Drupal – CMS of choice for White Hat Media
At White Hat Media, we’ve built or worked on hundreds of websites over the years, using a wide range of technologies and solutions. We’ve hand-coded and used templates, from basic HTML and CSS static stuff to PHP and ASP dynamic code. We’ve built e-commerce sites using Actinic and Zen Cart, and we’ve built Content Management System sites using all sorts of technologies and off-the-shelf packages. But in the era of open source development, we’re focusing much of our energies on Drupal.
Drupal is a free Content Management System written in PHP, and can be used for anything ranging from small personal blogs to large corporate or e-commerce sites. You can have flexible account privileges with fine grained user access levels, customisable layouts, forums, image galleries, RSS feeds, Ubercart-powered ecommerce, multi-lingual sites and much more. The key to Drupal’s success is its flexibility – Drupal offers literally thousands of plug-in modules to do almost anything you care to think of. And the best thing from White Hat Media’s point of view is that almost straight out of the box, Drupal is SEO friendly.
Drupal is amazing. Honestly. The backend work that has gone into it by thousands of developers around the world is immense, making it possible to do almost anything a client requests. You can even build your site, do nothing for a year then come back and upgrade it in a couple of days and suddenly, your site has all the benefits of a years’ worth of development by a huge team at the top of their game. Drupal’s modular design, which isolates the Drupal core files from contributed module and themes, increases flexibility and security, and it allows Drupal administrators to cleanly upgrade to new releases of Drupal core without potentially overwriting their site’s customisations (sorry, did I lose some of you there?). However, the learning curve is quite steep.
Drupal is a powerful system capable of doing things that used to be very complicated for web developers with a few clicks of a mouse. Although Drupal founder Dries Buytaert may claim that you don’t need to have any programming skills for basic website installation and administration, the bog standard Drupal installation is responsible for some of the ugliest sites on the interweb (although the standard Garland theme is built in a clever way, it’s not exactly pretty to look at, and sites can quickly become a mess in the hands of a novice). Most clients’ basic requirement of a Drupal site is that it doesn’t look like a Drupal site!
To make your Drupal website the smooth, suave sophisticated all-singing all-dancing West End hit of a website, you need skilled developers who understand the difference between nodes, modules, themes and templates, and where they all live in the Drupal “technology stack”.
In all honesty, Drupal is just the starting point for each client’s solution. It doesn’t do exactly what is says on the tin. Out of the packet, it’s about as much use as the proverbial chocolate teapot, and not as tasty. Adding on modules, customising themes and getting all these components to play nicely together takes considerable skill and brain power. If you want a site that looks good, has great features and functions but is simple enough for “non-techies” to maintain, you’re going to need some help.
The best way to get the results you want is to work with an agency like White Hat Media. We can guide you through all the stages of building your site, and give you training before sending you off into cyberspace fully prepared to populate and manage your website. From design to user experience to site architecture, we can make Drupal do what you need it to. Then it’s over to you to fill the site with your content and head off onto the information super highway of the internet!
