Drupal

= Drupal = toc Drupal is an open-source content management system that uses PHP scripting. It is distributed under a GNU General Pubic License.

Drupal is highly customizable and has steadily increased in popularity over the years, with even sharper increases in usage over the past couple years. The user community consists of over 648,000 user accounts and 10,000 developer accounts. Users are heavily involved in the continual development of the software and regularly contribute to forums and list serves and attend conferences and camps.

Drupal was originally designed by Dries Buytaert at the University of Antwerp. In its original state it was a message board that provided a forum for University of Antwerp students to discuss web technologies. He released the code in 2001. Drupal is supported in 55 different languages.

DrupalCore
Downloading the basic DrupalCore software package affords the user with several out-of-the-box functions, including account maintenance, menu management, RSS-feeds, page layout customization, and system administration. The basic code of DrupalCore cannot be customized, as there must be a solid foundation to the software, but the software is highly customizable through “contrib modules” and distributions.

Modules
Modules, or contrib modules, extend the basic DrupalCore software, and act similar to add-ons in a web browser. Anyone in the user and developer community may contribute code for modules. Distributions are assembled packages of modules that serve various specific purposes. For example, there are distributions that support social media websites, new media websites, etc.

Implementation and Criticism
Drupal requires a server capable of running PHP and a database to store content. It runs on any platform and boasts "no programming experience" necessary.

A common user concern is the software’s speed. For example, if using the Drupal in the context of blogging software, Wordpress out performs it in speed tests. The drupal community continually improves upon the program by reducing amount of PHP operations in order to "clean up," and thus speed up, the code.


 * Begin Learning Drupal**

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Examples
Examples of Drupal implementations are vast and versatile.

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 * Educational Website**

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 * Government Website**

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 * News Media Website**

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 * Library Website**

** References **
Drupal: []