What is Drupal?

Drupal is an open-source content management system (CMS) that enables you to create, manage and evolve websites and digital platforms. It is particularly well suited to projects that need to manage large volumes of content, multiple languages, different user profiles, editorial workflows or connections with other business tools.

However, describing Drupal simply as a page-publishing tool would undersell what it can do. Its strength lies above all in its ability to structure content and data, manage complex requirements and evolve over time without having to rebuild an entire platform when needs change.

Drupal at a glance

Drupal is both an open-source CMS and a foundation for building complex digital platforms. Its current version is Drupal 11.

It includes built-in multilingual capabilities, roles and permissions, structured content, taxonomies and many editorial features. Its capabilities can then be extended through modules developed by the community or through custom development.

Drupal can also communicate with many external systems through its APIs: CRM, ERP, PIM, DAM, mobile applications or business tools. It can be used in a traditional architecture, but also in a headless approach, where Drupal manages the content while another technology handles its display. This flexibility makes it particularly suitable for content-rich websites, multilingual platforms, multisite environments, portals, institutional websites or projects requiring advanced integrations.

What is a CMS?

CMS stands for content management system. A CMS allows you to create, edit, organise and publish a website's content without having to modify its code directly. Once the platform has been configured, editorial teams can, for example, publish an article, edit a page, add an image or update a product listing from an administration interface.

Drupal obviously fulfils this function, but goes much further: rather than treating all information as simple pages, Drupal allows it to be organised into structured content. News items, events, people, products, training courses or job offers can therefore have their own fields and relationships.

This structuring becomes particularly useful when a website grows or when the same information needs to be used in several places.

How does Drupal work?

Drupal is built on a common foundation, called the core, to which configurations, modules and developments adapted to the project's needs are added. This modular architecture makes it possible to start with a solid foundation while building platforms that are very different from one another.

Structured content rather than a succession of pages

Let's take the example of a university website (such as Unamur). Rather than manually creating a different page for each programme, Drupal makes it possible to define a 'Programme' content type containing specific information:

• the name of the programme 
• its description 
• the degree awarded 
• the relevant faculty
• the duration
• the language
• the admission requirements
• the contact persons

All programmes therefore follow the same structure and can then be automatically displayed in lists, linked to a faculty, made searchable and filterable or reused in another application. This is one of Drupal's major strengths: structuring information so that it can then be displayed, searched and reused in different ways.

Taxonomies for organising information

Drupal also makes it possible to organise content using taxonomies. For example, a company can classify its news by topic, its locations by region or its products by range. These classifications can then be used to create filters, automatic pages, search engines or content recommendations.

The greater the volume of information, the more important this structuring becomes.

Roles, permissions and editorial workflows

Not all website users necessarily have the same responsibilities, and fortunately Drupal makes it possible to create roles and define precisely what each person can view, create, edit, approve or publish. For example, an organisation may have:

• a contributor who writes content 
• an editorial manager who checks it 
• a communications manager who approves it 
• an administrator with more extensive permissions

These mechanisms are particularly useful when several teams, departments, countries or entities collaborate on the same platform.

Modules to extend functionality

Drupal core already provides many features, but it can be extended with Drupal modules developed by the community or specifically for a project. These modules can, for example, add or improve:

• search engine optimisation (SEO)
• forms 
• search 
• connections with external systems 
• media management 
• workflows 
• security 
• e-commerce 
• content personalisation

The goal is not to accumulate modules, but to build a platform suited to the project's actual needs.

What can be created with Drupal?

Drupal is not limited to a single type of website, but it can serve as the foundation for very different projects: an institutional website, a corporate website, an information portal, an e-commerce platform, an intranet, an extranet, or any other bespoke website. Drupal becomes particularly interesting when several of these needs begin to converge.

An organisation that has to manage several websites, multiple languages, many contributors, complex publishing rules and various business applications no longer needs merely a tool for creating pages: it needs a digital foundation capable of organising this complexity.

What are the main advantages of Drupal?

A platform capable of evolving

A website rarely evolves as planned because new content appears, services are added, the organisation changes, new countries need to be covered or new applications need to be connected. Drupal's modular architecture makes it possible to gradually evolve a platform without having to rethink or rebuild the entire platform.

This is one of the reasons why Drupal is particularly relevant for bespoke websites and projects intended to evolve over several years.

Advanced multilingual management

Language management is one of Drupal's long-standing strengths: content, as well as many configuration and interface elements, can be translated. Permissions, workflows and editorial processes can also be adapted to international organisations.

This approach is particularly interesting for companies active in several countries, public institutions or organisations that face multilingual challenges on a daily basis (as is the case in Belgium, for example).

