In terms of requirements you’ll ideally need an Apache server supporting PHP 4 or 5.x, MySQL, ModRewrite and local . htaccess files (IIS and PostgreSQL are also supported though to a lesser extent). You’ll also need to be able to set up your own database, load the drupal database scheme and then edit the settings.php file to connect it to the database you’ve created

After graduation they decided to put the site online and Dries chose the domain drop.org after mistyping his original choice dorp.org (“village” – Dutch). The Dutch for drop is “ druppel” which anglified became drupal.

Equipped with a powerful blend of features, Drupal can support a variety of websites ranging from personal weblogs to large community-driven websites.

Drupal is a free software package that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website. Tens of thousands of people and organizations have used Drupal to power scores of different web sites, including

• Community web portals
• Discussion sites
• Corporate web sites
• Intranet applications
• Personal web sites or blogs
• Aficionado sites
• E-commerce applications
• Resource directories
• Social Networking sites

Drupal is ready to go from the moment you downloading it. It even has an easy-to-use web installer! The built-in functionality, combined with dozens of freely available add-on modules, will enable features such as:

• Content Management Systems
• Blogs
• Collaborative authoring environments
• Forums
• Peer-to-peer networking
• Newsletters
• Picture galleries
• File uploads and downloads

By building on relevant standards and open source technologies, Drupal supports and enhances the potential of the Internet as a medium where diverse and geographically-separated individuals and groups can collectively produce, discuss, and share information and ideas. With a central interest in and focus on communities and collaboration, Drupal’s flexibility allows the collaborative production of online information systems and communities.

• Modular and extensible. Drupal aims to provide a slim, powerful core that can be readily extended through custom modules.
• Quality coding. High quality, elegant, documented code is a priority over roughed-in functionality.
• Standards-based. Drupal supports established and emerging standards.  Specific target standards include XHTML and CSS.
• Low resource demands. To ensure excellent performance, Drupal puts a premium on low-profile coding (for example, minimizing database queries).  Drupal should also have minimal, widely-available server-side software requirements.  Specifically, Drupal should be fully operational on a server with Apache web server, PHP, and either MySQL or Postgresql.
• Open source. Drupal is based on the open source philosophy of collaborative free software development and is licensed under the GPL.  Drupal is itself open source and builds on and supports other open source projects.  Specifically, Drupal is coded in the open source scripting language PHP and supports as primary data sources the open source database formats MySQL and Postgresql.
• Ease of use. Drupal aims for a high standard of usability for developers, administrators, and users.
• Collaboration. Drupal development supports open, collaborative information sharing systems and approaches.