Using Drupal

Drupal is a content management system based on PHP and MySQL that you use to build your own web site. To use Drupal, you need to copy the free Drupal package onto your web server and follow an easy installation process much like that of Wordpress. After installation, you use Drupal to create and edit pages. Drupal handles all of the functionality that you need to build all kinds of web sites, including:

• User management
• Content categorization
• Building pages, blogs, forums and menus
• Creating a consistent look
• Adding pictures, videos, podcasts
• Contact forms
• Translation and internationalization
• And lots more

Although the core features of Drupal alone are sufficient to handle most sites, the system also offers a powerful modular system that allows developers to contribute modules that plug in to this core framework to provide new capabilities. Thousands of modules have been developed by the Drupal community and released for free use by other users. Modules are available for almost every conceivable task, and they can be customized.

Also, Drupal provides a powerful theme system that lets you change the look and feel of your site and consistently changing all pages throughout the entire site. Lots of themes are available at Drupal.org free of charge, and these can also be customized to fit your requirements.

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After winning in 2008, Drupal has won the Best Open Source PHP CMS Category in the 2009 Packt Open Source CMS Award based on the overall choice for the judges and the public. WordPress made its way up to the second place, while Joomla! continued to maintain its reputation and came in third.

Drupal has also won the inaugural Hall of Fame Award in the 2009 Open Source CMS Awards.

The judging panel, made up from a list of experienced and respected experts in the open source CMS industry, have chosen from the five CMSes that received the most nominations in the first round based on several factors including usability, performance, security, ease of configuration, accessibility etc.

Pros and Cons of using Drupal

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Benefits of using Drupal

• Freedom to focus on building content rather than creating functionality already provided by Drupal.
• Freedom to change the look and feel of the whole site without having to rewrite or change every page.
• Ability to preview changes prior to the site being updated and then to apply them instantly.
• Ability to track revisions to pages, and to moderate them before being made viewable.
• The use of FTP or other methods is minimized and restricted to employing new functionality.
• Low development costs with the Drupal core package and all contributed modules being available for free at Drupal.org.
• An active community to help you answer any questions that may emerge during the development process.
• Constant updates available to ensure the highest level of security.
• Developing, maintaining and administering a Drupal site does not require any programming experience.
• Ability to delegate site management to a team of administrators thus sharing responsibility for the entire site.
• With constant maintenance and new updates emerging every week Drupal ensures that you can gain access to new technologies more rapidly than would be possible with any other CMS.

Drawbacks of using Drupal

• Although getting started is fast, a few months of learning period is necessary to use the system effectively.
• Drupal is sometimes referred to as a hardware-intensive system as compared to other CMSes such as Wordpress. However, there isn't a big difference and it largely depends on if you use the right and the right number of modules. It is recommended not to use modules that have not yet been tested and reviewed by more experienced users. To find out which modules to use go to drupalmodules.com.
• It sometimes becomes necessary to customize Drupal modules to precisely fit your needs. This requires programming knowledge.
• As a huge number of sites use Drupal, hackers may feel tempted to target them. However, Drupal has a way to inform us on its administration screen on every update made available by the Drupal community, so this should not be an issue.

Don't use Drupal

• if you want a simple personal site. Use Wordpress or Joomla!
• if you want a personal blog site. Use Wordpress.
• if you don't want to invest the time to learn how to do it. However, I warn you that if you want to utilize the full functionality of Wordpress, you might end up spending just as much time to learn how to do it.

Do use Drupal

• if you want absolute control over your site.
• if you are building a company website.
• if you are building a community website.
• if you want to take advantage of new technological advances.

Remember, Drupal, just like most other CMSes, was designed to make it easy for an average person with no experience in Internet technology to create and maintain his or her own website.

All CMSes are easy to use. The difference between Wordpress and Drupal is that while with Wordpress most of the functionality is hidden from you, with Drupal you are immediately exposed to everything. What makes this even more daunting is that Drupal has a much wider functionality than Wordpress due to the fact that it has been developed with a community site in mind from the start, while Wordpress has been started as a system to make blogging easier. If you want something quick and easy, go the Wordpress way. If you want a community site, interactive online classes, a site like Flickr or a video hosting platform like YouTube, a company site of any sort or an e-commerce site like Amazon or really any other site, and you are willing to spend two months learning how to get it, go Drupal. Where to start? Check out my other articles below.

Published articles on Drupal:

A Foolproof Guide to Building a Website with Drupal

Installing Drupal

Drupal Terminology