The more I work with Drupal, the more impressed I am with its features, flexibility and power. In just a few short weeks I've been able to create an entirely new website that has an awesome array of cool features. And there's a lot more new functionality that will be coming to this website in the near future, thanks to the availability of numerous user-contributed Drupal modules. Modules enable Drupal developers and site administrators to easily add new features and functionality to their web sites. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

Before choosing Drupal as my web CMS I'd looked at several different web content management systems (including Mura CMS), but they were too much of a pain to set up and maintain. Either that or the administrative interface and/or documentation left a lot to be desired. A web CMS shouldn't require the site administrator to write/edit code whenever new functionality is needed or when the site layout needs to be changed. Drupal allows developers to easily change the entire appearance of a Drupal site with a few simple steps and, more importantly, without having to write any code. I write code for a living and so when I'm blogging about code or some other technology I don't want to have to write code just to update or maintain my web site. In other words, I just want it to freaking WORK without a whole lot of effort or thought on my part.

I suspect that this is why there is now a whole community of folks who are making a living developing, maintaining and administering Drupal-based web sites. I wonder how many of these people actually know how to code CSS, PHP and/or HTML. I'd be surprised if it was more than about a third. But it really doesn't matter because Drupal automates everything and they don't really need to know how to write code if they're using Drupal. For me, this is the whole point of using a CMS: publishing content should be automatic and a no-brainer, not a painful, time-consuming exercise in writing and troubleshooting code.

I think the thing I like most about Drupal is its modularity; whenever new functionality is needed you simply download and install the appropriate module files, activate the new module via the administrative interface, and voila! I did this again just today because I was getting spam email from the Contact Me form on this web site. Thanks to Drupal, it was a laughably simple matter for me to download and install the latest version of the Drupal Captcha module and, once it was enabled, no more bot-generated spam for this site.

I also love the "Reports" section of the Drupal administrator interface where you can view and monitor all of the activity on your site including errors, logins, page requests, etc. It's a refreshingly straightforward presentation of everything a site administrator needs to know, no more and no less. Imagine that, a web CMS that provides site administrators with the information they need to manage and maintain their web sites. ;)

I believe that web content management systems are the wave of the future, and web developers need to "get up to speed" on them NOW. The demand for developers who are well-versed in creating, maintaining and developing Drupal sites is only going to grow in the future; if you don't believe me just take a look at the Drupal Jobs site. Web developers who ignore the coming web CMS revolution are doing so at their own peril. I believe it was Bob Dylan who once famously said, "The times they are a-changing..."