8 Resources for the Mighty Drupal Content Management System

by Sam Dean - Aug. 28, 2009Comments (10)

Undoubtedly, the open source project Drupal is one of the most robust content management systems (CMS) around. It provides the infrastructure and manages processes for many well-known web sites, including The Onion, Fast Company, InfoWorld and OStatic. We've had a great experience with it, and many large media companies are migrating to it and saving money. In our interview with Dries Buytaert, founder of Drupal, he described the core contributors to the project as on the "same scale as the Linux kernel." There are also over 2,000 modules for Drupal, making it hugely extensible.

Since OStatic's inception, we've collected many good resources for both getting started with Drupal, and extending its functionality if you already use it. Here is our latest update to that collection--eight great resources, including interviews with Drupal insiders.

A Drupal Honcho. Angela Byron is one of Drupal's top evangelists, a Drupal community manager and core committer, and sits on Drupal's board. Check out our extensive interview with her, where she discussed long term goals for Drupal, how she became involved with it, and much more.

Dude, Where's My Drupal? If you're just getting started with Drupal, DrupalDude.com is worth visiting for the many posts on specific tasks that you'll find there. You can get an excellent overview of the CMS from this post, where DrupalDude builds a website with Drupal in 10 minutes. Check out many more tutorial videos found at DrupalDude.com here.

A Free Book Chapter. John K. VanDyk is author of one of the most respected books for Drupal power users: Pro Drupal Development. The book is an exhaustive guide to how to build powerful, customized web sites. Here is a link to the complete Table of Contents and also the first chapter of the book, (PDF), provided for OStatic by John.

Input from the Author. We also interviewed Drupal author John VanDyk here. He provides specific examples on how modules are built for Drupal, and describes what users can get out of his book.

Free Tips and More. If you're getting into Drupal, also get into Lullabot, which we wrote about here. A provider of training and consulting for Drupal, Lullabot has consulted with such companies as MTV, Sony BMG Records, Lifetime Television, IBM, and Fast Company in building and growing their Drupal sites. The best news is that they provide a lot of free, educational content about Drupal, including excellent podcasts. Here's one on Drupal tips and tricks. You can also get educational DVDs and more from Lullabot.

Help Me. Do you need support for a Drupal deployment? We've covered Acquia before, which offers a commercially supported version of Drupal and sells support subscriptions and other services.

Take in Acquia's Videos. Acquia has also recently added many tutorial videos on Drupal to its Community page, and the videos are free to watch here. You'll find videos such as "Build a Dynamic Community Site with Flash Using the Drupal Services Module," and videos on how to use Drupal's many modules.

Is Drupal Right for Me? If you're planning a web site, whether it's a database-driven site, a blog, a combination of the two (which OStatic is), or something else, you may want to evaluate whether Drupal is right for you. Check out Kristin's post here for first steps. A good next step would be to to try OpenSourceCMS, which we wrote about here. It lets you function as an administrator of Drupal and other CMS offerings for hours, so you get a strong sense of all capabilities. Also, check out the many free tutorial videos on Drupal available here.

We hope you find some good insight into Drupal in this post. It's not an accident that we picked it to power OStatic. Few open source projects result in such a rich, incredibly extensible platform.

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by Gobezu on Aug. 28, 2009

Ok, I am now really tired of having this site constantly promoting a certain CMS.

Why don't you make some effort to include Joomla to at least dignify your attempt of being neutral and professional, or are you telling us readers that it's Drupal and I don't want to hear anything else.

Because as you know its a mere choice and none of them (Joomla nor Drupal) are absolutely better than the other. As for me, I have chosen Joomla and find it to be a reliable system developing and becoming better for each day.

Thank you!

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by Sam Dean on Aug. 28, 2009

@Gobezu, fair enough, we will post more on Joomla. Yes, Drupal is something we write about fairly regularly, because OStatic runs on it, and that helps us provide insight. We have covered Joomla and other CMS systems, though. For example, we've done posts on OpenSourceCMS, a site that lets you test drive Joomla (and Drupal, and other CMS systems). I like Joomla, and I know many people who run blogs and other types of sites on it.

Sam

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by Gobezu on Aug. 29, 2009

Thanks for listening, you will remain in my rss reader ;).

I truly appreciate your reporting in general.

Thanks again!

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by El Spamolito on Aug. 30, 2009

Drupal is pretty amazing, though I have only used it for one project, but I find for smaller projects, wordpress to be faster and easier for the end user to adapt to.

Is this more or less agreed with by the majority? Also as far as seo the wordpress format seems a better option for small business. Am I wrong here or right? I profess to never have attempted any cms project on the level of this site.

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by Savings Account on Oct. 18, 2009

I don't see what the big deal is. Lots of people use Drupal and they appreciate help in getting the most out of their CMS.

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by Tim on Feb. 02, 2010

One more resource I'd suggest for every Drupal developer is Drupal tutorials aggregator: http://dtutorials.com

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by Reuben Gregory on Jul. 18, 2011

Glad I found this site!

Have just started getting into word press my self, I was going to learn Joomla,got a book out and every thing, but then found that my web hosting service provides wordpress hosting free with my other site, with plugins, and I can have up to 5 of them all on sub domains!

And they also offer Drupal platform as well! I have contemplated using it, but at first glance it made me want to run away. It can hardly be classed as user friendly.

Way too technical for me and you really need to know what you are doing. Yes I could learn it... but my question is, would I have that amount of time? It would take me ages - by which time I would have built all 5 of my wordpress sites lol:)

And yes, I do even make some money from my sites as well. helps cover the cost of this service I am getting - so in effect it is now for free. Not bad eh? And there are tutorials there too! If any one want to know more, you know where to find me. :)

But I will be keeping an eye on this site, as I am a keen web site builder for fun and it does fasinate me, espessially this wordpress. Havent found any tutorials for Joomula though, and does any one know what the difference is, is it easier, better or what?

Thanks and will be watching out for your posts.

Reubs

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by Graham 'Money' Mortimer on Aug. 16, 2011

I also have used Joomla. It's pretty good, but I now use word press. Much better in my opinion as it's easy to use. I also found Drupal very technical and quite confusing. I'm going to stick with word press.

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by an anonymous user on Jan. 31, 2012

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