Looking Ahead: Navigating Drupal in 2023 and Beyond

Drupal is one of the most popular Open-source CMS technologies available out there. As a business owner, it is common to feel uncertain about technologies implemented into the business process. But here’s the good news: Drupal is here to stay, thrive, and help businesses provide superior digital experiences in 2023 and beyond.
In this article, you will learn not only about the future scope of Drupal but also ‘why’ organizations Hire Drupal Developers, and hopefully this will help you make better decisions. 

What is Drupal?

Drupal is a free and flexible open-source CMS platform for building and managing websites. The software is written in PHP language and distributed under the GNU general public license. There’s no doubt that Drupal technology can help in building corporate websites; at the same time, they can also build E-commerce sites, social networking sites, microsites, kiosks, and many other forms of digital web experiences.

In the year 2000, Dries Buytaert, an undergraduate from the University of Antwerp, created Drupal as a message board. He wanted to introduce the software as ‘Dorp’ which means ‘village’ in the Dutch language. While registering his software, he mistyped it as ‘Drop’ and later evolved as ‘Drupal’ which is the English translation of ‘Druppel’ meaning ‘Drop’ in Dutch.

It’s been more than two decades since then, now the Content Management Systems has more than 40,000 modules that extend to areas such as content scheduling, tokenizing, etc. Even credible firms such as NASA, The Economist, Tesla, Citibank, etc., have their websites built with Drupal.

Such credible organizations trust this CMS technology because it’s built on a strong stack foundation–LAMP Stack–Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. These individual technologies are themselves strong enough, when combined they provide digital experiences to make websites flexible and agile. To add further, even government websites/bodies are relying on Drupal because of its stand-out security features–gain security access, manage user controls, and implement data encryption.

Why do Companies Choose Drupal Over Other CMS?

Drupal has managed to provide satisfying digital experiences to over a million websites in the last two decades. 

But why do companies choose Drupal?

1. Developers often turn to Drupal for its robust feature set, which allows for greater customization and control over websites and applications.To explain further, Drupal can handle large amounts of content and traffic seamlessly.
2. The high modularity allows organizations to customize and extend the platform based on their specific needs.
3. Along with customization, it has a dedicated security team to check for any errors, and potential vulnerabilities regularly. This is particularly useful for large companies and government bodies because of their huge database of sensitive information. Businesses that prioritize providing a personalized experience in the user's language are more likely to build long-term relationships with customers and foster brand loyalty. 
4. Drupal provides outstanding support for multiple languages using its module ‘Multilingual features.’
5. What separates Drupal from other proprietary software is the huge community of developers, contributors, and users. They usually come from different backgrounds with diverse experiences and their extensive knowledge and resources can help you identify hidden potential within your business website. You can even solve your doubts within the community and take the help of good documentation, tutorials, and webinars, and even attend offline events to network with like-minded people. Some organizations have set up complex systems and third-party tools within the business process. 
6. Drupal has extensive API and smooth integration capabilities with CRM and marketing automation platforms. All these can be enjoyed by downloading Drupal at no cost. Plus, their architecture and modules are optimized for SEO, which can further help you grow your business organically.

What is the Future of Drupal as a CMS?

W3 techs say that “Drupal is used by 1.8% of all the websites whose content management system we know. This is 1.2% of all the websites.” From the graph above, it’s evident that the future of Drupal looks promising. Their significant USP is innovation–the community is always at the forefront of web development trends. With every update, using Drupal is becoming easier–improving the user interface and adding more customization options have been one of their top priorities. This will be extremely beneficial to folks with less technical skills.

As cyber threats are increasing day by day, the community will focus more on building robust security measures to make it almost impossible for malicious actors to harm your Drupal website.

Around 58.43% of website traffic comes from smartphones, and Drupal will go into depth on this aspect to provide a mobile-friendly experience to your business customers. Let’s face it, Drupal will definitely face competition from other CMS such as WordPress, Joomla, Magneto, and many others. But if Drupal keeps innovating and overdeliver its expectations, then it’s going to multifold its user base for sure.

Conclusion

After analyzing the latest trends, it’s safe to say that Drupal will continue to be a popular and reliable choice for businesses to build high-quality websites. The vast array of features and functionalities makes it a favorite among businesses, governments, and educational institutions.

At LN Webworks, we have an expert developers team and we take pride in delivering high-quality websites that meet the organization’s requirements. Let’s work together to create a Drupal website that sets you apart from the competition and delivers an excellent user experience. Contact us today!