Drupal
Drupal logo.png
Original author(s) Dries Buytaert
Developer(s) Dries Buytaert and other core developers
Initial release January 15, 2001 (2001-01-15)[1]
Stable release

 (June 6, 2024; 4 months ago (2024-06-06))

[]
Preview release  (June 5, 2024; 4 months ago (2024-06-05)) []
Written in PHP
Operating system Cross-platform
Available in Multilingual
Type Blog software
Content management system
License(s) GNU General Public License v2/v3
Website Drupal.org

Drupal is a free open-source content management system (CMS) and content management framework (CMF), used as a back-end system for at least 2.0% of all websites worldwide[2][3] ranging from personal blogs to corporate, political, and government sites, including WhiteHouse.gov and data.gov.uk.[4] It is also used for knowledge management and business collaboration.

Product history

Major Version Release Date
1.0 15 Jan 2001[1]
2.0 15 Mar 2001[1]
3.0 15 Sep 2001[1]
4.0 16 Jun 2002[1]
5.0 15 Jan 2007[5]
6.0 13 Feb 2008[6]
7.0 5 Jan 2011[7]
8.0 19 Nov 2015[8]

Originally written by Dries Buytaert as a message board, Drupal became an open-source project in 2001.[9] Drupal is an English rendering of the Dutch word "druppel," which means "drop" (as in "a water droplet").[10] 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 mistyped it when checking the domain name and thought the error sounded better.[9]

A community now helps develop Drupal,[11] 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.[12][13]

As of February 2012, hundreds of thousands of sites have used Drupal.[14] These include hundreds of well-known organizations,[15] including corporations, media & publishing companies, governments, non-profits,[16] schools, and individuals. Drupal has also won several Packt Open Source CMS Awards[17] and won the Webware 100 three times in a row.[18][19]

On March 5, 2009, Buytaert announced a code freeze for Drupal 7 for September 1, 2009.[20] Drupal 7 was released on January 5, 2011, with release parties in multiple countries.[21] As of this release, maintenance for Drupal 5 has stopped, and only Drupal 7 and Drupal 6 are maintained.[22]

On November 19, 2015, version 8.0 was released, which improved the front end, entity system, and menu handling system as well as simplified site administration and added a new configuration management system.[8]

Features

Features of Drupal include[23]:

  • categorize with taxonomy
  • automatic friendly path urls
  • custom lists
  • content association
  • content management types including video, text, blog, podcasts, and polls
  • user management
  • real-time statistics
  • optional revision control
  • user-based roles and security
  • content interaction control
  • pre-defined site configurations
  • presentation-based design layer
  • expandability with modules
  • aggregation, feed, and search engine connection capabilities
  • social networking integration
  • external media and file services

Hardware/software requirements

System requirements vary depending on which installation of Drupal is preferred. Please consult Drupal's well-documented system requirements page.

Videos, screenshots, and other media

Screenshots for Drupal 7 can be found on Drupal Easy.

An extensive series of video tutorials for Drupal 7 can be found on the LevelTen Interactive website.

An online demo of Drupal 7 can be found here. Username and password is "admin".

Entities using Drupal

Examples of entities using Drupal include:

Alabama Environmental Council, Best Buy, California Institute of the Arts, Council of Writing Program Administrators, Davis Applied Technology College, Forrester Research, Garmin, IKEA, Iowa State Entomology Index of Internet Resources, OpenClinica, Penn State University, Popular Science, Portland State University, Stanford Clayman Institute for Gender Research, Symantec, Tesla Motors, The Economist, Twitter, Yahoo!

A full directory of Drupal users can be found at the Drupal website and at Dries Buytaert's blog.

Further reading

  • Beighley, Lynn; Seamus Bellamy (2011). Drupal for Dummies (2nd ed.). New York: For Dummies. ISBN 1118083482. 


