Drupal Style

Why use Drupal?

Sep 11, 2008

This article talks about the advantages of using Drupal as a base for medium to large scale CMS (Content Management System) driven websites.

Drupal is an Open Source Content Management System (CMS), designed for power and flexibility. Boasting one of the biggest professional developer communities, Drupal is quickly becoming one of the leading PHP content management systems in the world. This article explores several key points of Drupal, and the reason why we use it as a base for our web solutions.

Key features

  • Advanced URL control. Unlike many other CMS's, Drupal gives you precise control over URL structure, which makes it ideal for Search Engine Optimization. Each item of content in Drupal (called a node) can be given a custom URL (called a URL alias). Drupal uses Apache's mod_rewrite to enable customizable URLs that are both user and search engine friendly.
  • Expandability. Drupal's core functionality can be further extended by using various community developed modules. This allows us to minimize the development time, resulting in a very cost-efficient end result.
  • Revision control. Drupal can be configured to save any revisions done to the website, allowing the users to revert to an older version of the page at any given time.
  • Search-friendly. All content in Drupal is fully indexed and searchable at all times if you take advantage of the built in search module. This feature is great when used to find archived items, or content in general on a very content-heavy website.
  • User management. Drupal was designed for community-based websites and has strong user role and access control functionality. You can create as many custom user roles with custom access levels as you need. For example you could create the following roles, each with different levels of access to your features: "anonymous visitor", "authenticated user", "moderator", "editor", "webmaster", "admin".
  • Page titles and meta tags. Drupal's Page Title Module gives you custom control of your HTML

    elements, while the Meta Tags Module gives you control over your pages' individual meta description tags. This is an excellent feature to make your website more search engine optimized.

What can Drupal be used for?

  • Community web portals
  • Discussion sites
  • Corporate web sites
  • Intranet applications
  • Personal web sites or blogs
  • Aficionado sites
  • E-commerce applications
  • Resource directories
  • Social Networking sites
  • Blogs

Who uses Drupal?

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