Backdrop CMS is an

Open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

, community-developed,

content management system A content management system (CMS) is computer software used to manage the creation and modification of digital content (content management).''Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy''. Ann Rockley, Pamela Kostur, Steve Manning. New ...

, written in PHP, and licensed under the GNU General Public License. Backdrop CMS was forked from the

Drupal Drupal () is a free and open-source web content management system (CMS) written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. Drupal provides an open-source back-end framework for at least 14% of the top 10,000 websites worldwide ...

CMS in 2013 by two Drupal developers, Nate Lampton (née Nate Haug) and Jen Lampton. Backdrop is very similar to version 7 of the Drupal CMS, maintaining most of the same functionality and features. The project's mission is to "enable people to build highly customized websites affordably, through collaboration and open source software".

History

The Backdrop CMS project was forked about 2 years into th
Drupal 8
development cycle. Backdrop therefore retained some features newly included in Drupal version 8, but excluded

Symfony Symfony is a free and open-source PHP web application framework and a set of reusable PHP component libraries. It was published as free software on October 18, 2005, and released under the MIT license. Goal Symfony aims to speed up the creati ...

, and most of the many new dependencies that were added to Drupal 8. Backdrop's founders and early contributors had concerns over the significant (and at the time controversial) changes coming to Drupal, and expressed concern that maintainers of existing Drupal websites would be unable (or unwilling) to manage these changes, and the cost that comes with them.

Dependencies

Installation of Backdrop requires a web server running PHP 5.6 or higher and a MySQL 5.0.15 database or higher (or equivalent, like MariaDB). All Backdrop versions are being tested on PHP version 5, PHP version 7, and PHP version 8. Backdrop core, and the majority of contributed modules are developed on the GitHub platform.

Development Support

Docker-based local development environments like DDEV and Lando support Backdrop CMS out of the box by providing Backdrop CMS as an installation option. Backdrop is also available as an installation option on the managed hosting platform, Pantheon. There are upgrade paths available to developers who wish to upgrade Drupal 6 and Drupal 7 sites to Backdrop. Core modules have upgrade paths as do some of the more popular contributed modules. Some may require extra work to upgrade smoothly.

Organization of the Backdrop project

Backdrop is a community-developed project, guided by a Project Management Committee (PMC), which is modeled on the respective

Apache The Apache () are a group of culturally related Native American tribes in the Southwestern United States, which include the Chiricahua, Jicarilla, Lipan, Mescalero, Mimbreño, Ndendahe (Bedonkohe or Mogollon and Nednhi or Carrizaleño an ...

project PMC. The project is maintained by volunteer developers on the GitHub platform, with shared code contributions reviewed and approved by community members. As of November 26, 2020, there were 136 contributors to the core Backdrop project on GitHub, and 92 contributors maintaining 717 user-contributed modules, themes, and layouts The Backdrop community hosts weekly development, design, and outreach webcasts with recordings available on YouTube. Backdrop CMS is a member of the

Software Freedom Conservancy Software Freedom Conservancy, Inc. is an organization that provides a non-profit home and infrastructure support for free and open source software projects. The organization was established in 2006, and as of June 2022, had over 40 member pro ...

. This membership allows Backdrop CMS to operate as a charitable initiative without having to manage their own corporate structure, administrative services, or legal team.

Integrations

CiviCRM, the open source CRM focused on non-profits, officially supports Backdrop, in addition to Wordpress and Drupal. The Webform CiviCRM module was also ported from Drupal to Backdrop and can be used for more complex integrations between CiviCRM and Backdrop.

References