Drupal Gardens is hosted version of Content Management System Drupal that runs thousands of sites on web. But before we move further let’s take a looks at what Drupal is actually?

Drupal Introduction

Drupal was created in 2000 by Belgium computer science student named Dries Buytaert to help him in sharing information with his friend but with the passage of time people kept asking him for more and more feature, as he was unable to proceed with there demand so he released the software under GNU/ GPL General Public License in 2001 and renamed it Drupal which means a drop of water. Today many high profile site run on Drupal includes that of United States Government, The Canadian Rail Service and many others including MTV Europe. It is free software that can be downloaded from its official website and you are not alone to download it Drupal gets nearly three hundred thousand downloads per week. This is a sneak peak of what is Drupal.

What is Drupal Gardens

Drupal Gardens was introduced in Feb. 2010 that makes the benefits of Drupal accessible to a whole new group of people who don’t want to get into site management. DrupalGarden and Core Drupal are very similar, learning one can help you learn another.

Actually Drupal Gardens simplifies Drupal by taking care of most of its tedious tasks such as maintaining and running the software. There are lots new features in Drupal Gardens that you will not find in standard Drupal like the revolutionary theme builder that helps you create standard state of art themes for your Drupal sites. You can build sites for free at Drupal Gardens the only condition is, that you have to allow Drupal Gardens to run there ads on your site. Well the creators of Drupal Gardens have facilitated you with and option to get rid of these ads simply by paying monthly fee which vary according to the plan that you chose.

Why to go for Drupal Gardens

One question that might be moving here and there in your head is that why I should use Drupal Gardens where there are bunch of other better options like WordPress, LiveJournal etc available?

Basically Drupal Gardens is core Drupal with some modifications that make it easy for end user. It is hosted and maintained by a company name Acquia as a result you don’t need to maintain and host the site which basically stop many people from running there own Drupal site. But Acquia isn’t the only company that host and maintains Drupal there one another big name in business called Buzzer which is backed by Lullabot.

Benefits of Drupal Gardens

Some of the major benefits of using Drupal Gardens:-

1.First and foremost advantage is that you can host several site from one Drupal Gardens site.

2.It allows you to make your site accessible through custom domain;well this feature is available under paid listing for that you have view the price listing options.

Limitations of Drupal Gardens

With all such great things there are some limitations also. There are three basic limitations of Drupal Gardens and that are:-

1. You can’t import and existing site i.e. the website that is already built and hosted some where else can not be imported to Drupal Gardens. You have to build a site from ground level here; it’s best suited for newly building sites. But you can export a site from Drupal Gardens to any where else.

2. You can’t at add any module to Drupal Gardens you have to use what they offer you but what the offer is quite impressive.

3. You don’t have access to server so you can’t do the geeky things over there like increasing memory allocation for example in free version while in paid listing you get ample of space.

This is quite impressive tool as you can create a perfect website with it that full fills the qualifying criteria laid down for a website.

So just start your journey in the world of Drupal Gardens and explore its power.