Compare it to Joomla. Some features are better other are worse.
Good for blogging, editing it has a lot of modules. But bad performance (cache), no design flexibility, no ressource management.

Drupal is a very powerful secured CMS . All kinds of cross site scripting is handled carefully in drupal. We can use drupal for large amount of contents. In drupal lots of free modules are available like ubercart, event, blog, caching, security , multilingual features. Now lots of large scale site is also developed on Drupal like white house official website, Fedex site etc. So you can use Drupal without any hesitation.

Drupal 7 is the best, just love it. Better than any other CMS that I have ever tried. Very configurable, the new default theme is excellent. A 5 star vote for Drupal!

I've had two wow stages with Drupal over the last eight months.

1) Discovering just how easy it is to build virtually any kind of site with its modules with no programming.
2) As a programmer discovering its APIs, Core and the ease and speed of module development.

Forget that it isn't 100% OOP, it has an excellent core / APIs and is an an absolute joy to work with. I wish I'd discovered it years ago.

Two books to help you:
1) (non programmers) O'Reilly, Using Drupal
2) Apress Pro Drupal Development, Second Edition

I fully subscribe to Michael comment. Drupal has certainly been a good CMS and still is. But it is outdated:
Its developers are blindly focused on the past technology and totally offset the new ways to work with a CMS.

@ Michael: I fully agree. I used Drupal several years to finally get fed up with it.

At first it seems to be a superb CMS. But then you spend your time by facing all its hidden limitations.

For those who like it: go ahead. For the other ones don't worry, be happy: there are quite a few other CMS out there. Excellent ones.

Drupal is like Joomla. Both CMS had their glory time. Both CMS were at high level a few years ago.

I know them both quite well for having used them several years. But I do not use them anymore, or only if a customer insists to have them (but this happens very seldom).

I do not use them anymore because today you find much better CMS: Modx, Silverstripe, Expression Engine to name just a few.
This new generation of CMS have little to compare with the 'old CMS': Drupal, Joomla, e107, etc.
Their whole philosophy is different.

Here are a few examples:
- Excellent caching (site performance and speed). Drupal and Joomla are both slow. Drupal becomes very slow once you have added a bunch of midules.
- Easy and flexible template system (you build whatever you want) with easy and full support of web standards (XHTML, CSS and Javascript). Forget Drupal and Joomla here. You will waste a lot of time and never be satisfied with the results.
- Well tested and bug-free (not like Drupal that has always security issues. Joomla is much better here.)
- Well documented: Drupal has a lot of information, but is it rather incomplete and not structured. Often it is outdated.
- Ressource (or asset) management. Drupal has never be able to have one. That means you can not manage the site pictures, or any other files properly.
Almost unbelievable, but Drupal has no file management.
This is due to the fact that ALL ressources (pictures, any files) are owned by a 'node' and not by the user. It will be a hard work for Drupal to change that, and I don't believe they ever will be able to do such a change.

The big issue with Drupal is once you have installed it you have a skeleton, this means for instance:
- no pictures!!!
- no editors
- a poor administration
- no spam protection
- no SEO
- no query
- no possibity to add no fields in pages
- no pingback / trackback
- no XML sitemaps
- no file browsing
- No communication (sending e-mails, messaging, etc.)
- etc.

In Drupal you can have most of these features in adding modules.
This is a big issue very well analysed by Jean: you would need to add and activate around 80 modules to have a decent website.
Modules are rarely up-to-date and if core has moved to a new version, you are always in conflict between 'old version' modules and 'new version' modules.

Worse, module developement is community driven. Very often, the module owner stops his developement after a few years of work and leave the community without follow up. This is a big issue when you have site in production. It ends often in paying huge amount to get customized developement.

The next issue due to modules is site speed: the more you add modules in Drupal, the slower it becomes. If you build a Drupal site with decent features, site speed will be a big issue.
You can use all caching option, add cache modules, etc. Speed will always be an issue.
I use only dedicated servers. That means Drupal speed problem is not due to hardware. Really, I would not like to have Drupal installed on a shared server.

The new generation of CMS have most of above mentionned features (and much more) in core. This mean by each new release, all these feature are up-to-date: you avoid the Drupal nightmare.

Thanks to their excellent caching system, speed with the new generation of CMS is just not an issue at all.
They are lightweight, literally flying. Highly flexible, performant, of course fully featured.

drupal is very easy to use and powerful at the same time its among the best cms good work drupal.

looking nice.

needs to make it more simple for the beginer

Randy says: You want a clean admin interface (for your customers for example) forget Drupal: many other CMS have better admin interfaces.

Yeah, why would anyone recommend a cms for it's excellent admin interface, but is useless as a cms, that statement is utter garbage.

Drupal has it's flaws, but over all it is a cms that has serviced me well for over 3 years, I have tried others and have always returned to Drupal. Me saying that means that I don't think Drupal is perfect, but I have not found better as of yet, like thay say, "better the devil you know"

Craig says: Drupal DOES have a steep learning curve and (he) spent months in the past overcoming it. But he loves Drupal.

