Drupal is the Open Source Content Management System which was invented by Dries Buytaert while a student at the University of Antwerp. This was about ten yeas ago and it was developed to go along with a make-shift wireless internet system which he made to benefit the students at the university. Since then Drupal, which comes as a free download at Drupal.Org, has become the PHP framework behind a number of world class websites such as those for Sony BMG and the Whitehouse. I started to use Drupal about 4 years ago when it was in version 5. Version 7 came out at the beginning of this year and my enthusiasm for it grows with each passing day.

What's New In Drupal 7?

Before, in Drupal, the designer/developer needed to add a Cron script in order to make the site run properly. If you are a Drupal user you remember the days when we got the famous notice, "Cron has not yet run". It was necessary to add Pormanscron or some other solution in order to get the intermittent tasks done which maintained the site. With Drupal 7 a cron script has been included.Also included in version 7 is the famous Content Construction Kit. This allows the designer or builder to build custom content types out of a variety of different fields. This is a great and powerful tool which gives us the power to add efficient and creative content to many pages without the need to build them over and over. The Administration Menu was build into the Drupal Core also, This helpful menu at the top of each page gives quick access to all of the administrative sections of the site. Many things are streamlined in Drupal 7. Modules can not be uploaded in their archived state and installed without using your FTP program. You then find a convenient link to go and enable the newly installed module. The contextual links found in the site to aid the administrator give quick access to modifying blocks and other parts of the site.

How Well Does It Work?

The new version of Drupal is working out great for me. I have only found one minor glitch and that has not caused any real problems. There are not many contributed themes ready at this time. I found a nice CSS theme that I liked and ported it to Drupal 7. The real work was done in less than a day and a half. Everything worked out fine with a little bit of experimentation on my local installation. I have felt hindered slightly by the fact that some of the contributed modules are not ready for use. One that I really miss is the SWF Tools module, which aids in embedding videos and flash animation. I have tried to embed videos in the templates and the nodes of the site without the aid of SWF Tools. This has worked out very well and it is possible to use the swfobject.js script to add flash to the site. The Views Module is still in Beta 3 at the moment but I have found it dependable after some cautious use. At this point I have been able to build my site exactly as I have wanted it with the limitations of unfinished modules. Everything is running well with an allotted 68M of php memory.

Why Does This All Matter?

Two years ago I read that the Catholic Archdiocese of Peoria, IL had a network of about 24 sites built on the Joomla CMS. They needed to get something new, badly. The system was a resource hog for the server and several of the sites had been hacked. They called in A Drupal expert from Chicago and had all of the sites built into one multi-site installation of Drupal. When the guys got done the whole thing ran better and it took far less server resources than in the previous configuration. People have said that Drupal has a higher learning curve than Joomla but I just can't see it Everything in Drupal has seemed better than Joomla, to me, even from back in version 5 of Drupal. I think and hope that Drupal is poised to knock the stuffings out of Joomla. If you build CMS websites all of this should matter a lot.