Drupal is a fully featured content management system that can be infinitely enhanced through the installation of contributed modules or by customised development. We have listed the key features - either in core or through contributed modules - that make Drupal the multi award winning CMS that it is.
Platform, Web Server and Database Independent: While the standard install configuration is on Linux, Apache and MySQL or PostgreSQL, Drupal can also be installed on Windows servers running IIS and Microsoft SQL Server, Solaris, BSD or Mac OS X if there's a requirement to do so.
Granular User Management: Drupal allows total control of user role definitions and permissions for access to different functions within your website.
Multiple Content Types: Drupal provides complete flexibility over defining how different content types (e.g. articles, blog posts, news stories) appear and the functionality associated with each content type, such as allowing or disallowing user comments.
Flexible Taxonomy and Menu Structures: The taxonomy module provides limitless customisation over the categories a content type is associated with, while the menu structure can be configured in any manner required. This flexibility makes the traditional CMS "Section > Category > Article" paradigm obsolete if you need complex ways to categorise your content, or you can keep things as simple as you like.
Standards Compliant Templating & Theming: Drupal separates all content from the presentation layer, allowing you to fully customise the design and layout of your website using standards compliant HTML and CSS. A large number of high quality, pre-built themes are available that may help fast-track the design of your project instead of starting from scratch and investing in a fully customised website design.
Device-Specific Display: If your website needs to be optimised for mobile or other devices, Drupal can detect the browser being used and serve a specific display theme for that device.
Highly Tuned Search Engine Optimisation (SEO): A Drupal website will be optimally tuned for search engines through the provision of natural language URLs, permanent links to content, customisable page metadata and an automatically generated XML sitemap.
Online Community Features: Drupal installs with forums, commenting, polls, blogging, RSS feed aggregation and rich user profiles by default, while a range of modules and custom development can facilitate any imaginable form of user generated content or interaction on par with the Facebooks, YouTubes and Flickrs of the world.
Tracking and Statistics: By default, Drupal contains its own user tracking and statistics, but can be easily integrated with third party reporting tools such as Google Analytics.
Content Administration: A range of core and contributed modules provides a very high degree of editorial workflow and management depending on the size of the organisation and amount of content being managed.
WYSIWYG Content Editing: A range of modules can provide varying levels of WYSIWYG editing control depending upon the complexity of editing requirements.
Content Syndication: Every page or section within a Drupal website can be published as an RSS feed if required. Other web services standards are supported for different types of integration with external systems.
In-built Search: Drupal's own internal search engine provides either standard or advanced modes of searching by default, and any manner of search can be customised. If you just want to use Google as your Drupal website search engine, a simple module is easily installed.
Contributed Modules: If Drupal core doesn't facilitate what you want to do, thousands of free contributed modules are available that may provide what you need.
We've identified a core set of reasons why Drupal has been adopted by tens of thousands of websites, from individual blogs to massive social media networks, and why it could be the right choice for your online project.
Drupal is open source software
In contrast to proprietary software developed and supported by a single company, Drupal is developed and maintained collaboratively by thousands of programmers all working to make the best possible content management system. This approach has a number of key benefits:
Drupal is proven
You don't need to look far to find examples of Drupal being used by the world's biggest brands, organisations and even countries for highly complex websites that cope with massive amounts of visitor traffic. You may have heard of some of them: The United Nations, Google, Yahoo, AOL, Sony/BMG, Universal Music Group, Warner Bros Music, Adobe, Harvard University, MTV, Nike, Amnesty International, Greenpeace, FedEx, Novell, Disney, The Kingdom of Belgium, Sun Microsystems, the New Zealand Government and Metallica.
Drupal is highly customisable
While you can install and release a basic Drupal website in an hour or so, Drupal is designed to be highly customisable in terms of features, functionality, layout and design. This means you can make it as lean or fully featured as you need it to be.
In fact, many people have started referring to Drupal as a Content Management Framework - a platform on which a developer has free reign to enhance the core functionality.
Drupal has online community features built into core
Instead of treating community features like forums, article commenting and blogging as an afterthought, Drupal has built these features into its core, so that every authenticated user of your website can create content depending on the level of permissions you've set. This enables the rapid deployment of social networking functionality without the need for major customisation or the mash-up of third party products and services. These features can be massively extended with the addition of contributed or customised modules. Want to build Flickr with Drupal? You can!
Drupal is designed for rapid deployment using an agile development methodology
Unlike old-school website development that involves masses of documentation and nothing for a client to see without weeks or months of development taking place, using Drupal enables you to work in a true 'Web 2.0' style in which core features and functionality can be rapidly deployed to market, with iterative enhancements and customisations made over time.
Drupal is enterprise-class
Companies like Microsoft have done a good job at promoting the notion that "open-source" and "enterprise-class" can't be uttered in the same sentence. This stems from open source software being one of the biggest threats to any proprietary software company's business model, so literally millions of marketing dollars have been targeted at spreading the perception that open source should be viewed as inferior in some way. Linux, Java, MySQL, Apache and Firefox are just a few examples that prove this dis-information campaign is just marketing spin.
Drupal provides long term business security
Due to a combination of the reasons outlined above, Drupal provides an organisation with a high level of business security in the investment they've made by choosing Drupal as their content management system. Some key points to consider are: