New Royal Academy of Dance Website – Potential Web Platforms (Part 2)

At Generate UK, we’re proud to be a ‘platform-agnostic’ agency. We work extensively with a number of platforms, frameworks, and tech stacks; and believe that ultimately the choice of platform should be based upon the specific needs of each organisation we work with. Every platform has its own pros and cons – so we try to consider what we believe is the “best fit” overall. During implementation, we then aim to capitalise on the strengths of the selected platform, whilst doing our best to overcome any limitations.

Based on our discussions with members of the Royal Academy of Dance and other stakeholders, as well as our own hands-on experiences of working with the existing website, we gained a clear understanding of the requirements for the new site. The next major decision was what platform the new site should be built upon…

For this project, we felt that an open-source platform would be particularly suitable. This means that anyone can freely access, modify and distribute the source code of the underlying core platform. As a result, large communities of people have contributed towards the success of these platforms by contributing code, developing extensions, providing support and training, etc, etc. In turn, this helps to avoid vendor lock-in, provides a lot of freedom and flexibility, and can reduce costs.

We primarily considered using 3 open-source Content Management System (‘CMS’) platforms – WordPress, Drupal, and Umbraco. All three of these platforms were very strong contenders – they are all powerful, robust, and mature platforms that have been refined extensively over the last 20+ years. We also have plenty of experience working with them.

Platform Comparison Table

To assist with this decision, we prepared the following comparison table to illustrate the characteristics of each platform; as well as a summary the main pros & cons, based on our experience.

In many cases we attempted to provide a ‘star-rating’ for each platform characteristic. While this is of course subjective, it helped to provide a clear idea of how effectively we believed the platform could meet the agreed requirements. A 5-star rating meant that we believed the platform has extensive built-in and/or easily implemented capabilities in the relevant area, whereas a 1-star rating meant that we believed the platform had virtually no capabilities in that area and thus a lot of custom implementation work would be needed to overcome this:

	WordPress	Drupal	Umbraco
Market share (i.e. % of websites built with this platform)	43%	1.1%	0.005%
Number of 3rd party plugins/extensions in official directory	59,000+	50,000+	1,000+
Open-source code & community?	Yes	Yes	Yes
Year when the platform was initially released	2003	2001	2000
Underlying technology stack	PHP, Nginx or Apache, MariaDB	PHP, Nginx or Apache, MariaDB	ASP.NET, IIS, MS SQL Server
Support for Required Features:
Content Management capabilities – e.g. flexibility, ability to add/edit content without requiring coding knowledge, content layout & display options etc	★★★★★	★★★★	★★★
Website layout & theming capabilities (including ability to make minor adjustments without coding knowledge)	★★★★★	★★★★	★★★
Ability to re-use and/or re-purpose certain content blocks on multiple website pages	★★★	★★★★	★★
Ability to maintain brand consistency when editing content (e.g. enforcing consistent font styling, colours, etc)	★★★	★★★★	★★★★
Multi-site support	★★★★	★★	★★★
Multilingual & localisation support	★★★★	★★★★	★★★
Ability to integrate 3rd party systems, services & platforms	★★★★	★★★	★★★
User, role, permission & workflow management features	★★★	★★★★★	★★★★
Ability to build custom forms without technical knowledge	★★★★★	★★★★	★★★
Media management capabilities	★★★★	★★★	★★★
Search & filtering functionality	★★	★★★	★★★
Features & capabilities to facilitate SEO	★★★★★	★★★	★★
Ability to fulfil potential future needs, e.g. members area & shop functionality, additional integrations, etc	★★★★	★★★	★★★
Other Platform Characteristics:
Security of platform & extensions	★★★	★★★★	★★★★
Scalability of platform	★★★★	★★★★	★★★★
Accessibility features & support	★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★
Lower upfront development & implementation time	★★★★★	★★★	★★
Less ongoing support & maintenance needed	★★★★	★★★	★★★
Lower ongoing hosting costs	★★★★★	★★★	★★

WordPress Pros & Cons

Pros of WordPress

• Very widely used.
• Many existing 3rd-party themes & plugins.
• Large community of developers and users.
• Very user-friendly UI.
• Powerful page content & layout editing capabilities with the new Block Editor.
• Relatively inexpensive ongoing hosting and maintenance costs.
• SEO-friendly capabilities.
• Many existing integrations for a wide range of external services, systems and platforms.
• Relatively minimalistic out-of-the box; and can then be tailored to meet specific needs.
• The core platform generally focuses on maintaining backwards compatibility when new versions get released, making it easier to install updates, and reducing the risk of sites breaking.

Cons of WordPress

• 3rd-party plugins can be of variable quality; and may not always follow best-practice for scalability, performance, coding standards, reliability, backwards compatibility, and/or security, etc.
• Some plugins may also be bloated with unnecessary features.
• The ease of getting started with the platform has historically lead to a number of poorly implemented websites.
• WordPress is normally relatively un-opinionated regarding the way in which custom functionality should be built. Although this can simplify development work, in some cases it can result in less well-structured code, which may be harder to maintain in the long run.
• The built-in flexibility of the content block editor can make it harder to maintain branding consistency throughout the site in some cases.
• Fewer out-of-the-box features than some competing platforms.

The Bottom Line

WordPress is a very powerful and widely-used platform – this is due to the user-friendly UI, the widespread availability of 3rd party plugins, the relative ease of developing new custom functionality, plus the focus on maintaining backwards compatibility whenever new versions get released.

