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Drupal - Easy to Use CMS !

By Arnab March 6, 2007 filed in CMS, Newsletter

A week ago I wrote about a Content Management System (CMS) called Joomla. I wrote about that because I have recently been reading about it and wanted to experiment and also get a discussion going on the subject to be able to learn some more. And then, I realized I would also write about Drupal, a CMS I have already used and experimented with exhaustively.

Before I get into Drupal’s features and strengths, let me show you a live site that I have with daily updates in the content. FresherJobsIndia.com is a website that I have built to assist Freshers on the hunt for a job that suits their interests and qualification, and since I realized that there are going to be daily postings on this website by my team and others, managing this website would have been a pain in plain HTML. Check out the website here !

We have designed only the Home Page in HTML. Clicking on the “Latest Job Postings” will take you to the Drupal based PHP interface. Drupal is built as many modules that can easily added or removed. By activating the Adsense module, I was able to add an Adsense Block to the right. Similarly, it was very easy for me to add RSS feeds (The feed from Economic Times at the Lower right hand side of the page). Features like registration, logging in, adding posts, adding comments, etc. are all automated and available instantly as soon as you setup Drupal. In addition there are multiple templates for looks that can suit the content, and Drupal also gives us detailed user management rights in the Admin section. It lets you add links or plain HTML content within blocks, as is visible in the Placement Company Listings on the left hand side.

The name Drupal is a derivative of the Dutch word “druppel” meaning drop, Drupal is a CMS as well as a blogging tool that was written by Dries Buytaert. Today it is one of the most widely used softwares that is used by many high traffic websites like The Onion, Ourmedia, KernelTrap and Spread Firefox. It is especially popular for creating online communities with the tag line “community plumbing”.

It is relatively easy to understand Drupal’s features and modify and administrate the layout menus and navigation of a drupal supported site. Also if you are well versed with PHP, it is not difficult to write a module for Drupal. With all the relevant features to support building community sites, Drupal, I think is a great choice for news or blog sites (along with standard websites). In addition, there is a ton of information on Drupal available online on multiple forums and support sites.

All in all, Drupal has looked very useful to me. It is relatively easier than other CMS like PHP-Nuke which I spent a significant amount of time over to achieve relatively little. I suggest those of you thinking of moving to a CMS try this Free tool for sure. Also, please comment on Drupal if you can, or any other CMS, if you have used any !