FoX
Hi everyone, my name is FoX.
Fede
And I am Federico, we are here to find out who’s a fraid of Drupal!
FoX
Who’s afraid of Drupal then... are you afraid of Druapl, Fede?
Fede
If you say it like that, I could...
No, actually not only am I not afraid, but I think he’s a nice guy.
Look, he’s got a cute round head, I notice a certain similarity...
FoX
Very funny, but maybe there’s still somebody asking who or what is Drupal.
Fede
I’ve been waiting for this question... we can start episode zero from this point.
Fede
What is Drupal? Drupal is an Open Source CMS, very versatile, that can work as a blogging platform, or as a full fledged community portal.
FoX
Wait a minute... I didn’t understand anything! Let’s start from the beginning.
Everyone needs to communicate. Be it about hobbies, work, or personal relationships, communication is the basis for all human interactions.
At the beginning people talked to each other, and to remember things you needed a good memory.
With the invention of print, we could archive all this information. For the first time, information could be forgotten and then retrieved afterwards.
Fede
The concept of archive becomes a reality. For centuries, archives have been big piles of paper, stored in huge rooms... but there was a problem with this system! It wasn’t always easy to find a certain document, and even when we did find it, sometimes a bad surprise was waiting for you. Time plays a bad trick, paper rots!
However, in the twentieth century, thanks to the invention and the expansion of computer, archives became digital. Documents are stored into little bits of information on a magnetic support, such as a hard drive, a DVD or a flash drive.
FoX
But, as I said before, everyone wants to communicate, share and collaborate. Thanks to the internet, todays it’s possible to do so with anyone, from anywhere on the planet.
The Web is building an immense global archive, the biggest ever conceived in the history of man.
Fede
Let’s take an example. Alice has a website that contributes to this huge archive. She started to publish photos, videos, and other documents. But this operation requires that she learns complex code, as well as having a lot of time and patience: not everyone is a computer geek!
But everyone wants to communicate at a global level, so in order to give them the opportunity CMSs were born.
C-M-what?
Fede
It stands for Content Management System. It’s basically a tool that allows you to publish and organise documents of any kind very easily, without being a computer genius.
FoX
But how does it work?
Fede
First of all, Alice needs to know that graphics and content can be separated. For example, I can create a website and change its graphic theme completely, without having to touch the things I published.
FoX
Just as I do when I change to cover of my cellphone, to have the trendiest one?
Fede
Yes, FoX, just like the cover of your cellphone...
So, we have content, the graphic theme, and the CMS allows us to manage all of that.
There are many CMSs around: some of them are free, some you have to pay, others gave certain requirements... well, you’ve got a lot of choice.
The question is... which one do I choose?
FoX
Drupal!
Fede
Drupal, for many reasons, but one above all: the community.
FoX
What is a community? It’s a set of people who are connected through the Web by common interests, such as hobbies, friendship or work.
Drupal is itself a community. It was born in the year 2000 thanks to the ingenuity of a belgian developer with an unspeakable name: [dris], [drais], [dries] Buytaert, o something like that. Since then, it always grew.
Dries decided from the very beginning to orient Drupal to the development of tools that allow people to communicate, share and collaborate. This is why Drupal is perfect not only for traditional web sites, but also to integrate community-specific services.
Drupal is used by virtually anyone: form the noob kid to big companies and governments, even NASA and MTV use it!
Fede
And we use it as well! All the Web TVs created by Media Group are developed on Drupal.
Drupal is an Open Source software, a program developed by a community of enthusiasts that make the source code available to anyone, so that they can edit it and make it better. This allows me to get a benefit, but at the same time also to give something back. This is the spirit of the Open Source community, and because of this we decided to dedicate you a series of podcasts, so that also non experts can enter the wonderful world of Drupal.
FoX
In the next episode we’ll learn how to install Drupal.