Drupal (www.drupal.org) makes pliable, search engine friendly sites. Build a sophisticated look with content that non-technical people can administer. Drupal can reproduce its content for use on web pages, on mobile devices, or shared to other websites to build your popularity. Content management systems are ideal at organizing data and making it flexible.
Drupal:
- stores your content in a database
- keeps the design of the website separate from the content and settings
- makes site-wide administration easy
My History of Content Management – How That Ties Into Drupal
I started in web development in 1996. For a short time, people handed me their content and said, “build me a web page!” Quickly that evolved into “I don’t know how to publish online: build me a content management system.” I had to build a lot of functionality from scratch: the early days of the Web felt like I was alone in the North.
In the late 1990s, agencies started calling on me for work, as I was one of the small list of people conversant in design, coding and building content management systems from scratch using Perl, PHP and ASP. At the time, content management systems were limited to expensive enterprise systems used by the likes of ZDNet and CNN. There was nothing for the small organizations.
The 2000s changed all that. In those days, I did early experiments with PHP Nuke, DotNetNuke, PostNuke (“Nuke” seemed to be code for CMS in the early days) before finally settling into Drupal 5 ca. 2006 and staying with it.
I have developed sites in Drupal 5, Drupal 6, Drupal 7 and Drupal 8., I migrated sites from other content management systems into Drupal. I have developed Drupal e-commerce systems. I have built start-up prototypes with Drupal. I have migrated Drupal websites over to WordPress.
I have consulted with a number businesses and organizations. Through my business, Shawn DeWolfe Consulting, we are recognized as a top E-Commerce Design & Development Company on DesignRush.
When it comes to Drupal, I’ve done it all. Along the way, I have experimented in or integrated with a who’s who list of other technologies: WordPress, Joomla, ModX, React, Magento, Shopify, Wix, MediaWiki, Daccor, Bootstrap, Foundation, Symphony, JQuery, JSON, Angular, Laravel, HTML5, phpBB, phpMyWebsite, Prestashop, Woocommece, Ubercart, Drupal Commerce and others.
Still: I keep coming back to Drupal. It’s my Swiss Army knife. It’s my big box of Lego. When someone says, “Let’s Build Something!” I say, “Yeah!” and get out the virtual Lego box that is Drupal.
Who Should Use Drupal?
When people ask us “Should I use Drupal?”, we ask about the role of the site. Drupal is great for conference and special event registration sites; e-commerce sites; sites with lots of data organization; and sites with lots of users, or complex user rules. Drupal is used to power some of the web’s most impressive sites.
We have been building Drupal sites for years. If you want to find out more, we should talk!
Why Drupal?
I love to geek out about Drupal, but this application has to earn its keep and perform well for our clients. For some roles, I will recommend WordPress or maybe even a static website. But if I feel this tools is a fit for your organization’s needs, then great!
Some reasons I like to get our clients working with Drupal:
- Drupal is feature rich: user management, admin screens, content management, search engines and RSS sharing come “out of the box”
- By starting with built-in elements, Drupal development cycles can be very brief.
- Drupal is flexible. We don’t give you a “Drupal site”, we give you an “excellent site” (built with Drupal).
- Drupal is extensible. We can add functionality to satisfy your business needs.
- Good technical extensions, called modules, are easy to deploy.
- When you need custom solutions built from scratch, we are happy to do that.
- Solid and easy to install functionality allows us to carry out fast deployments.
Drupal: Victoria BC’s choice!
While I have a number of clients in the US, Canada and overseas, but I love to work with our local clients who need a Drupal site for their Victoria-based business. I specialize in Drupal web design and development. I deliver solid, uniquely-designed websites that work well, are SEO-friendly, load fast and funnel users to satisfy your business goals.
A rundown of what we can do with Drupal:
- Client Relationship Management (CRM)
- Document Management
- E-commerce
- Event Registration & Management
- Fundraising
- Product Website
- Gallery site
- News portal
- Project Management
- Social Network Building
- Social Literacy
- Staff Intranet
Here’s a list of other Drupal developers in Victoria BC.