Physically, Drupal is a collection of folders and files, most often found within a parent folder that is typically referred to as the Drupal root. Drupal also consists of a database, where the site's content and various settings are kept.
The Drupal root will most often be situated on a computer known as a web server that may contain many websites, though the web server could also exist on a laptop for use in developing websites. The environment in which Drupal exists will consist of the following:
- An operating system, which is usually Linux, but can be any another, such as Windows, OS X, or Unix
- A web server, such as Apache or Nginx
- A database, most often MySQL, which may be on the same server or on a separate ...
