What is Drupal?
Drupal is a web content manager, or better known by its acronym CMS (Content Management System), which allows us to create dynamic web pages. Web pages can be simple blogs, e-commerce stores, discussion boards, or any type of website.
Drupal is an open-source software developed in PHP that has a large community of users.
Within Drupal, we can identify the core of the content manager that offers us the basic capabilities and the modules that expand the content manager’s capabilities. Any programmer can develop the modules in order to extend Drupal’s functionalities.
In addition, Drupal allows you to customize the way in which web pages are displayed through the use of themes. The themes that can be developed by the users themselves will allow the content to be located on one side or another on the web, as well as to apply the styles that are needed for its web or mobile display.
Possibly, along with WordPress, Drupal is one of the most widespread content managers on the market.
Drupal versions
Drupal began to be developed by Dries Buytaert, publishing the first version of Drupal on January 15, 2001.
Today there are three active Drupal versions:
● The current version is Drupal 9, currently at version 9.1.0
● The most widespread and installed version is Drupal 8, of which we can find version 8.9.7
● The version that is being retired is the Drupal 7 version, of which we can find up to version 7.73.
Main features
Many are the features that we could list in Drupal. But among the main features we find:
● Flexibility, through Drupal, we can create any type of web that we imagine. The extension capabilities are enormous, allowing content exposure through API Rest services.
● Free Software, Drupal is free software that we can use anywhere. Drupal source code can be downloaded from Github
● Drupal Community, Drupal has one of the largest free software communities, which contributes through Github repositories, in multiple forums, through blog posts
● Multi-language support, we can use Drupal in more than 100 languages. In addition, through its modules, we can simply create multi-language systems.
● Extensibility, its module system allows you to extend the Drupal core with new capabilities.
● Taxonomies, allow defining business concepts that can be managed in the different Drupal elements, such as views, blocks
● Cache has a caching system that improves performance when serving dynamic websites.
Who uses Drupal?
WordPress ranks first among the most used CMS, followed by Shopify and Joomla. In the fourth position, we can already find Drupal as a CMS with a 1.6% share – according to the June 2020 data from Joost de Valk -.
Among the most important sites that use Drupal, we find:
● 10. Entertainment Weekly.
● Tesla.
● NCAA.
● Mint.
● The Australian Government.
● Le Figaro.
● The Emmy Awards.
● Keap.
Where to download it
The first thing we have to do to install Drupal. Download the version that we want to install. We can do it from the Drupal download area where we will find the latest version of Drupal (Today Drupal 9.1.0), or we can go to the download page of all Drupal versions where we can find the versions of Drupal 8 (nowadays Drupal 8.9.7) and Drupal 7 (nowadays Drupal 7.73), as well as the multiple fixes.