How to Create Drupal Custom URLs Using Pathauto Module?

The best content management system is the one that helps to create custom URL addresses of several subpages. Drupal being the popular CMS platform has a Pathauto module to automate the creation of page aliases. A crucial part of Drupal development, customized URL addresses increase the search engine ranking of a website.

In this blog, we will look at the step-by-step process of creating automating page aliases simply and effortlessly.

But before starting the same, check out some information about the Pathauto module of Drupal.

Background Information

Pathauto for Drupal module development was released way back in February 2006 as an add-on to Drupal 4. After that, the Stable 1.0 version was launched and the current module from the 8.x1.x branch is the new one to evolution.

It is one of the essentials extensions for a Drupal website that is already used by 640 thousand pages and 32% of them are on Drupal 8 and Drupal 9 respectively.

The primary purpose of Pathauto is to create URL aliases for individual subpages. You can do it by following a step-by-step process mentioned here.

#Step 1: Download & Install Pathauto

The first step is to download Pathauto just like any other Drupal module and install the same. You can refer to any of the 4 methods mentioned below to install the module.

A. Using UI

1. Navigate to Manage<Extent

2. Once installed, then click on “Enable new added modules”.

3. Search for Pathauto in the list of modules, select and click on install.

4. For the rest of the methods, simply navigate to the root directory of your Drupal site, $ cd/var/www/html/drupal-8.4.4

B. Using Composer

1. Add Pathauto package using the composer

2. Enable the module by navigating to Manage<Extend

C. Using Drush

Download and enable the module using Drush

$drush dl pathauto

$drush en pathauto-y

D. Using Drupal Console

Download and install Pathauto from the Drupal console

$drupalmodule:download pathauto
$drupalmodule:install pathauto

#Step 2: ADD URL Patterns

Now, the next step is to start adding the URL patterns to ensure easy customization.

Navigate to Manage<Configuration

1. You can select the pattern to content.

2. Give a proper Path pattern. In this, Tokens allow you to create dynamic URL patterns.

3. Provide a label to this URL pattern, then check Enabled and click on Save.

4. Other URL patterns can be created in a similar fashion.

#Step 3: Create Bulk URL Aliases

Create bulk URL aliases for already created content, taxonomies, and users.

Follow the below-mentioned steps.

1. Navigate to Manage<Configuration<Search<Metadata

2. Select the entities to generate URL aliases.

3. Select appropriate paths for which URL aliases to generate.

#Step 4: Delete Bulk URL Aliases

Same like creating bulk URL aliases for your Drupal website, you can also delete the same.

1. Navigate to Manage<Configuration<Search<Metadata

2. Select entities that need to be deleted.

3. Check only delete the automatically generated aliases and prevent manually delete the created aliases.

Summing Up

Pathauto is a useful Drupal module for creating and deleting URL aliases efficiently and effortlessly. Create customized URLs to increase the search engine ranking of the platform. Stay away from the cumbersome manual process and create URL patterns automatically. Simply hire Drupal developers to make necessary changes to your website proficiently. Drop at Drupal India to find the ideal expert assistance at a low-cost.

Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is a Pathauto Module in Drupal Website?

Pathauto is like any other module of the Drupal website that brings additional functionality to the platform. It is particularly to create customized URLs for the website to increase ranking, improve SEO, and significantly increase business growth.

2. What is the Benefit of Creating Custom URLs in the Drupal Website?

Customized URLs of a Drupal website help web browsers to properly address the pages, increase their traffic, make improvements in ranking, and more. Ultimately, it helps to enhance your online platform and widen its reach across the targeted set of audiences.

3. How Much Does it Cost to Develop a Drupal Platform?

There is no such fixed cost estimation of developing a Drupal platform. Every single business organization has different sets of requirements, budgets, nature of the project, and features to call for. Depending on these factors and after considering the same, the development cost will be decided accordingly.

A Quick Look at Drupal 9: What to Anticipate From the New Release

The new versions of technologies make your product efficient, safe, feature-rich, and in line with modest trends. This is extremely helpful in the context of web portals. If your website is on Drupal, then what is the most recent version to update it? The latest version is Drupal 9, which is released on 3rd June 2020. So, it would be essential for enterprises to upgrade to accomplish full functionality. Also, it can be beneficial to retain the capability to get the security updates in by-yearly cycles.

Previously, migration from one to another has been similar to transferring from another CMS to Drupal, carrying more time and effort. If you are looking for the right Drupal migration company that can help create a robust website for you, you can contact the right expert.

But the upgrade from Drupal 7/8 to Drupal 9 is painless and easier. Here, we will be discussing everything about Drupal 9 new features and why it is a better choice for enterprises and business owners.

