Beginning Drupal 8

Chapter 1
Introduction to Drupal
This chapter provides a basic overview of what a content management system (CMS) is, how Drupal fills the
role as a CMS, the major building blocks of Drupal, and how to create content on your new Drupal website.
Content Management Systems
In its simplest form, a CMS is a software package that provides tools for authoring, publishing, and managing
content on a website. “Content” includes anything from a news story, a blog post, a video, or a photograph,
to a podcast, an article, or a description of a product that you are selling. In more general terms, content is
any combination of text, graphics, photographs, audio, and video that represents something that visitors to
your site will read, watch, and hear.
A CMS typically provides a number of features that simplify the process of building, deploying, and
managing websites, including the following:
• an administrative interface
• a database repository for content
• a mechanism for associating information that is stored in the database with a
physical page on the website
• a toolset for authoring, publishing, and managing content
• a component for creating and managing menus and navigational elements
• the tools required to define and apply themes
• user management
• a security framework
• Social networking capabilities such as forums, blogs, wikis, and surveys
• taxonomy and tagging
• online forms
• e-commerce capabilities
There are hundreds of CMSes available (check out www.cmsmatrix.org). They range from simple
blogging-centric platforms, such as WordPress, to complex enterprise-class content management solutions,
such as Drupal.
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