Drupal
Drupal is a content management system (CMS) and framework. Its main application is Drupal in the organization of sites currently ( March 2014 ) at 1.9 % of all websites with a market share of 5.4 % at CMS, according to W3Techs. Originally it was designed by Belgian computer scientist Dries Buytaert.
Drupal is Free Software released under the GNU General Public License. It is written in PHP and uses MySQL / MariaDB ( recommended), PostgreSQL (supported), SQLite ( 7.x ), Oracle (in development) or MSSQL (in development) as a database system.
- 7.1 Installation profiles generally
- 7.2 Pressflow (extension)
- 7.3 Acquia Drupal
- CiviCRM 7.4 (Expansion)
- 7.5 Open Atrium
- 7.6 ERPAL
- 8.1 Literature
- 8.2 video training
Features
With Drupal can, as with other content management systems ( CMS) also make and edit content on the Internet. Drupal is different from other CMS primarily through the implementation of policies that a social software, and supports the development of communities that collaborate on content and talk about issues and inform want. For example, users can create their own blogs, share in forums or publish articles. It will support a differentiated roles and permissions system.
Drupal is since 2001 as an open source package. Meanwhile, Drupal is used for several million websites of various kinds all over the world, for example of the reader comments on the website of the weekly Die Zeit or since 24 October 2009 it is for the website of the White House in Washington.
Among other well-known CMS such as WordPress, Joomla and Typo3, it has established itself a place among the "big" PHP - based open source CMS with its specific approach. Drupal has a strong online community that actively supports its members. There is also the German-speaking companies that offer commercial support and development operate professionally.
Drupal has won the English Packt Publishing Open Source Content Management System Award in the category " Overall Winner " in the years 2007, 2008 and 2009.
Structure and functions
Drupal consists of a core ( core German ), which provides the basic functionality and modules that provide additional functionality and can be added to the system when needed. It manages a total of over 12,200 module projects ( full modules ) as well as over 8,200 "sandbox " projects on drupal.org currently (as of February 17, 2013 ). Of the full-fledged module projects are marked above 6,900 as compatible with Drupal 6 and 5298 as compatible with Drupal 7. These modules offer a wide range of simple, common website functions on complex via a graphical user configurable tools to extensions to the already extensive programming interfaces.
The modular structure of Drupal versatile use facilities are available. The list ranges from " one-person sites " such as personal weblogs to online communities with thousands of members.
The following are possible applications for the Drupal CMS are described:
Blog
A single person can build up as the sole user of the CMS weblog. However, it is also possible that multiple users to "share" a website and everyone has his own weblog.
Online Community
Online communities are sites where many users, each responsible with their own user account for the design and content of the website. This item can be created or discussed in a forum. An administrator and moderators are responsible for monitoring and everything runs smoothly.
The link pages in a linear structure is often problematic in hypertext or CMS. Here has the content type " Book" in Drupal an easy way (together ) to write contiguous pages of a book and manage - without losing the overview.
Selected Properties
- Strict separation of layout / design and functional source code
- Sophisticated Taxonomiesystem for hierarchical categorization of content
- Content types can be built up various pages, may have different permissions.
- Role-based permission system
- Versioning of contents
- Tree-like (English threaded ) comment facilities
- Permalinks - Each page is accessible via a fixed ( unchanging ) URL
- Clean URLs - Drupal can generate human - and machine-readable URLs (eg for search engines)
- Built-in full-text search
- Drupal can use different database systems ( MySQL version 4.1 or later is recommended )
- Built-in caching mechanisms provide good performance
- Numerous Themes allow extensive customization of the layout
- Language settings (also multilingual sites ) with the help of location data
- Connection to LDAP server / authentication and OpenID
- Multi-site capability: Structure of isolated sites on an installation
- Override: Own Code-Anpassungen/-Ergänzungen without Kern-/Modul-Code-Veränderungen, both in features as well as with the layout (themes).
- Hooks: The hook system makes it possible to interact with the Drupal core and other modules
Selected modules
Drupal can be extended by a variety of so-called modules, so that you can " upgrade " almost any functionality.
- CCK module (CCK: Content Construction Kit, German "Content - kit " ): Simple creation of own content types (since Drupal 7 core included)
- Views module: Easy creation of user-defined collections of content ( modeling SQL queries on a graphical interface )
- CKEditor-/TinyMCE-/WYSIWYG-Modul: Simple WYSIWYG editing of articles
- Image module: Allows the publication of pictures and picture galleries (since Drupal 7 core included)
- Actions and workflow module: creating workflows and related actions
- Organic Groups module: Allows the creation of any groups to which users join and then there can publish content
- Event Module: Scheduling with calendar functions
- Location-/Google-Maps-/OpenLayers-Modul: access to maps, distance calculation, diverse localization of content, etc.
