What is Drupal?
Explaining Drupal is a little bit tricky but we’ll explain to you enough to gain a basic grasp of what it does. Drupal is a web-based content management system (CMS) and more. Drupal is an open-source content management system for building dynamic websites offering a wide range of features and services including user administration, publishing workflow, discussion capabilities, news aggregation, metadata functionalities using controlled vocabularies, and XML publishing for content-sharing purposes.
It is used to build websites. Drupal is a highly modular, open-source web content management framework with an emphasis on collaboration.
It is extensible, standards-compliant, and strives for clean code and a small footprint. It ships with basic core functionality and additional functionality gained by the installation of modules. It designs to customize, but customization is done by overriding the core or by adding modules, not by modifying the code in the core.
Drupal also successfully separates content management from content presentation. It is used to build an Internet portal, a personal, departmental, or corporate website, an E-commerce site, a resource directory; an online newspaper, an intranet, etc.
It even used to teach a distance-learning course. A dedicated security team strives to keep Drupal secure by responding to threats and issuing security updates. And a thriving online community of users, site administrators, designers, and web developers work hard to continually improve the software.
What do we require to run Drupal?
For running drupal we require a web server capable of executing PHP scripts recommended: Apache, PHP It recommends that you should use the latest stable release A PHP-supported database server & recommended: MySQL.
What is the meaning of Drupal version numbers?
In Drupal 4.7.0 and previous, the first two numbers indicated the Drupal version number, while the last indicated a “point” or bug-fix release with a specific “patch level”. For example, “4.7.2” means “the third bug-fix release (patch level 2) of the 4.7 version of Drupal.”
This was frequently confusing for people who expected 4.7.x to be a small update of 4.6.x, when in fact this was far from the case.
Different versions of Drupal often break API compatibility with one another and require contributed modules to upgrade. Starting with Drupal 5. x, the “5” indicates the major version of Drupal, and the .x is the bug-fix release or patch level.
That means that 5.0, 5.1, and 5.2 all have the same underlying structure and modules for 5. x are all compatible with each other. Modules written for Drupal 6. x will not work with 5. x and vice-versa.
What are the features available in Drupal installation?
1) Drupal Allows you to add users and assign roles. Roles are groups of users who share common permissions on what they can or not do within a Drupal site.
2) Drupal tracks the major activities on the website. Who visited which page, which pages are popular, who posted what, etc?
3) Its category module is one of the most powerful tools. this allows users to tag content. Unlike any other CMS, Drupal allows multi-tagging. It also allows you to define various tagging hierarchies. Not even Sharepoint or Lotus Quickplace can do this.
It allows free tagging and other combinations. Tagging is important in a highly complex intranet or community website because it makes information easier to categorize and search.
4) Drupal makes information friendly to search engines and humans.
5) It allows you to quickly build menus and blocks, without knowing HTML or PHP.
There are many more things you can do with Drupal.
Which Drupal version I should run?
It recommends that you run the most current stable release. The current stable release is Drupal 5.2. The next version of Drupal, 6.0, is in development and not fit for production use. Drupal 4.7.7 is still supported but if you just starting your site you should begin with the latest stable release.
How can I know which version of Drupal I am using?
Go to Administer / Logs /Status report. This will show you the list of version numbers if you have Drupal 5.0 or later.
If you Faile in that, look for a file called CHANGELOG.txt in the root of your Drupal directory and open it up to find the version you are running.
If CHANGELOG.txt is missing, you can also check-in system.module for a line at the top like:
define(‘VERSION’, ‘5.2’);
If this is present, it will tell you which version of 5x you are running. If not, you have a version earlier than 4.7.0.