Can we get beyond websites?

Maybe I'm just bored with websites. Or maybe I'm fed up with Flash and image clutter making it difficult to read and absorb content. Whatever the reason, I feel the time has come to spring Drupal from website prison.

The original developers of Drupal were thinking content management, not just websites. For example, look at Drupal's core taxonomy module. Nobody would write such a wonderfully complex tool if they just wanted to make quickie websites with hierarchical categories. No, taxonomy has much to offer the content professional, and we'll explore it and other Drupal tools in this series of articles.

In the early days, the web was the most convenient vehicle for vending Drupal managed content. But now, I think it is time to explore using Drupal as a centralized content management system that can syndicate data to clients in a variety of formats, including RSS. These centralized Drupal content systems will employ interfaces and tools to foster quality content creation and rapid disbursement of data. Websites and portable devices then become simple clients that pull data from centralized content servers. These content servers can take advantage of Drupal roles and authentication to offer premium and protected content.