Drupal 101: All you need to know about Drupal
Is your company thinking of coming up with its own website?
A simple web search will produce countless numberof open source content management systems,which allows ordinary people to create professionaland powerful websites. The list is endless. Onecontent management system, which can give youa run for your money, is Drupal. Developed initiallyas a message board, it has become the backendframework for at least 2.2% of all websitesworldwide. Why should you consider Drupal? Firstoff, it has great standard features, like easy contentauthoring, reliable performance, and excellentsecurity. But what really makes it different is itsflexibility; modularity is one of its core principles.Thus it helps you to create a delightful DigitalExperience for your customers. Further it allows youto add how many ever modules you like, without theassistance of a developer.
But with so much of power, Drupal does come with it’s share of problems. Anyone considering Drupal should have at least a basic knowledgeof HTML, PHP and other common web programming languages. One does not need to be an expert necessarily, but being able to troubleshoot error messages and identify code problems will be a huge benefit.
Another issue with Drupal is that, as your company website begins to gain traction, you will need to have the technical expertise (in-house or external). This can be a problem, because it’s typically a little harder (and more expensive) to find someone with advanced knowledge of Drupal’s steep learning curve. Whereas it should be much easier and less expensive to find someone relatively tech-savvy to help you make basic Word Press updates. Another issue is that unlike WordPress.com, there is no option to have a website hosted by Drupal themselves. That means purchasing your own domain and hosting is required before getting started with a new Drupal site.
“ Drupal is like an onion – it’s smelly, goes good with nachos and ... it has layers. As a programmer works their way into the layers, they continue to like what they see. At its core, Drupal is based on a number of well thought-out APIs that act as mediators between developers with varying needs. There are very little restrictions at the core that would prevent you from doing exactly what you want to do. But it guides you to do everything in a good way. “Freedom in fences,” as my high school creative writing teacher put it. The deeper you go, the more committed a programmer becomes, because they’re forced to do things the right way, and not only that, but it’s easier to do it the right way, and how can that not give you a warm fuzzy”
Summarising, we can say that Drupal is the ideal solution for users looking to create very complex sites, but there may be some difficulties with regard to technical expertise and user simplicity.