Drupal – Our Preferred Content Management Framework
What is Drupal?
Drupal is the name of an amazingly durable, reliable, secure, highly extensible sophisticated website framework and content management system all wrapped up in one. It is one of the most popular Content Management Systems (CMS) in use today. In recent months, particularly since the release of version 6, Drupal has experienced a surge in popularity. With hundreds of free customizable themes, more than 4,500 free modules to augment functionality, and an architecture that can literally do anything, it’s no wonder every day people and organizations by the tens of thousands around the world are choosing Drupal as their preferred website content management platform.
Who Uses Drupal?
Here’s a brief list of just some notable Drupal-based websites:
Why Drupal?
Popular
Drupal is a world-leading CMS, and is gaining in popularity every day. This is important for at least two reasons. First, Drupal’s popularity assures continued development in the open source community. Tens of thousands of people around the world collectively maintain and improve Drupal source code. This ensures future development in an ever changing web environment. Second – and every bit as important – at Paskainos, we strive to give your organization every opportunity to succeed. By using an industry-leading popular CMS we help insure you won’t be ‘held hostage’ by us or anyone else. Drupal is a framework familiar to and used by tens of thousands of web developers around the world. Rest assured, with Drupal you’ll never be stuck with a site no one understands or knows how to fix or maintain because the last guy took all the secrets with him.
Open Source
Open source technology in the simplest sense is technology built and maintained for free by an open group, with the limited expectation of those who make use of the technology that they will ‘give back’ to the project by helping to maintain and improve the technology in various ways. This approach dramatically reduces the overhead of such projects, allowing fertile growth and development. For site owners, this means a significant reduction in site development and maintenance costs, along with having in essence your own 24/7 on-site web IT staff.
Standards-based
In today’s web environment the importance of this feature simply cannot be overstated. In nearly every recent survey and government analysis, non-standards compliant sites are being targeted as potential threats to web servers and the internet community at large. Standards-based technology is the way to ensure a sturdy, reliable foundation on which to build an enduring web presence.
Customizable
Because of its unique design, Drupal has the capability to natively mimic any other CMS, and no other popular CMS can make that claim. Drupal can mimic Wordpress, Joomla, or any other content management system. It also has many capabilities others do not. In design terms this means the sky is the limit. There is no end to what Drupal can do. For website owners this means maximum flexibility in terms of design, layout, and functionality.
Database Driven
Long gone are the simple days of files in folders on servers that comprised the website of yester-year. If Web 2.0 and the Semantic Web concepts are about anything, they are about dynamic data interaction. Today’s websites are virtually required to provide robust interactivity of site data. In other words, how many different ways can the site’s content be served up or rendered together. Think of this concept as the way news sites serve up related content, or the way Amazon offers relevant purchase suggestions based on your purchasing habits. Drupal is one of the most powerful database-driven platforms, designed specifically with that core functionality in mind.
Extensible
This is a fancy technical term used by IT people which simply means scalable or able to grow and expand in essentially all feasible directions. Drupal is one of the most highly extensible frameworks available, and has the built-in ability to grow with your organization. Drupal was built from the ground up with a uniquely sophisticated granular level control system that provides unparalleled extensibility. With its vast feature-rich capabilities and growing community you’ll never outgrow Drupal.
Secure
Today all eyes are on internet security. Governments and other organizations are monitoring site security around the world, and site owners are becoming increasingly aware of site vulnerability hazards not only to their organization, but to their clients. With a premium being placed on site security going forward, it is essential to use a framework that mitigates security threats and provides maximum site security. Drupal maintains a vigilant security community, providing security release updates on an ongoing basis to achieve maximum site security, which is one of the reasons even the U.S. Government and governments around the world use Drupal.