Wagtail vs WordPress

Overview

WordPress

Stacks99.3K

Followers41.4K

Votes2.1K

GitHub Stars20.6K

Forks12.9K

Wagtail

Stacks163

Followers288

Votes132

Wagtail vs WordPress: What are the differences?

Wagtail and WordPress are both content management systems (CMS) that provide tools for creating and managing websites. However, they have some key differences that set them apart from each other.

Structure and Customization: One of the major differences between Wagtail and WordPress is the way they handle website structure and customization. Wagtail offers a more flexible and structured approach, allowing developers to create custom content models with defined fields and relationships. On the other hand, WordPress offers a more intuitive and user-friendly interface for customization, allowing users to modify themes and templates with ease.
Scalability and Performance: When it comes to scalability and performance, Wagtail has an advantage over WordPress. Wagtail is built on Django, a high-performance web framework written in Python, which enables it to handle large amounts of content and heavy traffic efficiently. On the other hand, WordPress can be prone to performance issues when dealing with extensive content or high traffic loads.
Security: Security is a crucial factor to consider when choosing a CMS. Wagtail has a reputation for being highly secure, thanks to its robust codebase and regular security updates. WordPress, on the other hand, has a larger user base and a huge number of plugins and themes, which can potentially pose security risks if not properly maintained.
Developer-Friendly Features: Wagtail is known for its developer-friendly features. It provides a clean and well-documented codebase, making it easier for developers to work with. It also offers a comprehensive set of APIs for custom integrations and an extensible plugin architecture. WordPress, on the other hand, has a wider range of plugins and themes available, making it more accessible for non-technical users to customize their websites.
Content Editing Experience: Another noticeable difference between Wagtail and WordPress is the content editing experience. Wagtail provides a more structured and customizable editing interface, allowing users to define content types and fields specific to their needs. WordPress, on the other hand, offers a more intuitive and user-friendly content editor, suitable for non-technical users.
Community and Support: The community and support for a CMS can greatly impact its usability and maintenance. WordPress has a larger and more active community, with a vast number of resources, forums, and plugins available. This makes it easier to find assistance and get support when needed. Wagtail, while having a smaller community, still has a dedicated user base and an active support forum.

In summary, Wagtail and WordPress differ in their approach to website structure and customization, scalability and performance, security, developer-friendly features, content editing experience, and community and support.

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Advice on WordPress, Wagtail

Kamaldeep

CEO at Zhoustify Agency

Nov 13, 2020

Decided

I usually take a slightly different tack because the technical level of people I usually am dealing with is lower. I tend to be pitching to decision makers and not tech people. A bit of my standard answer is below.

Wix and Squarespace are proprietary systems meant for unsophisticated users who want to build their own websites quickly and easily. While they are good for that specific use case, they do not offer any way to move beyond that if your needs arise. Since they are proprietary closed systems if you need something more advanced at some point your only option is to start over.

WordPress is an Open Source CMS that allows much more freedom. It is not quite as simple to setup and create a new site but if you are talking to me then you are not looking to build it yourself so that is really a non-issue. The main benefit of WordPress is freedom. You can host it on virtually any decent web hosting service and since it uses PHP and MySQL you can have virtually any developer take over a project without problem.

I believe in open source because of that freedom. It is good for me as a developer and it is good for my clients. If something were to happen to me or my company you would have no problem finding another qualified WordPress developer to take over the site in a totally seamless fashion. There would be no need to start from scratch.

Additionally the extensible nature of WordPress means that no matter what your future needs, WordPress can handle it. Adding things like e-commerce and custom quoting systems are just two examples of advanced solution's that I have added to WordPress sites years after they were first built.

WordPress is used by tiny one person businesses all the way up to major websites like the NY Times and I think it is right for this project as well.

69.2k views69.2k

Comments

Krish

Nov 19, 2021

Needs adviceon

Next.js

Firebase

WordPress

Hi Stackers, We are planning to build a product information portal that also provides useful articles and blogs. Application Frontend is going to be built on Next.js with Authentication and Product Database helped by Firebase. But for the Blog / Article we are debating between WordPress/GraphQL plug-in or Strapi.

Please share your thoughts.

293k views293k

Comments

Xander

Founder at Rate My Meeting

Mar 30, 2020

Decided

So many choices for CMSs these days. So then what do you choose if speed, security and customization are key? Headless for one. Consuming your own APIs for content is absolute key. It makes designing pages in the front-end a breeze. Leaving Ghost and Cockpit. If I then looked at the footprint and impact on server load, Cockpit definitely wins that battle.

