Drupal Review

If you’ve ever considered using Drupal for your website, you’re probably trying to decide if it’s a great fit for you. Well we’ve created a Drupal review to help you decide, and this is what we thought of the popular content management system.

What Is Drupal?

Drupal is a content management system which is a code to help you create your very own website. The developers consider Drupal to be more like a community publishing system, but as a CMS it works well.

With the software you can create a great forum, wiki site, online shop, blog, or another website that you wish to publish. Like some other CMS systems on the market, like WordPress and Joomla, Drupal is modular. This means there’s a core code you must have, but this can be added to your website for more functionality.

The key to the success of Drupal is that it’s an open source CMS platform. That makes the core programming free. The massive benefit of this for potential users is that there’s an active community who are supporting current users and developing new add-ons to improve Drupal.

There have been numerous versions of Drupal. If you’ve used an old version, then you might not find newer versions easier to use. So ensure you take a read of the rest of the Drupal review to see if you think the newer version is suitable for your needs. If you do decide to continue on with Drupal, be aware that it can take time to learn the new systems.

Building Your Drupal Website

One of the best features of Drupal is its functionality. It’s probably more functional than other common CMS systems like WordPress and Joomla. Yet despite the number of features that are included in the programming and with the extensions, you don’t need a technical background to use the software.

The functionality, with the extensions available, allows you to build any type of website you want. For instance, you can create blogs, discussion boards, social networks and even online shops. To help you, Drupal is capable of, and famous for being able to host various types of content types including: video, polls, user management, text, blogs, podcasts, statistics, etc..

Your imagination is your limit and that’s the power behind Drupal.

Of course, while it’s highly functional, the trade off is that the script isn’t very user-friendly. Therefore, if you don’t have technical knowledge or advanced knowledge of website development, you might struggle. Other website systems like WordPress and Joomla are far easier to use.

To get around this, there’s a lot of support available online to help you build, maintain and improve your website. If you’re stuck, you can look on freelancer websites or perhaps try one of the many forums for Drupal. If you think that you can solve the problem yourself but just need a hint of how to do things, there are plenty of YouTube videos to help you get started.

Here’s one of those videos to demonstrate the type of support you can receive.

There are also some website hosting solutions that will install the core Drupal program on your server for you. This can be time saving, but once the core program is installed and you’ve setup your user account, you can be on your own.

Drupal Functionality

As with all content management systems, you need to ensure you have strong management systems and Drupal doesn’t disappoint. As an administrator of a Drupal website, you have a lot of power behind you. For instance, you can create new user accounts and give them specific permissions to help you run your website.

If you want to segment your users into groups, that isn’t hard. You can even give them assignments so they know what they’ve got to do.

But this isn’t where your management of the website ends. Drupal has powerful content management tools too. You can categorize your content through URL addresses and paths. You can also make your own lists to help you segment your content into topic groups of your own design.

In comparison, you can’t do this on sites like Blogger.

The power of this is that it’s easy to manage your existing content, search for content you’ve misplaced and reuse the content when you need to.

Like other CMS programs like WordPress and Joomla, Drupal is not a complete product. The basic program is powerful and you can certainly build a good website with it. But to have a masterpiece website, you need to add more functionality that is specific for your needs.

Drupal has lots of extensions, known as plugins, available on the Drupal website to help you build a better website. And, because Drupal is open sourced, you can build your own plugins if you have the technical knowledge.

If you don’t have that knowledge or skill you don’t have to worry. There’s an active community that can help you develop your website’s specific plugins or sell you one they’ve already developed.

One of the biggest disadvantages of Drupal is the scale-ability of your website. If you want to have a lot of content, then this can result in a big server load. This can be harmful to your website’s search rank on Google and other search engines.

The main reason for this is the efficiency of the coding. Content Management systems like WordPress are much better with their code.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t use Drupal. There are some plugins available that can cache your website to reduce server load. But it is more challenging.

Drupal Review: Pros

• Lots of functionality giving you limitless possibilities.
• Open-source program that allows you to make changes to your website and add functionality.
• Great support from third parties and the development team behind Drupal.
• Great management tools to help you create an impressive website.

Drupal Review: Cons

• Technical knowledge is required to make your site great.
• Compatibility issues do exist.
• Due to bulky coding, your website might slowdown which can impact your site’s page rank on Google.

Drupal Review Conclusion

In conclusion, in this Drupal review we have seen that the CMS has great potential. There’s a lot of functionality and support for your website. However, to get the best results, you need technical knowledge or lots of money to spend on support or third party consultation.