New and innovative technologies define the digital landscape, including the web development processes. Drupal is a well-known content management system (CMS) that continues adding value to the web development process.
In this blog, I will discuss how Drupal can be used to transform the web development process.
Drupal: Introduction
Drupal is an open-source content management system (CMS) that is available for free, allowing users to develop and manage content on multiple websites. Drupal is based on the Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP (LAMP) stacks and has the capability to run on other stacks. Drupal is a modular system; new features can be added or removed by installing or uninstalling modules. This feature allows developers to change the look and feel of the website by using themes. The content and settings of a website are stored in a database, and for each page request sent to the web server, the scripts in Drupal combine the information from the database and JavaScript files, CSS files, image files, etc., to create the pages of a website. Drupal can be customized because of its flexibility and can be used to develop simple websites or even complex web applications. It offers a range of free modules and themes that businesses can use to design and develop web applications that can help build brand awareness.
Reasons that make Drupal a powerful web application development platform
• Modularity: Drupal is modular, i.e. it's made of small parts or modules, and this is one of its powerful features. The parts work together to create the system, and each module is developed to perform a specific function, and developers can choose the module as per their specific needs. This functionality offers a lot of customization and flexibility and developers can add, modify or remove any module without it affecting the overall structure and operation of the system. Drupal’s active community also offers new modules to choose from. The modular approach makes Drupal very adaptable and capable of developing a range of web applications.
• Scalability: Drupal is scalable and it has been designed to grow and handle high traffic efficiently. It can run on different hardware and hosting environments and support multiple users as well as content. This is possible because of its inbuilt features like database replication, built-in caching and load balancing. Its modularity enables websites to scale as per need and makes Drupal a popular choice for large websites that deal with high traffic.
• Security: Drupal inhouse security team updates the community modules and the core system regularly. It provides micro level control to administrators, allowing them to define roles and assigning permissions. Drupal offers security measures like Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) and SQL injection. It also supports the latest protocols for secure data transmission and authentication, which include SSL/ TLS and two factor authentication. These features ensure that Drupal offers some of the best security to its users.
• Community: Drupal has a big community support that includes developers, designers, editors and more. The community actively contributes to Drupal itself by contributing modules, distributions and themes. The community also provides support using forums, discussion groups and other online platforms. Drupal events such as DrupalCon offers developers the opportunity to learn, contribute and network. The resources and knowledge are shared ensuring ongoing innovation and improvement to Drupal.
• Content management: Drupal content management features are flexible and powerful providing content architecture that is customizable and allows developers to create content like articles, blogs, polls and more. It also supports a system that allows content organization and a menu system that enables easy navigation. Its WYSIWYG editor offers easy content creation and editing and its revision system enables developers to track changes made over time. Drupal is also multilingual and is a great choice for international website creation.
• Integration: Drupal has an extensive and versatile integration capabilities that can help it integrate with third party services and applications. This includes CRM systems such as Salesforce, marketing platforms like Hubspot, socal medal platforms, etc. Drupal support for RESTful API allows other systems to easily interact with its content. The Feeds module in Drupal allows developers to import content from other sources, while the Services module enabeels Drupal to serve as a web service. Enterprise Java applications can also be integrated with Drupal usings its PHP/Java Bridge.
• Multi-language capabilities: Drupal can be used to develop websites in multiple languages, and its built-in language handling feature allows developers to specify a language for the content and interface string. Drupal also has options for automatic selection of language based on browser settings or URL, and supports translation, which can help developers manage and track content that has to be translated. This multi language capabilities makes Drupal a great choice for developing multilingual websites.
Final Words
Drupal is extremely versatile and powerful and offers multiple benefits that include scalability, security, flexible content management and more. This makes it a powerful tool for developing web applications. A custom Drupal web development company can help businesses fully harness Drupal’s capabilities and features by bringing the expertise required to create solutions as per specific needs.
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