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Drupal

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Original author(s)Dries Buytaert
Initial releaseJanuary 2001 (2001-01)
Stable release
6.16 / March 3, 2010 (2010-03-03)
Preview release
7.0-alpha 3 / March 21, 2010; 14 years ago (2010-03-21)[1]
Repository
Written inPHP
Operating systemCross-platform
TypeContent management framework, Content management system, Community and Blog software
LicenseGNU General Public License version 2
Websitehttp://drupal.org

Drupal (Template:PronEng) is a free and open source[2] content management system (CMS) written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License.[3][4] It is used as a back-end system for many different types of websites, ranging from small personal blogs to large corporate and political sites, including whitehouse.gov[5] and data.gov.uk. It is also used for knowledge management and business collaboration.

The standard release of Drupal, known as Drupal core, contains basic features common to most CMSs. These include the ability to register and maintain individual user accounts within a flexible and rich permission / privilege system, create and manage menus, RSS-feeds, customize page layout, perform logging, and administer the system. As installed, Drupal provides options to create a classic brochureware website, a single- or multi-user blog, an Internet forum, or a community website providing for user-generated content.

Drupal was also designed to allow new features and custom behavior to be added to extend Drupal's core capabilities. This is done via installation of plug-in modules (known as contrib modules) created and contributed to the project by open source community members. For this reason, Drupal is sometimes described as a content management framework.[3] Drupal is also described as a web application framework, as it meets the generally accepted feature requirements for such frameworks.

Although Drupal offers a sophisticated programming interface for developers, no programming skills are required for basic website installation and administration.[6]

Drupal can run on any computing platform that supports both a web server capable of running PHP version 4.3.5+ (including Apache, IIS, Lighttpd, and nginx) and a database (such as MySQL or PostgreSQL) to store content and settings.[4]

History

Originally written by Dries Buytaert as a message board, Drupal became an open source project in 2001.[7] Drupal is an English rendering of the Dutch word “druppel”, which means “drop” (as in “a water droplet”).[8] The name was taken from the now-defunct Drop.org website, whose code slowly evolved into Drupal. Buytaert wanted to call the site “dorp” (Dutch for “village”) for its community aspects, but made a typo when checking the domain name and thought it sounded better.[7]

A large community now helps develop Drupal[9], and Drupal's popularity is growing rapidly. From May 2007 to April 2008, Drupal was downloaded from the Drupal.org website more than 1.4 million times, an increase of approximately 125% from the previous year.[10][11]

As of April 2009, over 70 well-known brand names and not-for-profit organizations use Drupal.[12] Drupal has also won several Packt Open Source CMS Awards[13] and three times (in a row) won the Webware 100.[14][15]

Drupal 6.16, released in March 2010, is the latest release.[16] On March 5, 2009, Dries Buytaert announced a code freeze for Drupal 7 for September 1, 2009.[17] The latest test version, DRUPAL-7-0-ALPHA-3, was released on March 21, 2010.[18] There is no date announced yet for the final release of Drupal 7.

Drupal core

Drupal core is the stock installation of Drupal, which can be optionally extended by third party contributions. In Drupal's default configuration, website content can be contributed by either registered or anonymous users (at the discretion of the administrator) and made accessible to web visitors by a variety of selectable criteria including by date, category, searches, etc. Drupal core also includes a hierarchical taxonomy system, which allows content to be categorized or tagged with key words for easier access.[6]

Drupal maintains a detailed changelog of core feature updates by version.[19]

Core modules

Drupal core includes core modules which can be enabled by the administrator to extend the functionality of the core website.[20]

The core Drupal distribution provides a number of features[20], including:

Column-generating template families

The templates listed here are not interchangeable. For example, using {{col-float}} with {{col-end}} instead of {{col-float-end}} would leave a <div>...</div> open, potentially harming any subsequent formatting.

Column templates
Type Family
Handles wiki
table code?†
 Responsive/
mobile suited 		Start template Column divider End template
Float "col-float" Yes Yes {{col-float}} {{col-float-break}} {{col-float-end}}
"columns-start" Yes Yes {{columns-start}} {{column}} {{columns-end}}
Columns "div col" Yes Yes {{div col}} – {{div col end}}
"columns-list" No Yes {{columns-list}} (wraps div col) – –
Flexbox "flex columns" No Yes {{flex columns}} – –
Table "col" Yes No {{col-begin}},
{{col-begin-fixed}} or
{{col-begin-small}} 		{{col-break}} or
{{col-2}} .. {{col-5}} 		{{col-end}}

† Can template handle the basic wiki markup {| | || |- |} used to create tables? If not, special templates that produce these elements (such as {{(!}}, {{!}}, {{!!}}, {{!-}}, {{!)}})—or HTML tags (<table>...</table>, <tr>...</tr>, etc.)—need to be used instead.

