After all these years, Drupal still sucks less

Submitted by paskainos on Sun, 2011-05-29 18:24

All content management systems suck, Drupal just happens to suck less.
— Boris Mann at DrupalCON Amsterdam, August 2005.

Back in July 6, 2006 Drupal progenitor Dries Buytaert made reference to Boris’ words in a brief post. Since then Drupal has continued to dazzle and amaze with its seemingly paradoxical brilliance of less-sucky-awesomeness. Many factors play in to Drupal’s vast superiority. Perhaps the main difference though is the Drupal Community’s ability to hold to exacting yet not prohibitively rigid standards. This nimble balance unique to the Drupal Community seemingly undergirds the philosophical and directional elements of Drupal development. As a result, Drupal just gets revved up where most CMS’ leave off.

White House goes Drupal, and the rest follow suit

Back in 2009 I began extensive research in a quest to find the ‘perfect CMS’. Having built with many of the widely recognized CMS’ I based my research largely on my practical experience. Security was consistently a glaring oversight in most CMS communities, even the most popular, based on a lack of proper concern and arguably negligent security posture in most CMS communities.

As my research was drawing to a close the White House announced its switch to Drupal, which seemed to simultaneously correspond with my research, and the Obama administration’s full-scale cyber-security initiative. Seeing the proverbial writing on the wall, I suspected most other CMS’ would soon fall prey to widespread security attacks.

Since then, my suspicions have been confirmed. In fact, on May 29, 2011 I checked in on the latest Google trends ranking for Wordpress, Joomla!, and Drupal and I think the screenshot (below) says it all, particularly the last two stories (E&F) listed by Google. Here are the articles referenced:

So what’s next?

The long awaited and much anticipated official release of Drupal 7 earlier this year, more than a year after the D7 code freeze announcement has sparked revived Drupal enthusiasm much like the D6 release did previously. Already D7 commands a formidable list of workhorse sites in its stable and promises many more with high-powered tools like the OpenPublic installation profile by Phase2 Technology.

Not just another pretty face, Drupal has a bright and promising future. The sleek new redesign in D7 boasts many improvements and enhancements. Security, true extensibility, the Web 3.0 initiative and more put Drupal squarely in the driver’s seat. If your site needs a makeover, maybe it’s time to take a look at Drupal — the world’s premier Open Source CMS.