Love It or Hate It, Drupal Works

Such has been the pace at which the Internet has invaded our lives that sooner or later we all wake up one morning and announce that it is time to set up a web site. By all, we truly do mean everyone from individuals to businesses to communities and clubs.

Of course, the bolt of enlightenment that leads to the need to have a site of our own doesn’t always hit us out of the blue. For many the move is gradual. We start with a facebook or twitter account. After that we might graduate to joining some chat rooms or business community forums. Whatever path we take, sooner or later the internet bug has migrated into our soul and nothing will satisfy us until we have a web site of our own.

Once the decision has been made, the next question is how; what do we need to do to set up a web site of our own. For some, this involves bringing in a web developer, telling them to set up a site and sitting back and hoping for the best. For others, it involves buying extremely heavy books full of words such as embedding, hypertextual and encryption and setting off full of enthusiasm and hope that persistence will be rewarded and one day a web site will emerge like magic from the chrysalis of the coding.

For those who have yet to set off on the path of discovery that leads to a web site, there is a third way, Drupal. To quote its web site, Drupal is a “leading edge open-source content management system that implements the latest thinking and best practices in community publishing, knowledge management, and software design.” For the layman this means that Drupal is free, lets you set up a web site and tries to continually improve.

So what can Drupal do? Drupal enables you to set up a flexible web site with information, articles, chat forums and even e-commerce. Drupal works by taking all the information that you throw at it (each piece of information is called a node) and storing the information in a central pool. It then uses various applications (modules) to take the information and display it in the way that you want. Whilst the basic Drupal system is fairly simple, there are thousand of different modules to choose from so your choice of how your site works is virtually infinite.

To fully understand how Drupal can work, let us take a case study. For this, although we are looking at a typical small village anywhere in the world, the solutions can apply for any business. At first the people of the village want a simple notice board so that details of all the village events can be shown. A Drupal web site is set up and the villagers have a basic one page site announcing the flower festival and the annual village picnic. Next, some people complain that they can see the announcements but that they get confused about the dates. Simple, a calendar module is added.

One of the villagers thinks it would be a good idea to be able to add more information about the events so additional pages are added to cover each event. To help with arranging for volunteers, a discussion module is added. Now on each page, the villagers can see the events and can make comments and ask for help. To try and attract more visitors to the events a map and a how to find us module is added.

One day, one of the villagers decides to sell some old toys that their children no longer need. A page is added to allow villagers to post pictures and descriptions of the items they want to sell. Finally, the village shop decides to sell its goods via the site so a full e-commerce module is added.

Now the village has a thriving web site with information, chat, sales and visitors being attracted to the village. To see what part of the site is used most a module is added to track hits and comments and the village thrives.

This same pattern can be used for any business. There are over 400,000 Drupal web sites worldwide being used by everyone from individuals to government departments. Any business wanting a web site which sells, informs and allows the exchange of ideas can use Drupal.

Of course, like any system there are some pitfalls. In common with any other system that allows web site chat, it is very important that the level of security is controlled. An organisation will be judged on its entire web site. If inappropriate comments are shown on the site, the organisation will be held to account and may lose clients. It is therefore important that for fully open sites a moderator regularly reviews the site and removes inappropriate comments. Alternatively, comment can be restricted to certain individuals and security permissions can be withdrawn if the chat forum is misused.

The comment “love it or hate it” was chosen for this article in recognition of the fact that Drupal does have its critics. Whilst the basic system is fast, adding modules will slow it down so it is important to choose your modules carefully. Drupal itself admits that anyone facing the system for the first time will be on a steep learning curve and having “modularity, extensibility and maintainability in our code” as one of their aims can be enough to put the novice off.

For this reason, whilst in theory anyone can build a Drupal system, in the same way that anyone in theory can produce a gourmet meal; sometimes it is better to leave it to the experts. Web developers who work with Drupal can quickly produce a flexible and user friendly system that is easy to administer. With version 7 in testing at the moment promising to be more user friendly we can see Drupal continuing to be used for some time to come.