1. Drupal
Content Management System
Information Culture
September 23, 2012

2. Section Topics
Section One
Introduction to Drupal
Section Two
Popularity of Drupal
Section Three
Development Considerations
Section Four
The Open Source Community
Information Culture
Sept 23, 2012

3. What is Drupal?
“Drupal is a completely free, open source content management system
that many intelligent companies are using today to provide for their
needs…”
Developed by Dries Buytaert in early 2000 initially as a message board for
his own website. Drupal became an open source project in 2001.
Drupal is a CMS for Building Dynamic Websites
Similar to other CMS solutions, Drupal allows you to easily setup and
deploy a dynamic website solution out of the box.
Drupal is an Application Framework
Extensive API and Hook system allows for rapid development of custom
modules, themes and add-on APIs for developers. Drupal is a PHP based
Content type choices and descriptions
CMS/Framework.
are presented when the editor selects
Drupal is a Social and Semantic Web Platform to add new content to the site.
Tools have been built into Drupal including support for Resource
Description Framework (RDF) to enable sharing of data with different web
sources.
Drupal is a Community
The Drupal Community is extremely active, especially in the Washington
DC Metro area with conferences, frequent meetups and local user groups.
http://drupal.org/node/220314
Information Culture
Sept 23, 2012

4. How Drupal Compares to other CMS’s
Drupal and other CMS platforms are constantly in a state of change. Based on past experience with WordPress,
Joomla and custom developed systems, a few comparison notes are provided.
WordPress
• WordPress was primarily built as a blogging engine and later developed into a CMS. It
is great for developing small to medium sized websites, however it was never built to
scale as an enterprise level CMS.
• Drupal assumes at its core there will be many kinds of users with many requirements.
At its core, WordPress on the other hand was developed only for one type of user in
mind and later adapted accordingly.
• Drupal provides more extensive development framework for many different types of
websites: blogs, forums, e-commerce, CRM, intranets, social networks, news
aggregators, wikis, photo galleries, restaurant review sites.
Joomla
• Joomla is arguably a better product ‘out-of-the-box’ as it provides much of the
expected advanced features of a CMS already built-in.
• Drupal on the other hand is limited out-of-the-box, however it provides a more
extensive framework for developing a more advanced site. “On the same grounds, if
you can master it, Drupal 7.0 is the best CMS”
More information:
http://www.chapterthree.com/blog/jennifer-lampton/wordpress-vs-drupal-saga-continues
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2011/02/02/joomla-1-6-vs-drupal-7-0/
Information Culture
Sept 23, 2012

5. Open Government and Drupal
Drupal first gained national attention when the White House announced its move to the open source platform — followed
rapidly by Open Government initiatives driven by Drupal web sites.
On his first day in Office, President Obama signed the Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government, ushering in a
new era of open and accountable government meant to bridge the gap between the American people and their government.
The Administration is tracking how government uses the money with which the people have entrusted it with easy-to-
understand websites based on the Drupal CMS.
Recovery (Recovery.gov) Launched Feb 17th, 2009
• Drupal portal created under the Recovery Act
• Tracks Recovery funds spent by recipients of contracts, grants,
and loans, and the distribution of Recovery entitlements and
tax benefits.
USA Spending (usaspending.gov) June 30th 2009
• Provides information on how US Tax Payers money is spent
• Summaries, trends and data feeds are accessible
IT Dashboard (itdashboard.gov) Launched June 1st 2009
• Federal agencies and the public have the ability to view
details of Federal information technology (IT) investments
online and to track their progress over time
Source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/open/about
Information Culture
Sept 23, 2012

6. Government-Aimed Drupal Events
Drupal Government Days – May 18th, 2012
“Across the government, agencies large and small have reaped the benefits of open source web technology and
community collaboration. Now you can learn the best practices for implementing Drupal within you agency by
registering for Drupal Government Days to be held for the first time in Washington, DC.”
Source: http://www.acquia.com/resources/events/drupal-government-days
Sessions
• A Beginner’s guide to using Views
• Open Source Mapping Tools
• Workbench: Managing Content
• Designing for Accessibility
• Collaboration and Open Atrium
• Responsive Design with Drupal
Information Culture
Sept 23, 2012

7. Government-Aimed Drupal Events
Capital Camp 2012 – July 27th, 2012
CapitalCamp is the DrupalCamp for Washington, DC bringing together developers, designers, open government
advocates, IT managers and anyone else that wants to find out more about Drupal.
DrupalCamp an unconference-style Drupal training, founded in the style of BarCamp. While there are some
differences (DrupalCamp does more pre-planning on the sessions), they have the common goal of bringing smart
people together in an environment that is accessible to everyone.
Training Programs
• Beginner & Intermediate Training
• Drupal Theme Development
• Custom Module Development
• Best Practices
In addition to the training programs, a number
of conference sessions will be available on the
27th-28th July.
Information Culture
Sept 23, 2012

8. Drupal Projects: Koshland Science Museum
Informational Site for Museum Visitors
Provides up-to-date information on museum
exhibits, tour information for groups and latest
news and events.
Interactive Showcases
Provides online interactive multi-media
exhibits for user’s to explore and interact with
the science.
Challenges
Custom developed Challenges system allows
for scientific challenge competitions
submitted, voted on and administered through
the site.
Convio API Integration
Provides event and ticketing information via a
custom developed Convio API module.
Community
Online Forum integrated directly into the site
for visitors to discuss the issues.
User Roles
Custom defined user roles available for staff,
volunteers and advisory personnel along with
custom permissions, avatars and
administration.
Information Culture
Sept 23, 2012

9. “There’s a Module for That!”
Common Drupal development involves the following different phases, not necessarily in any specific order. Existing
contributed modules are widely available within the Drupal community, however most are open-source contributions
so care should be taken before implementation into a production environment.
Use Existing Modules
Drupal has an extensive library of ‘contrib’ modules which are readily available for download and
customization into any Drupal installation via drupal.org. Select modules for ‘some’ functionality.
Write Custom Modules
Next you will want to develop your own custom modules to fill in spaces of missing functionality or
improve upon existing contrib modules.
Configure the Site
Site configuration can be an ongoing process which will increase with complexity dependent on
the amount of modules, size of site, user role, permissions, content types, etc.
Theme it
Theming can occur in parallel to other development activities. Drupal’s theming engine also
provides extensions to the modules.
Information Culture
Sept 23, 2012

10. The Drupal Ladder Initiative
drupalladder.org contains lessons and materials to help people learn
about and contribute to Drupal. The site was created by the Boston
Initiative to help Drupal user groups develop and share and develop
materials for learn sprints and issue sprints.
The ladder teaches essential skills
for contributing to Drupal 8 Core.
Start on the bottom rung if you are a
beginner, and climb as you acquire
the skills and knowledge described
in each lesson.
Information Culture
Sept 23, 2012

11. Local User Groups: Washington DC Druplers
“This group has a great meetup every month where we get together to
connect in person. The target audience is Drupal developers, users, and
people who want to learn more about Drupal. We start the meetups with
a round of very focused lightning talks that discuss real world solutions to
existing problems, new work people have done, and Drupal news.”
http://groups.drupal.org/washington-dc-drupalers
- Learn about latest Drupal events in the area
- Training resources, support, freelance opportunities
2 Meetings per month (Baltimore and Columbia MD)
Information Culture
Sept 23, 2012

12. Thank You!
Questions