Is Drupal Right for You?

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Lately, Drupal seems to be a hot topic in the technology community. As of mid-July, there were over 900,000 sites using Drupal. Many companies, organizations, and agencies are migrating their websites to Drupal. Some notable sites currently running on Drupal are The Economist, Fedex, NASA, and even the White House. There are obviously multiple options for Content Management Systems (CMS) and Content Management Frameworks (CMFs), and pros and cons to each. So, how do you know if Drupal will be the right fit for your website? Below are a few questions to ask yourself, and the answers should point you in the right direction:

1. What do I want to accomplish by implementing a CMS/CMF?

Are you looking for increased flexibility to update & manage your site? Do you have content managers that would like to make changes without a lot of coding knowledge? Drupal's backend system can be a little more complicated than some other CMS' (e.g. Wordpress), but overall it's still very easy to become familiar with. So, the content managers could make changes themselves without having to go through a separate technical team.

2. Am I looking for a CMS/CMF that's scalable, and provides me with the ability to add new features on an ongoing basis?

Since Drupal is open-source, it promotes a public and collaborative environment among developers. As of today, there are over 22,000 modules, or add-ons to Drupal's core functionality contributed by the community. These modules can be leveraged to customize Drupal to fit your needs.

3. Am I looking for a cost-efficient solution?

Again, since Drupal is open-source, there are no licensing fees or monthly subscription fees to worry about.

4. Is responsive design important to me?

With the growing pervasiveness of tablets and mobile phones, a big concern for content managers is serving content that's optimized to the screen size that the site is being viewed on. There are many Drupal themes and community modules that make it very easy to to build a responsively designed website.

5. Do I want to ensure my website is SEO & Social Media friendly?

Drupal allows for easy integration of SEO standards, such as keyword tags and meta tags. SEO Checklist, a community module, acts as a barometer of how SEO friendly a website is, and provides action items for improvement. There are also modules to easily add buttons or links to social media presences, or to facilitate sharing of content on various social media channels.

To recap, the above questions should provide you with an idea of whether Drupal could be the right CMS/CMF for your website. There are many resources out there to learn more about Drupal, and the different features it can provide. A great place to start is the Drupal Community, where you can search for topics, ask questions on their Forum, and even chat with other community members. Good luck!

 

 

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