Open-source content management systems are abundant these days, but few have garnered the popularity of Drupal. Drupal is a free software application that allows individuals or groups of user to create and manage content-rich websites. At the time of this article, Drupal is used by thousands of users to power a wide variety of different sites including corporate sites, discussion sites, community web portals, corporate and e-commerce applications, blogs intranet sites and social networking sites among others.
The Drupal CMS relies heavily on modules to extend its functionality to administrators. These modules allow you to organize and display content, customize site presentation and manage routines tasks. Combined with the supported add-ons, the built in features of Drupal allows for the creation of forums, image galleries, peer-to-peer networks, newsletters, podcasts, collaborative authoring environments and more. Though incorporating new modules and customizing the software requires some technical skills, general usage of Drupal is a straightforward process that can be handled by almost anyone.
Drupal is written in PHP, a server-side programming language well known for its ability to create dynamic web pages and applications. The software runs on platforms such as Linux, Unix, Windows, Mac OS X and other operating systems. It also requires the use a database like MySQL or MS SQL to store content and system settings. One of the most unique qualities of Drupal is that virtually anyone can create extensions for the software. The current modules range from photo galleries to newsletter management and behavior management tools. The extensibility of the Drupal enables the default behavior to be changed in order to build bigger and better websites. With extensive tutorials and documentation provided by the large community, finding support for your Drupal related project is much easier than other open-source content management systems.
Although some web developers have criticized and labeled Drupal as difficult to use, this CMS has received far more acclaim for its usefulness and the power it lends to quickly build large, feature-rich websites. Treasured for its dynamic nature, websites created on its framework can be changed rapidly by modifying specific modules.
Drupal is an open-source software application distributed under the GNU General Public License. This means the product is free to use and because the source code is freely available, you have the luxury to modify the framework to suit your personal needs. While there are quite a few products who sell Drupal products, most of the modules and themes are freely available as well.
