|
Drupal is a modular content management framework, content management system and blogging engine which was originally written by Dries Buytaert as a bulletin board system. Today, it is used by many high-traffic websites, including The Onion, Spread Firefox (CivicSpace, see below), Ourmedia, KernelTrap, and the Defective by Design campaign. It is particularly popular for building online communities, and has the tag line "Plumbing for communities". Drupal is written in PHP. As of October 18, 2006, the current version is 4.7.4.
Meaning of Drupal Drupal is an English transliteration of the Dutch word “druppel” which means “drop” (as in, “a drop of water”). The name was taken from the Drop.org website (now defunct), whose code slowly evolved into Drupal. Dries actually wanted to call the site “dorp” (Dutch for “village”, referring to its community aspects), but made a typo when checking the domain name and thought it sounded better. The project was started in 2000. Content Management System Drupal has a basic layer, or core, which supports pluggable modules that enable additional behaviors. The modules available for Drupal provide a wide assortment of features, including e-commerce systems such as the Amazon Items module, workflow, photo galleries, mailing list management, and CVS integration. Drupal's modular design and well-documented, clean codebase make it easier for individuals with knowledge of PHP to write code for additional features. Many feel that Drupal's focus on user communities also sets it apart from its competition. Modules Drupal's taxonomy or categorization system is especially customisable as it enables any content to be classified in a way entirely determined by the site administrator. This is one feature that sets Drupal apart from similar systems with its high degree of flexibility provided without the need for coding. Once set up the taxonomy module can “automatically classify new content”. The flip side to this advantage is that the configuration is more demanding. In some cases it may take more time to create well structured setup. A more extreme example is the high degree of automation possible with the Actions and Workflow modules. This requires the two modules to be setup using features from both. Thankfully there are extensive support documentation and videos to help configure the Workflow and Actions modules to achieve tasks such as sending out notices of new content. Drupal achieves clean integration between the core and the modules via a system of hooks, or callbacks, to allow modules to insert functions into Drupal's path of execution. Drupal core provides protection against many of the usual security problems, like SQL injection. Themes Most themes for Drupal are written in the PHPTemplate engine or the XTemplate engine. Earlier templates used hard-coded PHP. In earlier versions, Drupal's theming system has been criticised as being less design-oriented and more complicated than the systems for Mambo and Plone. With the inclusion of the PHPTemplate and XTemplate engines, these criticisms are generally no longer valid. Drupal Examples Some of the more specialized roles that Drupal has filled include company intranets, online classrooms, art communities, and project management. It has been used for applications including the following: Criticism Drupal has been considered by some to be more difficult to install and to configure than a CMS such as Mambo, or basic blogging tools such as WordPress or Movable Type. Drupal 5.0 will come with a web-based installer to answer these criticisms. It is considered easier to install than Plone. Some also believe that Drupal has a very steep learning curve and that one must be proficient with databases to use it effectively. The ability to install and update the database through a GUI was fixed in version 4.7. Distributions Drupal 4.2 was the basis for DeanSpace, a content management system used to power many independent websites supporting the 2004 presidential campaign of Howard Dean. After the Dean campaign ended, the DeanSpace project grew into CivicSpace, a Drupal-based "grassroots organizing platform that empowers collective action inside communities and cohesively connects remote groups of supporters." CivicSpace includes CiviCRM and other features useful on websites for nonprofit organizations and political campaigns. There are several other customized Drupal distributions. Most are simply drupal repackaged with third party modules, but some also include modifications to the core. They include: Books Drupal has been discussed in several books. Notable Drupal users Notable websites using Drupal or one of its distributions include: See also | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
| |