One of the big three open source Content Management Systems (Joomla! and WordPress being the other two), Drupal is both a popular and critically acclaimed CMS. The list of sites that use Drupal features some impressive names, and the number of awards it has received, too, is impressive. Like with other popular CMSs, users like Drupal for its ability to create Web content, single and multi-user blogs, Internet forums, and community Web sites with user-generated content.

Drupal came about in 2001 as an evolution in the code of the drop.org Web site by Belgian Dries Buytaert. Currently, its popularity is increasing substantially, with millions of users downloading Drupal each year, and 1.62 percent of the Web’s main sites now using Drupal in some form, up over 50 percent in the past year.

Moreover, Drupal has garnered notable critical acclaim throughout the past five years. Starting in 2006, when Drupal won second place in the Best Overall Open Source CMS Award from Packt Publishing, Drupal has been a leading award recipient, winning the Best Overall Open Source award in 2007, as well as earning second place in the Best PHP Open Source CMS Award and Best Social Networking Open Space CMS categories.

Drupal has also been named a Webware 100 winner from cnet.com for the past three years, and received the Best PHP Open Source CMS Award again in 2009 from Packt as well as the inaugural Hall of Fame Award which was awarded to the best open source CMS that has already won the Overall Award (Joomla! got second place).

The name Drupal comes from the Dutch word “Druppel”, meaning drop (like a droplet of water), which helps explain Drupal’s logo:

Drupal

The most recent release of Drupal is Drupal 6.16, which debuted March 10. Drupal 7 is expected to be released soon, although no official date has been set.