Various terms are used to pigeon-hole Drupal: platform, framework, environment, and so on. At its core, Drupal is a content management system (CMS). Like the other terms, the meaning of CMS can be somewhat abstract and ambiguous, so here is what I feel the terms mean within the context of this book:
- Content: Digital material meant for sharing online
- Management: Manipulation for the sake of usability, continuity and viability, including creating, editing, storing, retrieving, indexing, searching, reviewing, moderating, and translating
- System: A cohesive collection of functionality
Put the three together, and you have Drupal at its heart: a primarily used to make digital material available to users of the World Wide Web.
Drupal offers a breadth and depth of capabilities, with a strong baseline functionality that's greatly expandable via a high degree of customization. There is a cost associated with this, and with any product that offers broad personalization, and that is a learning curve that is not insignificant. Think about your first interactions with a car's display console, a smart watch, or even the New York subway system, and you will likely recall an initial paralysis when deciding the first thing to do; for some, there is nothing intuitive in the experience.
My hope, and the goal of this book, is to ease your way into Drupal, demystifying the manner in which to accomplish the more common content management activities.
