Beginning Drupal®

INTRODUCTION

OVER THE PAST FEW YEARS, the Web has undergone dramatic changes. What originally started as a handful of static web pages with a few e-commerce sites in the mix has now turned into a frenzy of collaboration and information sharing. New websites are expected to meet a certain level of interactivity and information-sharing. RSS feeds, blogs, and podcasts are just a few of the current standards. Photo uploads with auto-resizing and cropping, video and audio embedding, and even web APIs are quickly becoming the new standard-website functions.

Years ago, when I started creating dynamic websites, I began as most developers did, by writing my own custom content management system (CMS). My experience was not unlike that of others who followed the same path. The system was light and fast, and did everything that I, and my clients, asked — until a new feature emerged on the Web, and my software had to play catch-up. Soon I was buried under a pile of feature requests and bug fixes, which left me with no time to innovate. My quest for a better solution led me through a maze of software packages, until a friend told me about Drupal.

According to him Drupal has two really great things going for it. The first is that it's built on a modular structure, so it can quickly adapt to custom and unique scenarios. The second is that it is built around a community that is growing every day. When a new feature emerges on the Web, chances are someone has already gotten it to work within Drupal. ...