How Drupal works

Before we start building our social networking site, it is important to take a step back and look at Drupal in a little more detail, to see how it works and the thought process behind it. Having a better understanding of this will help when planning, expanding, and managing our site!

An abstract framework

Although in the previous chapter Drupal was described as a content management system, it can more accurately be described as a content management framework. Whilst being a content management system—in that it is a system which is used for managing content within a website—Drupal places more emphasis upon the ability to easily customize and configure it.

Drupal is an abstract framework, because instead of focusing on specific types of site, and solutions to those, it focuses on more generic problems and approaches to them, which makes Drupal useful for more situations. With a little customization Drupal can be tailored more to a specific type of site.

Nodes

Nodes are what make...