Welcome to Drupal, Partna’

By Kaywan Shiraz

Back in the chaotic nether of the early pre-2000 Internet, codeslingers whipped out their dual pistols of HTML and Javascript and corralled the eyeballs of viewers through animated under construction signs, dancing hamsters, and long-forgotten “frames.” Times were tough in those early days—a developer had to work the virtual land with nothing but their Windows desktop and their trusty Notepad applications.*

Time warp to today. The digital pioneers of the past either through sheer ingenuity or foresight (or just bad cases of carpal tunnel) decided that code…can write code! And thus several years ago several Content Management Systems came into the foreground. These Content Management Systems (CMS) allowed the developer to spend more time being creative than simply getting the code together to make the site say “hi!.” Simple blog providers such as Livejournal and Xanga took over the public in early 2000s while the businesses adopted a mixture of high-priced IBM and Microsoft-provided solutions. But what about the small business? Or the big business with a sensible budget? Or just the Ubergeek which loves to strut his code-generation stuff? Free and publicly-contributed CMS’ such as Wordpress, Joomla, and yup, Drupal burst into the scene to make your site-building fantasies ever more tangible.

So let’s cut right into it. Drupal is best! But why choose it as your CMS? Better than Wordpress for your blog? Better than Joomla for your online community? Better than um…whatever Microsoft/IBM provides for your company intranet? Three strengths: Customization, Control, and Connectivity.

Customization

Example: Fast Company

• You can basically create content with any kind of field for any situation. FAQs? That’s content. Blogs? That’s content. Q&A section? That’s content. Basically, if your site has content (if not, I’d be worried about your site), it can be built and customized to a fine point within Drupal
• Not only can you customize the types of content on your site, you can customize how the user interacts with it completely. You can do everything from letting a user add a piece of content to their bookmarks to doing a combined Tweet/Facebook Share/Digg/Text/Email/Phone Call/Fax a la “WUPHF”
• Also, a lot of other CMS confine you to either a set of themes or have some esoteric method to change themes. With Drupal, you can make your site look like any which way you’d like in any variety of ways connected to an unlimited number of actions and content. Well, you can make it look however you’d like.

Control

Example: AOL Corporate Intranet

• The sticklers who want control over the data in, out, and around the site can be assured that Drupal, when properly configured, can give even the most Draconian administrator control over every lowly piece of data out there. For cases such as a corporate intranet, messages can be logged and indexed, content can be hidden or shown at will, and virtual high fives can be administered to only specific ultra-privilaged users.
• Got a nasty comment, blog, or message out there? You can zap the content into oblivion or be more sinister and do an all-in-one delete, user ban, IP ban, report to the authorities, dispatch special forces (well maybe) in one stroke!
• Drupal can also be configured to instantly combat outsider penetration through various methods such as IP safe zones, site-keys, and user verifications, and many, many other terms I may have made up.

Connectivity

Example: MyPlay by Sony BMG

• Let’s get it straight. People don’t just visit cool websites anymore. With most of their time on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube (well Facebook), the typical user isn’t on your site without a damn good reason. Drupal sites can be written to be friendly with Facebook Shares, Twitter messages, or any future social network that would be leading the audience to your site.
• Then there’s the death of the desktop computer. With browsing increasingly being done on mobile devices and tablets, the typical website structure just doesn’t cut it. Drupal themes and code can reflect the user’s browsing device on the fly so you can ensure that your content is viewed without issues.
• So you don’t care about getting the mainstream audience to your site. Maybe you have a corporate intranet—Drupal can connect to existing databases and APIs to make sure that your organization data flows between Drupal and any proprietary systems.

Hopefully that’s enough for you to try to attempt to think about checking out Drupal. All of our clients and communities run on Drupal, so feel free to plunge through the Kasama Media site for more examples. And always, feel free to drop us a message if you have any questions.

*I apologize for the cowboy references, I’ve been playing too much Red Dead Redemption on the PS3.

And nope, we don’t get a referral fee for convincing you of all this ‘cause…Drupal is free!