Core themes

The color editor being used to adjust the "Garland" core theme

Drupal core includes several core themes, which customize the aesthetic "look and feel" of the site. These themes can be chosen by the administrator via a special menu.[21]

The Color Module, introduced in Drupal core 5.0, allows administrators to change the color scheme of certain themes via a Web-browser interface. This feature was added to allow a higher level of customization for the average non-coder.[22]

Abstract framework

Drupal's architecture does not follow the model–view–controller design pattern, but instead follows presentation-abstraction-control.

Translations

As of February 2008, translations for Drupal's interface were available in 44 languages plus English (the default).[23] Some read right to left, such as Arabic, Persian, and Hebrew. Drupal 6 provides improved support for content and content administration in multiple languages.[24]

Auto-update notification

Drupal can automatically notify the administrator when a new version of any module, theme, or the Drupal core itself, becomes available. This feature can help keep a Drupal installation up-to-date with the latest features and security fixes.[24]

An auto-update module for the older version 5.x provides identical functionality, but it is not included in the core release.[25]

Extending Drupal core

Drupal core is designed to be modular with a system of hooks and callbacks, which are accessed internally via an API.[26] This design allows third-party contributed (often abbreviated to "contrib") modules and themes to extend or override Drupal's default behaviors without changing Drupal core's code.

Drupal's modular design, which isolates Drupal core's files from contributed module and themes, increases flexibility and security and allows Drupal administrators to cleanly upgrade to new releases of Drupal core without potentially overwriting their site's customizations.[27] To maintain this separation, Drupal administrators are instructed to avoid altering Drupal core's software.[28]

Contributed modules

Contributed Drupal modules offer a variety of features including image galleries, custom content types and content listings, WYSIWYG editors, private messaging, third-party integration tools[29], and more. The Drupal website lists over 4600 free modules (as of August 1, 2009), written and contributed to by the Drupal community.[30][31][32]

For example, some of the most powerful and commonly used contrib modules include:

  • Content Construction Kit (CCK): allows site administrators to dynamically create content types. A content type describes any kind of information to be stored in the website's database. These may include, but are not limited to, events, invitations, reviews, articles, or products.
  • Views: facilitates the retrieval and presentation of content to site visitors.
  • Panels: drag and drop content manager that allows site administrators to visually design a custom content layout.

The CCK Fields API has been integrated into Drupal core in the development Drupal 7 branch.[33]

Contributed themes

Contributed themes adapt or replace a Drupal site's default look and feel.

Drupal themes use standardized formats that may be generated by common third-party theme design engines. Many themes for Drupal are written in the PHPTemplate engine[34] or, to a lesser extent, the XTemplate engine.[35] Some templates use hard-coded PHP.

Although early versions of Drupal's theming system were criticized[36] for being less design-oriented and more complicated than those for Mambo, Joomla! and Plone, the inclusion of the PHPTemplate and XTemplate engines in Drupal has addressed some of these concerns.[citation needed] The new Drupal 6 theming system utilizes a template engine in an attempt to further separate HTML/CSS from PHP. A Drupal development module, Devel, provides assistance to theme authors who use Drupal 6.

Community-contributed themes[37] at the Drupal website are released under a free GPL license,and most of them are demonstrated at the Drupal Theme Garden[38].

Contributed Profiles

Installation profiles include modules, themes, and associated configuration that provides certain features immediately after installation.

The earliest Drupal installation profiles to gain acceptance were also distributed as Drupal distributions, or unified downloads with all modules included. These include Open Atrium[39], Managing News[40], and Tattler[41].

