Drupal and Other CMS Systems Used by Polish Universities. The Droptica Report
Drupal is a CMS that colleges from different countries eagerly use. According to a report by The Drop Times, up to 80% of the world's top 100 universities chose Drupal for at least one of their websites. We wanted to find out how this technology is used in Poland and what other content management systems are popular among Polish higher education institutions - both public and private. This report presents the results of our analysis.
How did we prepare the data for the report?
Inspired by the above-mentioned report by The Drop Times about CMS systems used by the top 300 universities in the world, we decided to see how the situation looks in our backyard. We traced which content management systems are most often used by Polish universities for their home pages.
Polish higher education institutions in the report
Among the data for the report are 314 operating higher education institutions in Poland. We compiled the list based on official records available on government websites:
- a list of public universities (including academic and vocational universities),
- list of non-public universities,
- medical college directory.
In the report, we didn’t include institutions with "liquidated" or "deleted" status and those whose websites were unavailable at the time of analysis (March 2024).
To detect content management systems on the main pages of the institutions, we used a proprietary script that searches the code of these websites and the popular Wappalyzer plugin. In the second step, we further verified the web pages with undetected systems using the tool at WhatCMS.org.
Let's see how the results of our analysis shape up when it comes to the use of CMS systems on Polish university websites.
Which academies in Poland are most likely to choose Drupal?
Our focus - as befits a Drupal agency - is primarily Drupal, so it’s with this technology that we begin our review of the results. This functional and open-source CMS for universities offers many options for improving the usability and attractiveness of websites. So, we wanted to see how many universities in Poland have already discovered its potential.
- Of the total 314 higher education institutions, 22 universities (7.01%) have a home page on Drupal.
- Out of 95 public universities, Drupal was chosen by 9 institutions - 9.47%. These are academic universities.
- For academic universities alone, this share is 13.85% - Drupal was chosen by 9 out of 65 institutions.
- Of the 30 vocational universities, no institution has reached for Drupal.
- As for public medical universities, we detected that 2 out of 9 institutions (22.22%) picked Drupal as the main page's base.
- In the group of non-public universities, 12 institutions out of 213 chose Drupal, accounting for 5.63% of the total.
Popular CMS among Polish higher education institutions
Our analysis of the home pages of 314 Polish universities shows that WordPress is the most preferred content management system among the identified technologies. This CMS was selected by 172 institutions (54.78%).
For 59 colleges, the CMS is undetected and has an "unknown" status, accounting for 18.79% of the total. On the other hand, Drupal is used on the main pages of 22 institutions (7.01%) of all the analyzed universities.
This number compares favorably with Drupal's overall popularity. Built With statistics show how the use of each CMS breaks down among the one million most popular websites in the world. They show that Drupal is used by 3% (23,476) of websites. According to a W3 Techs survey, Drupal is used by 1% of all web pages worldwide.
Thus, among large websites, which undoubtedly include university web pages, the choice of Drupal is more frequent than among all websites in general. In Poland, however, this is not yet a satisfactory result. Certainly not on the scale of up to 80 percent use of Drupal (for at least one of the websites) by top universities around the world, as demonstrated by the aforementioned report by The Drop Times.
Our analysis also shows other popular systems in Polish higher education. There are technologies such as Joomla!, which is behind the main pages of 26 universities (8.28%), Ruby on Rails, chosen by 11 institutions (3.50%), Microsoft ASP.NET, found on 5 websites (1.59%), and TYPO3 - found in 4 cases (1.27%).
The detected technologies further indicate that Polish universities use 19 different content management systems.
CMS selection among public universities in Poland
Let's see how the situation looks for the 95 public universities in Poland. The list includes academic universities and those with a vocational focus (including academies of applied sciences and public vocational schools).
In this case, WordPress again takes the lead among the CMS used. The system was detected for 36 university home pages (37.89%).
University websites on Drupal account for 9 cases among public universities (9.47%). Other popular systems in this group include Ruby on Rails (8.42%), Joomla! (7.37%), TYPO3 (4.21%) and Microsoft ASP.NET (3.16%).