Why Upgrade?

By the end of life getting Drupal 7 and Drupal 8 soon, running the site on them efficiently and with full functionality will not be a possible choice.

Simultaneously, it can be overwhelming for Drupal 7 or Drupal 8 website owners. They should know that their site will require an upgrade when their site is running fine. So, it can result in lots of confusion among them.

Here are three major reasons why you need to consider upgrading your website to Drupal 9:

The security team of Drupal will no longer offer support or security advisories.
Drupal 7 and Drupal 8 releases on all the projects will be labeled as ‘not supported’. Drupal 7 and Drupal 8 will be flagged as insecure in third party scans. This can make integration with other tools and systems.

Prominent hosting service providers like Pantheon and Acquia will also withdraw their support from Drupal 7 leaving you without numerous alternatives. But to assume hosting measures to maintain your app and server-level configurations. You can hire Drupal developers to get the most extreme benefits of Drupal.

Should a Drupal 7 Website Be Upgraded to Drupal 8 or Drupal 9?

The one big reason that over seven hundred thousand Drupal 7 websites still haven’t migrated to Drupal 8, is because of the familiar challenges in the process of migration.

Hence, with lots of individual on Drupal 7, it is obvious that some of them didn’t want to upgrade their CMS.

A secure bet seems to be migrating from Drupal 7 to 8. Yet, will the website be safe and secure? Let’s understand something better.

Since Drupal 8 and Drupal 9 are the same except for deprecated codes eliminated and 3rd party upgrades in Drupal 9. It would be a perfect option for businesses to migrate to Drupal 9 rather than Drupal 8. It will help you to save them from going through a similar process and investing money, time, and efforts unreasonably.

What’s New in Drupal 9?

There are innumerable abilities included in Drupal 9 that can be efficiently updated biannually to aid businesses to remain up-to-date.

Well, once you upgrade your site to Drupal 9, will not require to make some major changes once you update it to a new version.

Here are several new abilities that are included in Drupal 9 –

Drupal 9 is friendly with its precursor, Drupal 8. It is being said, Drupal 9 will be capable to utilize configurations, modules, and data composed on Drupal 8 of the same program, similar to the case with Drupal 7 and Drupal 8.

Also, preserving this feature will not pressure on Drupal alongside historical baggage. With this, the system performance will stay unaffected. The Drupal community has additionally concentrated on breaking the code, not the data. In this way, Drupal will stay clutter-free, fast, and up to date technology. You can get in touch with the best Drupal development services to create a beautiful and engaging website to boost your business.

Fast Performance

Drupal 9 technology has taken it further to increase its support for responsive images. So, mobiles can showcase the best-sized pictures and thus consume a few amounts of data.

Cleaner Code Base

Drupal 9 has eliminated the support to deprecated codes in Drupal 8. This integration will assure that the code labeled as deplored will no longer be supported and utilized in the Drupal environment.

The goal behind this is to make Drupal 9 a cleaner version. So, whenever the modules in Drupal 8 need to become compatible with Drupal 9, they have to remove the deprecated code.

Hence, the result is clear to make the code nimbler and enhance the performance of the website.

Newer Versions of Twig and Symfony

Symfony 3 will be replicated with Symfony 4 or Symfony 5 after Nov 2021. Additionally, the Drupal community can present an upgrade to Twig 2.0. These updates will result in increased performance, enhanced developer experience, and maximized security.

Panelizer Will be Replaced and Removed

So, what is new in Drupal 9? Thus, the Panelizer will be replicated with the Layout Builder. It is the star module of the time.

Wrapping Up

Drupal 9 creates a transformation in the way the core team manages releases. The objective is to upgrade for most CMS Drupal users. Thanks to built-in regressive compatibility. If you are already utilizing Drupal 8, the upgrade will need to go easily as long as your modules are updated. Also, you are not utilizing the deprecated code. So, if you looking for a Drupal 8 website development company, you can get in touch with us.

FAQs

What are the benefits of Drupal 9 over Drupal 8 or even Drupal 7?
Drupal 9 signifies the result of all of the functions created across the course of Drupal 8, on a leaner, and cleaner codebase. This upgraded technology positions Drupal 9 to keep Drupal 8’s trend of the constant invention with noteworthy functions released every six months.

Is Drupal 9 hard to use?
The short response is No. The long answer: Drupal turns more user-friendly with every update. So, we have come a long way since we begin around 20 years ago—and this modest version is no exception. Drupal 9 takes the wonderful technical power of Drupal. Also, this makes it more accessible to reliable users through enhancing utilization.

How do I know if Drupal is right for my digital needs?
If you are looking for building the extremely best digital experience for customers with functions like multi-channel publishing, reusable content, and personalization, Drupal is the right choice.

