What we learnt: DrupalCon Prague '22

WHAT WE LEARNT AT DRUPALCON PRAGUE 2022

Who doesn’t love filling their brains with even more knowledge? We certainly do! We recently attended DrupalCon Prague 2022 to learn, connect and find out what future innovations the company and community have in store to provide a better user experience. We were really impressed at what’s coming down the line.

Future Innovations

• Automatic Updates - Keeping websites secure, patched and up to date can be a time-consuming business.  Automatic updates will allow us to focus less on routine maintenance, and instead dedicate more time to innovation and improvement. 
• Improved Editorial Experience - With an updated text editor, a completely redesigned accessible administration theme, and a drag-and-drop layout builder, maintaining your content on a Drupal content management software (CMS) will become easier than ever. 
• Increased Accessibility - When making your website accessible is hard, clients are sometimes less willing to dedicate budget to that area. Improvements in out-of-the-box accessibility will allow more of the budget to be used for that all-important wow-factor.
• Optimisation - Improvements in image optimisation, caching, code optimisation and server-side improvements will mean Drupal sites are faster to run, and require less resources to serve, increasing both user experience and server demands.

Pete Davis, our Head of Delivery, said this about the event: “This was my fourth DrupalCon and it was as inspirational as always. Drupal is still a hugely popular CMS in the industry, despite competitors chipping away at the periphery. Seeing the number of people in the community dedicated to improving and innovating the product is amazing.”

Michal Czernik, Head of Development, added: “The Drupal community is as dedicated as ever to making it a better experience for everyone and so are we. We’re proud of what we create for our clients and can’t wait to see some of these innovations come to life.”

If you’d like to watch the keynotes from DrupalCon Prague 2022, check out the videos here.

To Drupal or not to Drupal?

And so this raises the question: To Drupal or not to Drupal? At Everything–Connected we are technology agnostic, for us it is about choosing the right solution for each individual business. There is no such thing as the perfect CMS, but that said, at Everything–Connected we’ve been using Drupal since 2015 to aid the creation of websites for clients, and we’ve had some amazing results. We want to provide our clients with unique digital experiences and Drupal gives us that opportunity! There is a reason why so many of the fortune 500 businesses chose Drupal.

So, for the right business, why do we think Drupal is a great marketing tool?

• Personalisation - You can make the content right for each user.
• Headless - Distribute content to multiple channels.
• Possibilities - If you can imagine it, chances are Drupal can do it, which is pretty neat if you’ve got lots of ideas to implement!

Although there is no universal perfect choice of CMS, there is an ideal choice for different situations. We’ve consistently found Drupal to be a great solution to those situations. From start-ups through to large-scale enterprises, clients are always satisfied with it, whether they’re looking for site security and stability, or the chance to fully customise the site to their precise requirements and specific integration needs.

When not to use Drupal?

Ok, you get it, we like Drupal. But it's not right for every business. Here are a few pointers for when you are not ready to go down the Drupal route.

1. You are not ready for it - it's not considered the 'friendliest' of interfaces and managing Drupal is a challenge without developer assistance. It is infinitely customisable so typically suits the needs of more complex businesses but for many they may be able to meet their needs with a more 'out of the box' solution.
2. It's not cheap - customisation is great but will require developer support and add cost. Drupal framework requires years of experience and expertise, which is one of the reasons why the platform has not been able to capture more than 4.6% of the CMS market share.
3. Drupal maintenance - One consideration of Drupal is the ongoing maintenance that the content management system may require. Like all CMS’s, you’ll have to keep on top of updates and security patches, but you’ll also have to be ready to implement scalability techniques and resources once your traffic and viewership begins to grow.

Interested in learning more about how we use Drupal to enhance your website and if it is the right choice for your business? Find out more at www.e-c.agency