Drupal is a content management system for Web sites. It allows to publish articles, images, or other files and added services like forums, surveys, polls, blogs and user management and permissions.
For those interested in taking a look at the features of Drupal then unartÃculo LISNews originally published by Joseph A. Reyero
General Characteristics
On-line A robust online help system and help pages for modules ‘kernel’, both for users and administrators.
Search All content in Drupal is fully indexed in real time and is available at any time.
Open Source Drupal source code is freely available under the terms of the GNU / GPL. Unlike other systems, blogs or content management owners, you can extend Drupal or adapt as needed.
Modules The Drupal community has contributed many modules which provide functionality such as ‘category page’, jabber authentication, private messages, bookmarks, etc..
Customizing A robust personalization environment is implemented in the core of Drupal. Both the content and presentation can be individualized according the user-defined preferences.
Drupal friendly URLs using Apache mod_rewrite to create URLs that are manageable by users and search engines.
User Management
User Authentication Users tri-fold register and log on locally or using an external authentication system like Jabber, Blogger, LiveJournal or another Drupal site. To use in an intranet, Drupal can integrate with an LDAP server.
Role-based permissions Drupal administrators do not have to set permissions for each user. Instead, they can assign permissions to a ‘role’ and group users for roles.
Content Management
Version Control System version control and audit follow Drupal allows totally successive updates of content: what has changed, the time and date, who has changed, and more. It also keeps comments on the successive changes or undo changes recovering an earlier version.
Permanent links (Permalinks) All content created in Drupal has a permanent link associated with it so it can be linked externally without fear that the link fails in the future.
Content Object (Node) The content created in Drupal is, functionally, an object (node). This allows a uniform treatment of information, as the same moderation queue for shipments of various types, promote any of these objects to the main page or allow comments-or not on each object.
Templates (Templates) system Drupal themes separates content from presentation enabling easy control and change the look of the website. You can create templates with HTML and / or PHP.
Drupal content syndication format exports the contents RDF / RSS to be used by other websites. This allows anyone with a ‘news aggregator’, such as NetNewsWire or Radio UserLand view the content published on the web from your desktop.
Blogging
News aggregator includes a powerful Drupal News Aggregator for reading and post links to news from other websites. It incorporates a cache system in the database with configurable timing.
Support Blogger API Blogger API allows a Drupal site is updated by using various tools that can be ‘web tools’ or ‘desktop tools’ to provide an editing environment more manageable.
Platform
Independence database While most Drupal installations using MySQL, there are other options. Drupal comes with a ‘layer of abstraction for database’ which is currently implemented and maintained to MySQL and PostgresSQL, although it allows to easily incorporate support for other databases.
Drupal Cross-platform is designed from the start to be multi-platform. It can work with Apache or Microsoft IIS as web server and on systems such as Linux, BSD, Solaris, Windows and Mac OS X. Furthermore, to be implemented in PHP, is completely portable.
Location Drupal Multiple languages and is intended for an international audience and provides options for creating a multilingual portal. All text can be easily translated using a web interface, by importing existing translations or integrating other translation tools such as GNU ettext
Analysis and Management
Web-based administration and configuration management system can be performed entirely in a browser and does not require any additional software.
Analysis, Monitoring and Statistics Drupal can be displayed on the websites of government reports on referrals (inbound links), content popularity, or how users navigate through the site.
Records and reports all activity and system events are captured in an ‘event log’, which can be viewed by an administrator.
Characteristics of community
Comments linked Drupal you provide a powerful model that allows comments linked easily follow and participate in the discussion on the commentary. Comments are hierarchical as in a newsgroup or a forum.
Polls Drupal includes a module that allows administrators and / or users to create online surveys are completely configurable.
Includes discussion forums forums Drupal to create lively and dynamic community sites.
Collaborative Paper This feature is unique to Drupal and allows you to create a project or “book” to be written and other users to contribute content. The content is organized into easily navigable pages.
Performance and scalability
Drupal congestion control incorporates a congestion control mechanism that lets you enable and disable certain modules or blocks, depending on server load. This mechanism is fully configurable and adjustable.
System Cache The cache mechanism eliminates queries data increasing performance and reducing server load.
Tags: blogging, content management, drupal cms, drupal overview