Drupal is an open source content management system.

Even though it is free to download and use, don't think for a minute that it is a cheap featureless product.

In fact, it is a very powerful database driven system that is equipped with enough features and options to please almost any user. Drupal is ideal for presenting a wide variety of web sites ranging from small personal blogs and web sites right on up to large corporate web sites and community driven web sites of all kinds.

As with any product that is capable of handling tremendous amounts of content and delivering it in dynamic fashion from a database, Drupal can be very intimidating to the new user. With that being said, however, Drupal can offer huge rewards to anyone willing to put a little time and effort into learning how to setup, configure, and use it to full advantage. It certainly can be the solution to your content management requirements, whatever they may be.

Here are some of the features that make Drupal so attractive:

#1 Since Drupal is open source, it can be fully customized and extended to meet almost any requirement.

#2 Drupal can be fully customized as far as appearance and content presentation to meet almost any user preferences.

#3 There are many, many modules, or building blocks if you prefer, that are available for use with Drupal. These modules allow a user to add almost any feature imaginable to the basic Drupal system.

#4 Drupal allows setting up users and groups and permissions so as to meet almost any requirements a person might have for managing who can, and who cannot, view and manipulate content on the site.

#5 Drupal has a wide selection of theme templates available for use in controlling the look and feel of your site. Since content is separate from presentation, you can easily change the look of a site without extensive code rewriting.

#6 Content on Drupal is searchable through a built-in search feature, allowing users to quickly locate the content they are interested in.

#7 You can allow users to make comments on content articles and promote discussion on articles as well.

#8 You can setup a poll module that allows users to vote on items and also see the results of the voting by other users.

#9 Drupal allows tracking the details of content creation and updates, including who created or changed it, the date and time they created or changed it, and exactly what changes were made.

#10 Supports RSS content syndication, anyone with a RSS reader can browse your Drupal site feeds.

#11 Drupal's news aggregator allows reading news from other sites.

#12 Drupal content can be linked to from other sites by using Drupal's permalinks, which associates a permanent link with each content item.

#13 Drupal is multi-platform, can run on Apache, Microsoft IIS, Unix/Linux, Windows, Mac, and others.

#14 Drupal can meet the requirements of a multi-language international audience, and allows for creating a multi-lingual web site.

#15 Drupal has analysis, tracking, and statistics available and allows for printout of detailed information concerning your site.

#16 Drupal is web based administered, so you can login and administer your site from anywhere that internet access is available.

The above list is just a small sample of what Drupal has to offer. You can use Drupal to fulfill a wide variety of web site requirements, including, but not limited to:

Blogging

Content Management

Community Driven Sites

E-Commerce And Small Business Sites

Membership Sites

And on and on.....

If Drupal sounds like it will fulfill your web site requirements, then a good way to shorten the learning curve and get a jump start on installing and configuring Drupal is to take advantage of the various video tutorials available on the subject.

One such tutorial is How To Install And Configure Drupal, and it is a fast, easy, low cost way to get started.