Drupal migration

What is Drupal CMS and what are its benefits?

In this guide, I will cover what the Drupal content management system is, what the benefits of Drupal are, and what migrating your website to this CMS will give you.

Here is a list of questions I answer along the way:

  1. What is Drupal?
  2. What is Drupal used for?
  3. Why use Drupal: Benefits for clients and developers 
  4. Is Drupal dead?
  5. Migration to Drupal
  6. Conclusion: Why Drupal is better than other CMSs

Strap your seatbelts on, we’re getting started.

What is Drupal

Drupal is a popular open-source content management system

Open source means that the code behind it is made freely available for modification and redistribution. In Drupal’s case, the code is created by an open community of contributors. 

A content management system (CMS) is a tool for creating, managing, and modifying content on a website without programming.

In other words, it is a platform that helps develop websites.

How does Drupal work? The Drupal CMS operates on modules — snippets of code with different functions. Due to Drupal’s rich functionality, one can build various websites from scratch easily and quickly.

Is Drupal free? Yes, Drupal is free, but you might need developers’ help if you want to build a website with a complex structure.

What is Drupal used for

Drupal allows developers to create all kinds of websites for all kinds of purposes. Here are some Drupal site examples that we have built over the years:

websites on drupal

Why Drupal

Let’s see what advantages a Drupal website gives you. I divided them into two categories: pros for developers and clients.

Drupal benefits for clients

Versatility of Drupal website types. Drupal has a wide enough range of features and modules to build any type of website: online stores, service marketplaces, CRMs, social media platforms, portfolio builders, blogs, one-page company websites, etc.

Drupal performance. Drupal websites have a high loading speed and fast response time, which is especially important for online stores. It became possible due to a flexible system of caching Drupal provides. Drupal also allows you to demonstrate a broad product range and can handle high traffic. This means that you will not lose clients because of slow page loading.

RELATEDDrupal 7 performance optimization tips

High level of safety. Only 3.7% of hacked websites are Drupal websites. The Drupal Association has an assigned team that looks after the security of Drupal and its modules. It constantly checks the platform for errors and bugs and releases security updates. Besides, an enormous number of community members monitor the Drupal system’s safety status all the time. Your website is protected.

Drupal cost. Even if you decide to expand the functionality of your website beyond ready-made solutions, it is not going to cost you an arm and a leg. A typical task, for example, an authorization form, takes a web developer about billed 25 hours. On Drupal, that task would take 4 hours.

SEO in Drupal. Drupal is SEO-friendly and has a lot of tools for upgrading it. You can take a look at our list of out-of-the-box Drupal features that will help elevate your SEO. Your website has a good chance of ranking high in SERP if you apply them all.

RELATED: SEO starter kit for Drupal

Mobile responsive design. In the modern world, no human uses only one device to access the Internet. That’s why Drupal allows you to develop websites that render well on PCs and mobile devices right after launch.

Drupal content management. One of Drupal’s main features is the ability to manage your website's content without the help of web developers. A Drupal page consists of “bricks” of content that you can rearrange without breaking the website structure. You don’t have to learn to code.

Drupal benefits for web developers

Drupal software versatility. Drupal has become more flexible because of the use of Javascript technologies. Now Node.js, React.js, Vue.js, and Angular have become available for Drupal web developers.

Drupal community. Drupal is not just a system for web development. It’s a big community that constantly keeps in touch and works on improving the Drupal CMS. Bugs are fixed fast, and the core is updated regularly.

Drupal knowledge database. You can always find a lot of useful information at your fingertips. Functional modules and an inexhaustible stream of documents and tutorials are available free of charge.

Drupal modules. There are more than 7,000 publicly available modules that you can use to extend the functionality of your websites. They simplify web development, speed up the process of writing code, and, consequently, of building a website.

why use drupal

Is Drupal dead

I hear that concern a lot. Let me tell you this. In December 2022, Drupal 10 was released. The new version required numerous contributions from 2,129 community members. In the two and a half years it took to prepare for the release, 4,083 issues were resolved.

Would all these professionals work so hard for free if they thought Drupal was dead? I don’t think so.

RELATED: What do you need to know about Drupal 10?

Migration to Drupal

Let’s say you decided to migrate your website to the Drupal platform.

Drupal has an incredible tool for migrating from any CMS, such as WordPress and Joomla, or a database like Oracle. This tool allows for a much cheaper and easier migration. You can leaf through this step-by-step guide or book a free consultation with our developers for details.

Why Drupal is better than other CMS

To sum it up, Drupal is easily scalable. You can start with a simple splash page, add content, and poke around yourself without spending any money. If you feel like Drupal is a good fit for your ideas and want to expand, use open sources created by Drupalers to find solutions. Or hire a web development team to help you out with custom modules — with Drupal, it won’t cost you a fortune.

Be sure: Drupal is here to stay.

Looking for a Drupal development company? I think I know a guy.

Useful links 

1. OOP in Drupal 8 and how to use it to create a custom module

2. RESTful Web Services in Drupal 8 quick start guide

3. How to create a headless Drupal site

4. How to send the JSON data from a Drupal 8 site?

5. Migrate API: custom Drupal-to-Drupal migration

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