When we thought about redesigning Healthcare Finance News, we knew we'd need something with plenty of power, and the flexibility to give us --and you-- complete control.
Healthcare Finance News is now powered by Drupal - a Content Manage System, or CMS - that is the backbone of any news publishing Web site. It is a free, open-source platform we use to keep the site updated with news, analysis, research and rich media.
Taking the open-source plunge has proved beneficial to our needs. As technology implementation costs rise, we can keep costs low by relying on a growing, international user community for help with bug fixes, website functionality, and content creation.
But not all software platforms are created equal. During our search we looked at a number of off-the-shelf engines. These were mostly custom-built, proprietary engines requiring monthly license fees and close contact with the vendor, as they alone knew the code and how it functioned.
Drupal is a completely different animal. Got a bug with your site? Want to expand the functionality? Drupal offers a simple do-it-yourself style with an active community always just an email or forum post away.
Our new site features a number of "modules", as they are called in Drupal-speak. These are user-created features free to the drupal community. We have modules for playing videos, streaming audio, voting on polls and commenting on stories. Some of the customization still requires a bit of programming elbow grease, but for the most part Drupal is hands off.
When you become a Drupal user, you are joining a large international community of some of the biggest organizations on the Internet today. Drupal users include NASA, FedEx, MTV UK, The Onion, Popular Science, The United Nations, and Sony Music. (45 Drupal Sites Which You May Not Have Known Were Drupal Based, Drupal case studies).
In the end it's not just the price, and it's not just the functionality that attracted us to Drupal. It's the community. A living, breathing network of international programmers, designers, marketers, hard-core geeks, and Internet enthusiasts dedicated to open-source software and the continuing evolution of a project they love.