Why Drupal?
For the past several months, I have been carefully searching for the best CMS (content management system) to use to run one of my websites, Neverside.com. After months of research, I finally decided on Drupal. I'll go into deeper detail about what I like about Drupal in a later article, though in a nut shell, the top reasons include the fact that Drupal is not just a pre-packaged CMS, but a full framework that can be extended to create very advanced and completely unique sites and web applications, and that Drupal has been chosen over other systems for use on a multitude of high-profile and popular sites (which, in fact, is what this particular page is about - more on that in a moment).
But Drupal is ugly... or is it?
While learning about Drupal and what it was capaple of doing, I was surprised to discover that it has been adopted as the platform of choice for a wide variety of very successful, high-profile websites. Due to a lack of a surpluss of "design oriented" members in Drupal's development community, and a lack of an impressively designed site for Drupal.org itself, Drupal has earned a reputation for being an "ugly" CMS. Under the default exterior however, is a terrific theming engine that has been used by many popular sites to create stunning Drupal-based sites, ranging from MTV UK to Nasa.
Try Drupal 5 - it's delicious
Many people have also been put off by Drupal's previous less-than-friendly administration system and lackluster design. In version 5 however, extreme levels of effort were put into transforming Drupal into a pristine example of proper usability. The new version sports a completely revamped admin area with a new "home" area that intuitively links you to the proper tools. A new module called Menu scout is also available, giving you "Apple OS X Spotlight-like" abilities to instantly search the interface and find the tool you need (check out the sweet Admin scout demo video). Many useful features have been added with AJAX, due the now-integrated jQuery library, and several expansion modules such as Javascript Tools.
Here's an online demo of Drupal 5 for you to take for a spin.
Be sure to check out the built-in color changer, that lets you re-color the whole theme dynamically and save your own color themes for the site (including the graphics)... just go to this link once you're logged in. Since it's open source, the new theme has already been ported to Wordpress and other CMSs, and is very popular (though I don't think the color changer is ported).
A new spectacular Drupal book
Are you diggin' Drupal but have found it to be just a weeee bit too complex to get a full understanding of? Perhaps you've scoped out the Handbook and came away... empty handed (ok ok lame joke). If you're someone who aspires to become, as they've been dubbed in the Drupal community, a "Drupal Ninja" - there's a terrific new book that just came out, written by several Drupal core developers, stuffed with every bit of info you'll need.
The book is called Pro Drupal Development - I highly recommend this book over any of the other currently available Drupal books. Also great news - if you own a copy of the book, head over to the publisher's website to grab an eBook version for just $10. Either way, you can also download a free PDF chapter about Drupal's Theme system (note: definitely get this whether you buy the book or not).
Buy the book: Pro Drupal Development
Best of the best - Drupal powered websites
So without further delay, here is my personal "collection" of extremely well-designed, advanced, popular, and/or famous Drupal-based sites. Each of the entries on this list have been confirmed to be Drupal powered sites at the time this was written.
http://adrenalinehub.com
http://www.airamerica.com
http://amnesty.org (in development)
http://www.artistshousemusic.com
http://asia.playstation.com
http://www.askaninja.com
http://carnevaledesign.com
http://www.concreteideas.com
http://www.crave-life.org
http://creativebits.org
http://crosbystillsnash.com
http://dabble.com
http://www.dalitfreedom.net
http://www.datawitness.com
http://www.daughtryofficial.com
http://designcollector.ru
http://dev.aol.com
http://digett.com
http://droge.com
http://www.egr.msu.edu/future-engineer/
http://www.evolt.org
http://fearlessliving.org
http://www.fighthunger.org
http://www.fishfever.tv
http://flock.com
http://www.flossgallery.com
http://www.flixya.com
http://www.fresnofamous.com
http://www.fresnomet.org
http://fridge.ubuntu.com
http://www.gimme20.com
http://www.goingon.com
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk
http://www.guywilkins.com
http://www.imagesandstories.com
http://www.innertee.net
http://www.intelligentgiving.com
http://www.jewcy.com
http://www.jumptv.com
http://www.leuvenspeelt.be
http://www.lime.com
http://www.maclife.com
http://mediasift.com
http://www.mlgpro.com
http://www.moby.com
http://www.mod-canvas.com
http://www.mraf.org
http://www.mtv.co.uk
http://www.mumobo.com
http://musicbox.sonybmg.com
http://appel.nasa.gov
http://www.networkworld.com
http://www.nowpublic.com
http://opensource.org
http://operalyra.ca
http://www.ourmedia.org
http://www.participate.net
http://performancing.com
http://piecesinc.com
http://popsugar.com
http://www.projectopus.com
http://www.psu.com
http://www.raincitystudios.com
http://recipedia.tv
http://www.savannahnow.com
http://www.snowboard-mag.com
http://www.songbirdnest.com
http://www.spreadfirefox.com
http://stars-of-the-web.com
http://www.stccmop.org
http://stevenchan.us
http://www.southafricanwine.org
http://www.sustravel.co.uk
http://www.teamsugar.com
http://teen.secondlife.com
http://www.terminus1525.ca
http://theonion.com
http://thatotherpaper.com
http://theworld.org
http://www.toddalbert.com
http://www.tuxmagazine.com
http://www.twit.tv
http://www.ubuntu.com
http://urlgreyhot.com
http://usmagazine.com
http://visualval.com
http://www.wiiliketopodcast.com
http://www.votefortheworst.com
http://www.worldpulsemagazine.com
http://yotophoto.com
http://www.youdontknowjack.com
http://www.yourclimbing.com
http://www.yourmtb.com
http://www.zimmertwins.ca
Drupal articles, lessons, and resources coming soon
I'll be posting a wide variety of learning resources and resources in the near future to help people get off to a fast start with Drupal. Stay tuned.
