What is Drupal…?

Drupal is a content management system. Drupal is a free software package that allows you to easily organize, manage and publish your content, with an endless variety of customization. Drupal is used to manage content on informational sites, social media sites, member sites, intranets and web applications.

Drupal, is a second generation CMS. It means that a lot of new or customized functionality can be created in the user interface without programming. Doing this doesn't take much time and can be done by a member of your staff versed in your operations. This lessens your dependency on service providers offers you the freedom to make simple adjustments and development yourself.

Drupal is Open- Drupal was created over ten years ago and released as open-source software under the GNU Public License. That means it’s completely free to download, use, and modify: There are no purchase, license, or maintenance fees.

Drupal is Social- Drupal is a multi-user system, letting site visitors log in (as “authenticated” users) or browse the site without doing so (as “anonymous” users). You control their access levels, and can also assign “roles” for multiple permission levels.

Drupal is Content- Drupal both hosts and promotes your content. It can reach out beyond your site to give you a presence on Twitter, Facebook, and in other venues. Drupal’s built-in features also give search engines what they want, improving your web impact automatically.

 

Drupal is Scalable- Drupal has proven itself repeatedly in the field on sites with over a million pages, and at over 20,000 requests per second. Its core installation handles over 99 percent of use cases, while free optimization tools and a large base of Drupal-trained administrators address the other one percent.

 

Drupal is Design- Drupal site designs come from “themes”, whose visual presentation is described in standard CSS. Drupal.org hosts hundreds of free, fully customizable themes, including several “base themes” to help you launch your own designs.

 

Drupal is Everywhere- Drupal runs millions of web sites, including many of the world’s biggest. It’s especially strong among major governments and industry-leading enterprises, but is easy enough to be the platform of choice for individuals and small companies.

Drupal is Secure- Drupal is used by thousands of high profile web sites and is subject to rigorous security testing both by the Drupal community and by security experts around the world. Drupal's core code has been proven to prevent common security vulnerabilities such as those defined by the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP).

 

 

 

Why should I pick Drupal?

There are four reasons why you should choose Drupal instead of other first generation content management systems. Using Drupal you can create solutions that:

 

·         Offer shorter time to market for new or improved features on your site.

 

·         Empower your staff to customize and further improve your website without relying on a Drupal service provide

 

·         Offer sustainable maintenance when many small changes happen that affect functionality as well as design

 

·         Lower the total cost of ownership (TCO) as a result of Drupal being free software, offering shorter development time, less dependence on service providers and lower maintenance costs.

 

 

What is PHP?

PHP is an acronym for “PHP Hypertext Preprocessor”. PHP is a server-side scripting language designed for web development but also used as a general-purpose programming language. PHP is a widely-used, open source scripting language. PHP scripts are executed on the server.

PHP files can contain text, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP code. PHP code are executed on the server, and the result is returned to the browser as plain HTML. PHP files have extension ".php". PHP is a scripting language that is often embedded into HTML to add functions HTML alone can't do. PHP allows you to collect, process and utilize data to create a desired output. In short, it let's you interact with your pages.

PHP is able to perform a number of tasks including printing data, making numeric calculations (such as addition or multiplication), making comparisons (which is bigger, are they equal, etc) and making simple boolean choices. From this you can create more complex loops and functions to make your page generate more specialized data.

PHP and GD Library can create graphics - You can use PHP to create simple graphics on the fly. You can also use it to edit existing graphics. You might want to do this to resize images, rotate them, or greyscale them. Some practical applications for this are allowing users to edit their avatars or creating CAPTCHA verifications. You can also create dynamic graphics that are always changing.

PHP can interact with MySQL databases - And in doing this, the possibilities are endless. You can write users information to the database and you can retrieve information from the database. This allows you to create pages on the fly using the contents of the database. You can even do more complex things like setting up a login system, creating a website search feature, or keep your store's product catalogue and inventory online.

What Can PHP Do?                                                                                                                          

PHP can generate dynamic page content. PHP can create, open, read, write, delete, and close files on the server. PHP can collect form data. PHP can send and receive cookies. PHP can add, delete, modify data in your database. PHP can restrict users to access some pages on your website. PHP can encrypt data. With PHP you are not limited to output HTML. You can output images, PDF files, and even Flash movies. You can also output any text, such as XHTML and XML.

Why PHP?                                                                                                                                           

PHP runs on various platforms (Windows, Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, etc.).PHP is compatible with almost all servers used today (Apache, IIS, etc.). PHP supports a wide range of databases. PHP is free. Download it from the official PHP resource: www.php.net. PHP is easy to learn and runs efficiently on the server side