Granular user management

Drupal makes it possible to determine precisely what each user can do. This level of granularity becomes essential when dozens or hundreds of contributors work on the same platform. It enables teams to work independently while retaining central governance.

A strong focus on security

Drupal has a structured security process and a dedicated team that analyses reported vulnerabilities and coordinates the publication of security fixes and advisories. 

However, no CMS is secure simply because it has been installed. The security of a platform also depends on its architecture, configuration, hosting and, above all, its maintenance over time. Keeping core and modules up to date therefore remains essential.

An architecture designed for integration

A website rarely operates on its own, as organisations also use CRMs, ERPs, marketing tools, document management systems, DAMs, PIMs, authentication solutions and other business applications.

Drupal has an API-oriented architecture that enables it to communicate with these different systems and occupy a central position in a digital ecosystem. It is therefore no longer necessary to make Drupal “do everything”: each system retains its role and exchanges the information required by the other applications.

A platform suited to multichannel use

Content created in Drupal does not necessarily have to remain on the website. Thanks to APIs and data structuring, the same information source can power a website, a mobile application, a user area, a search engine or other interfaces.

This capability is becoming even more important as search and artificial intelligence evolve: well-structured content is easier for different systems to use, reuse and contextualise.

An open source model

Drupal is open source software: its code is accessible and can be used, studied and adapted without a proprietary CMS licence. An international community contributes to its development and improvement.

This model also helps limit dependence on a single vendor. An organisation retains ownership of its platform, its custom code and its data, and can continue evolving the platform with different service providers who have the necessary expertise. For organisations concerned about their digital sovereignty, this openness is now an additional argument in favour of open source technologies.

Drupal Core and Drupal CMS: what is the difference?

Since 2025, the Drupal ecosystem has distinguished between Drupal Core and Drupal CMS.

Drupal Core is the project's historic foundation: it provides the core functionality that enables developers and agencies to build fully customised platforms.

Drupal CMS is built on this same foundation, but aims to speed up the creation of new websites by offering more preconfigured features. In its latest version, Drupal CMS 2 notably includes Drupal Canvas, which makes it easier to create pages visually using a drag-and-drop approach, as well as templates and configurations that enable certain projects to get started more quickly.

These are therefore not two different technologies: Drupal CMS is based on Drupal and aims to make some of its capabilities more accessible and quicker to implement.

Is Drupal suitable for all projects?

No, and this is an important distinction. To quickly create a small brochure website consisting of a few pages, without any particular integration or significant need for future development, a lighter solution may be sufficient and sometimes more cost-effective. Drupal becomes particularly relevant when the project includes or could gradually include:

• a lot of content 
• multiple languages 
• multiple websites or brands 
• many contributors 
• different roles and approval levels 
• integrations with external systems 
• significant customization requirements 
• strict security or governance requirements 
• functional requirements likely to evolve.

The question is therefore not whether Drupal is 'better' in absolute terms, but whether it matches the project's level of complexity and ambitions.

Drupal in 2026: a CMS that continues to evolve

Drupal has existed since 2001, but its evolution has never stopped. Drupal 11 continues the technical modernization of the CMS and improves the experience of developers, administrators and contributors.

At the same time, Drupal CMS aims to simplify and accelerate the creation of new digital experiences. Drupal CMS 2 notably strengthens visual editing with Canvas and introduces new approaches that make it possible to get certain types of websites up and running more quickly.

The ecosystem is also increasingly focusing on the use of artificial intelligence, the automation of editorial tasks, accessibility and improving the contributor experience. The objective nevertheless remains the same: to preserve the flexibility and robustness that characterize Drupal while making them accessible to more users.

Conclusion

Drupal is much more than a tool for publishing web pages. It is an open-source CMS capable of structuring content, organizing teams and connecting different components of a digital ecosystem.

Its flexibility does not necessarily make it the ideal solution for every website. It is especially valuable when requirements become more ambitious: large volumes of content, multilingualism, multisite management, editorial governance, business integrations or long-term development.

This is precisely the type of context in which we use Drupal at WebstanZ: not simply to create websites, but to build digital platforms capable of evolving with the organizations that use them.

KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS ARTICLE

• Drupal is an open-source CMS for creating and managing websites and digital platforms.
• Its strength lies in content structuring and its modularity, which enable it to meet complex and evolving needs.
• Multilingual capabilities, permissions, editorial workflows and APIs make it particularly well suited to organizations with multiple teams, websites or business systems.
• Drupal is not necessarily the best solution for a very simple small website, but it comes into its own as requirements and complexity increase.
• Drupal 11 and Drupal CMS 2 continue to drive the evolution of the ecosystem, particularly in terms of the editorial experience, Canvas and new automation possibilities.