Drupal, similarly to WordPress or Ghost, is a CMS – Content Management System. As any other CMS, it has certain unique features which make it very useful in some projects, and useless in others.
Among the most important Drupal features is reliable performance and extreme security (=less speed), simple content authoring, and flexibility achieved thanks to the modularity of the system.
It is used mainly in building integrated digital frameworks, as well as crafting well-structured, content-driven dynamic web experiences. It’s an easily scalable and very powerful system.
There are thousands of useful Drupal add-ons and modules, which make it endlessly functional in various situations. It can also be integrated with various other applications and services in a given company’s infrastructure.
Like most other CMS products, Drupal has been released and is constantly developed as an open-source project, under the GNU General Public Licence.
A large community, consisting of designers, developers, teachers, consultants, editors, coordinators and so on, has grown around this system because of how useful and flexible it is.
Drupal is probably less popular than WordPress, but it’s used in many places like, for instance, the government sites for France and the United States, the websites for BBC, NBC or Amnesty International, even the University of Oxford uses it.
Short history of Drupal
This system was created around the year 2000 by two students from the University of Antwerp. It started as a simple framework for online content which was used primarily by the students to communicate with each other.
The creators finished college, and decided to keep the project going. They published it on a new domain, and it was so interesting that it started attracting other developers and internet enthusiasts.
The source code for the CMS was released in 2001 in order to see what other people could build out of it. Afterwards it kept growing, and the system now powers a large chunk of the internet.