you friend may want to look into it.

  4. razib January 28th, 2009 at 1:42 pm

    . I do not have any knowledge of Expression Engine but it costs money and WordPress doesn’t. 
     
    i hear they let you pay in gold necklaces as long as you attach a note in farsi…. ;-)

  5. Luke Stiles January 28th, 2009 at 7:07 pm

    WordPress. No question. Rolling your own anything is rarely a good idea for software that is or is approaching commodity status. Blogs are definitely in the latter category. You get new features for the time it takes you to upgrade, and if it doesn’t do what you want, you can always write a plug-in.

  6. Kevembuangga January 29th, 2009 at 2:41 am

    WordPress is lame, the very reason why it is popular! :-) 
    I would say e107, or else pick one according to your own specific needs and tastes by perusing the CMS comparator.

  7. Mike Schinkel January 29th, 2009 at 9:14 am

    I do WordPress development (i.e. plugins and customized functionality) and I’d say WordPress if they wants to spend very little time on it otherwise roll their own in Django because they are already comfortable with Django and won’t have to learn two platforms. Google “django blogging engine” for code to potentially start with.

  8. NYCtek January 29th, 2009 at 9:21 am

    Stuff like e107 and Drupal is good if you want the blog to look like a clunky CMS, and if you want to have a really hard time finding plugins and templates for it. 
     
    WordPress will at least look and act like a blog.  
     
    ExpressionEngine is good as well, although unless you are getting paid lots of extra money to create a slick high-performance blog, go with WordPress and just use the existing templates & plugins to create the site quickly and easily.

  9. KeepPaddling January 30th, 2009 at 7:33 am

    I have been using WordPress for a year, and have been astounded at how easy it is to add the next needed feature. (you guys may know exactly what you want up front, but that hasn’t been my usual experience). My bias is against building a custom code base that requires significant maintenance; staying with WordPress has been both free to acquire and low-cost to maintain in my experience.

a