Drupal Content Management System

Drupal is a workhorse, and it will get the job done. Drupal has been around for more than 15 years, and it isn't going anywhere. Drupal has begun to gain more traction with large organizations and government websites and applications. Over 150 sites in the US Federal Government are Drupal. Drupal like other CMS platforms performs as you would expect when it comes to editing content, but what makes it so strong is its ability to bend in any way you need it and handle mass volumes of data.

Drupal was made to be lightweight and not come with every bell and whistle from the start, but rather, you add to it as you need. Drupal has a massive community of over 1 million developers actively working to better the system. With that many brains, it is hard to think you could find difficulties, and alas with anything; there are problems and complaints. But there are overwhelming balances of benefits.

Drupal 7 was the start of the new push for Drupal. It was at this time the community worked to take Drupal from a simple website builder to a new and powerful tool. In my opinion, they succeeded. While the UI for adding content was clunky in this version and you had to remember the difference between what was a "Block" and what was "Content" you could manage to make beautiful and amazingly fast websites.

Security

In 2014 Drupal had a severe security issue, that with almost 1 Million Drupal websites, between 10% and 90% were hacked, which is an insane number. It was safe to say at the time, deal with the security issue, and do it quickly. This shouldn't be held to Drupal as a new thing. Almost every big company has or will have a significant security issue.

Drupal Distributions

But where the real power comes from are the many distributions that complete a more focused goal with the same underlying skill as Drupal because it is Drupal at heart.

• Learning Management Systems - Opigno is a Drupal distribution that is a SCORM 1.2 compliant and can give you quick and easy access to course setup, awards and certification tracking, teacher, student, and administrator roles, and it even integrates with most of your payment gateways allowing you to charge for the classes you need to.
• Lightning - Lightning is for enterprise systems and is what it sounds like a lightning-fast way to get your editorial experience with a beautiful website including, Workflow, Media, Layouts, and natural Previews.
• Open Social - If you are looking for your twist of a social media platform, this is it and more! This distribution not only lets you maintain and create real member engagement, but it also allows you to post events, create groups, follow others, and even start your timelines.
• Open Public - If you are a government entity or need to adhere to strict standards, use this distribution to get you there. It is WCAG 2.0 Level AA complaint right out of the gate. This one is great to create a clean design that is professional and even comes with example content to help you get going.
• Open Church - Churches are continually looking for a cost-effective means to get their message out there with ease. In this distribution, they can get just about everything they could want, including, blogs, Bulletins, Events, Giving, Ministry, Podcasts, and even social media integration.

Are you sensing the pattern here? Drupal is powerful because it takes a solid core and lets anyone, everywhere extend it to what they truly need when they need it.