Importance of Drupal – the open source CMS
Ever since I have built Drishtikone as a long term blogging/community platform, for me it was important to have at its base something that was flexible, scalable and powerful. Drupal is and has been the only one that fit the bill! Fortunately, there are some who share my enthusiasm for it. Here is one guy who discusses the possibility of Drupal being taught in schools and colleges.. and why is Drupal so important and good? Here are some reasons:
1. In an interview with Dries Buytaert, the founder of Drupal, he was asked the longevity question. His answer was smart, which was that most of what is at the heart of Drupal is ‘ideas work’ (my words). Many of the problems Drupal seeks to answer are not based on a particular programming platform, but are rather broader problems that all applications will run into at some point as they seek to develop a flexible Rapid Application Development (RAD) infrastructure.···
2. Drupal is open-source, and has already established a culture of sharing as a plausible, workable business model. Big companies like Sony BMG and MTV have hired Drupal developers to program new modules, or improve on existing modules, and then they contribute that code back to Drupal. These are displays of confidence in the open-source model by big companies, in opposition to the ‘Mine!’ approach of most custom-built CMS’s out there.
3. Drupal is like an onion – it’s smelly, goes good with nachos and … it has layers. As a programmer works their way into the layers, they continue to like what they see. At it’s core, Drupal is based on a number of well thought-out APIs that act as mediators between developers with varying needs. There’s very little restrictions at the core that would prevent you from doing exactly what you want to do. But it guides you to do everything in a good way. “Freedom in fences,” as my high school creative writing teacher put it. The deeper you go, the more committed a programmer becomes, because they’re forced to do things the right way, and not only that, but it’s easier to do it the right way, and how can that not give you a warm fuzzy feeling?