Criticism

In an article on the Whitehouse.gov site running Drupal, Slate noted that Recovery.gov, which is devoted to tracking stimulus spending originally used Drupal but soon hired a private contractor at a reported cost of $18 million to rework the site.[42] The article goes on to list some common criticisms of Drupal.[42]

  • Usability: Some aspects of Drupal's administration interface can be confusing and intimidating, particularly for new administrators.[43] According to the Interaction Design and Information Architecture program at the University of Baltimore, Drupal lacks an intuitive, easy administration user interface.[44][45][46] The administration area is regarded as clunky and cryptic with Drupal version 5 and 6, but improved ease of use is planned with the upcoming version 7. According to Dries Buytaert, Drupal 7 won't be released until 90% of the problems identified by the University of Minnesota[47][48] and the University of Baltimore[46] are solved. Usability will be one of the main improvements in Drupal 7 that will close the gap with easier CMSs.
  • Learning curve: Some users have described Drupal as having a fairly steep learning curve.[43][49][50]
  • Backward compatibility (for software development): Drupal's designers have decided that, in terms of programming, backward compatibility may be sacrificed with each major revision.[51] As a result, sometimes a new version's code is not compatible with a previous version. This means that contrib module and theme developers may be required to re-work some or all of their previous code to ensure compatibility with the latest version of Drupal. However, the policy enforced for Drupal core development is that Drupal may change an API, but it will not change how it uses your data. This means that while code may need changing between major releases, data from previous versions will still be usable without the need to alter the data itself in the new release.[52][53]
  • Performance / scalability: In 2008, performance tests between Drupal 6.1 and Joomla 1.5 branch demonstrated that Drupal's Web pages were delivered "significantly faster" compared with Joomla.[54] Despite this, there persists a popular view that Drupal is slow.[55] It is true that Drupal is likely to be slower when configured for a narrow usage as compared to an application specifically designed for that usage. For example, Wordpress may often outperform Drupal as a single-user blogging tool. However, the Drupal project itself suggests that narrowly focused applications are often preferable for narrow usage.[56] To improve performance, Drupal offers caching to store static pages, the use of which resulted in a 508% improvement. Static pages are typically delivered to only anonymous visitors who have not logged in; contributed modules must be installed to allow page caching for authenticated users.[57] Thus, dramatic performance improvements from caching may not reflect real-world usage of some Drupal sites.[58] Like performance, scalability, or the ability for a Web site to handle a growing number of concurrent visitors, can become a concern on large interactive sites. Particularly, SQL query caching can help offset the load to the database server caused by Drupal's high query rate.[59][60] Since version 6, Drupal caches database schema as well as elements such as blocks, forms and menus.[61] Development versions of Drupal 7 increase performance in database queries with simultaneous performance decreases in PHP code usage.[62]

Security

Since early in the project's history, Drupal has adopted a full transparent policy towards security [63]. A dedicated security team has a transparent and methodical process [64] to review any reported issue—whether in Drupal core or contrib. If in core, a trusted core contributor is tasked to implement a fix in an expedited fashion, followed by re-review by the security team. If in contrib, the module maintainer is asked to implement the fix, followed by a review. Once obtained, the security team announces the nature of the vulnerability and the availability of the fixed code in a timely manner, so that site administrators can immediately take remedial action. Though this policy tends to lead observers to think that Drupal has a high number of security issues, there is no proof that this is the case; the Drupal project's transparent approach is generally considered superior to the alternative—security through obscurity.

As security holes are discovered and remedied, the Drupal core is updated to new versions. Administrators of Drupal sites are automatically notified of these new releases via the Update Status module.[25] Additionally, Drupal.org maintains a security announcement mailing list, a history of all security advisories,[65] a security team home page [66], and an RSS feed[67] with the most recent security advisories. In 2008, eleven security vulnerabilities were reported and fixed in the Drupal core.[65] Security holes were also found and fixed in 64 of the 2243 user-contributed modules.[65][68]

Community

Drupal has a large community of users and developers. More than 650,000 user accounts have been created on Drupal.org, and more than 2000 people have signed up for developer accounts. The Drupal conference happens twice a year, alternating between North America and Europe.[69] Drupalcon Szeged 2008, held in late August 2008, had an attendance of 500. Drupalcon Washington DC 2009, attracted over 1400 people.[70] In September 2009, the conference was held in Paris, France, and in 2010 it will come to San Francisco. The European DrupalCon 2010 will take place in August 2010 in Copenhagen, Denmark.

There are a number of active Drupal forums,[71] mailing lists[72] and discussion groups[73]. Drupal also maintains several IRC channels[74] on the Freenode network.

There are over 20 national communities[75] around drupal.org offering language-specific support.

