ALWAYS DRUPAL

I love Drupal, I have been a Drupal specialist for more than 10 years. In all this time, I have maintained my commitment to Drupal and I know I will continue to do so in the future.

Why is that? Below I share with you my 5 TOP reasons to choose Drupal as a content management system (CMS) for your web projects.

Flexibility

Drupal is extremely flexible and versatile. Due to the modular structure, content and design are separated from each other. Both can be edited or exchanged independently without affecting the website as a whole.

The page can be changed or expanded at any time. For example, it is possible to add language variants, redesign the layout, add more user interaction, integrate new data sources, etc.

Customized solutions

Drupal is highly customizable and adaptable to the actual goals and requirements of the web project. There are (almost) no limits for ideas and possibilities.

As a CMS, Drupal offers a very good base, which can be extended and customized through thousands of extensions (modules). The already wide selection is also constantly expanded with new modules. Thus, there is already a pre-engineered solution for a huge number of use cases. The Drupal website is then assembled from just the building blocks that are needed for the particular use case. And of course, these can be extended at any time.

To me Drupal is not just a CMS, it's more of a framework that is used as a solid foundation to build something custom-made on top of. It is much more flexible and robust than other CMS like WordPress, but it gives you a lot of work done compared to other frameworks.

Usability and accessibility

Drupal has a strong focus on usability for users and accessibility for visitors.

The backend for Drupal users is kept clear and focused. Users can work from anywhere via browser and do not need any additional software. Through the integrated role and rights system, viewing and editing options are tailored to user groups. Thus, all users (e.g. marketing, editors, developers, etc.) can work clearly and efficiently in their work environment.

Accessibility standards are a basic requirement in Drupal. Drupal ensures that all features and content comply with the World Wide Web Consortium's WCAG, WAI-ARIA and ADA guidelines. 

In short, Drupal is designed to make it easy and requires little work to have a usable and accessible website for any type of user. 

Open interfaces

Drupal integrates very well with existing tools and software in the existing enterprise environment. Through robust APIs, a Drupal website can communicate and interoperate with many other interfaces. For example, your CRM software, external media databases, marketing tools, etc. can be shared with Drupal.

Drupal is easily extensible and has a very robust data import system.

Community and security

It is an open-source solution and is developed by an extremely dedicated community. All over the world, many web professionals invest their time in documentation, testing, code review, further development and networking. Therefore, they are constantly working on improving Drupal, which is visible in the form of ever new features and modules.

The security team plays an important role within the community. The experts continuously analyze and eliminate potential risks. Therefore, each new module undergoes strict quality testing by the security team before release.

It is one of the most secure CMSs. Many large companies and governments use Drupal for precisely these reasons.

Who is Drupal particularly suitable for?

From my experience, Drupal is suitable for projects of very different sizes, from very small and local sites, to large and complicated international ones. However, its advantages become particularly evident in large and complex projects.

Drupal has its strengths, especially when:

• There are custom and complex requirements and functionalities.
• Multi-language (I've created websites with more than 19 languages on the same website)
• Large amounts of content (different types of content, structured data, saving old versions of content)
• Many users (role management, access and permissions)
• Integration and connection of existing tools or regular content imports
• Very powerful search system required (a large amount of data, multiple languages, faceted filters)

Examples of project types

During these more than ten years I have been involved in a multitude of Drupal-based projects, all of them very different from each other. Some examples can be:

• The typical small company website with two or three languages and a few landing pages.
• Event and calendar booking websites, with blog and landing pages.
• Showcase websites for multinationals. Periodic data synchronization with a PIM, CRM or ERP. With a very powerful search engine and in several languages.
• Typical E-commerce. To allow sales in multiple countries.
• Intranet systems. To gather sensitive data from other websites of the same customer in a single dashboard for easy management. For example, management of users from various websites, management of forms sent by customers, management of student scores, centralization of product management, etc. Create a small CRM/ERP/PIM tailored for customers who want specific things.
• Membership websites. Different users with different permissions and some of them can pay to have access to parts of the web.
• Advanced search engines. Webs with more than 30k products and several languages, museums with several categories of articles, geolocalized maps with more than 200k items to filter, many-faceted filters and integrations with advanced systems such as Solr or Elastic Search.

You can see some of the highlights in my portfolio.

Conclusion

I highly recommend doing a web project in Drupal.

The truth is that compared to other CMS like WordPress the cost of web development is much more expensive. But it is worth it considering the flexibility, being able to expand the website in the future, and above all that most of the websites that come to me are not a "simple blog", but projects that have some special or custom-made part.

If you have any doubt, do not hesitate to contact me from the contact form on this website.