Why do we like Drupal?

CMS Construction Kit

We think of Drupal not so much as a Content Management System, but a CMS Construction Kit. Its powerful modular structure and flexibility make it highly customisable. Its easy to add news feeds, polls, newsletters, event calendars and much more. We've used it as the basis for very different projects, from simple content managed sites that are little more than a blog to complex community portals.

its simple intuitive interface has made it extremely easy to deploy

At first there was a bit of a learning curve for us as developers, putting the systems together as there is definitely a "Drupal way" of doing things. However after a very short time, we grew to like it and realised that what at first seemed slightly odd, was in fact extremely powerful. And for the end user, its simple intuitive interface has made it extremely easy to deploy. In some cases training has amounted to little more than a 15 minute phone call.

Over the last couple of years, we've used it so much and got so used to its flexibility that we now often think "that's a job for Drupal".

The basic features include:

  • Friendly URLs using Apache's mod_rewrite capability
  • Easily extensible using Drupal's module framework (The community has developed many useful modules that provide functions such as taxonomy display, jabber authentication, private messages, bookmarks, and so on.)
  • A personalization environment for individualized content and presentation based on user preferences
  • Role-based permission system to define access to the viewing and editing of content
  • Content is fully indexed to support search
  • Drupal is written on top of a database abstraction layer, so the framework can be easily extended to other database back ends
  • Support for other content forms such as polls, threaded comments, and discussions and content syndication
  • Separation of content from styling in a templating system that uses HTML, CSS, and PHP
  • Administrative support for logging, analysis, and Web-based administration
  • Online help

Chosen by IBM

We were encouraged to find our choice of content management system endorsed by IBM in this series of articles entitled Using open source software to design, develop, and deploy a collaborative Web site.

IBM's engineers like the fact that "the framework was well written,
robust, very extensible" and point out that "Drupal is known for
scalability, or ease of growing a Web site from a small set of users to
an enterprise level. The framework also has the ability to 'throttle'
areas of the site that could cause potential problems during heavy
traffic situations." However, it's really our experience of installing and using it
that has made us real fans.

We also have a presentatation on Drupal and CiviCRM

  • "bookmark