Drupal as a web platform?

[pfitz]

Do any of you use Drupal to create your affiliate websites? Currently I am weighing up either wordpress or drupal to create some new affiliate sites.

Both systems have a bunch of great plugins. If anyone uses Drupal, have you found ad management or other modules which really assist in monetising the site after adding content?

[Rob_TID]

I had big problems in using Drupal. I can pretty easily hack up WP to do what I want, but could never reach the same level with Drupal.

Spam control was a nightmare on Drupal too.

Plus WP plugins are more numerous and generally better.

Just my experience.

[imwebdev]

Hi There,
I have not tried Drupal myself, but have been told it is very good! I am thinking of learning to use Drupal to actually see for myself how good/bad it really is.

I personally use Joomla as my main web 2.0 content manager. It has everything from a shopping cart to ad managers to subscription components! Which is all fantastic for affiliate websites.
There is a learning curve involved with it, so do some research before you dig in.

If you are new to content managers, and you are looking to build the site yourself, I believe the best bet is Word Press. Lots of themes available and quite a few plugins!
My suggestion is to have a plan of what you want your site to be in the future. I.e. do you want to sell your own products down the track, or do you want to add a forum? I think taking all these factors into consideration important so you choose a content manager that is extensible, and will meet your future needs!

I know people who have built a basic website using a small system, or some expensive system they found, and realised 6 months down the track that they cannot add on a certain component to expand their site further!
This can cause a bit waste of your time and resources, as they have to search for another system that will meet their needs!

One good place to look is Home - OpenSourceCMS. They have demos of a lot of good content managers.

I am not saying there is anything wrong with Drupal or Word Press, I am just saying its good to take a look around before you settle for one system!

Just my 2 cents worth!

Cheers

[pfitz]

Thanks for the responses.
Yeah I think its unlikely I would need anything too advanced, say a forum or checkout process. But at this stage I am pretty new to affiliate marketing and am not sure if they might be good down the track.

I have experience with both wordpress and drupal 6 and I'm a PHP programmer by trade so I don't find either option too daunting from a technical point of view. I just wasn't sure if either had any pre-existing modules/plugins (apart from SEO) which gave them the edge for affiliate/sales sites.

I might start with wordpress for the first couple of sites, since its probably slightly easier to integrate data feeds. Then see if I need drupal's power. Thanks for the help!

[Fawzy]

WordPress’ main destination is a blogging system.. but it can be used to build all type of sites. You can make affiliate sites, presentation sites, or company sites. DRUPAL CMS, is a great example; it runs on the engine of WordPress. What I don’t know, is what if Google recognizes a WordPress engine, and puts it up in the SERPS only for a small period after which, if never posted again, it takes it off from the SERPS? That wouldn’t make WordPress such a great affiliate site builder since affiliate sites are static, they never change.

[Linda Buquet]

Originally Posted by Fawzy

What I don’t know, is what if Google recognizes a WordPress engine, and puts it up in the SERPS only for a small period after which, if never posted again, it takes it off from the SERPS? That wouldn’t make WordPress such a great affiliate site builder since affiliate sites are static, they never change.

"since affiliate sites are static, they never change"

Not sure where you got that idea. Tons of affiliates use WP for blogs and they update all the time. Affiliate sites aren't only static, there are all types of affiliate sites. In fact many affiliates here prefer to do WP blogs over static sites.

I have blog posts I did 3 or 4 years ago, that after they were published, were static and never changed - they still are indexed and bring me traffic.

[InternetZine.co.uk]

Drupal is one of the best opensource cms site. The best of drupal is your link will crawl by SE i fast than other cms blog. But it's not easy to use drupal.

[vereecjw]

Drupal is awesome.

As a php coder I would suggest WP because it is more and more a standard use platform for affiliates and a lot of tools, widgets, gizmos and junk gets made for it. It is also very popular for bloggers obviously, and has a lot of effort and widgets around the "getting traffic" area.

But drupal is just as good if it fits your style.

[mickeybrains]

I have been developing sites with Drupal for about 2-3 years.

I've done some stuff with WP as well but I think that drupal is a tremendously good platform for affiliate marketing. I'm not sure what kind of automation exists specifically for drupal but it has a huge set of modules and themes that can truly handle almost any sort of requirement that affiliate marketing has.

In particular, I like that it can automaticaly import RSS feeds as "nodes" - the drupal word for content. it integrates really nicely with mailing programs, sugar crm, paypal and a bunch of payment networks, and google absolutely loves it...

I find that it gets excellent results with organic traffic with very little customization. use the taxonomy tags with your content and write good taxonomy descriptions and you'll be through the roof for some pretty competitive terms.

If anyone wants to cooperate with me on an affiliate program, I'll teach the drupal stuff and you help me navigate the hows and why's of quality affiliate and PPA marketing practices, let me know.

[Linda Buquet]

Hi mickeybrains,

Welcome to 5 Star and thanks for the insightful post about Drupal!