Drupal | Open Source CMS

2008 October 01 | 11:16 pm

Contributed by: anti • antigrammar.com

Introduction

Drupal is an open source content management system written in PHP. Drupal had it's start as a bulletin board for college students in a single dorm. Drupal has come a long way since those days, but is still ideal for a website that is updated by more than one person.

Advantages

Anyone who feels limited by the structure of other systems may do well to try Drupal on for size. The code is designed so that any part can be overridden without hacking into the core of the system. This makes upgrades much more painless by keeping all custom code in a single place. There are modules that can be installed to allow for a shopping cart or photo gallery. There are also modules that let you customize the content itself. Views will build lists to display the content any way you like, and the Content Construction Kit (CCK) will let you create your own content types. This can be handy if, say, you need to import a spreadsheet containing the details of 8,000 books. The only limits are those set by your hosting plan.

Disadvantages?

The open structure of Drupal is often the thing that turns people away when they first begin to use it. It can be used to build anything, but once you get it uploaded and run the installer there does not seem to be a lot to work with. It helps to have a good idea of where you want your site to go, and it is certain your first Drupal site will not be as efficient as your second or third. Drupal takes a while to understand, but once you get the hang of it you can have a site up and running in no time.

Definitions:

Drupal also ships with some specific terms that must be understood for the fullest enjoyment. Here are a couple you will be confronted with immediately:

Node:

In Drupal, everything is a node. Pages, blog posts, and whatever custom content types you create with CCK are all just different types of nodes (Source)

Taxonomy:

This is the term Drupal uses to classify content. At the most basic structure it is a list of categories. The taxonomy of your site can be as simple or as complex as you desire. Think of the taxonomy set up to classify all life on Earth. Every plant, animal and bird has a family, genus, species, and perhaps even a variety. (Source)