The Data
66% (351 of 536 detected)
Drupal on .np domains
Source: WebPulse Common Crawl scan, 4M+ sites.
31% (165 of 536 detected)
WordPress on .np domains
Source: WebPulse Common Crawl scan.
4% (20 of 536 detected)
Rails on .np domains
Source: WebPulse Common Crawl scan.
Every other South Asian country follows the WordPress default. India: 83%. Pakistan: 63%. Sri Lanka: 74%. Nepal breaks the pattern completely — 66% Drupal, only 31% WordPress. This is the most unexpected country-level finding in our entire dataset.
The Institutional Theory
Nepal received significant international development funding for digital infrastructure. UNDP, World Bank, and other multilateral organizations standardize on Drupal for their own websites and for the systems they fund in developing countries. The hypothesis: Nepal's Drupal dominance traces back to institutional development projects that chose Drupal and trained local developers on it. The framework choice followed the funding, not the freelance market.
