Leveraging Drupal®: Getting Your Site Done Right

Introduction

Drupal is an Open Source, community-based Content Management System (CMS) and Website Application Development Framework that allows individuals, organizations, businesses, government agencies, and social classes to create interactive, media-based database-driven websites where they can carry out a significant portion of their activities.

What does this mean for you?

• Open Source—Not only is Drupal a software product readily available free of charge, but it is also licensed under the GPL license. This means, among other things, that its source code is completely open and readily accessible to all. It also means that all upgrades are available free of charge.

  For more on the GPL license, see www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhatDoesGPLStandFor. For an interesting discussion of how business can make use of GPL-licensed software without having to publish the way they actually put Drupal to use, see http://jeff.viapositiva.net/archives/2006/02/drupal_and_the_gpl_as_i_understa.html.

• Community-Based—Not all Open Source software is community-based. Some large corporations release a portion of their code under a GPL license, but the user community cannot participate in the production of the code. It is important to understand that because Drupal is actually produced by a huge developer base, with a publicly accessible and tremendously active issue queue, Drupal enjoys a considerable gain in the quality of its software.

• Content Management System (CMS)—Once installed and configured, ...