What is Drupal

Drupal whose name was derived from the dutch word "druppel" which means "Drop- water droplet" is one of the most popular CRM tool. It is one of the most popular yet powerful languages used for web development. Stats say that Drupal is used by 4.7% websites all over the world.

Drupal is an open source tool which means that there is no cost involved to download and use the software. It also holds a huge community of 1.3 million users who contribute towards the tool to make it robust and less error prone. We have Drupal 8 currently that has more features compared to its predecessor Drupal 7. Drupal 7 has brought numerous improvements, like CKEditor WYSIWYG enhancements, added APIs, an improved help page, and two new experimental modules.

It lets you to easily create and manage a wide variety of Web sites starting from a simple blog to an ecommerce site. The application comprises of a content management platform and a development framework.

Drupal lets digital marketing companies to make effective use of the rich digital experiences across the web, mobile and Social Media. With Drupal you can customize, manage and edit your website from any browser with ease.

Why Drupal development

•  Reliability: Drupal, which has been in the market since 2001 has established a great number of communities that has a greater part in making it robust and stable so far. Drupal is a great choice for business-critical online services for which reliability is indispensible. Drupal websites are known for its stability and reliability even in high online traffic conditions. Ecommerce sites prefer Drupal for its high speed and High reliability.
• Readymade Features: Anything you want to create for your project is mostly available in Drupal ready made which includes: user account registration and maintenance, RSS-Feeds, menu management, system administration and page layout customization and much more. Another added advantage is that almost all of the most useful modules (Drupal add-ons) are contributed to the Drupal community for free unlike other CMS. 
• Dedicated community: Since the software had come to the market 17 years before, it has evolved with time and gathered a vast community of enthusiastic developers who have contributed to it. If you are a newbie or a developer who has a few questions, you can always approach the Drupal community for answers and support. Drupal.org is the place where you dig in for learning material, upcoming news, or ask for support from contributors, and specialists.
• Flexibility: Drupal allows users to create pages, blog entries, stories, books and polls out of the box.  It allows you to customize any type of website that fits your taste and requirements. Drupal gives its users  the flexibility to create and manage different content types like video, polls, user management, text, blog, podcasts, real-time stats, and revision controls. 
• Scalability: You can easily scale your Drupal core to a higher level with a variety of contributed Drupal modules. Besides being totally different, These Drupal modules integrate flawlessly and efficiently with the Drupal core. This makes the mundane task of scaling an easy one with Drupal. These modules are flexible enough to tweak as per your requirements either by you or with the help of Drupal development services.
• Security: Drupal is mature, stable and a robust code designed and tested with security in mind. It is widely used to develop secure websites for leading corporations, brands, and governments. Drupal has been stringently tested for security issues by Drupal experts and its contributors. Drupal locks its directories and restricts direct access to ensure security. A lot of government sites which demands extreme security like whitehouse.org , commerce.gov etc.  have chosen Drupal without doubt.  

Famous sites that use Drupal: 

• White House: www.whitehouse.gov
• Twitter developer community: http://dev.twitter.com
• Zynga https://zynga.com/
• GE: www.ge.com
• New York Stock Exchange: www.nyse.com
• Pinterest : https://in.pinterest.com/ 

Drupal Modules

In the current date, the Drupal community has developed about 16.000 modules with different functions. Creating A customized blog or an e-commerce in just a matter of few clicks when it comes to Drupal- all thanks to Drupal modules. Drupal modules are add-ons that let you extend, build, and customize a website with whatever functions are required Instead of always having every feature that will never be used in the website's code. Here's a list of top free Drupal modules used by Drupal development companies that are easy to use and facilitates your Drupal development rapidly.

Top Drupal modules that makes Drupal development easier:

1.  Backup and Migrate

Certified for: Drupal 5/6/7

Losing important data is not a big deal but not having a backup of it is definitely a nightmare. The Backup and Migrate module developed by Gorton Studios allows you to download backups or save backups on a schedule. It not only lets you schedule your backups but also send them to a variety of destinations.

