Why Drupal?

As mentioned in the previous post, I'll be building the new school website using something called Drupal. This is an open source Content Management System. But what does that mean?

• The open source part means that the software has been put together through a collaboration of individual members of the public (as opposed to teams of programmers at somewhere like Microsoft). These are folk who have created the software for the love of it and have done so without financial incentive. Drupal continues to be maintained and added to by such people, and projects are worked on by people all across the globe.
  
  
• A Content Management System (CMS) does clever things with your content, and keeps it stored in a separate database to the rest of the website. For example, when uploading a 'News' item to a CMS, any text/images/videos/etc. associated with that item are stored in their own area. This content can then be archived, used on more than one of the pages on your website (without saving the data on every single page it's used on), and 'themed' to look inline with the rest of the website. Should you change the look of the website, the theme can be changed, leaving the content itself untouched.

One of the many problems for me with the current webiste is that it doesn't do anything clever with content whatsoever. If I post a new vacancy on the site, with a deadline for applicants of 25 April 2009, this vacancy remains on the site after the closing date, and I have to remember to take it off myself (which I tend to do by adding a reminder in Outlook. If I remember to do so). The same applies to things like the Calendar on our homepage and, if content isn't removed at the right time, can leave the website looking out of date. Using Drupal means that when I add such a piece of content, I can set the date at which it will disappear from the website (despite this disappearance, the content will remain stored in the database should it be required again).

This leads me on to another great thing about using a CMS - all content is archived. Using the current system, whenever I delete a 'News' item or anything else in fact, that's it - it's gone forever*. Anything added to our new Drupal site will be stored permanently, including any edits to content - each version will be stored separately and can be 'rolled back' to, if required.

Once the 'core' version of Drupal is installed, I'll be able to add 'modules' to it. These modules are extra bits of pre-written code by Drupal fans that allow me to add some great bits of functonality to the site. There are thousands of modules out there, which include things like: calendars, online shops, polls, photo galleries, etc. along with things that are more to do with the nitty-gritty of making the site run.

Another difference when using Drupal is that, once the website is built, any updates/edits to content can be made using a web browser. Currently, the website can only be updated using Dreamweaver, which requires a knowledge of the software, and a computer with it installed. Once the new site is in action, and should we require it, content can be added using pretty much any computer (as most people have an internet browser) in a user-friendly interface. The new site will also use a new hosting company and will allow me to update the website from anywhere, which the current hosting doesn't allow. This caused problems, for example, during the recentish snow, when the school was closed due to the weather, but I still had to get into the building to post an item on the website informing parents and carers that the school was closed due to snow!

Drupal has many other benefits, and it would take me weeks to name them all, but future blog posts will include mentions of some of the new features it provides.



*I do periodically back up the whole website, although this doesn't catch everything.