Do you have a great idea for a new app, website or web service and are looking for the right technology? There are plenty of good solutions on the market, but do you really want to bet on something just “not bad”? It is better to choose a system that not only meets your expectations but also guarantees a seamless implementation of the project and its further development. In this article, you will find out why you should take your chances on Drupal.
If you have just decided to build a new platform that will allow your business to spread its wings, you need to choose the right technology very responsibly.
Of course, you can hire a team of developers and write everything yourself from scratch. However, this option is very time–consuming. In the case of large platforms or applications, work on a project can take many months or even years. Every element has to be built from scratch. We are talking about both back-end and front-end parts.
The “from scratch” option is also much more expensive. Nowadays, the work of a team of developers is a significant cost for a company. They will be creating your service for many months, which, after all, will not be making any money during this time. And what if a key programmer drops out of the team due to force majeure? Getting a new person in the gears means additional time and costs.
OK, but let's assume you persevered and got your project off the ground. Congrats! However, this is not the end of the line. Suddenly you find that you need new features or extensions to existing elements. What then? Again, you hire programmers and rewrite the code. You can probably guess what this means – more lost time and expense piling up.
However, there is a much better solution.
CMS for your business
All you need to do is use a CMS (Content Management System) in your project. Its implementation will speed up your work by offering ready-to-use elements, functionalities or modules, so that you can build your project as if it were made of building blocks.
There are many CMSs on the market, you need to pay for some of them and some are free. However, there are few that have stood the test of time and can be a safe choice as the basis for micro–projects as well as for the largest ventures of global corporations and institutions.
In our opinion, the best choice is Drupal. It's a great open-sourced CMS that first came to market in 2001. Since then, it has been continuously developed and is gaining new users all over the world.
Why should you choose Drupal? Here are the main reasons.
Flexibility
Drupal is open source, meaning it has open code. This means that you can freely customize it to suit your needs. You have full control over what happens "inside the application" and in its code.
If you want to add specific functionality, you can take advantage of thousands of free modules developed by developers affiliated within one of the most active online communities. You can read more about what exactly it means for Drupal to be open source in this article.
Consistency
In Drupal, put simply, everything fits together. There is no way that any of the modules published by the Drupal community won't work properly with other modules or the “core” of the system itself.
Safety
The security of the solution is constantly watched over by members of the Security Team, an elite group of Drupal developers, as well as thousands of developers from around the world. Most threats are detected before they can do actual damage. System bugs are almost non–existent, and if they do occur, they are quickly fixed thanks to a transparent application bug reporting procedure. You can read more about Drupal security here.
Independence
This is also an element of security for your project. You have all the code and all the modules in–house. So there is no question of "external" plug–ins as offered by other popular CMSs. By choosing Drupal, you are not dependent on software vendors who may want additional fees for extending functionality or simply stop developing your project.
What will you do if a plug–in, e.g. responsible for payment transactions, is disabled or contains a critical bug and its provider is unwilling to fix it? With Drupal, this will never happen.
Great API
You don't have to create an information exchange interface from scratch. It's built into the core of the system. Thanks to the API (application programming interface), you can use Dupal on a headless CMS basis, so you can deliver data to multiple channels (website, app, IoT etc.). You don't have to duplicate the work of editors and create content for each channel separately. You can also 'liberate' the front–end and create it in any technology. You can read more about the advantages of Drupal as a headless CMS here.
Drupal is being developed with an API–First philosophy, making its interface increasingly better and allowing it to integrate even better with other components of your platform.
Experience
Drupal has been in development for over 20 years. It is not a trendy and “seasonal” tool that will become unsupported after a few years. We currently have version 9 on the market, which you can read more about in our other article. The release of Drupal 10 is approaching fast. The new iteration will be even better and give your business even more benefits!
Just take a look at the list of companies and institutions that have decided to bet on Drupal. These include: Tesla, Nokia, NASA or even the Council of Ministers of the Polish government, whose web platform we had the pleasure to create. Read more in our Case Study.
Summary
We hope that you already know how many advantages you can enjoy with Drupal as a technological basis for your business. It is the perfect solution for building a modern corporate website, intranet, training management system or web application.
At Direktpoint, we have experience working on these types of projects. If you need help, let us know! Our experts are always up for a challenge.
