1) Built-in support for multi-language sites and admin portals

Let's jump right in! For business owners, ecommerce eliminates many restrictions of traditional business practices. One opportunity is the ability to sell your product to overseas consumers, expanding your possible market to contain, well virtually, the whole world. Of course, one of the barriers to entry into certain markets may be the language.

Imagine this: You are a Brazilian business owner who just invented chewing gum that never loses its flavour. Obviously, the demand for this product is worldwide. The only problem is that you do not feel comfortable writing the script for your new online product page in English or any language other than Portuguese for that matter. In a perfect world, the ideal solution might be to hire translators for every language of each country that you want to sell this amazing gum in. However, the costs of such an endeavour are enough to make even those with even the deepest of pockets think twice.

In my opinion, the next best and completely viable option is to choose to develop your chewing gum site using Drupal then make use of the many multilingual modules to automatically translate your content (just Google “Drupal automatic translate” for a list of options). The advantage of these Drupal translation modules is that, first, it can appear as an option at the top of the page and is therefore easily accessible to the customer. Second, additional modules can allow you to automatically show the users local language based on their browser’s set language. Third, you can choose which blocks of text you want to translate and which you do not; so let us say for aesthetic reasons or brand awareness you do not want a certain block of the site to be translated, you simply do not enable the translation for that block in the admin portal. Additionally, while your site frontend is being translated for your visitors, as an admin you can maintain Portuguese as the primary language to run your backend admin portal.

Speaking from my own experience, I shop online for bicycle components quite often. The problem is many of the unique manufacturers I am looking to buy from are based out of Italy and Germany. Google translate can do an adequate job of helping you navigate the site, but when it comes to the finer details like product specifications or return policies I quickly find myself out of my depth. The great thing about using Drupal Translate is that you can manually enter the translation for each language of every block on your website. So for example, instead of paying for a full site translation in each language, you could hire professionals to translate the important areas like the fine print and leave the less critical areas up to Drupal.

2) Features on features

Okay, Drupal is not exactly an episode of Pimp My Ride, but it can pretty much do anything you can dream of. If, for some reason, you want to design a site that sources all of the types of chicken wings sold in restaurants across your city. Then create a catalogue that breaks down the various chicken wings by texture, flavour, price, size, messiness, etc. Now you want to integrate a system that uses logic and intelligence to recommend the best beer your company sells to accompany any wing selection made. This is all possible with Drupal.

The cost to develop such a unique site with these custom modules on Drupal would not be cheap. However, the point remains that a feature such as the one mentioned above is quite crazy, but completely possible. If there is functionality that you need, it can be built on Drupal. The other big takeaway is that once you have paid for the development of the module you are now the owner and do not have to worry about any ongoing licensing costs. For reasons like these, it is my opinion that Drupal is the best CMS for such robust and custom site requirements.

3) Security

Of course, nothing can ever be fully secure especially without regular upkeep, but Drupal does a few things differently that should help you sleep better at night. Unlike the many popular SaaS platforms, Drupal is open source and non-proprietary. This means that you are the owner of your data and you are the one who decides how it is managed, meaning you can fine tune every aspect of your Drupal site from the site itself to your hosting environment. If you have a security team or security-focused partner that you work with, Drupal provides the flexibility they need to keep your data safe.

The official Drupal Security Team is also thoroughly on top of the security of the core Drupal software’s code and helps module developers keep their modules secure. This team frequently releases security patches that address any vulnerabilities that come up. In addition to the official Drupal team, the large Drupal community of developers donate their time to develop and monitor Drupal’s code. Drupal and all of it’s modules are built using a core set of coding standards, so the many thousands of developers working with Drupal’s code ensures security issues are found and addressed quickly.

Lastly, one of the features of Drupal that is best known is its ability to integrate into third-party applications. As such, Drupal is also capable of easily integrating into other security systems and platforms on the market. You’re not restricted to Drupal alone.

4) Open source community

In my mind, there are two main reasons that the open-source nature of Drupal and the community that surrounds it are such an advantage.

First, because of the large community of developers and its open-sourced nature, there are countless plug-and-play ready modules available free of licensing fees just waiting to be added to your website. This means, in addition, you are the owner of your own code and data. Furthermore, you never have to worry about losing development support for your website. There will always be another Drupal agency out there waiting to pick up the pieces if something were to go wrong.

Second, because there is such a large community of developers behind the expansion of Drupal, you have a veritable fusion of diverse ideas and designs. Instead of a single organization pushing code in a certain direction, you can find incredibly creative and unique libraries of code. This means a deeper pool of free talent to pull from. Even with the creative minds driving the development of Drupal, there is still consistency in the underlying code. This enables easier upkeep of the code itself and allows a lower barrier of entry when onboarding new developers. The advantage to the end-user is that, when compared to a fully custom build, using Drupal means that should your partner agency ever go out of business or the relationship deteriorates, you will have other experts in Drupal to turn to.

5) Future-proof

I keep bringing this up, but it really enables so many possibilities; because Drupal is so open to API integrations, you can design Drupal to work as a modular middleware behind the scenes. This means as you acquire new technology and software, it really is as simple as plugging it in and configuring an API hook.

Furthermore, as long as Drupal is paired with the right server, it can handle endless amounts of traffic and scale from small business to enterprise. This is a reason why Drupal is such a popular CMS of choice for medium-sized to enterprise-level organizations.

Finally, Drupal as a CMS is kind of like Play-Doh. You can build out your frontend experience for the market you are presently targeting using Drupal’s built-in theming layer or by using one of the many other frontend frameworks. Drupal’s APIs allow it to run headless, so it can hold your backend data but you’re not tied down to any specific way of building your frontend. Ten years down the road, though, you may have a completely different set of needs for your frontend framework. No problem, you can rest assured that Drupal won't get in your way.

Are you considering options for your digital experience platform?

Choosing the right DXP now is important to your business now and in the future. Protect your tech investment by assessing the trade-offs of buy or build deployment options and how they relate to your digital experience goals and business outcomes. This Gartner report has been made available to our readers for a limited time and will help you get started. Check it out.