Common Drupal Questions

by sam Nov 23, 2010

Drupal is a content management system? A content management system is software that allows non-technical users to control the day to day operations of a website - adding, updating & deleting content, managing comments, users and so on.

Drupal is more than a content management system? Traditional CMS's tend to focus on the features mentioned above. Drupal can do so much more. Community sites with forums, company intranets, custom applications, heck you can even create social networking sites. This flexibility is why Drupal's tag line is 'community plumbing'. Drupal provides a base to build websites around.

Why is Drupal so flexible? Drupal is flexible because it is extendable. If you have a problem you can go to drupal.org and search the project directory for a module that meets your needs. There are thousands of these modules. For instance, the ubercart module suite will enable you to configure a shopping cart.

So why would I need a developer? You don't necessarily. Lots of people have spent many hours learning the Drupal module ecosystem and can put some what functional sites together. However if you want any level of polish for your site you will likely discover it gets difficult to complete the last 10%. Things like altering modules, custom themes or theme alterations etc.

It can be far more time & cost efficient to just get a developer to create the site for you - we have been down this path time and time again, and we already know the best ways to get things done. What you should spend you time learning is how to operate your Drupal site. This will save you lots of money in the long term.

Drupal is free to use. Why? Drupal is released under the open source GPL license. In simple terms, this license allows you to download and use the code for free, but if you cannot redistribute alterations to the code unless you make them freely available.

So while it is free to build a website with Drupal, you cannot resell or redistribute modifications to Drupal without making it freely available. This is has led in part to the massive community module directory.

Who makes Drupal? In 2000 Belgium Dries Buytaert started the first version of Drupal as a system to share information between himself and his class mates. After University, Dries put the site up on drop.org, which was a misspelling of the Dutch word for village, 'dorp'. A year later it was decided to release the now improved code as Drupal, derived from the Dutch word 'druppel' which means 'drop'.

From that point a community of thousands of developers has built up around Drupal. These can be broken into a smaller 'core' development group that work to release major Drupal versions. The larger group of developers works on contributed, or 'contrib' modules, which expand Drupal and provide additional features. Sometimes code that starts out in a popular contrib module will make it into Drupal core.

Some of the developers are paid by their employers or their clients, others contribute their valuable free time. This is important to remember when interacting within the community.