About Drupal

by: Fat Jack

The Onion
The Spread Firefox
Ourmedia
KernelTrap
The Defective by Design campaign

Do these above mentioned names make any sense for you? Well, they are all the names of high-traffic websites….but apart from that?

Well, they are all bound by a common thread…they all use Drupal as their web application framework or blogging engine.

So what Drupal actually is?
Drupal is a software package that is

* Free o download and use
* Written in PHP
* Open-source system
* Distributed under the GPL
* Maintained and developed by a community of thousands of users and developers across the globe.
* Allows an individual or an online community to publish, manage and organize a content rich website.

The background

The credit for writing this software---today’s most popular tool for building online communities goes to Dries Buytaert. The name of the software has significance; the word Drupal has its origin in the Dutch word, “druppel” or Drop. Now Drop in Dutch also stands for Village or community. So the community aspect of the software has always been emphasized. However, others try to establish a link with the name of now defunct Drop.org website---the codes of which had a direct influence on the coding of Drupal.

What it can do for you

The latest version (Drupal 5.1) released in the early 2007 comes with the enhanced feature of easy-to-use web installer. The moment your web host adds this script to your web host account, it is all geared up to help you in your variety of content management and blogging tasks such as: Forums, Peer-to-peer networking , Newsletters, Podcasting, Picture galleries, File uploads and downloads and many more.

The wide ranging Drupal websites

Powered with a wide range of features, Drupal can support different types of website ranging from traditional blogs to Social Networking sites and Intranet applications to E-commerce applications.

If you want to have a glimpse of notable sites using Drupal, refer to this URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drupal

On your way to create a community based website or a community driven portal?

Or are you up to introducing a resource directory or an Aficionado site?

Whatever may be your website requirements, Drupal can handle them all. So start your warming up from today; but before that make sure you find an efficient web host who can offer you Drupal webhosting.

source : http://www.articlecity.com/articles/computers_and_internet/article_3907.shtml