Should you use the Drupal framework for your website applications?

Drupal is a flexible yet powerful content management framework available freely in the market. You get full support from the community - made of good developers - and it costs you nothing. You get many features out of the box without configuring anything.

You have - most probably - read about the Drupal framework online. And you have seen many good and bad feedback about it. 

And you are confused about it - if you should use it? 

The above question is not new to me. I have been providing my IT outsourcing service for a long time, and many clients have questioned me about it. I feel these types of questions are harder to answer.

I have invested my time learning Drupal and can tell you that you can use it without any problem for any website applications. And if you are looking for our Drupal development service, you can hire our development team. 

As a simple rule, you should not use any framework without learning about your project's requirements. A good framework may make or break your websites. Why? Because your project is not static but evolves over time. 

You may need to integrate easy or complex features in the future. I have written about the website application frameworks for the PHP language, and you can compare them according to your requirements.

I advocate the Drupal framework often, and the following are some reasons for choosing it.

The flexibility of creating any content type

A content type is a specific entity containing its own fields and meaning. And you can create many custom content types in Drupal. It does not restrict you to an article, blog, or static page type. Many software developers call it a content management framework rather than a content management system.

You do not need to be a programming expert to create any new content type. It gives you an interactive user interface for that.

Other frameworks do not provide support for custom content types. You need to extend your core website or install third-party plugins or components.

A better template mechanism

Another advantage of using Drupal is its template mechanism. It uses a Twig template engine that is clean and easy to learn. Any non-programmer team member can start creating a view template without worrying about the back-end development issues.

Other frameworks still use the old PHP-style template where you embed PHP code to show the entity information.

API first approach

You do not want to restrict your application to the website only. Your audience may use any Network enabled device to browse your product. 

And that is where API's first approach is beneficial. 

And I think it is a very thoughtful decision from the Drupal community. It helps clients to support many alternatives to consume their products.

For example, one client requested me to create two different user interfaces for two different users. One uses a single-page interface - Angular framework - and the other uses a simple website.

Since I was using the Drupal back-end, I could deliver both interfaces without changing many things.

API first approach allows you to create your business logic separately and then provide information in response. And it is up to the consumer as to how he is using it.

Performance stability over the time

Over the course of my development career, I have worked on many frameworks, and I noticed one thing very carefully. They have performance issues over time.

A new website with a small amount of content performs well. But as time passes, the content creators start adding content daily. The website performance suffers.

And then, you have two options; either improve the server configuration or optimize the website and cut down your corners. But still, you will not have stable performance over time.

But Drupal has a different story. I have used it for some heavy content-based websites, and it performs well. And still, the same websites do not suffer any lack of performance over the years.

Community support

All frameworks have good community support in forums, issue boards, and paid customer support. But the probability of getting a technical answer from these communities is a little tricky.

In the case of Drupal, it is the developer community that solves all the technical issues. You only need to visit their issue boards, write your technical problems, and boom. You will have an answer within an hour. And I have tested it many times.

As a software architect, I know it is hard to support all users and give answers to all the questions – and some are really dumb questions. And therefore, I admire all framework communities for giving their best to framework users. 

And many other factors affect my decision in selecting the appropriate framework.