High-profile websites built using Drupal

Ordered by the relative amount of traffic, as reported by Compete.com:

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Drupal 7.0 Alpha 3 released
  2. ^ "Licensing FAQ". drupal.org. Retrieved 2009-04-08.
  3. ^ a b "The Drupal Overview". drupal.org. Retrieved 2009-04-08.
  4. ^ a b "System Requirements". drupal.org. Retrieved 2009-04-08.
  5. ^ Lincoln (2008-09-24). "45 Sites You May Not Have Known Were Drupal-Based". Social CMS Buzz. Retrieved 2009-04-08.
  6. ^ a b "Features". drupal.org. Retrieved 2009-04-08.
  7. ^ a b "History". drupal.org. Retrieved 2009-04-08.
  8. ^ "Druppel: Dutch to English Translation". Babylon Translation. Retrieved 2009-04-08.
  9. ^ Koenig, Josh. "Growth Graphs". Groups.Drupal. Retrieved 2009-04-08.
  10. ^ Buytaert, Dries (2008). "Drupal Download Statistics". Retrieved 2009-04-08.
  11. ^ Buytaert, Dries (2007). "Drupal Download Statistics". Retrieved 2009-04-08.
  12. ^ "Who is Using Drupal?". Us&V. Retrieved 2009-04-08.
  13. ^ "OSS CMS Award Previous Winners". Packt Publishing. Retrieved 2009-04-08.
  14. ^ Drupal is a Webware 100 winner for the third year in a row
  15. ^ Cnet.com
  16. ^ "Drupal Project downloads". drupal.org. Retrieved 2009-09-16.
  17. ^ Buytaert.net
  18. ^ Drupal 7.0 Alpha 3 released
  19. ^ "View of /drupal/CHANGELOG.txt". drupal.org. Retrieved 2009-04-08.
  20. ^ a b "Handbook: Core Modules". drupal.org. Retrieved 2009-04-08.
  21. ^ Buytaert, Dries. "Garland, the new default core theme". drupal.org. Retrieved 2009-04-08.
  22. ^ "Color: Allows the user to change the color scheme of certain themes". drupal.org. Retrieved 2009-04-08.
  23. ^ "Translations". drupal.org. Retrieved 2009-04-08.
  24. ^ a b "Drupal 6.0 released". drupal.org. Retrieved 2009-04-08.
  25. ^ a b "Module: Update Status". drupal.org. Retrieved 2009-04-08.
  26. ^ "API Reference". drupal.org. Retrieved 2009-04-08.
  27. ^ "File and directory management". drupal.org.
  28. ^ "Do not hack core". drupal.org.
  29. ^ Integrating Drupal with External Systems
  30. ^ "Modules". drupal.org. Retrieved 2009-04-08.
  31. ^ Nash, Tim (2007-01-08). "CCK & Views the ultimate combination, part 1". The Venture Skills Blog. Retrieved 2009-04-08. Two modules particularly important to typical Drupal installations
  32. ^ Safuto, Robert (2007-07-30). "Drupal CCK and Views Tutorial". Awakened Voice Learning Center. Retrieved 2009-04-08.
  33. ^ "Field API". 2009. Retrieved 2009-05-08.
  34. ^ "PHPTemplate theme engine". drupal.org. Retrieved 2009-04-08.
  35. ^ "XTemplate theme engine". drupal.org. Retrieved 2009-04-08.
  36. ^ "How does Drupal compare to Mambo? discussion thread". drupal.org. 2005-01-17. Retrieved 2009-04-08.
  37. ^ Drupal themes
  38. ^ Drupal Theme Garden
  39. ^ Template:Cite web url=http://www.openatrium.com/
  40. ^ Template:Cite web url=http://www.managingnews.com/
  41. ^ Template:Cite web url=http://tattlerapp.com/
  42. ^ a b Message Error, Why running the White House Web site on Drupal is a political disaster waiting to happen Chris Wilson. Slate_(magazine) October 27, 2009
  43. ^ a b Hagopian, Peter (2008-07-10). "Drupal Addresses Security In 6.3, Usability in 7". Information Week. Retrieved 2009-04-08.
  44. ^ Scollan, Becca (2008-05-01). "Drupal Usability Research Report" (PDF). Retrieved 2009-04-08. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  45. ^ Lal, Kieran (2008-06-26). "Drupal usability tests from the University of Baltimore with community solutions". drupal.org. Retrieved 2009-04-08.
  46. ^ a b Buytaert, Dries (2008-07-03). "Usability, usability, and usability". Retrieved 2009-04-08.
  47. ^ Buytaert, Dries (2008-03-10). "First results from usability testing". Retrieved 2009-04-08.
  48. ^ "Report from Formal Drupal" (PDF). 2008-03-03. Retrieved 2009-04-08.
  49. ^ Howard, Brian C. (2007-01-25). "Harnessing Drupal for Citizen Journalism". NewAssignment.Net. Retrieved 2009-04-08.
  50. ^ "Drupal Review".
  51. ^ Buytaert, Dries (2006-05-26). "Backward Compatibility". Retrieved 2009-04-08.
  52. ^ Buytaert, Dries (2006-07-27). "The pain before the pay-off". Retrieved 2009-04-08.
  53. ^ Drupal's Upgrade Instructions (end-user)
  54. ^ "Joomla 1.5 & Drupal 6.1 Performance Comparison".
  55. ^ "Is Drupal Slow & Bloated?".
  56. ^ "Is Drupal the right tool for the job?".
  57. ^ "Authenticated User Page Caching (Authcache)". drupal.org. Retrieved 2009-09-23.
  58. ^ Buytaert, Dries (2006-08-11). "Drupal vs [[Joomla!|Joomla]] performance". Retrieved 2009-05-20. {{cite web}}: URL–wikilink conflict (help)
  59. ^ "Speed up a Drupal web site by enabling MySQL query caching". nadeausoftware.com. 2007-03-07. Retrieved 2009-06-21.
  60. ^ Book on Drupal Performance & Scalability
  61. ^ "Caching in Drupal 6". drupal.org. 2008-07-28. Retrieved 2009-06-21.
  62. ^ "Drupal 6 vs Drupal 7 performance and comments vs nodes". CivicActions.com. 2009-05-19. Retrieved 2009-06-21.
  63. ^ Drupal security team: past, current and future
  64. ^ Drupal Security team
  65. ^ a b c "Security advisories". drupal.org. Retrieved 2009-04-28.
  66. ^ Drupal security team
  67. ^ Drupal Security RSS feed
  68. ^ "Contributed modules". drupal.org. Retrieved 2009-04-28.
  69. ^ Drupal.org
  70. ^ Bogle, Bonnie. "DrupalCon DC By the Numbers: Community, Profit, and Sustainability". drupalcon.org. Retrieved 2009-04-08.
  71. ^ Drupal.org forums
  72. ^ Drupal.org mailing lists
  73. ^ Drupal Groups
  74. ^ Drupal IRC channels on FreeNode
  75. ^ Language specific communities
  76. ^ "Thoughts on the Whitehouse.gov switch to Drupal". Oreilly. Retrieved 2009-11-27.
  77. ^ "WhiteHouse.gov Goes Drupal". TechPresident. Retrieved 2009-11-27.
  78. ^ "Case Study: United Nations World Food Programme (WFP.org)". Phase2 Technology. Retrieved 2009-11-27.