How Drupal Development Ensures the Security of Your Website?

Drupal CMS, as per Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) standards, is arguably one of the most secure open-source content management systems used by enterprises worldwide other than WordPress and Joomla. However, no matter how secure something is, there is always potential for security vulnerabilities to be discovered and exploited. As a leading Drupal development agency, we have been serving our global clients with excellent Drupal website development services to help them build robust, feature-rich, and highly secure Drupal-based websites. It’s because of the Drupal CMS features, we are able to build powerful websites for our clients to help them gain a distinguished presence in the market.

In this article, we will discuss how the Drupal community reduces online security threats and how Drupal CMS features with regards to security is different from other leading CMS and popular proprietary platforms. So you can be assured that your Drupal site is secure and in safe hands.

Why Drupal Development is the Safest Option?

1. Meets Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) Standards
OWASP is a 501(c)(3) global non-profit charitable organization that focuses on improving the security of software.” The organization has identified a list of Top 10 security risks to guide online application software security development. Drupal CMS’s security is designed to meet OWASP standards and is actively reviewed for any potential security risk.

2. Proactive Drupal Security Team
Formally formed in 2005, the Drupal Security Team comprises of 40 security professionals across the globe. These professionals are responsible for analyzing and reporting security vulnerabilities discovered in the core Drupal CMS and community-contributed modules. The security team then provides resources, guidance, and assistance to resolve security issues and generates documentation to help Drupal developers write secure code scripts and protect the sites.

Our Drupal developers follow the best Drupal security practices to build highly secure websites for clients and provide dedicated Drupal security support to protect their websites against any potential online threats.

3. A Large Active Community is Always Watchful
The large Drupal community is a community of over 1,000,000 designers, developers, strategists, trainers, coordinators, editors, and sponsors who are all working together to shape the Drupal platform and make it more secure. With all of these eyes constantly keeping watch on the code-base and Drupal CMS features and functionality, you can be sure that any security vulnerability will be reported to the Drupal Security Team and resolved instantly. Therefore, it’s nearly impossible that any serious security vulnerability will penetrate into the official core software release.

4. Highly Secure, Open-source Code-base
Any Drupal module created by the Drupal community member undergoes extensive scrutiny by the Drupal community members and Drupal Security Team. Any contributed module must first be approved by the diligent team of Drupal core software maintainers before being released to the larger community. Once it is released in the community, developers can then download, review the code-base, submit bug reports and make requests for Drupal CMS features. All this makes Drupal fully transparent, secure, open-source software.

Being a top-notch Drupal development agency, we are armed with certified and highly-skilled Drupal developers who are well-versed in the Drupal development and strive to maintain the security of the Drupal website to the best of their abilities.

If you want to leverage the benefits of Drupal CMS features and functionality, simply hire Drupal developers in India from us and we’ll provide you with a robust, scalable, and secure website for your business.

5. Strong Password Security
At its first installation, Drupal encrypts any password stored in the database. These passwords are salted and hashed several times, which means they’re obscured lengthened to avoid dictionary and brute-forcing attacks.

To make the password more secure, many user-contributed Drupal modules can be added to support SSL and two-factor user authentication.

Various single sign-on systems such as Google Sign-in, OpenID, and more can also be integrated to given an alternative method for users to login.

6. Advanced User Access Controls
User access controls in Drupal can be set up with a full degree of control. This means, you can set up account types for any situation, whether it’s setting up for user accounts in an online store, social community websites, magazine content publishers and editor, etc. With Drupal CMS, any and all access control situation is possible.

7. Database Encryption
Drupal CMS can be configured to encrypt either the entire website database or certain parts of the database such as user accounts, content types, forms, et al. This encryption level means Drupal can be configured to pass PCI, HIPPA, and any other privacy standard or regulations.

8. Built-in Security Reporting
If you want to keep Drupal CMS secure as much as possible, you need to make sure your Drupal website is properly configured and that the Drupal software, as well as plugins, are up-to-date. Drupal provides timely notifications and reporting for all of these things, including software and plugin update details and recommendations, to ensure that any security vulnerabilities that may be present on your site are patched immediately.

How Is Drupal More Secure than Other Top CMS such as WordPress & Joomla?

Drupal, WordPress, and Joomla – all three are very secure, open-source platforms when the software is kept up to date. All these three platforms are backed by a large development community and massive user base, therefore security is the top priority in the ongoing development of each software package. While WordPress and Joomla are suitable for small to medium-sized sites, Drupal is great for these sites as well as for large enterprise sites.

As an experienced Drupal development agency, we suggest startups to build their websites on the Drupal platform as it is highly flexible and can be scaled up as their businesses grow in the future.

