Before you start using Drupal to build your website, you should understand the following terminology and concepts of the platform.
Open-source software (OSS). This is software that has made the source code available with a license that allows anyone to inspect, modify, and distribute the software freely.
A CMS (Content Management System). This is software that helps you manage digital content. More specifically, a CMS like Drupal is a web application that allows one or more users to create, edit, publish, and control access to a website using a graphical user interface (GUI).
Site building. A Site builder is the Drupal role that everyone who wants to build a site should know, as it’s the core Drupal competency for site creation. Site building involves getting Drupal up and running, and configuring the options to build a functional site.
Themer. A themer, also known as a front-end developer, is the connection between the designer and the developer on a project. They’re responsible for the architecture and implementation of the user-facing parts of a web site. This includes working with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP in template files, or Twig in older Drupal versions.
Dev. Developers, also known as engineers or programmers, use their knowledge of PHP, MySQL, HTML, JavaScript, and CSS to extend, alter, and enhance Drupal by creating modules and integrating external services.
Drupal Community. One of the main strengths of Drupal is being one of the largest open-source communities, which creates the software, writes the documentation, provides support, and runs events all over the world.
Drupal adheres to modern object-oriented programming patterns, PHP best practices, HTML5 and YAML standards. It also incorporates other great web technologies, including CKEditor, Symfony2, Twig, jQuery, Backbone.js, and Guzzle.