by Vidhatanand Sharma, Chief Engagement Officer at OpenSense Labs
The internet is rife with opinionated and polarised content over the ‘Best CMS’ of today’s times. In today’s world what drives the demand of the market are the complexity of technologies. These complexities poses new challenges for Drupal as well. Choosing the right technology is confusing and an equally important task.
While you do not want to compromise on any constituent dealing with your enterprise, is your CMS fulfilling all your needs and providing you with the best of the technology?
In this article, learn why Drupal is the most loved enterprise CMS in the world and why it is used 7x the number of the top sites as its next two competitors combined. We will also discuss how Drupal supports the web system of enterprises and helps them boost their commerce, community, and content and how it fits seamlessly to deliver enterprise ready solutions.
How Does Drupal Help Your Website?
It is very important to chalk out your needs and go with the ones which satisfy the checklist. However, we suggest you keep in mind the level of flexibility and scalability on top.
Any CMS which doesn’t provide these two should immediately be struck off the list.
Let us now move forward and know if and how Drupal helps enterprises build their websites. For a more detailed comparison, you can click here.
Creation and Maintenance.
Easy Creation and Customization.
You don’t want to shell out money every time you want to add or omit any feature. Any CMS you will be opting for should provide you with easy creation, editing, and customization, so high technicality doesn’t ruin your day. As a new age web development platform, Drupal allows creation and modification of big web sites with a difficult structure. It also facilitates plenty of opportunities for site extension. Drupal speeds up your development process because it is easy to extend, easy to build.
Architecture.
The best part about Drupal is, its architecture allows for both core and integrated modules. While it provides you with some basic modules(which can not be disabled) at the time of installation, it also allows to add or remove integrated modules according to your preference. This allows for a flexible system with a strong core. Drupal has a strong content workflow system, which provides easy revisioning and moderation.
Creation Time.
It is an old saying that ‘time is money’. It is important for you to choose a CMS which helps you save both. Often creation and modification take a lot of time unless your CMS allows features that support quick editing.
Drupal supports various modules and distributions which fasten the process of editing, thus saving both your time and money.
Online Challenges.
Does It Provide Uncompromised Security?
As your business expands, so do threats. One cannot ignore the perils of information theft or hacking or simply getting infected with some malware. Your reputation also relies on the security of your website. Unlike other proprietary CMS, Drupal is known for its stone strong safety which is supplemented with constant security fixes and updates from its community, led by Drupal’s Security Advisory team. And the icing on the cake is, that all the updates, security features, and parameters can be directly managed by admin panel without much effort. To list the best example, WhiteHouse.gov, Australia.gov.au, UN.org, Loreal India, Johnson and Johnson India, and Pfizer are just a few in the list who trust Drupal and its security. Need more proof of Drupal’s security? Well then addNASA, CERN, and London Government in the list too. These examples should be reason enough for you to trust Drupal for its security.
Does It Boost Your SEO?
After all the hard work you have put in who doesn’t want to be on top? We know how much SERP matters and we also we know that top links get more clicks. It is important to know if your CMS helps you boost your ranking.
Drupal offers you various modules such as:
- URL Optimisation with “PathAuto” Module
- Increase website traffic with “Path Redirect” Module
- Add Meta Data with “Metatag” module
- Site Verification
- Generate website sitemap with “XML Sitemap” module.
- Search Friendly pages with “Page Title” module.
- Specify extra information with “Menu Attributes.
But never mistake any feature for a 100% result as ‘content has and will always be the king’.
Targeting The Target Audience.
Easy Content Translation?
Content Translation helps you to easily add content in other languages, without redesigning the whole website. Drupal offers access to more than 110 international languages.
As a multinational company, you should keep in mind that regional languages have the ability to attract more customers as people can relate trust with their native tongue and so rely on it. Also, use of native language gives a personal touch to the product which might give a boost to your sales too.
Is the CMS for my Niche Type?
It would be wrong to confine the definition of the enterprise with just one type. Every business has its own requirements and it reflects on their website too. Yours could be an FMCG company, or an e-commerce, media, and publishing type or you maybe are an hotelier. Your CMS should offer a perfect solution for your type.
Drupal offers modules and distributions which provide necessary site features and functions in a single download. With Drupal, one doesn’t need to download every single module for different purposes. These are a collection of various features and functions including Drupal core, contributed modules, themes, predefined configuration and much more.
It offers various distributions which are useful in setting up different websites:
- Enterprise Forum – For enterprise needing a discussion forum
- Open Enterprise – For website with important tools and functionality
- Lightning – For easily publishing content with social media posts and tweets
- Commerce Kickstart – For your e-commerce solutions
- Thunder – For media and publishing websites
- Open Social – For setting up a community website.
- Open Atrium – For creating intranet
Administration.
Does It Allow Easy Administration?
No one would not want to shell out extra penny every time you want to add a new feature or chuck out the other. It is important for a CMS to provide with easy content and user access control, so site administrators can create new content and divide roles and functions which exclude the extra burden from one person. Drupal provides ‘permission access’ which can help in assigning different admins for different roles making it less cumbersome when involving more than one admin.
Drupal as an Enterprise Content Management System?
As the business grows, one often requires an intranet system which helps in better storage and sharing of data in the most efficient way. ECM System is different from the web content management system in the way that the former is specifically designed for enterprise websites and is more dynamic (in that aspect). Drupal offers various modules and distributions which help in the establishment of an ECM. ECMS can be established in two ways, either using Drupal modules and features or with the third party configuration. Drupal as an Enterprise portal does more than just serving content. It brings with it, the ability to interact with different stakeholders while also presenting personalized content. Drupal’s integration capabilities help the website to serve as a central content management system integrating with other social media channels.
Bottom Line.
World’s leading businesses and institutions like whitehouse.gov, UN, Johnson and Johnson, L’oreal are among those who have migrated to Drupal because it provides not just the basic framework for your website, but it also fulfills the space for overall development. The benefits Drupal provides in terms of UX/UI, visitor engagement and social integration are unmatched. Drupal was developed as a CMS but with time it has been evolved into a framework which fulfills the needs and overcomes the challenges of enterprises. With time Drupal community has worked to ensure the needs and quality are met keeping in mind the needs of the market
Vidhatanand Sharma is an Open Source evangelist and has keen interests in personalized experience on the web. He has been associated with Drupal for close to a decade now and has worked as Technical Officer for various agencies. He is also the founder of VocabMonk, which is a simple and easy to use virtual assistant powered by AI. Currently, he is working as Chief Engagement Officer at OpenSense Labs, New Delhi, India.
