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ENGLISH: A brief introduction to Drupal

ITALIANO: Una breve presentazione di Drupal


The Features, Mission, and Principles of the Drupal Project

"Don't panic. - Douglas Adams (The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy)"

Drupal is an open source content management platform licensed under the GPL. Equipped with a powerful blend of features, Drupal can support a variety of websites ranging from personal blogs, corporate brochures and large community-driven websites.

While it is not the purpose of this manual to fully educate you on database, web server or operating systems basics specific to your site, this will hopefully introduce you to getting a Drupal based website installed and configured for your needs. For a more technical sounding definition;

"Drupal is a web-based content management system. Text and pointers to other kinds of content are stored in a database, dynamically retrieved and composed, and presented to a user in response to a request sent via a web-browser."

Sound scary? It is a complex software product and can at times seem overwhelming, however, anyone willing to invest a little time and effort can learn how to use, setup, configure and maintain a Drupal based web site.


Features

Collaborative Book - Our unique collaborative book feature lets you setup a "book" and then authorize other individuals to contribute content.detailed information

Friendly URLs - Drupal uses Apache's mod_rewrite to enable customizable URLs that are both user and search engine friendly.

Modules - The Drupal community has contributed many modules which provide functionality that extend Drupal core.detailed information

Online help - Like many Open Source projects, we can't say that our online help is perfect but have built a robust online help system built into the core help text. Available to you on your own site.detailed information

Open source - The source code of Drupal is freely available under the terms of the GNU General Public License 2 (GPL). Unlike proprietary blogging or content management systems, Drupal's feature set is fully available to extend or customize as needed.detailed information

Personalization - A robust personalization environment is at the core of Drupal. Both the content and the presentation can be individualized based on user-defined preferences.

Role based permission system - Drupal administrators don't have to tediously setup permissions for each user. Instead, they assign permissions to roles and then group like users into a role group.screenshot . detailed information

Searching - All content in Drupal is fully indexed and searchable at all times if you take advantage of the built in search module.


User management

User authentication - Users can register and authenticate locally or using an external authentication source like Jabber, Blogger, LiveJournal or another Drupal website. For use on an intranet, Drupal can integrate with an LDAP server.detailed information


Content management

Polls - Drupal comes with a poll module which enables admins and/or users to create polls and show them on various pages.detailed information

Templating - Drupal's theme system separates content from presentation allowing you to control the look and feel of your Drupal site. Templates are created from standard HTML and PHP coding meaning that you don't have to learn a proprietary templating language.detailed information

Threaded comments - Drupal provides a powerful threaded comment model for enabling discussion on published content. Comments are hierarchical as in a newsgroup or forum.detailed information

Version control - Drupal's version control system tracks the details of content updates including who changed it, what was changed, the date and time of changes made to your content and more. Version control features provide an option to keep a comment log and enables you to roll-back content to an earlier version.screenshot


Blogging

Blogger API support - The Blogger API allows your Drupal site to be updated by many different tools. This includes non-web browser based tools that provide a richer editing environment.detailed information

Content syndication - Drupal exports your site's content in RDF/RSS format for others to gather. This lets anyone with a News Aggregator browse your Drupal sites feeds.detailed information

News aggregator - Drupal has a powerful built-in News Aggregator for reading and blogging news from other sites. The News Aggregator caches articles to your MySQL database and its caching time is user configurable.detailed information

Permalinks - All content created in Drupal has a permanent link or "perma link" associated with it so people can link to it freely without fear of broken links.


Platform

Apache or IIS, Unix / Linux / BSD / Solaris / Windows / Mac OS X support - Drupal was designed from the start to be multi-platform. Not only can you use it with either Apache or Microsoft IIS but we also have Drupal running on Linux, BSD, Solaris, Windows, and Mac OS X platforms.detailed information

Database independence - While many of our users run Drupal with MySQL, we knew that MySQL wasn't the solution for everyone. Drupal is built on top of a database abstraction layer that enables you to use Drupal with MySQL and PostgreSQL. Other SQL databases can be supported by writing a supporting database backend containing fourteen functions and creating a matching SQL database scheme.detailed information

Multi-language - Drupal is designed to meet the requirements of an international audience and provides a full framework to create a multi-lingual website, blog, content management system or community application. All text can be translated using a graphical user interface, by importing existing translations, or by integrating with other translation tools such as the GNU gettext.detailed information


Administration and analysis

Analysis, Tracking and Statistics - Drupal can print browser-based reports with information about referrals, content popularity and how visitors navigate your site.screenshot . detailed information

Logging and Reporting - All important activities and system events are captured in an event log to be reviewed by an administrator at a later time.screenshot . detailed information

Web based administration - Drupal can be administered entirely using a web browser, making it possible to access it from around the world and requires no additional software to be installed on your computer.screenshot


Community features

Discussion forums - Full discussion forum features are built into Drupal to create lively, dynamic community sites.detailed information


Performance and scalability

Caching - The caching mechanism eliminates database queries increasing performance and reducing the server's load. Caching be tuned in real time and many high-traffic sites have performed very well under load.detailed information

Source: Drupal.org





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A proposito di Drupal

Drupal è un software che aiuta utenti singoli o grandi comunità a pubblicare, amministrare e organizzare grandi quantità e varietà di contenuti in un sito web, in maniera semplice e veloce.
Migliaia di persone e organizzazioni stanno utilizzando Drupal per gestire vari tipi di siti web, come

* portali web di community e siti di discussione
* portali web e intranet aziendali
* siti web personali
* aficionado sites
* applicazioni e-commerce
* directory di contenuti

Drupal dà la possibilità di abilitare

* sistemi di amministrazione di contenuti
* blogs
* ambienti di scrittura collaborativa
* forums
* newsletters
* gallerie di immagini
* uploads e downloads di files

e molto di più.

Drupal è un software libero rilasciato sotto licenza GPL, ed è mantenuto e sviluppato da una community di centinaia di utenti e sviluppatori.
Sei completamente libero di scaricare ed utilizzare Drupal.
Se ti piace ciò che Drupal riesce a fare per te, per favore lavora con noi per espanderlo e migliorarlo.

Fonte: Drupal.it