Why Drupal is the Best CMS for Your Website?
As a CMS, Drupal has always been basking in compliments.
It is the most powerful, the most secure, the most flexible — the list of Drupal strengths could go on. However, all this is not enough to stay current. After all, time moves fast. So what makes a truly cool CMS, loved by customers, site admins, and developers? Does Drupal fulfil this, and how? It’s time for a little investigation!
What lets Drupal remain a major CMS?
“The reason Drupal has been successful is because we always made big, forward-looking changes.” This quote is from Drupal founder Dries Buytaert.
The future-oriented changes in Drupal’s latest version, Drupal 8, really left everyone speechless ‑ so much that, when discussing them, you simply do not know where to start.
The particular quote by Dries was part of his article about Drupal’s new architecture, so let’s start with that.
Brand-new architecture and modern concepts
A successful CMS must be in line with the most modern programming concepts, have a highly consistent, clean, and reusable code.
To achieve all this and more, Drupal adopts OOP (object-oriented programming), Symphony components, and Twig template engine, as well as polished its APIs, rebuilt its core, and more. Developers applaud, and customers enjoy more efficient processes!
Mobile perfection
According to Statista, the share of mobile phone website traffic jumped from 0.7% in 2009 to 52.2% in 2018. The mobile audience is key already! Modern CMSs cannot ignore that.
Dries Buytaert said that if he built Drupal from scratch again, he would build it for mobile experiences first. “Mobile-first” — that’s the philosophy of Drupal 8.
Responsive core themes, responsive admin interfaces, awesome built-in modules for responsive development are just some points of Drupal 8’s mobile perfection. Your users will enjoy their mobile experiences on any device.
The era of dynamic features and JavaScript
Websites with rich, dynamic, and real-time features are ahead of others. And anywhere you find all these features together, you will also find some representatives of the JavaScript “family.”
React, Vue, Angular, Node, Ember, and other tools are more and more often mentioned in connection with Drupal. It cooperates perfectly with them, and it even planning to adopt of them in the near future. We are likely to see ReactJS as part of the Drupal family!
Beyond the shape of a website
You can have more than just a website. You can output your content to any imaginable applications, so your users stay with you in their natural environments.
Drupal 8 has an awesome ecosystem of third-party integration modules that provides the data exchange of your Drupal website with any other system. They also magically convert the data to the right format.
High speed with modern caching
For making websites fast enough to fly towards the future, Drupal 8 has excellent caching tools. Users will enjoy the flight!
The novel tool BigPipe uses an especially interesting approach to quick content delivery. The static elements come first, the dynamic ones come second, and the perceived loading speed is awesome.
Usability for editors
Drupal’s reputation as a developer-oriented CMS used to scare customer away a little. It was the other side of the “most powerful CMS” medal.
But now it’s time for editors to enjoy it as well! Drupal 8’s new level of editor usability impressed even the most sceptical critics.
It is now very easy to apply quick edits right on the page, change block layout, enjoy handy content previews, drag and drop images, shape your toolbar to your liking, embed multimedia from various sources, and so much more.
Truly international
Millions of customers in different countries will be closer to you if your website speaks their language.
Drupal 8 offers a hundred languages, and a very smooth procedure for adding them to websites. Their interface translations are ready for you. And you can also translate every inch of your website — absolutely anything from configuration to content.
High level security
Cybercriminals have become more ingenious, so CMSs have to be stronger. Drupal is considered the most secure CMS.
This is achieved by continuous security updates that quickly catch any vulnerabilities, the “collective intelligence” of a watchful community, an especially vigilant Security Team, strict standards for submitting contributed code, refined user roles and permissions, great possibilities for data encryption, strong security modules, and more.
Accessibility for everyone
It’s a must to provide a smooth experiences for users with visual or other impairments. There are important WCAG 2.0 and ATAG 2.0 accessibility guidelines, and Drupal 8 adheres to them. In particular, the website structure and content are more understandable to screen readers and other assistive technologies.
Semantic HTML5 with WAL-ARIA properties, useful alerts, more convenient forms, compulsory ALT tags that describe images, high contrasts, and other techniques enhance web accessibility.
To recap
That said, Drupal is a CMS that follows all the trends. And, knowing Drupal, we understand it’s just the beginning. Many groundbreaking changes are very close.
Would you like to enjoy all awesome novelties with Drupal? Contact our web development team!