Drupal

Drupal is considered a Community Publishing System. At least, that is how its developers describe it. That said, it is still a content management system (CMS) optimized to such an extend, becoming a web-based social medium. Drupal is a platform that borrows from forums, e-commerce, wikis, and blogging platforms, like WordPress, creating an integrated publication, e-commerce, and communication modular system.

Drupal is an application development framework that encourages developers to use a structured approach, which leads to interoperable code and functions with a shared interface. As a final note, the software is open-source, empowering website and apps free of charge. As such, there is an active community of developers supporting and upgrading Drupal constantly.

Drupal offers many features, from user management to advanced menu management. With the software, users create advanced websites, social networking pages, e-commerce websites, or personal blogs without a struggle. On top of that, Drupal lets users create any content that they might desire, such as texts, blogs, statistics, polls, and videos. Plus, they can manage all of this content efficiently from a central interface.

What is fantastic about Drupal is how customizable it is. Companies benefit from accelerated development through the deployment of specific functions. Consequently, Drupal is unmatched when it comes to reliability, security, manageability, scalability, and resource availability,

Drupal is versatile and has many advanced features. That is why more than 1 million websites employ it. As a CMS solution, the app has a dynamic taxonomy, which assists users immensely when organizing content. The Drupal taxonomy enables them to research keywords, too. In this way, they can tailor content to match market trends. Additionally, Drupal is designed for community-based websites, where it lets users create multiple user roles, depending on their needs. And, the Drupal forum is active, with fellow users ready to answer any queries, offering solid advice.

What is also phenomenal about Drupal is that it is free and open source. This fact allows users to manage websites better. You add or edit pages in whatever way you may need. Also, it might not be as friendly as other CMSs, but Drupal is not that hard, too, with developers having an easy time creating and operate websites. Even simple users with limited programming knowledge can build attractive websites, as there is no need to code everything from scratch.

That said, Drupal is somehow complex. It is challenging to learn it in-depth. The active community, even though helpful, it is kind of small. And there are not many guides available. Further, websites created using Drupal may come out heavy, taking a long time to load.

Drupal was written by Dries Buytaert and started as a message board but, it turned out an open-source app in 2001. Two years later, it helped build DeanSpace for Howard Dean, one of the candidates in the U.S. Democratic Party's campaign for the 2004 U.S. presidential elections. DeanSpace used the open-source nature of Drupal and supported a decentralized network of 50 disparate, unofficial pro-Dean websites, enabling users to communicate directly with one another and with the campaign itself.

When the campaign ended, DeanSpace's web team continued to pursue their interest in developing a Web platform that could aid political activism, launching CivicSpace Labs in July 2004. It was the first company to develop and distribute exclusive Drupal technology. As of 2013, the Drupal website listed thousands of vendors, offering Drupal-only services. In 2017, over 1 million websites used Drupal, including hundreds of renowned organizations, media, publishing houses, government parties, schools, non-profits, and prominent individuals.