CMS systems among websites of academic universities
There is no surprise in the academic universities' zone either. The most significant number of home pages of institutions with this profile are based on WordPress (24 out of 65 institutions, which is 36.92% of the total group).
The second result among correctly detected systems belongs to Drupal. In this case, 9 websites are behind 13.85% of all 65 academic universities. An unknown value for the CMS was returned by 14 sites, accounting for 21.54% of the total.
Academic universities have also chosen for their websites Ruby on Rails (7.69%), Joomla! (6.15%), TYPO3 (6.15%) and Microsoft ASP.NET (3.08%). Individual schools reached CMSs such as Contao (1.54%), Liferay (1.54%), and Squiz Matrix (1.54%).
Popular CMS among public vocational universities
What is the situation in the field of vocational universities? In the case of the most popular system, there were no surprises. The first place is occupied by WordPress, which was used by 12 out of 30 websites, accounting for 40.00% of all schools in the list.
Among the favored technologies in this group are: Joomla! (10.00%), Ruby on Rails (10.00%), as well as Microsoft ASP.NET (3.33%) and Orchard Core (3.33%), which occurred one time each. Drupal was off the list this time.
CMS systems chosen by public medical schools
A separate group of public universities included in our report are medical universities. We decided to classify them separately in accordance with the division seen on government websites. They are included in the list cited at the beginning of the article, compiled by the Ministry of Health.
For this category of higher education institutions, we observed the highest use of Drupal among all content management systems. The analyzed data shows that 2 medical universities out of 9 (22%) have chosen this CMS for their main page.
The other choices were Edito, WordPress, and ExpressionEngine (in these three cases, it was 1 school out of 9, or 11.11%). The CMS remains undetected for 4 of the institution's websites (44.44%).
CMS selection among non-public universities in Poland
Without a doubt, the largest group in this report are non-public institutions. We analyzed 213 home pages of such colleges. What are the results?
The favorite among non-public schools is WordPress. This CMS was detected for 138 home pages, with a percentage score of 64.79%.
The second popular CMS is Joomla! It was reached by 17 non-public universities (7.98%). Third place among the detected systems went to Drupal, which was chosen by 12 institutions (5.63%).
In the non-public university category, 30 content management systems remain undetected (14.08%).
Best universities according to "Perspektywy" ranking vs. CMS systems
Every year in Poland, the „Perspektywy Press” Publishing House compiles a ranking of higher education institutions "Perspektywy" (ang. Perspectives). This is a beneficial summary for prospective students, who can choose the right university for themselves.
For the purposes of the report, we also decided to look at the ranking positions. This allows us to show which CMS systems are used by the universities that are recognized as the best in our country.
Academic universities
This table presents the academic universities that ranked 25 in the "Perspektywy" ranking. In it, you can see what position a particular college took in 2023, as well as what CMS its main page is based on.
| Academic colleges | CMS | |
| 1= | Jagiellonian University in Kraków | Liferay |
| 1= | University of Warsaw | WordPress |
| 3 | Warsaw University of Technology | Drupal |
| 4= | Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań | Ruby on Rails |
| 4= | Stanislaw Staszic University of Science and Technology in Kraków (AGH) | TYPO3 |
| 6 | Gdańsk University of Technology | Drupal |
| 7 | Medical University of Warsaw | Drupal |
| 8 | Wrocław University of Science and Technology | Unknown |
| 9= | Medical University of Gdańsk | Unknown |
| 9= | Lodz University of Technology | Drupal |
| 11 | Medical University of Lodz | WordPress |
| 12= | Poznan University of Technology | Drupal |
| 12= | Pomeranian Medical University in Szczecin | ExpressionEngine |
| 12= | Silesian University of Technology | WordPress |
| 12= | SGH Warsaw School of Economics | Drupal |
| 16= | Karol Marcinkowski University of Medical Sciences in Poznań | Unknown |
| 16= | The Silesian Piasts Medical University of Wroclaw | Drupal |
| 16= | University of Gdańsk | Drupal |
| 16= | Kozminski University in Warsaw | Drupal |
| 19 | University of Wrocław | WordPress |
| 20= | Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń | Unknown |
| 20= | Medical University of Bialystok | Unknown |
| 23 | Medical University of Lublin | Edito |
| 24 | Opole University | WordPress |
| 25= | Lublin University of Technology | Microsoft ASP.NET |
In terms of numbers, the leading CMS is Drupal. It was chosen by 9 out of 25 academic universities (36.00%) from this list. The second place among the CMS detected belongs to WordPress, found on 5 websites (16.00%).
