Drupal

The Open Source Content Management System

Drupal is a free, open source Content Management System (CMS) based on PHP and a relational database (MySql. PostgreSQL).


Drupal originated as a communication platform for fellow University of Antwerp students in 2000 by Dries Buytaert. It has since been expanded to a full-featured, flexible, and robust CMS by over 1200 core and module developers. Drupal and all community contributed modules and themes are licensed under GPL.

Implementing a Drupal website requires no development, as module installation and configuration is enabled via the browser-based point-and-click administation panel. Optionally, extending functionality by developing plugin modules is well supported by Drupal's API system (http://api.drupal.org).

Figure 1: Drupal's browser-based adminstration panel

Drupal provides powerful tools to manage:
  • content (referred to as 'nodes', with the ability to create any number of content types with granular control over each)
  • users (with both individual and role based access control)
  • presentation (using themes, blocks, and contributed modules such as Panels)
  • and functionality
Figure 2: Drupal's abstraction layers (source: http://drupal.org/node/265726)


Due to its flexibility, Drupal has been implemented across a variety of applications:

Blogs (e.g. http://dooce.com)

Media showcasing (e.g. http://musicbox.sonybmg.com)

Design showcasing (e.g. http://adbuzeedu.com)

Academic websites (e.g. http://amherst.edu)

Online news (e.g. http://observer.com)

and Social Networks (e.g. http://teamsugar.com)

More information on Drupal may be found at http://drupal.org.

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Last edited: Jul 23, 2008 6:39 PM.

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