Why do OneEach Technologies developers choose Drupal for building websites for our nonprofit customers? As technology professionals, we seek a reliable, safe, and flexible website solution that allows us to create the features that our customers want for their website projects. We need to ensure we can build websites that are better, faster, and more secure than our customers’ current websites. So, we choose Drupal. And when you consider that large, world-wide known organizations like NASA, The Emmy Awards, The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), and Tesla also use Drupal for their websites, we’re in pretty good company! So, let’s dig a little deeper into Drupal.
What is Drupal?
Drupal is the content management software (CMS) we use to build your website. Drupal has been ranked as the #1 platform from global enterprises, governments, and higher education institutions. Here are some of the top characteristics we love:
- Great standard features and templates
- Easy content authoring and updating
- Reliable performance
- Flexible as you need it to be
- Continuous improvements and updated versions every 6 months since 2015
- Excellent secure, stable platform that’s been tested by hundreds of thousands of companies around the world
- Security team that monitors threats and publishes security patches
How Long Has Drupal Been Around?
The first version of Drupal was published in 2001, with subsequent key versions of Drupal released as follows:
- Drupal 5 in 2007
- Drupal 6 in 2009
- Drupal 7 in 2011
- Drupal 8 in 2015
- Drupal 9 in 2020
What Are Drupal’s Features & Benefits?
Drupal is an out-of-the-box web content management tool that is also extremely customizable. That way we can build the right website for you that meets your nonprofit’s communications, content management, educational, and fundraising needs. And when you ask us, “Can we use Drupal to build this type of website?” our answer is typically a resounding, “Yes!” Here are some of the great features from Drupal’s product web pages:
- Highly Scalable: This means Drupal can manage large, high-traffic sites; daily high traffic; periodic traffic spikes in traffic; and constant traffic. Drupal powers over 1.2 million websites worldwide.
- Mobile-First: It’s critical that a website delivers great visitor experiences, no matter what device they are on – mobile phone, tablet, laptop, desktop. Drupal supports mobile-first, responsive design.
- Security: Drupal’s dedicated security team validates and responds to security issues. They fix security problems and publish advisories that explain issues and steps to reduce the risk to them. Drupal is proven and secure, standing up to the most critical internet vulnerabilities.
- Easy Content Authoring & Editing:Tools for content creation, publishing, and editing make it easy for content creators to do their jobs. Drupal provides authentication and permissions to help manage workflows and previews to show how content will look before it’s published.
- Multisite: Organizations can manage many sites, brands, and campaigns on just one platform. Drupal allows quick, easy site creation and deployment.
- Multilingual: Four core modules for enabling translation of content on the website comes with Drupal 8/9 in 90+ languages. Drupal saves users time and money.
- Third-Party Integration: APIs integrate Drupal seamlessly with a variety of other marketing and business technologies. Drupal provides flexibility that provides websites with more vibrant content.
- Robust Community: Since Drupal is an open source software, thousands of organizations are involved in the process of building Drupal itself. The Drupal community is worldwide and shares its knowledge on the right ways and best practices of doing things within the platform.
What Value Does Drupal Bring To Nonprofits?
Drupal’s values and principles are quite similar to many nonprofits’ that we work with. Having alignment with the vendors and partners you work with is important for successful working relationships. Let’s look deeper into Drupal’s values and principles:
- Prioritize Impact: Drupal builds software that’s easy, accessible, and safe for users.
- Better Together: Drupal fosters a learning environment, collaborative decision-making, and involvement in community.
- Strive For Excellence: Drupal constantly re-evaluates and assumes that change is constant.
- Treat Each Other With Dignity & Respect: Drupal seeks to first understand, then to be understood and is relentlessly optimistic.
- Enjoy What You Do: The Drupal team and community has fun.
Do these values and principles align with your nonprofit’s? They align with OneEach’s and so it’s a no-brainer for us to partner with them!
Why We Choose Drupal
We trust this information has provided you with compelling reasons why we choose Drupal to design and build your nonprofit website. Over the next several weeks, we’ll be writing more about Drupal’s features and tools, showcasing how easy it is to use. If you’d like to chat with one of our Account Representatives and see a demo of the beautiful websites we’ve built, contact us today!