CMS: Examining Drupal
Although not as well known to the general public as Wordpress, Drupal has been a favorite with developers for years, mainly due to its extensibility and highly dynamic nature. What the heck does that mean? Well, in a nutshell, Drupal is based on a portal model, which is a fancy way of saying it excels at connecting to, and communicating with, multiple data types. This means Drupal is unbeatable in its ability to pull content from multiple sources, and assemble it in a very organized fashion. Kinda like your aunt and her Hummel collection.
Why exactly has Drupal has become the darling of the developer community? It’s due to its core power and flexibility. It is fairly easy to customize, and has a boatload of add-ons called “modules.” Many of the modules have been built by professional developers, and are offered free to the Drupal community. These modules allow the Drupal developer to build highly dynamic sites, and structure content in any way they please.
Oh wait, you want to build in a responsive framework? No problem… Drupal has a Bootstrap sub-theme, the granddaddy of mobile-friendly frameworks, which automatically applies its entire arsenal of responsive elements to your site, to ensure that it looks good on every device.
If the site requires an online marketplace, Drupal is an excellent choice, as it has outstanding modules designed by the original Drupal creators to manage online sales, track inventory, offer coupon discounts and manage worldwide shipping and tax variations.
Like Wordpress, Drupal has an unlimited degree of flexibility in user types. Nearly every page element view and setting control in Drupal can be granted or denied to any user type, which means you can allow users complex control and access, or just enough permission to not blow something up. In fact, most developers agree that Drupal provides much more out-of-the-box functionality and granularity for dealing with user roles and permissions than WordPress currently does.
Drupal does require patience to fully understand how and where content lives on each page, so it may be overkill for simple sites. While adding content is easy for the user, creating custom page layout can be daunting. The page navigation and menu system, while quite powerful, can also be very confusing for new users. And simple page options and settings are sometimes buried in a cascade of drop downs and sub panels.
If you would like to know more about how a Content Management System can help you take control of your site, contact High Seas. We will be happy to go over the details, and create a plan to give your site the management system it always wanted.
Originally published at www.highseas.com.
