Drupal (/ˈdruːpəl/)[4] is a free and open-source web content management system (CMS) written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License.

These include user account registration and maintenance, menu management, RSS feeds, taxonomy, page layout customization, and system administration.

[19][20] Although Drupal offers a sophisticated API for developers, basic Web-site installation and administration of the framework require no programming skills.

[22] Drupal was originally written by Dries Buytaert as a message board for his friends to communicate in their dorms while working on his Master's degree at the University of Antwerp.

[36] The name Drupal represents an English rendering of the Dutch word druppel, which means "drop" (as in a water droplet).

Buytaert wanted to call the site "dorp" (Dutch for "village") for its community aspects, but mistyped it when checking the domain name and thought the error sounded better.

[38] Interest in Drupal got a significant boost in 2003 when it helped build "DeanSpace" for Howard Dean, one of the candidates in the U.S. Democratic Party's primary campaign for the 2004 U.S. presidential election.

DeanSpace used open-source sharing of Drupal to support a decentralized network of approximately 50 disparate, unofficial pro-Dean websites that allowed users to communicate directly with one another as well as with the campaign.

[39] After Dean ended his campaign, members of his Web team continued to pursue their interest in developing a Web platform that could aid political activism by launching CivicSpace Labs in July 2004, "...the first company with full-time employees that was developing and distributing Drupal technology.

[44][needs update] From July 2007 to June 2008, the Drupal.org site provided more than 1.4 million downloads of Drupal software, an increase of approximately 125% from the previous year.

[58] In October 2022, Drupal released an open source headless CMS accelerator, allowing the front end to be managed outside of the core system.

In a Drupal website's default configuration, authors can contribute content as either registered or anonymous users (at the discretion of the administrator).

Core modules also include a hierarchical taxonomy system, which lets developers categorize content or tag with keywords for easier access.

[70] Two weeks later the Drupal security team released an advisory explaining that everyone should act under the assumption that any site not updated within 7 hours of the announcement was compromised by automated attacks.

[71] Thus, it can be extremely important to apply these updates quickly and usage of a tool like drush to make this process easier is highly recommended.

Drupal 9 extends the data abstraction layer so that a programmer no longer needs to write SQL queries as text strings.

[75] Drupal core is modular, defining a system of hooks and callbacks, which are accessed internally via an API.

This increases flexibility and security and allows administrators to cleanly upgrade to new releases without overwriting their site's customizations.

A popular Drupal contributed module called 'Devel' provides GUI information to developers and themers about the page build.

Today, however, a distribution defines a packaged version of Drupal that upon installation, provides a website or application built for a specific purpose.

The distributions offer the benefit of a new Drupal site without having to manually seek out and install third-party contributed modules or adjust configuration settings.

It accepts input via a single source (HTTP GET and POST), routes requests to the appropriate helper functions, pulls data out of the Abstraction (nodes and, from Drupal 5 onwards, forms), and then pushes it through a filter to get a Presentation of it (the theme system).

The Drupal community also organizes professional and semi-professional gatherings called meetups at numerous venues around the world.

The underlying bug allows remote attackers without special roles or permissions to take complete control of Drupal 6, 7, and 8 sites.

[115][116] Drupal 6 reached end-of-life on February 24, 2016, and does not get official security updates (extended support is available from two paid Long Term Services Vendors).