Backdrop CMS

Backdrop CMS is a free and open-source content management system written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. Backdrop CMS is a fork of the Drupal project. Drupal is used as a back-end framework for a large number of Web sites ranging from personal blogs to corporate and government sites.

The Backdrop CMS project forked from Drupal about 2 years into the Drupal 8 development cycle. At that time the code was very similar to that of Drupal 7—it was before the adoption of Symfony, before the conversion to PSR-0 autoloaders, before the removal of almost all Drupal code that was not object-oriented, and before widespread rewrites of many subsystems. Backdrop's founders and early contributors saw the huge changes coming to Drupal, and figured many in the community wouldn't be able (or willing) to make the jump.

Backdrop CMS's philosophy is focused on providing an affordable yet comprehensive CMS for small to medium-sized businesses, non-profits, educational institutions, and other organizations. Because Backdrop CMS is very similar to Drupal 7, a module that was written for Drupal 7 can be ported to Backdrop CMS far more quickly than to Drupal 8. There is also a built-in upgrade path from Drupal 7 to Backdrop CMS. It should be more affordable to upgrade an existing Drupal 7 site to Backdrop than to migrate it to Drupal 8.

The core Backdrop CMS package aims to include many useful features, but only those that are necessary for the majority of sites using it. Backdrop can be easily extended with the addition of modules (that change the way it works), themes (that change the way it looks), and layouts (that change the way content can be placed on the page).