One question we get a lot is “what is Drupal?” A simple answer is Drupal is a content management system. However for some this answer is either too simplistic or still even a bit too jargoned as describing a content management system is still a bit too techie for some. A more complicated and involved answer is sometimes necessary for non technical people and hard core technical people as well.

Basically Drupal is a means to make any webpage dynamic. That doesn’t mean each user customizes their site; but rather that the webpage itself is constructed on the fly and is not one piece of static code that is commonly referred to as HTML. To understand this, realize that today’s webpages are no longer static code but are constructed by computers when a person clicks on the link.

Essentially when the server (computer in remote facility) receives a request from a user it looks at a few factors such as location and time of day, type of browser, etc. It then tells the computer this information and the computer starts to pull relevant information for that page, constructs it in HTML and then displays it on the web browser in a very short amount of time. Drupal is the computer program that allows all of this to happen by pulling content from a database and executing commands to display that content on a pushing together pieces of HTML code and then posting it for the requestor’s browser to make into a graphical image.

Once people understand the idea of what Drupal does, they become excited by a number of other things:

• Cost – Drupal is FREE! All of its add ons are FREE! People who configure Drupal and build Drupal sites are not free.
• Add-ons – Over 12,000 modules offering everything from eCommerce to Email forms to Following links
• SEO – One of the best things about Drupal is how SEO friendly it is. Title are automatically h1s. Clean URLs are core to the product and page titles always appear and can be manipulated
• Plays well with others – Lots of outside companies have created add-ons that allow for integration
• Easy to use – Once configured, Drupal is pretty easy to use to create content. If you can type, you can create content on Drupal. This makes it easy for non-technical people to take control of their websites.

Drupal is a great content management system for small business to government to large multinational brands. Anyone considering a migration should always consider Drupal development as a foundation for a great website.