Further reading

  • Beighley, Lynn (2009). Drupal for Dummies. New York: For Dummies. ISBN 978-0-470-55611-5.
  • Douglass, Robert T. (2005). Building Online Communities With Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress. New York: Springer Verlag/Apress. ISBN 1-590-59562-9. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  • Graf, Hagen (2006). Drupal. Community-Websites entwickeln und verwalten mit dem Open Source-CMS (in German). Munich, Germany: Addison-Wesley. ISBN 3-827-32321-5.
  • Mercer, David (2006). Drupal: Creating Blogs, Forums, Portals, and Community Websites. Birmingham, England: Packt Publishing. ISBN 1-904-81180-9.
  • Peacock, Michael (2008). Selling Online with Drupal e-Commerce. Birmingham, England: Packt Publishing. ISBN 978-1-847194-06-0.
  • Roswell, Marjorie (2009). Drupal 5 Views Recipes. Birmingham, England: Packt Publishing. ISBN 978-1847196965.
  • Shreves, Ric (2007). Drupal 5 Themes. Birmingham, England: Packt Publishing. ISBN 1-847-19182-7.
  • VanDyk, John K. (2007). Pro Drupal Development. New York: Springer Verlag/Apress. ISBN 1-590-59755-9. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthor= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  • VanDyk, John K. (2008). Pro Drupal Development, Second Edition. New York: Springer Verlag/Apress. ISBN 1-430-20989-5.
  • Herremans, D. (2009). Drupal 6: Ultimate Community Site Guide. Switzerland. ISBN 978-2-839-90490-2.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
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