Drupal
About Drupal
Drupal traces its origins all the way back to 2000. Its staying power comes from its modularity, customizability, and scalability. These features make it well-suited for even the largest sites on the internet today.
A key feature of Drupal is its rich and diverse array of modules, themes, and pre-packaged bundles called distributions sets. Its integrations are the magic under the hood. As a CMS, or Content Management System, this makes Drupal an attractive option for those needing to deploy a large and robust site or network of sites to serve millions of users.
Like WordPress, Drupal is open-source and free to download. Its highly engaged though smaller community of developers and experienced Drupal users respond to questions in its various forums, keep the software updated and maintained, and provide a place for users and enthusiasts alike to download, get support, and share their experience with Drupal.
Costs
Like WordPress, Drupal itself is free. However, many of its most powerful features such as its integrations and the use of back-end third-party frameworks and plugins will require technical infrastructure and the staff to maintain it.
Why Use Drupal CMS?
Drupal Pros
Drupal’s flexible and scalable platform offer a diverse array of options and configurations to its users. Its well-suited to some of the largest scale applications and deployments on the web today. While all that implies technical expertise, it still saves businesses time and money, allows businesses and organizations to bootstrap large scale applications relatively quickly, and does all of this securely and efficiently when configured properly.
- Free and open source
- Robust API allowing for extreme customization
- Modular approach for scale and efficiency
- Strong community support
- Secure and reliable
Drupal Cons
While Drupal offers powerful, scalable features, it comes with a steep learning curve. The level of expertise required to deploy and maintain are significant barriers to those without technical experience or access to assistance.
- Steep learning curve
- Smaller marketplace compared to other options like WordPress
- Can be overkill for simpler, static websites
- Requires extensive expertise and experience to manage properly
What Now?
If you work in or manage an organization with access to the technical knowledge required, and you need to deploy a large scale solution on a solid, open source framework your developers can customize and integrate from front to back, then look no further than Drupal. This is precisely why those in the field of web development or pursuing a career in web development are likely to encounter it at some point. If this is for you, you know who you are. If not, there are plenty of open source and propriety options on the market to cater to virtually every need and skill level.
Cover Photo by Ofspace LLC on Unsplash