Content Management
August 22, 2011
To be able to adjust site content directly lets your company respond to requirements more effectively, saving you money and allowing you to better make that money in the first place.
Power, Freedom, Ownership
Drupal is much more than just a CMS - it is a fully mature development platform. Conceived from the start for the web it gracefully answers many of the problems posed by site building, and published under an open source license it hands ownership over to the user - you.
Power
The core Drupal code deals elegantly with much of the requirements made by modern websites and applications. Not only does it provide an excellent framework onto which a site can be woven, it also opens up the management and configuration of the framework directly to a web browser.
This means that all sites I build with Drupal automatically give my clients huge control:
- Content: create, edit, review and organise pages easily.
- Navigation: total control of as many navigation elements as you need. Add links from one page to another as you edit without worrying about their address - just select from a drop down.
- Images: upload and attach images to pages; build galleries simply. Thumbnail images and other required image sizes are created for you automatically.
- Files: upload and attach any file type to pages for download by users with the right access.
- Forms: create and edit forms easily. Manage, record and analyse responses. Build mailing lists for marketing.
- Users: create and manage users; allow users to register for access. Users can edit their account details and reset their password manually if they need to. Easily set up user types and define their level of access: place limits right down to a page or file, even share user access details across mutliple sites.
- Search: all content is automatically indexed and searchable. Full control over what is searched and how results are published.
- Clean URLs: avoid meaningless web addresses common in dynamic sites and keep things clear for search engines.
Freedom
Drupal is already hugely effective - even before I set about improving it - but what really sets it apart for me is the way in which it can be adapted to your needs without me having to re-write the core code along the way.
I won't delve too deeply into the technicalities here. The key thing is that Drupal is 'modular' in structure: it is designed so that core functions can be overriden or new functions can be added according to the needs of the user.
This means it is very simple for me to adapt existing functionality to suit you, or to build in new functionality as required, even to make use of adaptations developed by other Drupal users if their modules already solve one of your requirements - freely of course, as Drupal is open source.
I'm often confronted with sites that were constructed with little consideration for future changes. Such poor design translates into unseen costs as the core code is found to be unfit for purpose somewhere down the line.
But because Drupal is 'modular', such adaptations can be applied without changing the core code, which means that updrading the core Drupal code later on is far easier.
The very structure of Drupal ensures I have complete freedom to adapt, extend and improve the core with minimal fuss and build a site that is completely tailored to your needs with the confidence that maintaining those improvements over time will have as little impact on your business decisions as possible.
Ownership
Drupal is published under the opensource GPL ("GNU General Public License"), which effectively means it is free for you to use. No purchase cost, no cost to upgrade, despite an army of dedicated developers working on improvements and security patches 24/7.
There are numerous well supported modules that deliver commonly requested functionality are available, and because the platform is open source these, too, are free to use.