Drupal is set up to maintain community-based sites out of the box, with comments, blogs, forums, and multiple users and roles integrated as part of core.
However it's also a very strong platform for centralized, traditional Content Management and a full web development platform, from a brochureware 'about us' site presence to full ecommerce site or knowlegebase.

This handbook focuses directly on the latter cases, with lessons learned from private, corporate and government sites.

These types of site differ from default Drupal sites in the following ways:

• Little call for user registrations. Usually registration is given to a handful of content editors, who are the only ones that add content to the site.
• Comments, forums or blogs are left out of the core site design.
• The publishing workflow is usually a little more stilted. Rather than content or functionality being edited directly on the CMS, there is often a 'staging' site and a publishing workflow, often between different physical machines. This approach is not optimal under a live CMS, and creates some problems with keeping things in synch.
• Site themes are highly stylised, and less generic than more open-plan sites. This often creates a tighter set of guidelines for the site editors to follow, which in turn reduces or complicates layout flexability.
• Site editors usually deserve full HTML privileges by default, along with image embedding and enhanced abilities.