Is Drupal Right for You?

I'm a Blogger and I need...

• single-user or multi-user blogs (or both);
• ways to assign categories to my content;
• commenting;
• trackbacks;
• themes I can use to customize the style and layout of my site;
• support for images or other media, using contributed modules (plug-ins).
• Skills needed: (link), end-user, administrator.

I'm evaluating Drupal for my organization or company and we need...

• customizable user roles and permissions;
• robust security;
• scalability;
• functionalities we can configure and extend to meet specific business needs;
• a support infrastructure (documentation, community, etc.);
• ways to assign categories to our content;
• additional features or functionalities.
• Skills needed:  evaluator, end-user

I'm a community organizer, and I need...

• ways for community members to easily share ideas (blogs, forum, files, etc.);
• tools that our members can use to self-organize;
• to be able to evolve as the community evolves (keeping up with the state of the art for interactive web sites);
• a support infrastructure (documentation, community, etc.) ;
• customizable user roles and permissions;
• safety and security on the web (control over spam, trolls, etc.);
• preconfigured tools for community-relationship management like CivicSpace.
• Skills needed: evaluator, end-user, administrator, site developer (to some extent)

I'm a small-business owner and I need...

• a site I can set up myself;
• themes I can use to customize the style and layout of my site;
• customizable user roles and permissions;
• scalability and adaptability to the needs of my changing business;
• ways to categorize my content;
• a support infrastructure (documentation, community, etc.) ;
• e-commerce support for:
• shopping carts;
• premium paid-content subscriptions;
• functionalities that I can configure and extend to meet my specific business needs.
• Skills needed: evaluator, end-user, administrator, site developer (to a limited extent)

I build or design websites for clients and I need...

• the freedom to create a custom look and feel with my own themes;
• additional features and functionalities;
• easy-to-provide support for my clients;
• access to a community of designers and developers.
• Skills needed : evaluator, administrator, site developer, developer (to some extent)

I'm a programmer and I need...

• a robust, well-designed, modular system that I can customize and extend as needed;
• well-documented API (application programming interface)s;
• system and architecture documentation and coding standards;
• access to a community of other developers;
• a rich list of features.
• Skills needed : administrator, programmer

To determine what type of Drupal user you want to be, review the skill sets below to see what you'll need to be able to do to get started:

• Evaluator: Be familiar with web terminology and concepts.
• End-user: Be familiar with browsing, clicking, submitting web pages, selecting options.
• Administrator: Manage roles, select themes, categorize web pages (content), configure module settings, install and upgrade software and databases, apply security fixes.
• Site designer/developer: Install software, design style and layout (with CSS and minimal PHP), build and deploy websites, evaluate contributed modules, work with LAMP.
• Programmer: Program in PHP, administer databases, program through a well-defined API (application programming interface), design database objects, evaluate existing solutions, apply patches, collaborate with other developers.

Now is a good time to learn more about Drupal. The Case studies section examines typical types of sites that use Drupal and gives links to real sites of each type. This section includes a listing of hundreds of Drupal sites.

In the Feature overview we survey some of the most important and commonly deployed features of Drupal.

Rolling your own system vs. using Drupal compares using Drupal to writing a custom web-application framework for your project.