5 Signs Your Site Is Ready for Drupal

There's a saying in the digital industry - you're never done upgrading. And whether you're starting a brand new site or your current site is starting to feel out of date, choosing the right Content Management System (CMS) will affect everything you build. It's the difference between your future self (or team) cursing your name or singing your praises as they try to make simple updates. If you're ready to make a change in your web environment, and any of the following sounds familiar, Drupal may be the hero you need.

1. Your Business is Growing

Your numbers are up and your community is growing. But is your site keeping up? Whether you're the running the Dallas Cowboys' site or you're a mighty web team of one, Drupal is a highly scalable CMS. Consider the ways you want to grow: should your site be available in more than one language? Do you need a second or third site to support a different audience? Drupal includes multiple language support and has built-in functionality to let you easily run a multi-site environment right out of the box. Businesses of every size need to be concerned with accessibility, and that only becomes more pressing as you scale up. Why would you exclude a user before they have even seen your amazing site? You wouldn't. And Drupal can help with more extensive support for accessibility beyond font sizes and colour contrasts.

2. Your Content Needs Are Changing

We all know content is king, and we also know the critical need for web content to exist separately from its styling. Not only does that separation mean better accessibility, it also makes it much easier to reuse your content across different mediums. Drupal offers you the flexibility to identify and treat content types independently. Are you working with a blog post, an article, a featured story on your homepage? Not only will the styling needs for each be different, you may also want to set different permissions for each type, such as allowing a blog post to be published immediately, but a feature story may require a workflow approval.As your site grows, so too will the number of people you have contributing to your site. You have lots of option for how you structure that team - some choose to outsource complete website management, some rely on internal business units to be responsible for their respective areas, or you may have a dedicated in-house web team. No matter which way you choose to go, content revisioning in your CMS is essential for multiple author teams. Agency or in-house, someone has to be the final gatekeeper for what makes it to the site. Workbench, one of Drupal's many contributed modules, offers a customizable editorial workflow that lets you control who has what permissions, including who can draft and publish. You can even keep track of what's in the queue based on statuses like Draft and Pending Approval. An assist from Workbench Email incorporates flexible email notifications.

3. You're Ready To Go Responsive

If you've taken a look at your analytics lately, you might find what many others have lately: the majority of your users are viewing your site on either a mobile or tablet. A report by a US market research company suggests that there are now more mobile devices on the planet than people, and responsive design is the way to make sure your users get the experience best suited to their device, without maintaining multiple versions of your website. Remember: not only will you be serving your mobile users, you will also be providing a better experience across all of your platforms as responsive technology adapts to show your website in the best layout based on the size of the screen accessing it. Lucky for you, Drupal 8 comes with responsive functionality right out of the box.

4. Security Is Important To You

If it's good enough for The White House and the US Department of Transportation, chances are it is pretty secure. Some people are wary of open-source systems like Drupal, but their dedicated security team and the community of developers testing and working together to find vulnerabilities means the system is actually more secure.

5. You Want It To Be Easy

Your focus is on running your business and your CMS should help you, not act as a roadblock. With features like single-sign on, contextual editing and the ability to make changes from your smartphone, you'll be able to keep your site up to date without breaking a sweat. A CMS that makes editing easy means you won't have to rely on a developer to publish new content. Drupal offers drag and drop image uploads and an easy to use preview interface to let you or your team clearly see what changes will look like on different devices. With an extensive library of user-submitted modules, Drupal offers scalability and flexibility, without overcomplicating the experience for your team. If you're considering a new CMS, Drupal may just be the answer you and your future web team are looking for. Get in touch for a free site review, and let us show you.