Over
the past year, APQC's internal Web technology team has been designing our
next-generation Web presence. I say "presence" because our site is the primary outward-facing
point of contact to our members, and many have come to equate access to our
online Knowledge Base with APQC membership. Based on comprehensive feedback
from our members and customers, we evaluated everything from well-known portal
and content management system (CMS) vendors to this week's "Web 2.0 tool du
jour," ultimately selecting Drupal as the platform best suited to our needs.
For
those unfamiliar with Drupal, it's often categorized as an open source CMS,
although the term "CMS" doesn't do it justice in terms of functionality. Drupal
has a large and rapidly expanding install base, ranging from small, independent
sites to large enterprises such as www.whitehouse.gov and www.fastcompany.com.
From a knowledge management perspective, the most fascinating aspect of Drupal
is the collaborative way in which the platform's programming community handles
innovation. In return for access to more than 5000 contributed modules
centrally organized at www.drupal.org, developers are on the honor system to
contribute any generic modules they write that they feel will benefit the
community as a whole. The community then offers feedback, bug reports, and
feature patches.
