Beautiful Drupal sites

Yes, Drupal sites can be functional AND beautiful. Even thou Drupal does miss pretty out-of-the-box templates (themes) nothing should stop skilled designer and front-end developer from making good looking websites.

It the blog 70 beautiful Drupal sites you will find the finest examples.

When implmenting new design I usually start with Zen Theme which is probably the ugliest of all but also the purest when it comes to xhtml/css base implementation. Modifying css files is usually enough to bring the website to required look.

Drupal vs. Joomla

When convincing people to use Drupal I was very often challenged with the question: why not to use Joomla instead? Till now had some problems to give professional and objective answer, one because of my devotion to Drupal, two because of my lack of experience of Joomla.
Few days ago found this post:

Drupal vs. Joomla: a frank comparison from an IBM consultant

I think it's indeed quite honest comparison of both content management systems, should quickly answer question about main pros and cons.

Drupal Case Study: Lifetime Digital

The Lifetime Digital case study highlights the proven scalability and performance of Drupal websites in a high traffic environment. By utilizing Akamai technology for caching of rich media and for anonymous users, Lifetime Digital's 6 Drupal sites have proven successful in supporting:

* 50 million page views per month
* 6.5 million site visitors per month
* 150,000 page views per hour
* load tests to levels of greater than 500,000 page views per hour

Download full Drupal Case Study: Lifetime Digital

NOTE: improvenemts in Drupal 7 care for even greater performance and scalablility!

White House website using Drupal

Did you know that from November 2009 the official White House website www.whitehouse.gov is using Drupal? This initiative is part of big open source promotion campaign and project CONNECT (an open source software solution that supports health information exchange – both locally and at the national level).

Drupal seems to be a perfect match for President Barack Obama's push for an open and transparent government -- Drupal provides a great mix of traditional web content management features and social features that enable open communication and participation. This combination is what we refer to as social publishing and is why so many people use Drupal. Furthermore, I think Drupal is a great fit in terms of President Barack Obama's desire to reduce cost and to act quickly. Drupal's flexibility and modularity enables organizations to build sites quickly at lower cost than most other systems. In other words, Drupal is a great match for the U.S. government.

It’s a clear sign that governments realize that Open Source does not pose additional risks compared to proprietary software, and furthermore, that by moving away from proprietary software, they are not being locked into a particular technology, and that they can benefit from the innovation that is the result of thousands of developers collaborating on Drupal. It takes time to understand these things and to bring this change, so I congratulate the Obama administration for taking such an important leadership role in considering Open Source solutions.

Being one of the world's largest consumers of computer software, the U.S. government is not new to Drupal. Several agencies, including the Department of Defense, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Education, and the General Service Administration have been using Drupal, for example. Drupal adoption is growing rapidly within the U.S. government. However, Whitehouse.gov switching to Drupal goes above and beyond any other Drupal installation within the U.S. government, and is a fantastic testament for Drupal and Open Source. It will raise awareness about Drupal across the U.S. government, and across all governments world-wide.