External links

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 "CHANGELOG.txt - Drupal 7". Dries Buytaert. http://api.drupal.org/api/drupal/CHANGELOG.txt/7/source. Retrieved 30 March 2012. 
  2. "Usage of content management systems for websites". W3Techs. http://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_management/all. Retrieved 30 March 2012. 
  3. "Drupal Usage Statistics". BuiltWith. http://trends.builtwith.com/cms/Drupal. Retrieved 30 March 2012. 
  4. "The State of Drupal 2010 speech". Internet Archive. 10 March 2010. http://www.archive.org/details/Css3TheFutureIsNow. Retrieved 30 March 2012. 
  5. Wittens, Steven (15 January 2007). "Drupal 5.0". Dries Buytaert. http://drupal.org/node/109494. Retrieved 30 March 2012. 
  6. Hojtsy, Gábor (13 February 2008). "Drupal 6.0". Dries Buytaert. http://drupal.org/node/221219. Retrieved 30 March 2012. 
  7. Byron, Angie (5 January 2011). "Drupal 7.0". Dries Buytaert. http://drupal.org/node/1015392. Retrieved 30 March 2012. 
  8. 8.0 8.1 "Drupal 8.0.x CHANGELOG.txt". Dries Buytaert. https://api.drupal.org/api/drupal/core!CHANGELOG.txt/8.0.x. Retrieved 02 May 2016. 
  9. 9.0 9.1 "History". Dries Buytaert. http://drupal.org/node/769. Retrieved 30 March 2012. 
  10. "Druppel: Dutch to English Translation". Babylon Ltd.. http://translation.babylon.com/Dutch/to-English/druppel/. Retrieved 30 March 2012. 
  11. Koenig, Josh (5 December 2006). "Growth Graphs". Dries Buytaert. http://groups.drupal.org/node/1980. Retrieved 30 March 2012. 
  12. Buytaert, Dries (14 July 2008). "Drupal Download Statistics - 2008". Dries Buytaert. http://buytaert.net/drupal-download-statistics-2008. Retrieved 30 March 2012. 
  13. Buytaert, Dries (21 May 2007). "Drupal Download Statistics - 2007". Dries Buytaert. http://buytaert.net/drupal-download-statistics-2007. Retrieved 30 March 2012. 
  14. "Usage statistics for Drupal core". Dries Buytaert. http://drupal.org/project/usage/drupal. Retrieved 30 March 2012. 
  15. Dries Buytaert. "Drupal Sites". Dries Buytaert. http://buytaert.net/tag/drupal-sites?page=27. Retrieved 30 March 2012. 
  16. Kirk, Jason (13 December 2009). "List of Nonprofit, NPO, NGO Websites Using Drupal". ENGINE Industries. http://engineindustries.com/blog/jason/list-nonprofit-npo-ngo-websites-using-drupal. Retrieved 30 March 2012. 
  17. "Open Source Awards Previous Winners". Packt Publishing. http://www.packtpub.com/open-source-cms-award-previous-winners. Retrieved 30 March 2012. 
  18. Lal, Kieran (19 May 2009). "Drupal is a Webware 100 winner for the third year in a row". Dries Buytaert. http://drupal.org/Drupal-2009-webware-100-winner. Retrieved 30 March 2012. 
  19. "Webware 100 winner: Drupal". CNET. 19 May 2009. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13546_109-10237630-29.html?tag=mncol. Retrieved 30 March 2012. 
  20. Dries Buytaert (5 March 2009). "Drupal 7 code freeze: September 1st". Dries Buytaert. http://buytaert.net/drupal-7-code-freeze-september-1st. Retrieved 30 March 2012. 
  21. Dries Buytaert (21 December 2010). "Drupal 7 to be released on January 5 (with one ginormous party)". Dries Buytaert. http://buytaert.net/drupal-7-to-be-released-on-january-5th-with-one-ginormous-party. Retrieved 30 March 2012. 
  22. "Xplain Hosting Drupal 7 Quickstart training seminar". Scoop. 16 December 2010. http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/SC1012/S00048/xplain-hosting-drupal-7-quickstart-training-seminar.htm. Retrieved 30 March 2012. 
  23. "Drupal CMS Benefits". Dries Buytaert. http://drupal.org/features. Retrieved 30 March 2012.