What Is a CMS?

You may have read some of our past blog posts about Drupal or seen some of the recent press about WordPress on Mashable or in Fast Company and unless you are a web developer or a CMS expert you are likely wondering what these oddly named products actually are. So here’s a quick Drupal and WordPress crash course.  Drupal (pronounced droo-pull) and WordPress are two of the most widely-used website content management systems (CMS), what is a CMS you ask? A content management system is a technical solution that allows users to quickly and easily update websites with little technical knowledge required. Even minimally tech savvy individuals can use a CMS to maintain their website.

Drupal and WordPress are particularly good solutions as they are both open source, meaning that they are created by a worldwide community of web developers that contribute to the advancement of the system. This also means that there is a large passionate group of developers dispersed all over the globe working to constantly improve the systems for the end user, you. Additionally, both systems offer modules or plug ins that add functionality such as photo galleries, social marketing (like SocialToaster), and e-commerce to websites. These two systems have been battling it out in recent years for the title of Best CMS in Packt Publishing's Open Source CMS Awards.

As you may already know, we are big fans of Drupal for content management for the reasons mentioned above and many others.  As one of the country's largest Drupal development shops, we have had many successful Drupal deployments for clients like Shofer’s Furniture, The National Kidney Foundation of Maryland’s Santé, and the Trigger Agency. Our team of developers is also very active in contributing to the Drupal community. In fact, our SocialToaster for Drupal module recently received the official Drupal stamp of approval and became available for download directly from the Drupal site! Check it out here.