Why More Government Departments Are Switching Back To Drupal From Adobe CMS

Hundreds of departments, agencies, and offices are shifting to Drupal, an open-source platform that assists public sector enterprises in overcoming many challenges associated with Adobe CMS.

It would not be entirely incorrect to argue that a website or web application is judged primarily worthy due to its content. Although the functionality of a website is essential, the content is what closes the deal for the user. Web designers worldwide realize this, which is why content management systems have become so necessary for websites.

Government departments embrace the web content management system for all the right reasons, thanks to the exponential leap in technology and the omnipresent desire for individualized information. It starts with consumer engagement and lead generation and then snowballs into overall revenue from numerous channels.

After a disastrous implementation of Adobe CMS, governments are going back to Drupal CMS, the open-source choice that delivers the stability, multilingual, multi-site, security, and affordability they need to succeed. Some of the most critical government websites are powered by the open-source Drupal CMS.

Drupal's open-source platform enables the government departments to draw on the expertise of other departments and developers to provide high-quality digital experiences to Canadians. Today, more than 25% of all government websites in Canada are utilizing Drupal.

What is Drupal?

You may be wondering what is Drupal? Drupal is an open-source platform that aids in developing online applications and the realization of web projects. It is entirely free to use and is utilized by millions of individuals all around the world. Some of Drupal's most prestigious clients include the Canadian Government, Tesla, Nokia, The European Commission, The City of London, Oxford University and many more.

You don't need to be an engineer to produce and distribute content in Drupal. The fact that your department material isn't restricted to a specific style of layout or quantity of content fields is an added plus. Drupal uses PHP's greatest features while also adhering to HTML5 and YAML standards.

Drupal's powerful third-party dependencies include,

· Twig,

· jQuery,

· Symfony,

· and CKEditor.

These factors combine to make Drupal a robust web building platform unaffected by large traffic. Overall, Drupal can assist you in creating powerful and unique web experiences that will entice and retain a government department's audience.

Drupal has had nine versions so far, each with various sub-versions. Even though Drupal 9 is the most recent version, less than 5% of Drupal websites use it. According to a poll by W3Techs, two-thirds of them are still using Drupal 7, while over a quarter are utilizing Drupal 8.

The Level Of Performance And Scalability Provided

The user's willingness to stay on a website for an extended period is most likely due to its performance. If a website takes longer than 2 seconds to load, the user may be tempted to press the escape key and navigate to another site. You're well aware that you have competitors who profit from your failure. As a result, the first feature to examine is Drupal's site performance and scalability.

Many websites fail from time to time, especially when there's a lot of traffic. You won't have to worry about that using Drupal. Drupal is used by various Government and high traffic websites all over the world to handle traffic spikes and avoid sluggish performance.

Drupal manages traffic and provides the freedom to expand the content as much as needed with various content contributors. Drupal manages traffic without compromising efficiency. As a result, controlling site performance and scalability in Drupal is simple and effective.

Drupal has a lot of tools and functionality to improve performance.

· The department could use the Blazy module to load and multi-serve photos.

· The site's delivery could be offloaded to a network of edge caches with the help of a CDN.

Then there are site monitoring modules to keep track of the site's performance levels like

· Nagios Monitoring,

· Production check and Production monitor,

· Raven

· Sentry Integration,

· Error Log,

· Drupal Remote Dashboard and Monitoring.

The Content Flow

Drupal is a well-known name in the CMS market, owing to its authors' ease of using and altering material across various sites. Drupal offers a level of content authoring simplicity that no other system can match. It is set up to provide authors with all of their tools to produce and publish customizable content. The WYSIWYG editor personifies drupal's flexibility. Authentication and permissions make it simple to manage the process and content.

Drupal also performs well in terms of content architecture. You have the option of using an Admin Interface to construct the ideal architecture for your needs or programming it yourself. Paragraphs and Layout Builder are two modules that help get the most out of any material by micromanaging the tiniest aspects. Furthermore, Drupal processes offer

· annotations,

· pictures can be reused in other components,

· and multi-fields can easily accommodate several unique fields in a single field.

All of these features give an excellent user experience, and Drupal's ability to work on a variety of devices is an added advantage. The content in Drupal is stored in a database, arranged in a hierarchy if desired, and wrapped with Symfony. Drupal usually interacts with data using MySQL, although other databases are also available.

Drupal Aligns With Marketing And Engineering Goals Of The Departments

There are two groups of people who are regarded as the foundation of a website, and it is their input that propels a web project forward. They are the engineers and marketers.

