What is Drupal? What is a CMS?

What is Drupal?

Drupal is content management software. It’s used to make many of the websites and applications you use every day. Drupal has great standard features, like easy content authoring, reliable performance, and excellent security. But what sets it apart is its flexibility; modularity is one of its core principles. Its tools help you build the versatile, structured content that dynamic web experiences need.

Drupal is the platform the United States, London, France, and more use to communicate with citizens. It’s the framework media companies like BBC, NBC, and MTV UK rely on to inform and entertain the world. It’s part of how organizations and universities like Amnesty International and the University of Oxford work to make the world a better place.

Drupal 7 has been out since early 2011.

What is a CMS?

A content management system (CMS) is a computer application that allows publishing, editing, modifying, organizing, deleting, and maintaining content from a central interface. Such systems of content management provide procedures to manage workflow in a collaborative environment. These procedures can be manual steps or an automated cascade. CMSs have been available since the late 1990s.

CMSs are often used to run websites containing blogs, news, and shopping. Many corporate and marketing websites use CMSs. CMSs typically aim to avoid the need for hand coding, but may help it for specific elements or entire pages.

The function of Content Management Systems is to store and organize files, and provide version-controlled access to their data. CMS features vary widely. Simple systems showcase a handful of features, while other releases, notably enterprise systems, offer more complex and powerful functions. Most CMSs include Web-based publishing, format management, (version control), indexing, search, and retrieval. The CMS increases the version number when new updates are added to an already-existing file. Some content management systems also support the separation of content and presentation.

A CMS may serve as a digital asset management system containing documents, videos, pictures, phone numbers, scientific data. CMSs can be used for storing, controlling, revising, semantically enriching and publishing documentation.

Distinguishing between the basic concepts of user and content. The content management system (CMS) has two elements:

  • Content management application (CMA) is the front-end user interface that allows a user, even with limited expertise, to add, modify and remove content from a Web site without the intervention of a Webmaster.
  • Content delivery application (CDA) compiles that information and updates the Web site.