It lets you to quickly and effortlessly back up your website so that it can be transferred or restored.

Drupal Backup and Migrate Module 

2. Context

Certified for: Drupal 6

A lot of pages we find are uniform throughout, meanwhile there are some sites that prefer showing different contents, on your site based on certain conditions. For instance you might want certain elements to be displayed in one way in a homepage and in a different style in the other pages. That's when context comes to your rescue.

The Context Drupal module allows showing different elements, or contents on your site based on conditions. For example, you may only want some blocks to show up at the bottom of the homepage, and change it to display differently on products page. This is when Context comes into picture, it enables admins to define contexts for a site and manage how and when these contexts control the look of different parts of the site.

Add a New Context 

3. Views

Certified for: Drupal 6/7/8

This is the most popular module due to its utility. Views is a vital module that lets you organize content in Drupal. The views module lets administrators and site designers to create, manage, and display lists of content. Views is a smart query builder for Drupal that displays any sort of list in a certain way, based on the query you build. It lets you sort or filter the content of the individual list and come up with an interesting content node like, say, a list of unread forum posts.

4. Media

Certified for: Drupal 7

Handling media files which is interesting everywhere is cumbersome when it comes to Drupal Core.

Media lets you manage images, documents, audio & video files easily. It helps you to work files so easily regardless of whether they are hosted on your own site or a 3rd party site. It is commonly referred to as a 'file browser to the internet. 

5. PathAuto:

Certified for: Drupal 7

Pathauto helps you generate clean, keyword rich URLs in Drupal. It lets the user to define a data pattern so that the system can generate a URL automatically. This is an essential module for a Drupal website with wide variety new contents. It automatically generates URL/path aliases for various kinds of content (nodes, taxonomy terms, users) without requiring the user to manually specify the path alias.  

6. Custom Contextual Links

Certified for: Drupal 7

Custom Contextual Links by ImageX Media simplifies the long process of moving around the administrative tools. It lets you to add your own links to the contextual drop down widgets of blocks and nodes.

Contextual links are really helpful for quickly accessing settings pages within your Drupal.

By default, the contextual module smartly adds links that it finds in the normal Drupal menu system. It is easy to use and makes the task of digging around Drupal's admin links simpler for admins.

Custom Contextual Links 

7. Delta

Certified for: Drupal 6

Delta lets you, via the Context module to create duplicates of your theme settings for any context on your site. You can configure theme settings based on node types, context or groups of paths using Delta. You can then save those theme adjustments in Delta and display them when a particular context for your site is shown. It lets you create custom themes for Context to use when it needs to thereby saving you from theming hassle.

Add a New Template 

8. Display Suite

Certified for: Drupal 6/7/8

Display Suite lets you to take full control over how your content is displayed using a drag and drop interface. You can organize and layout your nodes, views, comments, user data etc. the way you want without having to work your way through a lot of template files. It contains predefined list of layouts too for the developer to drag and drop.

Display Suite 

Comparison with other joomla extensions & WordPress Plugins

When it comes to content management systems, the most popular names we have heard of are WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. All three are powerful and comes with similar benefits like open-source software, each developed and maintained by a community of thousands, and all are free to download and use. 

WordPress is the best option for beginners who want to create a simple blog or brochure-type site. It's easy to use by even a person who has lesser knowledge. For a large, complex, highly customized site that requires scalability, performance and content organization, Drupal would be the best choice. If you need something in between both these which is also easy to learn then Joomla might be the answer.

Conclusion:

These readymade modules are a boon to this era where development and deliverables needs to speed up to produce results. Top Drupal development companies in Middle East make use of these modules to deliver the website comparatively quicker. You can develop your project yourself with these modules or outsource your task to Top Drupal development companies. Choose the company you entrust by carefully looking at its reviews (Drupal development companies reviews).

Here at eDesk HUB, we can save you from the hassle of finding the right company for your drupal website/app development. So go ahead with your development and we will zero down the Best Drupal development companies for you.