Drupal CMS & Framework Overview from SGC San Diego

Drupal is our preferred free, open source, third-party CMS & Framework and it is our first choice when building sites for our clients that require its abilities and admin controls.
Official site: http://www.drupal.org
Advantages: templates control,system architecture, API, taxonomy, community.
Disadvantages: difficulty of working without preparation.

If you wish to completely control the appearance and the functionality of your Website or Web application (the level of control is determined by your needs), and do this effectively, the Drupal API will work extremely well for you and be very flexible as a template system solution.

In general, Drupal is simply a tool to construct your Website and not actually the site itself. The Drupal core contains only the required functionality to get your site working at a basic level. To do more custom and contributed modules, the modules need to be integrated to add your desired functionality. A basic Drupal install has many modules included however, such as content, profile, taxonomy, contact, blog, forum, search and so on. Some beginners may choose another CMS because it may take a lot of time to find the necessary module for a beginner and Drupal is really a development tool, not a do-it-yourself-kit!

You may think that Drupal was designed for programmers. But this doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to make an individual and attractive site if you are a web designer. If you don’t know PHP, JavaScript and MySQL you could still install Drupal and work with it. It is most likely not necessary to write your own modules if you are building a brochure Website with no custom abilities/functionality. It will be enough to go to the site and download them as needed.

Working with the Drupal API, CMS, and Framework is like a breath of fresh air for the programmer as compared to other options out there like Joomla, for example. Simple and well written code, powerful API, excellent documentation — what else do we need? The structure of the core assumes easy re-definition of the majority of core functions and modules (almost all which are responsible for output) with the help of «hooks». To write your own modules is very simple with the use of these core «hooks». Add just a few of special functions in the «filename.module» file you create — and your module is ready.

It is possible to apply Drupal to almost any site type: from simple static sites (the system of pseudonyms allows to set any URL for pages), to complicated community-portals. There will be almost no restrictions in site design – it all depends only on the desire and experience of the developer.

Drupal has a built-in system of internal caching which provides stable work even at overloads (slashdot and digg-effects). You can automatically turn off the part of functionality at flow of visitors. For some great examples, visit http://www.drupal.org and http://www.theonion.com.