If you have stumbled upon various blogs discovering which of the content management systems is the best, you might have came across endless discussions about Drupal, WordPress and Joomla. There are a lot of texts, tables and infographics where these CMSs are described, and I’d like to be fair with you from the very beginning - if you are looking for a comparison, you’d better go for those ones. Beside other articles, this one gives you a monosemantic answer of what is the best CMS: after analyzing all of them, every single of Vardot’s 150+ customers has chosen Drupal. Next 10 chapters will be nothing but explanation why.
Though every CMS has advantages, Drupal turns out to be the most effective in a long-term perspective. This is because in simple terms, Drupal features an amazing collection of modules allowing development of any and every type of site: whether you are looking to create a blog, a brochure company site, an informational site, an e-commerce company site or a full-blown social community, Drupal can be the right tool for the job. Let’s dig deeper into some facts and know why Drupal is the best CMS for you.
Just imagine that Wikipedia would be managed only by certified editors that work together in one office. How many people would they need to cover all the articles in all the languages? Moreover, who would guarantee that these people know enough to identify and describe all the information that we need searching for a specific topic? The biggest advantage of Wikipedia is that everyone can contribute to any article: even if you’re an expert in very unusual topics, you’re more than welcome to share your knowledge with others. The same thing is an Open Source - you don’t pay to use this software and if you see that something is missing in it, you can edit it or request changes from other, more experienced members of the community. More opinions - more suggestions - more ideas - more value.
Why Open Source Will Dominate the Market
Below you’ll find main benefits that Drupal has as an Open Source CMS.
Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:121212_2_OpenSwissKnife.png
Drupal houses a robust, rapid and agile module for the purpose of web development. As written above, since it is an open source CMS, web developers from all across the world can work on it and fix all the issues and bugs that appear as per their needs. It comprises of thousands of modules (more than 13,000 for Drupal 7 and 8 combined) through which developers can quickly add specific features to their sites. You can easily think of CRM, security, polls, login modules, backup, performance, Social Media and SEO as Lego blocks that can be added to your website. Needless to say, Drupal boasts of quality such that the development time is reduced from months to days. And what’s more? Drupal comes with constant updates from a massive active community making it easier for developers to leverage its benefits to the fullest.
The best CMS should be 100% free and can be installed without the hassle of purchasing any license or recurring fees. Drupal comes with the option of choosing from the variety of modules and third-party integrations that can be used for developing a website adhering to your preference.
It comes with clean markup code out of the box that makes it easy for developers to manage content publishing. This makes it an affordable content management framework featuring an enormous amount of options free of charge.
The competency of Drupal lies in its versatility. Since it is open source, any web developer can work on it. As a website owner, one can also switch between Drupal vendors in case (s)he is not satisfied with the work of the currently hired web developer. With a few mouse clicks and a few minutes’ research on the internet, you can find a better Drupal web developer online.
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I’d say, the more complex the site is, the lower total cost of ownership would be for you to build it with Drupal. Although you’d probably spend a more in the beginning of your project than for example hiring a WordPress developer, you’ll save a lot in the future when you decide to add additional components to your site or to customize it. The best CMS shouldn't be cheap, but it has to be worth the money.
Drupal is for everyone. This means that anyone can use it anywhere to create a website of desired preference. It is supported by an active community of more than 1 million members who are constantly trying to make it more flexible for different websites. Not only this, according to usage statistics, Drupal fuels about 1,180,000 websites across the world. This means that if we surf the internet, we can easily come across Drupal websites in a nick of time. Hence, if you are getting your website developed, you can easily see its prototype already available online. Instead of visualizing things you need on your site, just compile them from other sites that already have these features. The idea is easy: if you see anything you like, you can have it, too.
Needless to say that the advantages listed above apply to all the Open Source CMS's. It gives us a good introduction about advantages of Drupal, however, it doesn’t explain why we think, Drupal is better than WordPress and Joomla. Next part of the article answers this question.
Drupal is reliable with accelerated adoption. According to Best PSD to Html, the Drupal 7 version was adopted by more than 100,000 websites in just 6 months as compared to Drupal 6 that took one year to achieve the same. Drupal 8 has even more reasons to migrate to and seems to be adopted faster than the previous versions. It is one framework that can easily handle high traffic and hence is essential for enterprises and world’s busiest web platforms. Drupal is your way to successful branding and immediate corporate success.
Unlike other CMS, Drupal is known for its rock-solid security measures that are complemented with constant security patches and updates from the community, led by Drupal’s Security Advisory team. It safeguards you from online hacking attempts. Moreover, the performance and security parameters can be managed effortlessly from the admin panel directly. If you take some effort and don’t forget to install new security patches and add the essential Drupal security modules, you can be sure that your website is absolutely protected. Even The Whitehouse’s official site has clinched the magnificence of Drupal technology - do you need other pieces of evidence of Drupal’s security? NASA, CERN, London Government - this list can really take pages. Share with us in the comments section your favorite examples!
Drupal enables developers to deploy core features and functionality to complex web platforms with the help of additional customization options and features. As a new age web development platform, Drupal allows creation and modification of big websites with a difficult structure. While our best CMS makes it easy to add taxonomy terms, it also facilitates plenty of opportunities for site extension.
The flexibility of Drupal lies in the fact that its basic functionality and modules come in 90 different languages. Some of these are Arabic (thanks to my colleagues from Vardot for translating all this), Chinese, and so-called internet-based Lolspeak, to name a few.
Its flexibility is such that you can customize almost everything on your site. Without the hassle of implementing custom code, you can customize pages, blogs, polls, forums, designs, layouts, aesthetics, fonts, stock images, 3rd party themes, colors, and much more.
Nowadays, the virtual arena is fuelled by SEO-friendly websites and social media elements like hashtags, tweets, profile posts and photo tags. This shows how imperative it has become to implement social media and SEO into your website. As a best CMS Drupal has this covered!
Powerful SEO modules, modern web publishing tools and clean code are the cornerstones of Drupal. This enables the CMS to offer developers an extensive range of 3rd party modules that can take your search engine optimization initiatives to a whole new level. And since the content is the focus here, SEO works like a charm to promote it faultlessly. The SEO modules also allow you to take control of URLs easily while consuming less amount of time as compared to other CMSs.
All these reasons make Drupal a perfect choice for the news/media/publishing industry that is worried about content and SEO more than others. Biggest publishing agencies build their sites with Drupal distributions like Uber publisher or Varbase that are used by Al Jazeera and other famous companies.
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It's possible to find tons of reasons why people think Drupal is the best CMS exer. If we compare your website to an exhibition, Drupal is not a one-shade canvas, but simply a flare-rich painting that can carry the entire event. While Drupal websites can be influenced by great examples online, it can also be used to configure your own unique brand. Each aspect of your website can be themed to your personal vision. This will not only make your business thrive but also enable you to stand apart from the competition and succeed in it.
As we can see, there is hardly any flaw to be observed in a robust, flexible and dependable CMS platform like Drupal. There’s a reason everyone loves it – developers, enterprises and even business clients are keen to be in the reliable shade of this CMS. Keeping abreast of the technology, Drupal is a platform that knows how to deliver the right content at the right time through the right medium and on the right device.
And why do you choose Drupal?