What is Drupal?

Introduction

If you are looking for an effective web publishing system for your site, Drupal is an optimal choice. However, do you truly know what it is, why use it, and its outstanding features? In this article, we will assist you to answer that questions by the simplest way.

An overview of Drupal

What is Drupal?

Drupal is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) that allows you to construct and manage websites, intranets, and online apps without having to write any code. Because of its very flexible content management capabilities and sophisticated API-first architecture, it’s the CMS of choice for large, complicated websites (like university websites).

Drupal is written in PHP, which is a scripting language. The software comes with a Web-based installer and add-on modules and is ready to use right away. Content management, collaborative publishing, newsletters, podcasts, image galleries, peer-to-peer networking, file uploads/downloads, and more are all supported by the program.

Dries Buytaert created Drupal as a bulletin board system in the Netherlands, and it became an Open Source project in 2001. Buytaert meant to call his initial Drop.org Website “dorp” (“village” in Dutch), but after checking the domain name, he made a typo and believed the revised form sounded nicer (Drupal is a transliteration of the Dutch ” druppel ” which means droplet). Drupal has over a million downloads and is the center of a significant development community.

Why should we use Drupal?

The majority of websites have a set of elements in common. They usually have navigation menus and listings of material, pages of content with good URLs, a logo in the header, contact information in the footer, and so on. At the same time, there are several distinctions among websites. They frequently have a one-of-a-kind content structure, a personalized look and feel, and one-of-a-kind features.

Drupal is an excellent choice for websites that require those shared functionalities. It comes with a lot of features that most websites require out of the box, such as content management, taxonomy for organizing content, flexible navigation system, nice content authoring experience, multilingual content & user interface, and much more. At the same time, this is extremely adaptable, allowing you to customize and add bespoke features to your website.

What is Drupal used for?

Drupal is used to power a variety of online experiences, including corporate websites, intranets, online directories, interactive websites, marketing portals, etc.

The most prominent features of Drupal

Firstly, Drupal is an excellent content management system. It has a user interface that makes it simple to generate and publish content. With fully customizable forms, the platform can accept a limitless number of content kinds, including text and media. With powerful yet simple-to-use capabilities, it dynamically retrieves, filters, and shows this content. Intuitive content creation tools and sophisticated in-place editing capabilities are also available. Drupal’s complex user role classification and permissions mechanism restrict access to information and functionality.

Secondly, modules provide all administrative and end-user-facing functionality in Drupal, from basic things like logging in and creating content to dynamic photo galleries and intricate voting systems. The “Drupal core” that you download from Drupal.org includes all of the most widely used modules for building a site, but there is also a huge range of contributed modules that thousands of developers make accessible for free on Drupal.org.

Thirdly, this is a robust website development platform as well. It follows current object-oriented programming paradigms, PHP best practices, HTML5, and YAML specifications. It also includes CKEditor, Symfony2, Twig, jQuery, Backbone.js, and Guzzle, among other fantastic web technologies. A broad collection of add-ons in the form of modules and themes allows you to extend functionality and get complete control over the design.

Handy terms in Drupal

Here are some common terms that you need to understand, they include:

• Node: Content node
• Content-type: A template for content
• Vocabulary: A way of categorizing your content
• View: Material listing
• Module: Functionality that you can add to a Drupal website
• Theme: Defines the layout, appearance, and feel of the website
• Block: Displays content, a list, a menu, a form, and so on (often in the sidebar, header, footer)
• Permission: A user’s ability to perform a task
• Role: A specific type of user

Wrap up

In general, we have already covered the basics of Drupal. As a result, we hope that the information in today’s blog will be useful to you. Furthermore, in the coming blogs, we will assist you with Compare Drupal and WordPress. Don’t hesitate!

Last but not least,  if you want to modify the look of your website, come to our site to find a variety of responsive Free WordPress Themes.

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