Drupal Forum Review - General Features & Requirements

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Web Site: http://www.drupal.org
Download here: Download Drupal Forum
Community Forum: Support
Released under: GPL License.
Current version: 6.6 (February 25, 2009).
Price: Free.

From Drupal Web site :

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 are using 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 download 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
  • Podcasting
  • Picture galleries
  • File uploads and downloads

and much more.

Drupal is open-source software distributed under the GPL ("GNU General Public License") and is maintained and developed by a community of thousands of users and developers. If you like what Drupal promises for you, please work with us to expand and refine Drupal to suit your specific needs.

Review Updates

  • March 25, 2009: Additional Modules have been added to the review to explain how to improve a default Drupal installation.

Server & Clients Requirements

Server Requirements
Operating Systems
Systems supporting this software.
  • Linux
  • Windows Server 2003
  • Windows XP
  • Solaris
  • FreeBSD
  • OpenBSD
  • NetBSD
  • Windows Server 2008
  • Mac OS
Web Server Details
Web servers host the forum software.
  • Apache 1.3
  • Apache 2.0/2.2
  • Microsoft IIS
  • Lighttpd
  • Nginx
Languages Details
Development language.
  • PHP 4
  • PHP 5
Databases Details
Systems that store forum datas.
  • MySQL
  • Postgresql
Browsers & Clients Requirements
Compatible Browsers Details
List of compatible browsers.
  • Mozilla Firefox 3
  • Mozilla Firefox 2
  • Mozilla Firefox 1
  • Opera
  • Safari
  • Konqueror
  • Internet Explorer 7
  • Internet Explorer 6
  • Chrome
  • Mozilla SeaMonkey
Required Plugins/Technologies Details
What the user needs exactly to use this forum correctly.
  • Plain HTML
  • HTML and Javascript
  • HTML and AJAX
Localization Details
Languages supported by Drupal Forum.
Yes Yes.

Supported Languages could be found here:

Drupal is known to work in every configuration which accepts the PHP scripting language. It means that operating systems and web servers that are supporting Drupal are not all listed here. SQLite database should be normally supported in the next major release of Drupal 7.0.

Forum Threads & Posts

Forum Threads
Forum Style
General appearance of the topics.
Flat/Threaded
Social Networks
Users can share information from their social network account...
No.
Thread Icons
An icon that identifies the type of a topic.
Yes Yes
Forum Organization
Organize your forum with categories, sections,...
  • Forum Categories
Sticky Threads
Sticky threads stay at top of a section or a forum.
Yes Yes
Spell Checking
Posts and topics are spelled checked with a dictionary.
Unknown Unknown
Detect Duplicate Threads
Duplicate Threads are detected before creation.
No No
Shadow Topics
Some topics are only accessible to a limited list of users.
No No
Posts
Post Editing Form Details
Details about the manner to post messages.
  • Plain Text
  • WYSIWYG Editor
  • Preview Button
Emoticons Details Plugin Plugin
Post Editing Format Details
Markup Language (HTML, Wiki, BBCode,...).
  • Plain
  • HTML
Attachments Details
Attach files (screenshot, archive,...) with a post.
Plugin Plugin
Post Quoting
Quoting a post helps readers understand who answers who.
Plugin Plugin Syntax Highlighting
Posted Source Code is formatted using colors.
Unknown Unknown
Post Rating
Users can rate the quality of other users posts.
Plugin Plugin

Key Features & Additional Tools

Key Features
Bundled Softwares
Softwares that are also available with the forum.
  • Website Home Page
  • CMS
  • Blog
  • Pictures Album Manager
Users List Details
List of all user accounts, to helps users searching their friends.
Yes Yes
Private Messages Details
Users can communicate using an internal messaging system.
Plugin Plugin Online Users List
List of actually connected users, in the forum home page, a dedicated topic,...
Plugin Plugin
Instant Messaging Details
Communicate in the forum like in other IM (Yahoo Messenger, Live Messenger, Google Talk,...)
Plugin Plugin Quick Reply Box
Write a post directly from the topic page.
Yes Yes
Calendar Details Yes Yes Remote Control Details
Remote control from external softwares or websites.
No.
Poll Creation Details Yes Yes Friendly URLs
URLs are as short and simple as possible (for better copy/paste and share).
Yes Yes
RSS/Atom Syndication Details
New posts and threads available using aggregators Syndicate
RSS 2.0

Here are a list of essential modules that complete a core installation of Drupal, for a forum usage:

The Flat or Threaded view of your forum will depend on the Drupal Theme you use.

 
 
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