Digital brands and platforms that are heavily reliant upon content publishing and distribution for business realize that their content is not enough.
They need to deliver an impressive and engaging digital experience for their readers; an experience that is responsive to their content consumption behaviors and needs.
A major aspect of the experience that matters most for content consumers is how they view that content. The View Mode. View Modes are display modes that configure how content entities on any website are displayed and presented by the website visitors.
Our dev team decided to create the View Modes Inventory (VMI) module which is basically a collection of View Mode templates that are ready to be used within minutes. These templates are the most popular and highest-rated View Modes used by giant content publishing platforms across the internet such as CNN and the BBC.
BBC Homepage View Mode - Source: BBC News
Why VMI Module? Here are 3 reasons why the VMI module is an essential aspect of building any content-heavy digital experience:
1. More for Less
Why spend more than you need to when you can exceed your expected gains for far less?
This logic was simple for media powerhouses such as Al Jazeera when they opted to build their media network using Drupal. As a news network multimedia platform that relied upon content publishing, management and distribution they were already impressed with Drupal’s focus on digital experiences that engage website visitors.
Using the capabilities of the VMI module Al Jazeera was able to create the best-in-class View Mode for their digital news platforms in various languages within minutes.
Al Jazeera Balkans Homepage View Mode - Source: Al Jazeera Balkans
Your project development time will be able to cut hundreds of hours working on this feature by simply selecting and personalizing one of the many View Modes available in the VMI module.
2. Integrated Responsive Design
As aforementioned, the VMI module is inherently designed to match the best practices and standards of digital experience building. Of course, this includes design.
The VMI module is integrated with the Responsive Images core module which allows your developer to upload images and visual content to the website without worrying about responsive design issues.
Source: Varbase Demo
VMI utilizes the well-known Twitter Bootstrap library that handles all responsive grid layouts and other needed front-end features.
Simply opt for the dimensions you need and the VMI module will take care of scaling each image or design to fit any device screen size. The VMI module's available view modes and layouts include:
Vertical media
- Vertical media teaser - Xlarge.
- Vertical media teaser - large.
- Vertical media teaser - medium.
- Vertical media teaser - small.
- Vertical media teaser - Xsmall.
Horizontal media
- Horizontal media teaser - Xlarge.
- Horizontal media teaser - large.
- Horizontal media teaser - medium.
- Horizontal media teaser - small.
- Horizontal media teaser - Xsmall.
Text teaser
- Text teaser - large.
- Text teaser - medium.
- Text teaser - small.
Touts
- Tout - Xlarge.
- Tout - large.
- Tout - medium.
Hero
- Hero - Xlarge.
3. Convenient Versatility
Besides the focus on creating effective digital experiences; Drupal’s major appeal has been the dedication of its open-source community to support these experiences.
This is a key ingredient in our VMI module.
The module allows you to revamp your digital platform within minutes without compromising the quality of performance or allocating the typical resources needed when building a new website.
Simply select another View Mode template and you can alter the entire display of your web pages within 5 minutes.
Other advantages include your ability to personalize a particular web page (e.g.) event announcement or landing page; in a bid to highlight it.
Regardless of the size of your project, if you are running a blog or planning to launch an ambitious content-heavy digital experience; Drupal is the ideal technology and CMS to build your project thanks to the hassle-free solutions you can integrate to create the best media digital experience possible.