Fox find Drupal easy: even a carpenter knows how to operate Drupal and it is what linux is to Microsoft.
What a stupid statement !!! Be overwhelmed is OK. But to write such definitive statement shows your stupidity.

Mako Bosnic found Drupal a snap to pick up. But then he writes 'give it a go and don't give up soon'. Looks like the snap was a bit long !
And when he writes 'nothing is more powerful than Drupal'.
Then he must be said that his knowledge is quite limited...

Looks like people around are just reacting to comments rather than sharing their experience with Drupal.
This does not help at all.

I know Drupal, I used it for years (now I am using another CMS).

One can not judge a CMS by good or bad, black or white.
Everything depends on your requirements.
So first of all define your requirements and then check whether Drupal or any other CMS fits with them.

For example, you want a blog, just a blog?
Don't use Drupal, you're much better off with Wordpress.
Without doubts Drupal can do blogging, but the expert is WP.

You want a social website, go with Elgg. It is the killer CMS for this type of use.

You want a good generalist site with many features: Drupal is a good choice.

You want utmost flexibility in design. Simply forget Drupal and go for ModX.
Again, Drupal has some flexibility in design, but you can not compare it to ModX. Not at all.

You want a clean admin interface (for your customers for example) forget Drupal: many other CMS have better admin interfaces.

You want a very performant site (for example because you are on a shared server, or for any other reason): leave Drupal aside and go for Typo3 or Modx that have caching per page (Drupal has a bad cache system).

You want an picture gallery, you can use Drupal. But Menalto is much better for that specific use.

If you want a simple website but with blogging, news and pictures + a few other features. Go for cms made simple. Drupal is too big for that.

These are very basic examples, but gives you an idea how you should proceed when choosing a CMS.

Seldom you will have a CMS "better" than another one. You rather will have a CMS that fits better your needs than another one.

So claiming Drupal is good or bad means absolutely nothing. These general statements only show the stupidity of their authors.

I don't believe these people here who are saying that Drupal is some kind of animal that's hard to tame, are you serious Craig calling people stupid, just like fox said, you proved to be the idiot here. I love Drupal and unlike Craig said, there are no hidden demons in Drupal, nor is it capable of any miraculous tasks, it is just a very powerful piece of kit, all I can say is, anyone flaming Drupal has just given up to quickly, I my self found it a snap to pick up, it is actually easier than Joomla. I am 21yo and not in the web game at all, I use it for my own personal use website, even updating Drupal is not so hard, so long as you follow the procedure, other wise you could end up with a few PHP errors, so give it a go and don't give up to soon, you will be glad you did, because there is nothing more powerful than Drupal.

Marko Bosnic

Craig, stop playing with your barbies, even a "carpenter" new how to opperate this mega machine, all other CMS's don't come close to Drupal, Drupal is simply what Linux is to microsoft, better, but people are afraid of it because it is powerful, and it seems people like you, should stay away from it and continue playing with your easy WP script, calling people idiots because they know how to work Drupal makes you look like the idiot, how ironic, you have proved that you are the idiot here, "spent months overcoming drupal" LOL, all I can say is stay away from it if you have no clue.

Drupal is a big deception. Big, because when a CMS has such a fame it should at least perform better than any other CMS.

Drupal is average. One of the positive point is that it is easy to install and very easy to use. People that mention a steep learning curve (sorry Craig) must be a bit limited in their skills.
Drupal is nothing difficult to use.

One the other hand Drupal has a bloated code and is very slow. Not at first after installation. But you will see performances slowing down when you install modules.
The more modules you install the slower it is. I use only dedicated server, so imagine what it could be on shared servers.

Drupal has no flexibility in design. You have many templates, but (beside the fact that I find them not very nice) you will have a very hard time to do a design that meet your customer requirements. Be ready to spend a lot of time and frustration if you try.

OK, you have thousands of modules and this is very nice... at first. But when you dig a bit you see that you have Drupal has put in modules many features that other CMS have in core.
The issue is that the modules do not follow the strict development rules of the core. And you always have issues like deprecated modules, not up-to-date modules, etc.
So you install a module but you are never sure that it will be there in 2 years when Drupal will upgrade to a new version.

This being said, Drupal is certainly not a bad CMS. But all the noise done around it would make one believe that it is as great as the universe. It is really not the case and you can find much better CMS around : Expression Engine, Typo3, ModX, Silverstripe and other ones that give you everything that Drupal does not have.

Some of you idiots should actually try making something with Drupal instead of just downloading it and using it like Wordpress. Adding a few content posts is easy because it's a completely non-technical task.

I can see that the people who are saying Drupal is "easy" or "a medium level" CMS have absolutely no idea what Drupal is or is capable of. Drupal DOES have a steep learning curve and I know because I've spent months in the past overcoming it. That's why it's one of the most highly paid platforms to freelance with. Don't just evaluate it, try a couple of simple tasks and then comment like you're an expert. Most people who have commented here are too stupid to even understand what Drupal is designed to do.