When I started the Drupal project eighteen years ago, I could never have imagined the impact that my software project would have. Today, Drupal powers a full two percent of websites online, and it has a devoted open source community of more than a million people from all walks of life around the world.

The Drupal community has changed the way websites are built. Drupal has promoted a modular software architecture since its origins and, as a community, we have created thousands of modules, all freely available from the drupal.org website. Each module alters and extends Drupal's core capabilities and adds new functionality to a Drupal site. It's a credit to the collective efforts of thousands of clever people working together over a period of many years, not only for their own interests, but also for the benefit of others.

Drupal's modular architecture allows you to build any website that you can dream of. The speed at which websites can be assembled using Drupal and Drupal modules is exceptional. Not a single proprietary content management system has the depth and breadth of Drupal. And if some functionality is missing, it can be built using Drupal's many foundational services and open APIs.

In his excellent book, Drupal 8 Module Development - Second Edition, Daniel explains how you can build modules for Drupal. Daniel is a respected voice in the Drupal community, with expertise in Drupal dating back to Drupal 6. He is known for his extensive writing on topics related to Drupal development, primarily on his website at webomelette.com.

If you're new to Drupal, I give you my warm welcome and invite you to not only write modules for your Drupal project, but also to become part of the Drupal community.

Dries Buytaert

Founder and Project Lead of Drupal

Co-founder and CTO of Acquia

Dries Buytaert is the original creator and project lead for the Drupal open source web publishing and collaboration platform. He is co-founder and chief technology officer of Acquia, a venture-backed software company that offers products and services for Drupal. A native of Belgium, Buytaert holds a PhD in computer science and engineering from Ghent University and a licentiate in computer science (MsC) from the University of Antwerp. In 2008, Buytaert was elected Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum, and is an MIT TR 35 Young Innovator.