243k views243k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

WordPress	Wagtail
The core software is built by hundreds of community volunteers, and when you’re ready for more there are thousands of plugins and themes available to transform your site into almost anything you can imagine. Over 60 million people have chosen WordPress to power the place on the web they call “home” — we’d love you to join the family.	Wagtail is a Django content management system built originally for the Royal College of Art and focused on flexibility and user experience.
Flexibility;Publishing Tools;User Management;Media Management;Full Standards Compliance;Easy Theme System;Extend with Plugins;Built-in Comments;Search Engine Optimized;Multilingual;Easy Installation and Upgrades;Importers;Own Your Data	A fast, attractive editor interface;Complete control over design with standard Django templates;Configure content types through standard Django models;Tightly integrated search (with an Elasticsearch backend for production);Strong document and image management;Wide support for embedded content;Simple, configurable permissions;Support for tree-based content organisation;Optional preview->submit->approve workflow;Fast out of the box. Varnish-friendly if you need it;A simple form builder;Optional static site generation;Excellent test coverage
Statistics
GitHub Stars 20.6K	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 12.9K	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 99.3K	Stacks 163
Followers 41.4K	Followers 288
Votes 2.1K	Votes 132
Pros & Cons
Pros 418 Customizable 369 Easy to manage 357 Plugins & themes 259 Non-tech colleagues can update website content 248 Really powerful Cons 13 Hard to keep up-to-date if you customize things 13 Plugins are of mixed quality 10 Not best backend UI 2 Complex Organization 1 Great Security	Pros 23 Highly customizable 18 StreamFields are amazing 18 Very Flexible 15 Web content management 13 Non-tech colleagues can update website content Cons 3 Not a full CMS: basic components require heavy coding 2 Small developer community 1 Expensive to develop
Integrations
ClickTale Clicky Disqus Formstack GoSquared HipChat Hipmob KickoffLabs KISSmetrics LiveChat	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to WordPress, Wagtail?

Drupal

Drupal is an open source content management platform powering millions of websites and applications. It’s built, used, and supported by an active and diverse community of people around the world.

Strapi

Strapi is100% JavaScript, extensible, and fully customizable. It enables developers to build projects faster by providing a customizable API out of the box and giving them the freedom to use the their favorite tools.

Ghost

Ghost is a platform dedicated to one thing: Publishing. It's beautifully designed, completely customisable and completely Open Source. Ghost allows you to write and publish your own blog, giving you the tools to make it easy and even fun to do.

OctoberCMS

It is a Laravel-based CMS engineered for simplicity. It has a simple and intuitive interface. It provides a consistent structure with an emphasis on reusability so you can focus on building something unique while we handle the boring bits.

Twill

Twill is an open source CMS toolkit for Laravel that helps developers rapidly create a custom admin console that is intuitive, powerful and flexible.

ProcessWire

ProcessWire is an open source content management system (CMS) and web application framework aimed at the needs of designers, developers and their clients. ProcessWire gives you more control over your fields, templates and markup than other platforms, and provides a powerful template system that works the way you do

Typo3

It is a free and open-source Web content management system written in PHP. It can run on several web servers, such as Apache or IIS, on top of many operating systems, among them Linux, Microsoft Windows, FreeBSD, macOS and OS/2.

Directus

Let's say you're planning on managing content for a website, native app, and widget. Instead of using a CMS that's baked into the website client, it makes more sense to decouple your content entirely and access it through an API or SDK. That's a headless CMS. That's Directus.

Joomla!

Joomla is a simple and powerful web server application and it requires a server with PHP and either MySQL, PostgreSQL, or SQL Server to run it.

Craft

Craft is a content management system (CMS) that’s laser-focused on doing one thing really, really well: managing content.

Related Comparisons

Wagtail vs WordPress: What are the differences?

Wagtail and WordPress are both content management systems (CMS) that provide tools for creating and managing websites. However, they have some key differences that set them apart from each other.

Structure and Customization: One of the major differences between Wagtail and WordPress is the way they handle website structure and customization. Wagtail offers a more flexible and structured approach, allowing developers to create custom content models with defined fields and relationships. On the other hand, WordPress offers a more intuitive and user-friendly interface for customization, allowing users to modify themes and templates with ease.
Scalability and Performance: When it comes to scalability and performance, Wagtail has an advantage over WordPress. Wagtail is built on Django, a high-performance web framework written in Python, which enables it to handle large amounts of content and heavy traffic efficiently. On the other hand, WordPress can be prone to performance issues when dealing with extensive content or high traffic loads.
Security: Security is a crucial factor to consider when choosing a CMS. Wagtail has a reputation for being highly secure, thanks to its robust codebase and regular security updates. WordPress, on the other hand, has a larger user base and a huge number of plugins and themes, which can potentially pose security risks if not properly maintained.
Developer-Friendly Features: Wagtail is known for its developer-friendly features. It provides a clean and well-documented codebase, making it easier for developers to work with. It also offers a comprehensive set of APIs for custom integrations and an extensible plugin architecture. WordPress, on the other hand, has a wider range of plugins and themes available, making it more accessible for non-technical users to customize their websites.
Content Editing Experience: Another noticeable difference between Wagtail and WordPress is the content editing experience. Wagtail provides a more structured and customizable editing interface, allowing users to define content types and fields specific to their needs. WordPress, on the other hand, offers a more intuitive and user-friendly content editor, suitable for non-technical users.
Community and Support: The community and support for a CMS can greatly impact its usability and maintenance. WordPress has a larger and more active community, with a vast number of resources, forums, and plugins available. This makes it easier to find assistance and get support when needed. Wagtail, while having a smaller community, still has a dedicated user base and an active support forum.

Wagtail vs WordPress

Overview