1. Koya University
School Of Computer
Software Engineering Department
Open Source Technology
A short report about
What is Drupal?
Prepared by Under Supervision Of
Kewan S. Salih Dr. Salah I. Yahiya

2. Introduction
A CMS or Content Management System is an application that can be used to manage
and organize text, movies, pictures, links and many other types of data. Functionality
varies from CMS to CMS, but most are web based and offer some sort of access
control. Many of the most popular websites in the world use free and publicly available
CMS' like Wordpress, Joomla and Drupal [1]
In this essay we discuss shortly about Drupal
Drupal is a free, open-source web development platform for online content and user
communities. Drupal powers some of the busiest sites on the web, and can be adapted
to virtually any visual design. Drupal runs over a million sites, including
WhiteHouse.gov, World Economic Forum, Stanford University, and Examiner.com [2]
History
Originally written by Dries Buytaert as a message board, Drupal became an open
source project in 2001. Drupal is an English rendering of the Dutch word "druppel",
which means "drop" (as in "a water droplet"). The name was taken from the now-defunct
Drop.org website, whose code slowly evolved into Drupal. Buytaert wanted to call the
site "dorp" (Dutch for "village") for its community aspects, but mistyped it when checking
the domain name and thought the error sounded better.
Interest in Drupal got a significant boost in 2003, when it was used to build
"DeanSpace" for Howard Dean, one of the candidates in the U.S. Democratic Party's
primary campaign for the 2004 U.S. presidential election
Drupal is now developed by a community, and its popularity is growing rapidly. From
July 2007 to June 2008, Drupal was downloaded from the Drupal.org website more than
1.4 million times, an increase of approximately 125% from the previous year
As of December 2012, more than 808 000 sites are using Drupal [3]
Standard Drupal Features:
Drupal is highly modular; most of Drupal's user-visible features are written separately
from the codebase. This section lists the functionality provided by the modules included
in the latest Drupal release by default. The features provided by your Drupal system can
easily be expanded by adding or writing other modules [4]
 Users (scalable user structure)
 Forums
 Blogs (per user or collective)
 Articles
 Static pages
 Collective Book Writing.

3.  Taxonomy (categories)
 File-attachment on posts.
 International interface translations.
 Multi-language support.
Drupal Core
In the Drupal community, the term "core" means anything outside of the "sites" folder in
a Drupal installation. Drupal core is the stock element of Drupal. In its default
configuration, a Drupal website's content can be contributed by either registered or
anonymous users (at the discretion of the administrator) and is made accessible to web
visitors by a variety of selectable criteria. Drupal core also includes a
hierarchical taxonomy system, which allows content to be categorized or tagged with
key words for easier access.
Drupal maintains a detailed changelog of core feature updates by version
Drupal Core includes optional modules which can be enabled by the administrator to
extend the functionality of the core website. [3]
The core Drupal distribution provides a number of features, including:
statistics and logging
search
, books, comments, forums, and polls
and feature throttling for improved performance
URLs
-level menu system
-site support
-user content creation and editing
OpenID support
profiles
access control restrictions (user roles, IP addresses, email)
tools (triggers and actions)
Also Drupal core includes core themes, which customize the "look and feel" of Drupal
sites, for example, Garland and Bartik.
The Color Module, introduced in Drupal core 5.0, allows administrators to change the
color scheme of certain themes via a browser interface.[3]
Extending the core

4. Drupal core is modular, defining a system of hooks and callbacks, which are accessed
internally via an API, This design allows third-party contributed (often abbreviated to
"contrib") modules and themes to extend or override Drupal's default behaviors without
changing Drupal core's code.
Contributed modules offer image galleries, custom content types and content
listings, WYSIWYG editors, private messaging, third-party integration tools, and more.
As of November 2012 the Drupal website lists more than 19,600 free modules.
And contributed themes adapt or replace a Drupal site's default look and feel.
So the distribution of Drupal defines a packaged version of Drupal that upon installation
provides a website or application built for a specific purpose.
The distributions offer the benefit of a new Drupal site without having to manually seek
out and install third-party contrib modules or adjust configuration settings [3]
Drupal Community
Groups.drupal.org provides a place for groups to organize, meet, and work on projects
based on interest or geographic location. It's a great way to get involved, learn more
and get support.[5]
Drupal Security
Drupal has a very good track record in terms of security, and has an organized process
for investigating, verifying, and publishing possible security problems. Drupal’s security
team is constantly working with the community to address security issues as they arise.
More information about this process can be found in that section of the handbook. [6]
Localization
As of November 2012, Drupal had been made available in 91 languages
and English (the default). Support is included for right-to-left languages such
as Arabic, Persian, and Hebrew.[3]
Also Kurdish language added to translation pages and until now a group of kurditgroup
members, Works on translation Drupal to Kurdish language and waiting to others to
help them to speed up Working under this link
http://localize.drupal.org/translate/languages/ku

5. Websites using Drupal
http://www.law.stanford.edu/
http://www.actfl.org
Conclusion
In the end we can say that Drupal has some advantage as participate end user in
making and design a website easily ,freely at short time and make changes easily by
himself or call another one to improve ,change

6. References:
1. http://whatcms.org
2. http://www.acquia.com/what-is-drupal
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drupal
4. http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Drupal
5. http://drupal.org/community
6. http://drupal.org/documentation/is-drupal-secure