Drupal 7 overview

welcome to the getting started with Drupal tutorial in this course will show you how to start building next-generation websites using the world's most popular open-source enterprise ready web platform Drupal Drupal is a type of online software application called a web content management system or CMS for short content management systems enable non-technical people to administer sophisticated websites without having to write code once installed CMS is enable you to manage content users using just a web browser one of the things that makes Drupal so popular is it goes way beyond content management it has a unique way of enabling non coding site builders to add advanced functionality using just its web interface a great way to think of Drupal is like a Lego set for constructing websites Drupal provides a large chest of diverse building blocks that work together to create dynamic functions if you know how to put the pieces together you can recipe practically any kind of website but Drupal is not just a toy it's robust enough to scale into enterprise class deployments some of the world's most prestigious brands depend on Drupal to be a reliable high performance solution for delivering the ultimate user experience yet Drupal is also free and open source thus it's accessible for small organizations ventures and even personal web projects it's developed and supported by a vast worldwide community of developers designers and enthusiasts the Drupal community is the real force behind the project there is a unique culture of collaboration where the sum of the whole is greater than the parts Drupal is extremely flexible it's used by numerous sectors to build a wide range of websites from traditional businesses to nonprofits to academia government publishing and entertainment I should mention that there are literally hundreds of other CMS's many a proprietary and have associated fees it's not unusual for enterprise content management systems to cost into six figures for licensing and annual maintenance there are many others though that are free and open-source like Drupal virtually all CMS's have similar core functionality enabling you to build basic websites where you can post content and customize the look and feel of your many even offer advanced features such as search content workflows and multi-language support while Drupal certainly can be used to build traditional websites where it really excels is web 2.0 style sites that drive human interaction social engagement is woven into drupal's DNA Drupal doesn't just publish content it enables virtually limitless ways of getting your site visitors to interact with your brand creating a deeper and more engaging user experience Drupal can even be used to build full online communities such as intranets extranets and social networking sites it can facilitate team collaboration enable your staff directly interact with your audience and even let your users dialogue among each other and let them self problem-solve as a collective Drupal also excels at marketing and sales is fantastic at driving traffic from search engines social media and online PR efforts via wealth of social interface tools Drupal can even help you integrate and expand your digital footprint leveraging other web sites such as Facebook Twitter Linkedin and YouTube once you have the eyeballs Drupal can even help you convert visitors to customers by capturing leads facilitating your sales process and even selling directly online via integrated e-commerce systems and of course drupal helps you keep track of all the on-site metrics so you quantify your initiatives and tune your efforts finally I should mention that Drupal can also be used as a tool set for enhancing productivity and improving business processes many organizations use Drupal social features to facilitate team collaboration customer service automation and knowledge management Drupal also provides a robust set of administrative site building tools enabling you to quickly prototype a wide range of web-based applications and finally Drupal is built upon amateur web framework if you're a developer you can save yourself a lot of time and effort when deploying custom functionality by reusing drupal's well-tested libraries all this power comes from one piece of software but there is a major hurdle the learning curve while Drupal reduces the low-level complexity of building next generation sites there's additionally been a significant investment in time to learn how to use Drupal and to properly harness its seemingly limitless possibilities luckily a modest amount of knowledge can go a long way to getting you down the right path this course is designed to help you quickly understand Drupal's essential principles understand what is possible with Drupal and get you well on your way to building next-generation websites so let's begin

Channel: Tom McCracken

Views: 49,069

Rating: 4.875 out of 5

Keywords: Drupal tutorial, Drupal 7

Id: Nl1dADk0rU0

Length: 4min 51sec (291 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 14 2011