- Weblink module: management of links with link monitoring
- Ubercart / Commerce Module: Extension for E -Commerce
Community
Drupal has a large user and developer community. More than 935,000 user accounts have been registered on Drupal.org, which have logged more than 23,000 for a developer account (as of February 17, 2013 ). The Drupal Conference held twice a year, alternately in North America and Europe. DrupalCon Szeged 2008, which took place in August 2008, had about 500 visitors. DrupalCon Washington, D.C. 2009 attracted over 1,400 visitors. In September 2009, the Paris conference was held with 800 participants. About 3,000 people registered for DrupalCon San Francisco in April 2010. European DrupalCon 2010 took place in Copenhagen in August. In March 2011, DrupalCon was held in Chicago. From 22 to 26 August 2011, the European DrupalCon was held in London. With 1840 tickets sold the largest European DrupalCon was held in Prague in September 2013.
There are many active Drupal forums, mailing lists and discussion groups. Furthermore, there are also various IRC channels on Freenode the network.
There are 34 national communities on drupal.org, the language-specific help to offer (as of February 17, 2013 ).
Name and Logo
The name " Drupal " is the Anglo- American pronunciation of the Dutch word " druppel ", which in German means drops ( Low German: " Dropp " or " Droppen "). Drupal is a registered trademark of Dries Buytaert.
The official logo is the so-called Druplicon. It was created from the idea of using a drop of water as a logo. However, this should act comically and clearly recognize to be. Therefore, make two joined in a single drop, which look like a infinity sign, the eyes in the face of the water droplet dar. Thus the endless possibilities of Drupal should be symbolized.
Criticism
- Lack of backward compatibility: New major versions of Drupal are often restricted with previous compatible (eg major version 6 with 5, etc. ). This leads to that existing modules must be adjusted or re-programmed and may not initially be available when a new major version. There is for example no functioning process of major version 6 upgrade to 7, which is officially supported and works flawlessly.
- Performance: 2008, tests showed that compared the performance of Drupal 6.1 and Joomla 1.5, Drupal websites " significantly faster " ready made . However, Drupal is slower than other systems in some applications, for example, the performance of WordPress is superior to that of Drupal as a single-user blogging system in general. The Drupal project itself points out, however, that Drupal is not designed as a blogging engine.
Large Drupal Projects
- Whitehouse.gov, the White House website
- Economist.com, the site of the Economist
- Amnesty.org, the website of Amnesty International
- WFP.org, the website of the United Nations World Food Programme
Versions
Distributions and expansion packs
There are some of the massively changing Drupal core extensions that need to be installed or can be part of a distribution ( software). There is also a standardized distribution possibility that contain no core changes with installation profiles.
Installation profiles generally
Drupal offers the possibility of installation profiles, in which a certain range of features, themes and special settings can be integrated to maintain as independent projects. Such an installation profile always relies on a stable Drupal version and extends it by additional, available from the beginning of functionalities. This makes the otherwise time-consuming sometimes separate search of required modules is simplified if a similar configuration to be installed multiple times. Installation profiles are thus suitable to create their own compilation of commonly used modules and themes and to publish them as well. Many Drupal distributions provide innately the appropriate functions to a special type of website to create. For websites that are based on an installation profile, but is also the entirety of all Drupal modules available for installation.
Pressflow (extension)
Pressflow is based on the current Drupal version, relies however focus on improved performance, as well as more sophisticated caching mechanisms. The API compatibility remains completely intact. The higher performance but at the expense of backward compatibility: So will take PHP 4 and multiple database systems with Pressflow only PHP 5 and MySQL 5.x support.
Pressflow improved following characteristics:
- Function simulation: Drupal uses up to version 6 on functions of the PHP version 4.x back. High-end features as they are only supported by PHP 5.x and later were replicated in Drupal, so as to ensure the compatibility with PHP 4. Pressflow breaks with this compatibility and instead uses the native PHP 5 functions.
- Optimize the MySQL connection: Drupal can run with different database systems: This variety comes at the expense of performance, as many MySQL-specific functions can not be used. Pressflow only supports MySQL and is therefore able to respond to the specifics of this database system and utilize special (faster ) MySQL functions that are not available in other database systems.
- More sophisticated caching: Especially sites with massive user traffic caching helps reduce the server load considerably. Pressflow supports caching using a reverse proxy, which is in contrast to the database- based caching capabilities of Drupal reduce the server load by a factor of 10.
Acquia Drupal
Acquia Drupal is the distribution of the homonymous company of Drupal creator Dries Buytaert. It is characterized primarily by commercial support, as well as some modules of the community were integrated directly into the system.
CiviCRM (extension)
CiviCRM is a Constituent Relationship Management System (no Customer Relationship Management ) system, which is specifically geared to the needs of non-governmental organizations, associations and nonprofit organizations. There are modules for managing different types of contacts ( not just customers ), donations, events and members. It uses Drupal, Joomla or WordPress as a base.
Open Atrium
Open Atrium is a complete intranet solution that coordinates cooperation between the team and may be optimized. It includes blog, calendar, documents and todo lists. Open Atrium is based on Drupal version 6, version 2.0 was created based on Drupal 7 ..
ERPAL
ERPAL is developed by Bright Solutions GmbH Drupal distribution. This ERP system is designed for use in agencies and small and medium-sized companies. It summarizes functions together for project management, resource planning, staff management and document management under a single interface.