Why Choose Drupal?

Comparing Drupal with other content management systems (CMS) is tricky because it is like comparing Walkman and iPod for consumers who have never tried iPod before. We can say that both can play music and are portable, and iPod is at a clear disadvantage because it's the younger technology. It is difficult to explain why iPod has more advantages, and the only way is to demonstrate what it does and which famous celebrities endorse iPod (like U2 and Madonna, for instance).

In a similar manner, Drupal is the younger technology compared to other CMS. Yet it is fast gaining popularity as a powerful KM tool. Drupal was chosen over other CMS's (including Plone) to power the community web sites and intranets of international players like IBM, , Mozilla, and NASA.

In the Philippines, Drupal is used by Globe Telecom (intranet), Haribon Foundation (http://haribon.org.ph ), TruthForce.info (maintained by Center for Alternative Development Initiatives), PovertyEnvironment.net (funded in part by the Asian Development Bank) and the Department of Health (DOH) Portal, funded by UN-World Health Organization. All of these sites have users numbering from a few hundreds to 8,000.

Like Walkman and iPod, Drupal and other CMS like Plone, PHPNuke, and Joomla have similar features. They all make it easy to set up and update web sites, and they are all modular --ie, they allow add-on features that snap easily in place. They are open source and have active communities supporting them. However, when it comes to supporting knowledge management (KM) and communities of practice (CoPs), that is where Drupal gains clear advantage.

Why are they choosing Drupal for knowledge management and community building? As the IBM gurus said:

"The ease of adjusting the way the content was displayed was crucial; we needed to remain flexible during iterations of the design and any future adjustments. This so-called "themability" also was required for using the current best practices of Web design with respect to semantic xHTML, CSS, and accessible design." (Italics supplied)

-- from http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/ibm/library/i-osource1/index.html?...
by Alister Lewis-Bowen (alister@us.ibm.com), Senior Software Engineer, IBM
Stephen Evanchik (evanchik@us.ibm.com ), Software Engineer, IBM
Louis Weitzman (louisw@us.ibm.com), Senior Software Engineer, IBM

It has also been said that Drupal is not just a content management system but also a toolbox, implying a set of tools that allow a craftsman to concentrate on doing the task at hand (ie, knowledge management or building community), with little or no tweaking needed.

Part of Drupal's power lies in its flexibility to organize and reorganize content without resorting to coding. The constant headache of content and knowledge managers is how to adjust content organization to the changing preferences of a community or organization. One day, a community may prefer to organize content by geographic location. Another day they may want to filter it by subject matter. In other CMS's, this could only be done by programmers who need to reprogram the site. In Drupal, this can be done by anyone with a little training on how to use Drupal.

To further bolster this case, let us take a look at Globe Telecom. Globe Telecom's intranet is vital to its internal communications. Every morning, an average of 3,000 users from different parts of the country log into the intranet, to touch base with the organization. The previous proprietary CMS broke down under this load, causing the intranet to slow down. This discouraged user participation and caused low enthusiasm to join the forums and read content. When the old system was replaced by Drupal, the employees started becoming more active in the forums. The question everyone asked was: what else can it do? Now, several other modules are being customized for the company to support user requests.

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Additional Readings:

• Drupal 5 - More Reasons to Choose Drupal
• An argument why Drupal is a best fit for spurring community (Collaboration Loop website)
• Yahoo Case Study
• The Power of Drupal Categories
• Discussions of Drupal's Taxonomy