Beginning Drupal®

Chapter 1. Introducing Drupal

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER:

• History of Drupal

• Drupal's community

• How to find and participate in the community, including: IRC, Meetups, Camps, and Drupal conferences

• Professional Drupal support

• The Drupal Association

What is Drupal? If this is your first time using Drupal, you're probably trying to answer this yourself, and you may have heard conflicting answers. Often Drupal is described as a content management system, whereas other times, it's called a content management framework. So is it a system or a framework? Here's a simple definition:

Drupal is an open source software application that manages the content of and builds websites and web applications. It can be used to create a web blog, e-commerce store, photo gallery, or social networking website.

That seems straightforward, right? In fact, it sounds a lot like Joomla!, Wordpress, Zope, and many other content management systems (CMSs). So why do people use the term content management platform or content management framework?

The use of the terms platform and framework is an attempt to describe Drupal as a base or a foundation onto which you build your desired websites or web applications. Out of the box, Drupal can be used to instantly create a website with users, articles, blogs, comments, and a forum. With a few modules from http://drupal.org it can be transformed into an e-commerce site, a group photo gallery, and more. Drupal is also built around a modular core and a strong application ...