If someone asked you "What kind of software is Drupal?" what would you tell them?
I've been using Drupal for a little over a year now and I think I've found a decent answer. I've determined that it's actually hybrid of 3 different categories of software:
Communication software: Drupal is just as much a communication appliance as the telephone. It allows individuals and groups of people to connect with one another.
Content Management software: Drupal has many powerful features that allow you to organize and manage content for display on a web site.
Web application platform: You can create programming logic in a Drupal module and use Drupal's interface as a front end to web based applications
Anybody have any further ideas on my initial thoughts? I think there should be a good "official" description of what kind of software Drupal is. I'd like to propose this as a start.
Comments
Target page
This is a good idea... the main problem for new users is that our "About Drupal" page is way too long winded:
http://drupal.org/about
Ideally, people should be able to look at it in 5 seconds and see what Drupal is about. Perhaps a simple "Drupal allows you to do: 1) .. 2) ... 3) ... 4) ..." would be nice to start it off.
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audience first
I'm the long winded person Steven is referring to that wrote most of what is on the current "About" page :-)
Before you can decide how best to describe what kind software Drupal is, the difficult part is defining the audience. The about page is targeted at a very general audience and was developed with that in mind. Notice how the introductory paragraph is, itself, a description of Drupal that 99% of the people who visit Drupal could understand and get a base idea of what Drupal could do. The next section is an expanded description. The goal was to give people an idea how they could use Drupal with more specifics so that those with particular ideas in mind could find a match or understand some of the range of possibilities. And the about page also provides information about Drupal the community as opposed to just Drupal the application.
And this is different than the descriptions of Drupal you'll find in the marketing materials. For example, Dries's presentation you'll find in CVS differs from the pdf brochure created for a technology conference. Both are more suitable for programmers and developers than the about page, but neither might be best for a more general audience. Different audiences, different definitions.
So who is your audience? For example, I think that the term "communication software" for a more informed audience might be less useful than "social software." But it all depends :-)