The technology behind designing, developing, and managing a website evolved quickly as the internet rapidly became a major aspect of society in recent years. Big tech companies are now trying to create their own platforms where people can customize websites and make different technological adjustments and innovations to improve user experience.
Over the years, there has been something that stood the test of time and continued to be one of the most popular platforms on the internet regarding content management: Drupal.
In this article, we’re going to discuss the use cases of Drupal and how it helped many different websites to manage content and customize their designs. Then, we will talk about some of the basic mechanisms behind the technology and a few resources where people can learn how to use the platform.
What is Drupal?
Drupal is essentially a content management system (CMS). What it does is that it allows users to publish, structure, and manage content on the website. There are many tools and features within Drupal, such as when a user uses it as a central component of their digital experience platform where it can be integrated into other platforms like social media and analytics tools.
Features
Below are some common features found in Drupal, most of which are easy to learn and apply to design and create a website.
Layout building
One of Drupal’s most popular features is the layout building tool that doesn’t require the user to learn how to code. It offers a bunch of templated layouts and drag-and-drop UI for organizing and placing content on the page.
Media
Drupal supports a wide range of media formats, be it from local files or embedded videos and images from outside sources like YouTube and Imgur.
Scheduler
As a content manager, scheduling the content for publishing is one of the most important things to consider when using a CMS tool since you don’t have to worry about forgetting if you published the right content at the right time. With a scheduler feature, you can simply upload the content, and it will be published to your preferred date and time.
Theme System
Drupal’s theme system tool lets users customize how the website will look to visitors to create a more personalized and creative look for the page. Some brands establish specific guidelines on the website, so having a customizable theme system is a huge plus.
WYSIWYG
Unlike other complicated content management systems that require users to rely on HTML and manual coding heavily, Drupal has a feature that allows users and creatives to customize their content and preview their progress along the way.
Use Cases of Drupal
Online DirectoriesAdvanced search interfaces are now one of the most popular customizable user experience features, especially among companies with product listings that also need a tool that allows them to integrate third-party content.
Intranets
While mainly used to publish and manage content for the public to see, CMSs like Drupal can also be used for private content that allows multiple users to access content in one place. This is pretty useful for collaborative projects and teams.
Interactive Websites
Many websites are employing features that allow visitors to interact with the website. For instance, content personalization can be made possible for users who log into their website. A great example of this is when a feature in the website integrates Google maps to perform GPS tracking for services like deliveries and directions.
Marketing Portals
For companies looking to rank their websites on Google for specific keywords and pages, Drupal is flexible enough for content managers to organize necessary SEO tools and metadata management. This is great for marketers who are on a mission to raise brand awareness.
Corporate and Institutional Websites
As mentioned before, Drupal’s flexibility makes it an appropriate CMS for large projects that are commonly built by corporations and institutions. Some necessary features that these types of websites need are distributed publishing workflows and corporate branding. With Drupal’s fully customizable theme system and a plethora of templated content, a corporate or institution-specific style of branding can be achieved.
Conclusion
Many people use Drupal for its flexibility and tools that allow for customizable content. One of the many reasons for people to also build their content using this platform is the fact that it’s open-source, meaning the public can modify the changes in the platform because the design can be accessed without restrictions and not under any specific entity.
At its core, Drupal is a community-based platform. The programming language that Drupal is built on top of is PHP, which is the programming language that about 80% of all known websites are made of. This is pretty convenient since the integration of third-party content is an important feature of Drupal.