What is Drupal?

My immediate answer is this: Drupal is one of the best things that has happened to businesses. Ever. Of course, there’s more to it than that, but I’m sure that you’ll come to the same conclusion after you get to know Drupal.
Drupal can be described simply as: open-source software, a web development platform, a content management framework, a web application framework, and free.
It is a complete content management system (CMS), able to be used as a website, blog, forum, portal, business directory, company intranet or social network site. Its possibilities are endless due to its extensible architecture and community contributions (called modules; some other CMS’s called them plugins).
What’s really great is that you don’t need any programming skills to run a Drupal website. If you can send an email, you can administer a Drupal site. Part of this is due to the CMS, but the real magic happens when I set things up to make it easy for you.
What else can you do with Drupal? You can have a site with multiple users and assign them different roles with different abilities. Some people can be writers who create articles while others can be editors who review those articles and publish them. Unlike WordPress, which limits you to 5 pre-defined roles, we can create infinitely customizable roles with Drupal. This is extremely helpful, from small businesses who want one person to blog to large organizations that have many people with different roles and responsibilities.
Design-wise Drupal is so flexible that we have complete control over the look, feel, layout and organization of content. This assures that the final result won’t look like a cookie-cutter website template.
Drupal trumps WordPress due to its built-in flexibility and the tremendous variety of possibilities it offers. More thoughts on WordPress vs. Drupal in a following article.