The latest Drupal version is the latest attempt by Drupal to become easier to use than ever before – what is the verdict?
Drupal is known as one of the most flexible and powerful open source content management systems. Drupal also has a strong community of users, designers and developers in 100s of countries. It has a strong reputation of being scalable, powering personal sites, as well as corporate and government websites. Examples of Drupal websites include White House, MTV UK, and The Economist.
Drupal has a culture of continuous improvement, with the production release of Drupal 7 in January 2011, the central focus of Drupal 7 was to improve usability. This was achieved by making the administration interface more user friendly and easier to navigate. One of the main aims of this new version was to make it easy for people who are not familiar with Drupal to create and maintain content, and to make this an intuitive as possible.
There are a number of other ways that Drupal 7 has made improvements. It has introduced the "Shortcut" feature. This allows the user to create a shortcut for a frequently used function you use frequently. This is particularly useful if there is a function which requires a number of clicks, then a shortcut is useful for an instant update.
The organization of other elements are also improved. Making changes to a block, just requires the user to click on the block and make the change. Permissions are better organized and the layout out has been enhanced. Installation and updates are also easier to make compared to the previous version. Drag and drop features have been added
Users as well as developers have found Drupal 7 to be a much better user experience. Other important enhancements have been in security, file handling, image handling, database improvements and general performance developments. Drupal always has been particularly strong in terms of flexibility and its ability to be customized. Taking into account these considerations, if you have previously hesitated to go ahead with Drupal, now is a good time to choose Drupal considering which content management system to use.
Mitchel Xavier is a Drupal Developer and Drupal web design specialist.