What is Drupal Development

Drupal is a free web based open source content management system (CMS) written in the PHP programming language. In short, Drupal provides users with a simple interface to design and build fully functional websites with little or no programming experience. One can easily create anything from a simple website such as a personal blog, forums or social networking sites to enterprise level intranets, extranets, and storefronts.

Drupal Core

Out of the box Drupal provides the basic building blocks for just about any site. These building blocks are small packages of files called modules. The modules that come with the Drupal core provide functionality for items such as user registration, search, simple user profiles, menus, user permissions and roles, form submission, file uploads, forums, and blogs just to name a few.

Drupal Security

Some criticize that open source software is less secure than private closed source software because the code is open and available for hackers to look at making it easy to find vulnerabilities. It is this fact that actually makes open source software more secure than it's counterpart by letting everyone else have the same benefit. As soon as a vulnerability is found, anyone in the community can identify the issue and submit a patch which can then be tested by the rest of the community and easily distributed through Drupal's update site.

Drupal User Security Features

Drupal's user security features are impressive to say the least. Administrators can lock down elements of the site using roles and permissions. Security can be as simple as locking down a page for a members area or as minute as blocking off specific menu items and content items. Through roles and permissions a site administrator can create just about any complex security scheme they can think of.

Extending Drupal

Drupal is not just a CMS but, is better described as an application framework or web application framework. Drupal's real power is in its modularity. Drupal's core functionality can be extended through the use of modules, often referred to as contrib modules. These modules can add functionality for items such as visually playful picture galleries and neat menu effects to complicated social networking functions like facebook or ecommerce features like shopping carts. There are literally thousands of free contrib modules to choose from for Drupal and more of them are being developed every day.

Install It Anywhere

Yes it's true, you can install Drupal on any web server out there. It is completely cross platform. This means you can install it on any web server that can run PHP and a database. You aren't locked into any one particular operating system or web server. You can run it on Microsoft's IIS web server or Linux's popular Apache platform.

Drupal Community

The Drupal community is the key to Drupal's overall success. There are no big corporations or money hungry software developers maintaining the Drupal core and it's wealth of modules. That being the case, the Drupal community is the true driving force behind it's successful adoption among web site owners. Drupal has over 830,000 user accounts and more than 2,000 developer accounts making it one of the most popular CMS's out there. There is a major conference held twice a year that currently alternates between Europe and the United States called DrupalCon. DrupalCon's attendance grew from 500 at Szeged in August 2008 to over 3,000 people at San Francisco in April 2010. With those kinds of numbers supporting Drupal you can use it in confidence knowing that it will be supported for a long time to come.