Web Book: Thinking in Drupal

Thinking in Drupal begins not with pages or code, but with the architecture of information.

Thinking in Drupal

For more than twenty years I have worked with Drupal, and in more recent years with Backdrop CMS. During that time I have designed, built, maintained and rebuilt websites for organisations large and small. Like many developers, I spent much of that time solving practical problems: writing code, configuring modules, migrating data, refining themes and helping clients make sense of their own information.

Only recently did I realise that beneath all of that practical work lay a quieter story.

These essays emerged almost accidentally. Sitting in a waterfront café before returning to my desk each morning, I began talking with ChatGPT about the architecture of Drupal. What started as technical questions gradually became conversations about ideas. We were no longer discussing software features or troubleshooting websites. We were asking why Drupal works the way it does, why some architectural decisions have endured for decades, and what they can teach us about organising information itself.

The result is Thinking in Drupal.

This is not intended to be a manual or a developer's reference. There are already many excellent resources that explain how to install modules, write code or configure a site. Instead, these essays explore the underlying principles that make Drupal—and equally, Backdrop CMS—such remarkably capable content management systems.

Again and again, the same themes appear. The node. Structured content. The separation of content from presentation. Information architecture. Flexibility through design rather than complexity through implementation. These are not merely technical concepts. They are ways of thinking that influence every decision made while building a website.

Although Drupal gives this collection its title, the essays are written with Backdrop CMS constantly in view. The two platforms have travelled different paths, yet they continue to share the architectural philosophy from which they both emerged. Readers who work with either system should find familiar ideas throughout these pages.

There is another thread running through this collection as well. Every essay was written in conversation with artificial intelligence. That fact is not hidden; it is acknowledged with gratitude. The AI did not contribute decades of practical experience, nor did it spend years maintaining websites for clients. Those experiences remain my own. What ChatGPT offered was something different: a thoughtful conversational partner that helped make tacit knowledge explicit, challenged assumptions, suggested clearer explanations and encouraged reflection. The essays are therefore neither entirely human nor entirely artificial. They emerged between us.

If there is a single message that runs through this collection, it is that good websites begin long before the first page is designed. They begin by understanding information: how it is organised, how it relates to other information, and how it might be presented in ways we have not yet imagined.

That, ultimately, is what it means to think in Drupal.

Author's Note: Why 'Thinking in Drupal'?

There were many possible titles for this collection.

It could have been A Course in Drupal. It could have been Understanding Drupal. It could even have been Learning Drupal Architecture. All of those would have been accurate, but they would also have suggested something this collection is not.

These essays are not intended as a curriculum. They do not progress systematically from beginner to advanced topics. Nor do they attempt to explain every aspect of Drupal or Backdrop CMS. There are already many excellent books, courses and websites that fulfil those purposes.

The phrase Thinking in Drupal points somewhere else.

Over the years I have come to realise that experienced Drupal developers gradually acquire a particular way of looking at information. They stop asking, "How should I build this page?" and begin asking, "What is the underlying content?" They stop designing individual screens and start designing relationships between pieces of information. They think about structure before appearance, flexibility before immediacy, and architecture before implementation.

That shift is subtle, but it changes almost every decision that follows.

In many ways, these essays document that way of thinking. They explore why the node matters, why content is not layout, why structured information outlives presentation, and why good architecture quietly makes difficult problems easier. Although the examples come from Drupal, the same architectural habits of mind apply equally to Backdrop CMS, which shares many of the same foundational ideas.

The title also reflects how these essays came into being. They were not written as chapters in a textbook. Most began as conversations with ChatGPT while I sat in a waterfront café before returning to my desk for the day's development work. We were not asking, "How do you configure this module?" We were asking, "Why was Drupal designed this way?" The discussions became reflective rather than instructional, and gradually a body of essays emerged.

Looking back, I realise that Thinking in Drupal describes not only the subject of the essays but also the process that produced them. They are an invitation to slow down, look beneath the software, and appreciate the architectural ideas that have allowed Drupal—and Backdrop CMS—to remain such enduring platforms.

Ultimately, software changes. Versions come and go. Modules appear and disappear. But ways of thinking have a much longer life. If these essays remain useful years from now, I hope it will be because they illuminate a way of seeing rather than merely a way of doing.