Drupal

Drupal is an open source content management system.

Features

Drupal has five essential elements (use emphasis or bold):

Nodes: The basic building block or unit. A node is a piece of content (of any type) entered by a user into the authoring form, together with its associated metadata. Nodes are categorised by Drupal’s built-in taxonomy system.
Modules: Modules customise the data items or fields on each node set. A small number of core modules and thousands of add-on modules (contributed by members of the Drupal community) add functionality to the data.
Themes or templates: Themes govern the look and layout of the pages. Because themes are separate from the nodes a different look can be provided for the same content for different audiences and changes can be made to the look and layout of multiple pages at once (Hunter, 2008).
Blocks and Menus: Blocks are boxes containing content which will be visible on the pages of the site. The developer has greater control over where these appear than is the case for the nodes. Menus are the collection of links from which the site navigation will be generated.
User permissions: A role-based system of permissions operates in Drupal, whereby permissions are assigned to roles rather than individual users. A user can be assigned multiple roles and can accumulate permissions. By contrast, most CMS will only allow each user a ‘single system role or group’. In Drupal, users’ ability to take on multiple roles builds up ‘a scaffold’ of permissions, vastly expanding the flexibility of the interface in adjusting to the needs of different users (Austin and Harris, 2008, p. 15).

The interaction between these five basic layers or building blocks controls the display. Information pertaining to site structure is stored in each node and the information architecture is generated by the menu system, the taxonomy and the views module instead of being dictated by separate page coding (Hunter, 2008).
Other features include:

The choice of mandatory or optional controlled vocabularies or free tagging or a combination of these. Drupal automatically creates a page for each term in the taxonomy (Austin and Harris, 2008, p. 12).

RSS feeds for each site and the option of creating custom feeds.

Security features including comment moderation, Captchas and connection to anti-spam services through contributed modules.

Integration with third party services such as Google Analytics and social networking sites like Facebook and twitter (Safuto, 2011).

Functional requirements and details

Initial installation requires an FTP upload to the user’s own web server. A set of web configuration questions guide this process.

Written in PHP and backed up by a MySQL database.

Distributed under a GNU General Public License, enabling anyone to download and share the software with others.

Usability and functionality

Flexibility: Mindful of the need to balance simplicity and flexibility, Drupal aims to be both a content management system and a content management framework (Hunter, 2008). As a framework for the layering of the five essential elements of nodes, modules, themes, blocks and permissions according to individual site requirements, Drupal facilitates the creation of an array of websites, including sites with static content, sites with dynamic content, single and multi-author blogs and community websites and publishing ventures and open data platforms (Safuto, 2011).
Development and customisation: The initial installation process is easy and well-guided. After downloading the latest stable version of the software from the Drupal website, the user copies the downloaded files to her web documents directory, extracts the files and then follows the instructions to create the ‘super user’ or administrative account (Austin and Harris, 2008, p. 8).
The ‘open’ and ‘fluid’ nature of the software is both its strength and its weak point. The trade-off for the variety of sites one can develop is a much lengthier customisation process than is the case for a less complex CMS which delivers a complete site design out of the box. Often, there are many modules and solutions capable of answering any one problem or requirement and the best solution can only be found by trialling all of them (Hubble, Murphy and Perry, 2011, p. 190).
Nevertheless, Drupal can also save developers time maintaining and expanding (and potentially overhauling) the site. Like other CMS, Drupal produces sites with a great deal of scalability. Developers are better positioned to deal with changes to branding, visual design and even organisation given that only a few options need to be reconfigured to alter the entire look and feel of the website.
User experience
: Drupal has a reputation for overwhelming non-developer users, especially with its administration pages (Austin and Harris, 2008, pp. 34-35). However role-based privileges and permissions make it possible to simplify the interface seen by general users and to enact a phased introduction of more complex features for those authors who need to access them (Robertson, 2007; Veen, 2004).
The developer community and support services: Support (including tutorials, videos, forums and help articles) are available at Drupal’s website, many of which are composed and maintained by the large and active Drupal community. These are reasonably easy to navigate and cater for varying levels of technical knowledge. There are also a number of free and subscription-based tutorial and support services, as well as consultants specialising in Drupal implementation and training.

Costs

Although the initial implementation is free, on-going training and maintenance costs may make a less complex CMS a better choice, especially for smaller organisations without in-house developers or sites with smaller repositories of content and less frequent updates. When migrating an existing site, the training burden can be lessened by concentrating on single sections at a time (Hubble, Murphy and Perry, 2011, p. 194). Training refreshers and updates are a must, since the software is continually evolving (Hubble, Murphy and Perry, 2011, p. 191).

Austin, A., & Harris, C. (2008). Drupal in libraries. Library Technology Reports (special issue), 44(4).

Hubble, A., Murphy, D. A., & Perry, S. C. (2011). From static and stale to dynamic and collaborative: The Drupal difference. Information Technology and Libraries, 30(4), 190-197.

Hunter, L. (2008). The Drupal overview. Retrieved from Drupal website: http://drupal.org/getting-started/before/overview

Safuto, R. J. (2011). Beginner's guide to Drupal. Retrieved from Learn by the drop website: http://learnbythedrop.com/beginners-guide-to-drupal