Drupal. It’s a funny sounding name, and often, if you are not in the web industry, is an unfamiliar term. This week, we are answering one of the most common questions we are asked: what is Drupal? (And why should I use it?)

Drupal is an open source content management system (CMS).

Let us start with the definition of a CMS – a content Management system is a system used as a website’s framework, with the main goal of providing efficiency in working with the site’s content loading and editing. It is a tool intended to simplify the work involved in processes like blog posting, news updates or any other types of content work. There are several popular CMS’ available out there, most of them free to use, such as Drupal, WordPress and Joomla. Each of them has its own advantages and disadvantages, depending on the purpose of the website they are to be used for. To choose which CMS is right for your site, you have to keep in mind a number of selection criteria, such as documentation, security and scalability.

Drupal is a CMS that provides all the core required features, as well as a lot more potential for complex functionality features that can be integrated into a site. To give a better understanding of it, we would like to present a list of key benefits that this fantastic CMS provides.

Drupal Features:

1) Efficient content loading and editing.

If your site is one that requires periodical updates and changes, whether it be new posts on a blog or changes to a slideshow on your front page, Drupal gives you the freedom to do so without having to deal with complicated code.

2) SEO-friendly websites.

Search engine optimization is a crucial process for virtually any website. It is what allows your site to be searchable on search engines like Google. Drupal provides you with the ability to work on your SEO right within the content management system. Drupal SEO Tools is a collection of detailed SEO components, accessible right through Drupal’s interface.

3) Supportive Community. 

Drupal, being an open-source CMS, is highly customizable, allowing developers to make changes to its modules (functionality addons), as well as create new ones. In fact, there is a vast community of developers, who make their customized modules available for anyone to download and use. This customization is done with PHP, which is a fairly common programming language and most web developers are familiar with it. The community also provides tons of tutorials, documentation and answers to questions that may arise in the development process.

4) Effective User Management System.

Drupal provides great control over the site’s users. Various permissions can be assigned to different users, making the access freedom restriction rather flexible. This means that there can be a site administrator with the freedom to make any changes to the site’s architecture and there can be users, who only have the ability to load or edit content.  This can prevent the less technical, content-oriented site users from accidentally making changes to the site’s structure or functionality. At the same time, these content editors don’t need to communicate with the main administrator for content changes, which eliminates that common bottleneck.

5) Easy Theming.

Drupal comes with several choices of themes (layouts) for your site, but there is a multitude of them available in the community.  Themes in Drupal are fully customizable and you can apply your own designs to create the desired look and feel for your site.

There are plenty of different scale Drupal-enabled sites out there. Some of the big examples include: The United Nations, Warner Brothers Records, The Discovery Channel, Forbes and the White House!

Here is an example of a Drupal website developed by Tidal:

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