To commemorate the launch of our most recent website—Engineered Restorations, Inc. (ERI), we’d like to devote some time to singing the praises of Drupal, a free, open-source content management system platform.

First, a little about ERI: ERI is a specialty contracting company that provides restoration, repair and protection services for all types of structures. Examples of their clientele range from the manager of a multi-family development to the senior-level engineer managing a nuclear power plant.

ERI’s site redesign needed to appeal to a wide audience, enabling clients to self-educate and easily navigate throughout the site. ERI offers a multitude of services that apply to dozens of industry segments, so this presented a bit of a challenge. Enter Drupal.

Drupal allows any piece of data to have attributes and tagging mechanisms. This intelligently connects information, keeping the user moving throughout the site and educating with each click. Generally speaking, Drupal is a great fit for sites with increased complexity. The platform boasts a large community of supporters and developers—both professional and independent—so the resources available are considerable.

Proprietary CMS platforms (Sitefinity, for instance) are Microsoft-based, expensive to invest in and maintain, and developer talent is limited to folks with .NET experience and Microsoft server knowledge.

For these reasons, we’re leveraging Drupal quite a bit for complex web application development—in fact, we’re currently developing 4 additional sites with the platform. It’s become our go-to CMS for complex and/or large sites and web apps due to its extensibility, scalability and ready access to thousands of modules supported by the greater Drupal community. Another prime example of the type of site well suited for Drupal (Drupal customization, in this case) is the site we built for CNNGO.

We’re not the only Drupal enthusiasts. Many major brands and organizations use Drupal, including whitehouse.gov, The Economist, and Fast Company.

Now over to you: have you had any experiences with Drupal? If not, do you have questions about it? Let us know in the comments.