If you’re searching for a powerful content management system to build and manage your website, you might have heard about Drupal. The latest version of this technically advanced CMS option offers numerous core functionalities, upgrades, and additions to give you a competitive edge. If you’re wondering if Drupal website development is still relevant in 2022, then here’s what you need to know about this platform:
Latest Drupal Stats for 2022
- Currently, Drupal powers over 1.7 million websites worldwide.
- The number of active Drupal websites is 588,653. (Source BuiltWith)
- Drupal websites in the top 1 million 31,344. (Source BuiltWith)
- 5% of all websites with known CMS use the Drupal platform, which is nearly 1.9% of all live websites. (Source W3Techs)
- Drupal 9, the latest Drupal version has been installed live by users more than 100,000 times.
- Approximately, 48,166 Drupal modules are free to download. (Source Drupal)
- There are 1.3M+ users registered on the official Drupal website. (Source AgileDrop)
- Drupal has 2.0% of the global CMS market share. (Source – W3Techs)
So, these were some of the current stats related to the popularity of Drupal website development.
Introduction to Drupal
Drupal is an open-source and free-to-use content management system written in PHP using Symfony. It does not include any proprietary code and hence, it is highly flexible and extensible. Drupal is used as a CMS for a diverse range of websites including personal blogs to corporate and government websites. Some of the popular websites built using Drupal include Twitter, Pinterest, the Australian Government, Harvard University, Timex, eBay, NASA, etc.
This robust CMS is supported by a massive and active community of developers and contributors. Additionally, there is a huge market for responsive themes, distributions, and modules.
What Makes Drupal a Popular CMS Solution
Drupal is a great value proposition for businesses looking to establish a distinguishable digital presence. It’s because the platform offers enhanced scalability, SEO features, security, and flexibility. Moreover, many hosting service providers provide reliable Drupal hosting services, which adds to the list of reasons why Drupal is a popular CMS solution.
These are just to name a few. Here are the top reasons why businesses approach a Drupal web design and development company to build their digital presence.
- 100% Free and Open Source
As said earlier, Drupal is a completely free and open-source platform. So, it is absolutely free to download as you don’t need to purchase a software license or pay any fee. All you need to do is install the software file on your web server, and there you go!
- Higher Flexibility
When compared with its competitors, the Drupal CMS is more flexible. It’s because that platform is designed for custom web development. It helps developers to build and manage various content types. Furthermore, the CMS offers a flexible design platform that enables developers to create a feature and content-rich websites.
- Greater Scalability
Another reason to invest in Drupal website development is the scalability the platform offers. Drupal allows you to add unlimited pages to your website without changing anything.
Additionally, it is capable of handling high traffic volumes as well as constant organic traffic. Perhaps, this is one reason why popular websites such as whitehouse.gov and weather.com use Drupal as the reliable CMS for their websites.
- Templates Enriched with Features
Drupal is backed by a large community of modern theme designers, thus creating well-designed and feature-rich templates. So, using one of the ready-to-use Drupal themes, you can get started with your Drupal website development in no time.
- Free Modules
There are thousands of Drupal modules developed by developers and contributors that will help you add essential features and functionality to your website quickly. Module ranges from CMS features and security to social media and data backup.
- Enhanced Security
When it comes to evaluating the CMS based on security, Drupal will never disappoint you. High-end security is one of the main reasons why businesses with sensitive, confidential data rely on Drupal’s advanced security. The CMS solution ensures enterprise-level security by providing security patches and protecting against malware and cyberattacks.
- SEO-friendly CMS
Drupal offers essential SEO functionalities that can boost your search engine ranking. It provides modules for the title, meta description, meta keyword, header tags, etc. You can create content and text optimized for search engines and present a dynamic URL on your web page as a static one.
Drupal offers numerous free and premium responsive themes ranging from basic themes to business-oriented ones. You can use also use numerous premium design templates or create a customized one with the support of a professional Drupal web development service provider.
- Superior Quality and Value
Drupal offers great value to your business website with a huge range of elements, modules, etc. You can build a wide variety of websites ranging from static blog websites to dynamic social networking platforms.
The CMS provides greater multi-usability which enables it to work optimally with PHP, MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc. It also supports jQuery and LAMP. Drupal’s advanced API libraries and diverse modules are making the platform more popular.
- Cross-browser Usability and Support
The CMS offers greater usability and compatibility with virtually all popular web browsers such as Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari, and Mozilla Firebox. It helps create websites with designs and functionality translating as expected across all browsers.
- Impressive eCommerce Features
Ideally, the Drupal CMS is the most fitting eCommerce solution for online merchants. In Drupal website development, integrating essential eCommerce features, and payment gateway is a child’s play. It is possible because of numerous open modules and APIs available for Drupal.
Furthermore, it not only enables you to design your content and integrate marketing but also offers order fulfillment tools that help in driving and engaging more customers.
- Supports Multilingual Functionality
Drupal comes with built-in multi-language handling capabilities that provide value to users’ requirements and deliver localized online experiences. This saves them money and time in the process. You can easily build multilingual websites quickly and easily. In Drupal 8, four code modules enable complete language translation of each element of your website. Besides, the Drupal 8 version supports 100 different languages by default for translation.
- Useful Drupal 9 Features
The latest Drupal version 9 comes with excellent features that will serve as motivation for sites running on the older Drupal versions. Since the official support for Drupal 7 and 8 has ended, users on these versions need to migrate to the latest version.
Drupal 9 offers core features such as backward compatibility, faster and enhanced performance, removal of deprecations, headless CMS, and more.
If you want to boost the performance of your Drupal site and strengthen its security, you may consider hiring professionals for Drupal 8 to Drupal 9 migration services.
Conclusion
Certainly, most renowned government and private organizations are using Drupal website development services to reap the benefits of Drupal. With unique features, flexibility, scalability, and more, Drupal has become the premier choice for developers and businesses worldwide.
The platform also allows businesses to quickly and effectively make changes to enhance customer experiences. Furthermore, it supports a mobile-first approach by facilitating the development of mobile apps and responsive sites for various screen sizes.
If you’re looking for a robust platform to build a high-quality and future-proof website, then Drupal is an ideal CMS for you. You may approach a reputed mobile app development company in Delhi to avail of cost-effective Drupal development services and solutions today.
Besides, if you’re running your website on Drupal 7 and 8, it’s high time that you upgrade to the latest Drupal 9 version and make the most out of its advanced features. So, make your move as soon as possible if you want to stay ahead in the market competition.
Author’s Bio
Author’s Name is a Senior Drupal Consultant in a leading Drupal development company in India. He/She has 7+ years of experience in providing personalized consulting services to businesses and offering suggestions on their business growth. During his/her leisure hours, Author’s Name loves reading books on psychology and writing informative blogs on various topics, including Drupal website development and trends.