Drupal is a free, open source CMS that allows one to build smart web application, that are faster, flexible, and easier to manage. It has thousands of free modules contributed by passionate Drupal developers that perfom complex operations almost magically! Drupal is magical, and using it will lead you to such an experience.

It has a great architecture and, the fundamental concept of keeping everything dynamic and expandable allows Drupal-based applications to transform into anything that the business requirements demand!

It is very important for a content management system to be able to interact with other back-end systems to deliver powerful features now and for future. Drupal is a very powerful and unique content management framework. It not only provides you with an advanced content management system, but also gives you the power to develop more advanced features, workflows, customization, and more with the help of its highly flexible and scalable core architecture. Drupal offers many commonly used web components out-of-the-box such as Advanced Search, Blogs, Books, Comments, Forums, Polls, User Management, Access Control, Content categorization and tagging. It has many full-fledged packages for other functionality such as multi-site hosting, multi-domain hosting, file management, groups, etc.

A very transparent policy towards security has resulted in a very secure code both in core and contributed modules. One of Drupal’s major strengths is the large support community that continuously builds and updates the Drupal software. Search engine friendly URLS, excellent control over page title and URLs, easily customizable PHP Template engine are all Drupal’s additional benefits. Thousands of contributed modules make Drupal a vast suite for almost all web applications.

Drupal’s core architecture is lean and written for flexibility. The Drupal architecture is built on a modular structure which gives it the power for infinite extensibility. Very advanced and complex features can be added to the core Drupal framework without having to hack into the existing code base. Web services can be easily integrated using add-on modules. Adding templates, menus, blocks and users, permissions are all part of the core Drupal software, whereas advanced integrations such as Rules and Actions can be implemented to address intercept the work-flow.

Each module in Drupal provides an interception point through which other modules (core or add-on) can hook into that module’s processes. This mechanism allows us to build as many features as we need without having to alter existing code.

Examples of its interoperability include:

• Apache SOLR Search
• Lucene API
• getID3
• LDAP Integration
• Flash Video
• Facebook Connect
• Yahoo YUI
• Google Maps
• TinyMCE and FCKeditor WYSIWYG editors