In the case of this ranking, 5 CMS systems have an "unknown" status, accounting for 20% of the total. In contrast, in the table above, you can see that individual colleges have chosen the following technologies for their websites: Edito, ExpressionEngine, Liferay, Microsoft ASP.NET, Ruby on Rails, and TYPO3.
Non-public universities
As in the case of academic schools, for non-public institutions, we also present the top 25 positions in the "Perspektywy" ranking for 2023. In the table, we’ve considered the place occupied and the CMS system detected (or not) on the home page.
| Non-public universities | CMS | |
| 1 | Kozminski University in Warsaw | Drupal |
| 2 | SWPS University | Joomla! |
| 3 | WSB University in Dąbrowa Górnicza | Unknown |
| 4 | Lazarski University in Warsaw | Drupal |
| 5 | Academy of Finance and Business Vistula | WordPress |
| 6 | Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology in Warsaw | WordPress |
| 7 | Collegium Civitas in Warsaw | WordPress |
| 8= | University of Economics and Human Sciences in Warsaw | WordPress |
| 8= | Jagiellonian College in Torun | WordPress |
| 10 | University of Lower Silesia DSW in Wrocław | Drupal |
| 11= | Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski Krakow University | Edito |
| 11= | The International University of Logistics and Transport in Wrocław | Joomla! |
| 13 | WSB Merito University in Poznań | Drupal |
| 14 | WSB Merito University in Wrocław | Drupal |
| 15= | Powiślański University | WordPress |
| 15= | University of Social Sciences in Lodz | Microsoft ASP.NET |
| 17 | Humanitas University in Sosnowiec | Unknown |
| 18= | Kuyavian-Pomeranian Academy in Bydgoszcz | Joomla! |
| 18= | WSB Merito University in Gdańsk | Drupal |
| 20 | Academy of Silesia in Katowice | Unknown |
| 21= | University of Economics and Humanities in Bielsko-Biała | Drupal |
| 21= | Vistula School of Hospitality | WordPress |
| 21= | WSB Merito University in Torun | Drupal |
| 24= | College of Social and Media Culture in Torun | WordPress |
| 24= | University of Upper Silesia Wojciech Korfanty in Katowice | Ruby on Rails |
For non-public universities, Drupal (8 out of 25 cases - 32.00%) ranked first, along with WordPress (8 out of 25 cases - 32.00%). For 3 home pages, the Joomla! system appeared (12.00%). For 3 websites (12.00%), the CMS is undetected.
Edito (4.00%), Microsoft ASP.NET (4.00%), and Ruby on Rails (4.00%) were the other CMSs found among non-public university websites from the "Perspektywy" ranking.
Report on CMS systems on the websites of Polish universities - summary
Our report covers 314 higher education institutions in Poland. The list of analyzed academies comprises public universities (including academic and vocational universities), public medical universities, and non-public institutions.
For the most part, WordPress proved to be the most popular CMS. It’s used by the largest number of universities among all institutions, as well as among public and non-public universities.
As for Drupal, it’s most popular among medical schools. It has also been selected by most outlets from the lists of the 25 best academic universities and the 25 best non-public universities according to the "Perspektywy" 2023 ranking.
In general, higher education institutions in Poland use as many as 19 different content management systems. In addition to WordPress and Drupal, the detected CMSs include CMS Made Simple, CodeIgniter, Concrete CMS, Contao, DNN, Edito, ExpressionEngine, Joomla!, Liferay, Microsoft ASP.NET, Odoo, Orchard Core, Ruby on Rails, Squiz Matrix, TYPO3, Umbraco and Wix.
