Introduction and Definition
What is Drupal ?
Maybe you have already heard of Drupal, as being one of the most popular CMS (Content Management System) available these days...
Maybe you have never heard about Drupal, but you are looking for a website for yourself, your company or your organization, and you arrived at the home of webfodreams, and just started reading about it...
In any case, if you are in need of a (powerful) website with any of the features like:
- content publishing or blogging
- easy administration (with no knowledge of programming)
- user management
- group creation and management
- video and photo sharing
- connection with other networks (facebook, twitter, rss feeds, etc)
- integration with Google Maps
- advanced search functionality
- multi-language or multi-domain (one database serving different websites) functionality
- etc. etc. etc.
... or basically any other great feature you have found somewhere on the web and you want to incorporate on your new website... you have arrived at the right place, look no further... Drupal may be the best solution available to you: and it is free !
But before continuing... let's define what Drupal is:
The shorter version:
"Drupal is an open source content management platform powering millions of websites and applications. It’s built, used, and supported by an active and diverse community of people around the world." [source: drupal.org]
The longer version:
"Drupal /ˈdruːpəl/ is a free and open source content-management framework written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. Drupal provides a back-end framework for at least 2.3% of all web sites worldwide – ranging from personal blogs to corporate, political, and government sites. Systems also use Drupal for knowledge management and for business collaboration.
As of January 2018, the Drupal community is composed of more than 1.3 million members, including 109,800 users actively contributing, resulting in more than 39,500 free modules that extend and customize Drupal functionality, over 2,570 free themes that change the look and feel of Drupal, and at least 1,200 free distributions that allow users to quickly and easily set up a complex, use-specific Drupal in fewer steps.
The standard release of Drupal, known as Drupal core, contains basic features common to content-management systems. These include user account registration and maintenance, menu management, RSS feeds, taxonomy, page layout customization, and system administration. The Drupal core installation can serve as a simple Web site, a single- or multi-user blog, an Internet forum, or a community Web site providing for user-generated content.
Drupal also describes itself as a Web application framework. When compared with notable frameworks Drupal meets most of the generally accepted feature requirements for such web frameworks.
Although Drupal offers a sophisticated API for developers, basic Web-site installation and administration of the framework require no programming skills.
Drupal runs on any computing platform that supports both a Web server capable of running PHP and a database to store content and configuration."
[source: wikipedia]
Open Source ?
The fact that Drupal is open source software means that it is maintained and developed by a community of hundreds of thousands of users and developers. It's distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (or "GPL"), which means anyone is free to download it, share it with others, and contribute back to the project. This open development model means that people are constantly working to make sure Drupal is a cutting-edge platform that supports the latest technologies that the Web has to offer.
Is Drupal what I need ?
If you've gotten here and if you are reading this right now, the answer most probably will be: YES !
I will not try to convince you... no-one never tried to convince me either. Drupal is just too powerful, flexible, scalable, well documented, secure and above all easy to use and administer, that it will convince you itself, once you get to know Drupal !!!
I would invite you just to make a list of what features of functionalities your new website needs to have. And then try to find any of the features that Drupal can NOT implement. If you found any, please call me. If not... well, email me :)
And please don't think... 'oh, this is probably not for me, this will be too complex or too expensive, or this is too big for a small site like mine...'. Because that is just what Drupal is all about... bringing modern and powerful solutions into the reach of everyone !
The internet is ours, so we should ALL be able to take the best out of it !
And Drupal makes that A LOT easier !
Welcome to the Drupal world !!!