The volume of open source components discovered can be daunting for developers for all the right reasons. One of the most important is that Drupal is synonymous with a developer-centric ecosystem. This means the developer will profit from the experience and knowledge of other developers.

Drupal enables marketers to alter or update page layouts without requiring the assistance of a developer. Drupal also lets marketers use tools they choose outside of Drupal's control. Any prominent marketing automation product would work well with Drupal to maximize your efficiency.

Cost of Implementation

When assessing whether or not to adopt a practice, or in this case a CMS, it's crucial for the department to consider whether or not it matches the budget.

Drupal is the clear winner in terms of costs. Drupal is open-source software, which means there are no license fees associated with it. However, this does not imply that it is free; it would still take funds to construct. This is because Drupal sites are created from the ground up.

Logically, maintenance fees would rise once the department site is completely running. Drupal gives you the flexibility to scale your maintenance and support charges to fit the budget.

Historically, each department of the Federal Government had its bespoke website. This strategy resulted in hundreds of platforms that all worked differently, making it difficult to find internal and external information. Departments can use Drupal to share existing customizable website code and copy designs, features, and functionality.

Sharing code across departments also allows government departments to concentrate on delivering digital services rather than the look and feel of their current website.

Security Measures

Many believe that open source software is more vulnerable to security breaches because it is open. But, that is not the case. Open-source security, also known as Software Composition Analysis, allows users to increase the visibility of their open source applications.

A variety of factors have a role in this:

· The binary fingerprints are inspected,

· Professional and proprietary research is used,

· Scans are used to corroborate the study.

All of this is provided to developers in the form of tools. As a result, no open-source software can be considered harmful or vulnerable. The security features of Drupal are excellent, and they can help overcome even the most severe security issues. The Drupal Security Team is prepared to resolve all reported security concerns, whether they are in core or contrib modules. The team members are professionals in security procedures from all over the world, confirming Drupal's security trustworthiness.

Some of the security features include,

· Drupal's password regulations with minimum length, complexity, and expiration.

· Brute force entry can be detected by limiting the number of login attempts from a single IP address.

· IP addresses can also be blocked.

· Drupal's user roles allow managing what users may see and change on any page.

· Drupal's database encryption can be customized to become exceptionally strong for applications requiring a high security level, whether for the entire website or specific parts.

· The Form API supervises the validation of data entries into the database to prevent XSS, CSRF, and other malicious data entries from entering the database.

Is Drupal Responsive?

Any web application's focal point is the user, who is at the center of every decision made for the website. As a result, a responsive web design that considers the user's demands and their surroundings is critical.

Drupal is known for its responsive designs, ensuring the most excellent possible user experience regardless of the device. Drupal's mobile-first approach aims to provide a consistent content experience over the lifespan of its websites.

Drupal enables the ability to add and change content while on the go. The responsiveness of the built-in themes allows the web pages to match all screen sizes. Drupal also uses breakpoints to allow users to modify the width and height of pictures based on the device. Tables in Drupal 8 are responsive, with high, medium, and low priority to choose from.

Third-Party Intergration

A CMS's ability to integrate with other apps is frequently seen as a critical feature. Drupal Integrations with third-party platforms have become an essential requirement for open source platforms. Because Drupal is an open-source project, it has a built-in capacity to interface with other systems.

Drupal was built with scalability and modularity in mind, making it capable of allowing third-party integrations with ease. The procedure runs efficiently since the Services Layer and Library API are designed to handle all integration requirements. Numerous analytics solutions, such as Google Analytics, Salesforce, and HubSpot, can be integrated with Drupal.

Headless Approach

Going headless has grown extremely popular in recent years. A headless approach entails using different technologies for the website's frontend and backend to ensure that you're getting the most out of the content.

Drupal is known for its flexibility, which can be demonstrated in its headless approach, which offers three options.

· Drupal has a presentation layer that utilizes Drupal and other frontend frameworks, such as JavaScript, as it becomes more detached.

· Drupal's fully decoupled architecture separates the two sides of the site, with Drupal handling content and a JavaScript framework like React handling the frontend.

· Drupal for static sites is decoupled, allowing a static site generator like Gatsby to construct a frontend by being its source.

Multilingual Feature

Drupal allows constructing customized sites in any language, multilingual web applications, and displays with numerous admin languages. Departments can ultimately translate the material to reach more people.

The four modules built to assist the language shift include,

· Locale,

· Language,

· Content Translation,

· and Configuration Translation

These Content and Entity Translator modules allow translating pages, specific fields, elements, and more right out of the box.