Drupal Pros & Cons

Pros of Drupal

• Extremely flexible and customisable out-of-the-box.
• Very modular – built-in and 3rd-party modules can easily be combined in lots of useful ways.
• Many aspects of a Drupal site can be configured by site administrators via a UI rather than necessarily requiring coding knowledge.
• Content is typically stored in a structured way behind the scenes, making it easier to re-use and re-purpose existing content in various ways upon the website.
• The Layout Builder provides a fair amount of flexibility to control the default layout for different content types and/or the layout of content on individual pages.
• Support for setting up sophisticated editorial workflows for content approval etc.
• Granular roles and permissions to control user access to various areas of the system.
• Comprehensive built-in support for multilingual websites and content.
• Widespread availability of 3rd-party modules providing additional functionality & integrations.
• Built in a way that encourages usage of well-structured ‘best-practice’ modern coding conventions, helping to increase overall reliability and scalability.

Cons of Drupal

• Due to the range of options available, some parts of Drupal can feel a bit overwhelming if you are unfamiliar with the platform.
• The structured approach to page content and layout management means that the editing experience can feel less ‘fluid’, and with relatively few built-in formatting options.
• Quite a bit of upfront configuration is needed to make the most of the platform’s capabilities.
• Potential challenges when updating certain configurable options and/or page content on occasions when there is already existing content that depends on the previous configuration.
• The more structured and opinionated nature of the underlying code – in combination with the wide range of existing features – means that there is a steeper initial learning curve for developers, who need to be relatively skilled to work effectively with the platform.
• Because Drupal is less widely used, there is a higher chance that additional custom development work may be needed to integrate with various external services.

The Bottom Line

Drupal is extremely flexible and customisable out-of-the-box; and includes a lot of built-in functionality. Its modular and structured approach to storing and managing content make it particularly well-suited to large websites with complex underlying requirements.

Umbraco Pros & Cons

Pros of Umbraco

• Provides developers with a lot of control and flexibility over many aspects of a website.
• Ability to build websites that are truly tailored to meet requirements.
• Very modular system, with powerful building blocks to facilitate website development.
• Can adapt, expand, and scale the system relatively easily over time, as requirements evolve.
• The structured underlying code requires developers to be reasonably skilled and follow good practice – reducing the risk of potential issues in the long term.
• More custom code means a lower risk of poorly written 3rd-party plugins causing issues.
• Granular permissions to control user access to admin area functionality.
• A good choice for very Microsoft-centric organisations, who want to leverage existing expertise with these underlying technologies.

Cons of Umbraco

• This platform tends to be more developer-focused, which can mean that more initial upfront development & configuration work is ultimately needed to meet end-user needs.
• Block Grid component provides relatively few formatting options and very few pre-built blocks, with somewhat limited capabilities for content creators out of the box.
• A very low market share means there is a much smaller community available to assist with usage and development of the platform.
• Few 3rd party extensions are available, so more components need to be built from scratch.
• The structured underlying code can make it harder to implement certain functionality.
• Limited out-of-the-box SEO capabilities.

The Bottom Line

Umbraco is a powerful platform that can be used to build websites that are truly tailored based on an organisation’s needs. The level of control and freedom over the set-up – in combination with the modular approach and available building blocks – makes it possible to build sophisticated websites.

The Chosen Platform for the New RAD Site

A key consideration was that the previous RAD website had been built upon WordPress, albeit in an unconventional way, as described on the previous page. The Royal Academy of Dance did have some concerns and reservations about aspects of the way in which this existing website worked (hence the decision to build a new site) – so we were keen to establish whether these reservations related to the platform itself, or to the unusual way in which the site had been built. Based on our discussions, it became apparent that the latter was a bigger concern.

It should be noted that the previous approach did have various benefits (particularly from a technical perspective), however it also resulted in certain challenges, as summarised below:

Benefits of the Previous Website Tech Stack

• Elegant scalable architecture, following many ‘best-practice’ modern development techniques.
• Highly structured and modular code, with a clear separation of concerns.
• Content managed in a structured way, thus potentially providing opportunities to re-use and re-purpose this content elsewhere.
• Better compatibility with the wider PHP ecosystem e.g. via the usage of Composer, making it easier to use certain 3rd-party code libraries more easily.
• Opinionated structure encouraging a rigorous approach, helping to avoid common coding errors.

Challenges Arising from the Previous Website Tech Stack

• Built in a way that is likely to be unfamiliar to the majority of WordPress site developers.
• Potentially more sophisticated coding skills needed to effectively work with the site architecture.
• A lot of custom ‘boilerplate’ code needed to develop even simple new features.
• Unexpected bugs and other issues arising as a result of the site working in a different way than typical 3rd-party plugins expect a WP site to function.
• A rather ‘brittle’ structure, due to the many layers of code and associated dependencies, so that changes to other layers of code can cause unexpected issues elsewhere – this was particularly apparent when upgrading these dependencies, as described earlier.
• Additional infrastructure needed to install WP updates using Composer, particularly in the case of premium 3rd-party plugins.
• This approach is not really in line with how WordPress itself is designed to work, or its ethos – therefore resulting in the potential loss of benefits such as the ease of on-boarding and the large developer ecosystem.
• Limited ability for non-technical users to control the appearance of page sections and content.
• In turn, this ultimately made it necessary for the Royal Academy of Dance to frequently raise technical support requests, resulting in delays and frustration.

We therefore agreed that if WordPress was chosen as the platform for the new website, it would be important to build it using a different approach more in line with standard WP conventions.

Most notably, the previous site was built prior to the emergence of the WP Block Editor as the standard way to manage WordPress site content – this editor tool now provides a huge amount of flexibility for non-technical users to easily manage website content, thus helping to overcome many of the frustrations with the previous system.

Based on this, WordPress rapidly became the preferred option. Having made this decision, we were now ready to start building the new website…

Find out more in the third part to our technical series: Setting up the automated build, deployment & testing infrastructure »