Comparing Drupal Security with Proprietary Platforms — Shopify, BigCommerce, Weebly, etc.

The main advantage of proprietary platforms over open-source software is their hosting environments as they are typically more secure and controlled. However, if you partner with a knowledgeable and reliable service provider for your website development, open-source can be just as good as any other proprietary platform as your hosting environment can be customized according to your needs.

The main drawback of using proprietary platforms is that they are managed by a small team of developers. If there are security vulnerabilities, how long will this small team of developers to detect them, and then fix them? Smaller teams also mean that the testing may not be done thoroughly as compared to the open-source platform that is supported by a large active community behind it. With proprietary platforms, you may not realize a potential issue in the software until they create a problem on your site.

With open-source platforms, you receive the security and comprehensive programming resources by contributors that are enough to encourage their use. As a leading Drupal development agency, we know Drupal is secure because we know their online standards, their security guidelines, and their processes for resolving the issues. It’s completely transparent and we love it!

Does Drupal Development Require a Proactive Approach?

Unfortunately, anything that’s online is exposed to security risks, no matter which platform or service you use. As web software evolves continuously, cyber attackers constantly find and exploit in security. Servers, if not configured properly, leaves gaps in the website security. An insecure website on shared hosting servers could open doors for cyber attackers to harm your website. Data centers holding business-critical files can have hardware failures.

As Drupal is a secure, open-source platform, ensuring complete security requires a knowledgeable and proactive approach. Here are some useful tips to enjoy complete peace of mind with Drupal development.

  • If you’re not technically-savvy, hire a professional Drupal agency that knows the potential security risks, can setup and configure your website hosting environment properly, and can guide you along the right path.
  • Regularly update your Drupal software (or hire a Drupal development company on retainer that can do this job for you).
  • Regularly backup the Drupal software and the underlying database.
  • Make use of strong and hard-to-guess passwords to protect your website data.

If you want to free yourself from all these tasks and save your time and effort for other business-critical activities, just hire Drupal developers in India from us and we’ll take care of every task to keep your site secure and up-to-date.

The Last Say

Drupal, no doubt, is the most reliable and secure CMS that is perfect for businesses of all sectors and sizes. It is the safest platform, provided that you have an expert team that ensures the software is always up-to-date to mitigate the risks of new risks.

As a reliable Drupal development agency, we offer the best-in-class Drupal website development services to give you a distinctive presence in their respective sectors. If you’re looking to hire Drupal developers in India for Drupal development services, Drupal India is your premier destination.

FAQs

Q.1. Can you provide Drupal security patches and support for the previous Drupal versions?
Ans. Yes, we can provide security patches and support for Drupal 7 and 8. However, we suggest all our clients to update their software to the latest version (Drupal 9) to protect your Drupal site against new security vulnerabilities.

Q.2. Do you provide Drupal website support and maintenance services?
Ans. Yes, of course. We are your dedicated and reliable Drupal development partner for Drupal website maintenance and support. We provide extended support to keep your Drupal site up-to-date, secure, and bug-free.

Q.3. What’s included in your Drupal website maintenance service?
Ans. – Our Drupal support team handles:

  • Bug fixing: CSS, JavaScript, PHP, Drupal, etc.
  • Drupal core and modules security updates.
  • Feature and functionality enhancements.
  • Drupal upgrade and migration services.

Why Should You Hire a Professional Drupal Development Company?

Drupal is functioning dynamically in today’s digital space since 2001. It is ranked among the top three most popular content management systems used in the world. Web developers and designers can create any content according to their preferences on the website. Millions of websites and applications are powered by Drupal because it is technically advanced open-source CMS with extensive flexibility and scalability.

Drupal India is a renowned Drupal development company in India that has been offering some of the best Drupal responsive web designs to all its global clientele. Our proficient Drupal developers provide elite web-based services, along with plugin design, development, and various online marketing services.

We provide our clients with the best open-source Drupal development services in India and abroad at affordable price packages. We are committed to proffering the best-fit solutions and services to our global clientele that can cater to their business requirements.

In terms of using superior-quality Drupal development services, you have actually two options. First, you can hire a full-time Drupal developer in your office or hire Drupal developers from a professional Drupal website development company. Indeed, hiring professional Drupal web development services has many advantages. Let’s take a look at it.

Major Reasons to Hire a Professional Drupal Development Company

1. Personalized Uniqueness
To stand out from the crowd, you need support for personalized uniqueness that can give your business a unique global presence. That’s why the professional experience of a Drupal development company is used here as a power amplifier. When you hire Drupal developers from an agency, you get custom Drupal development solutions and services for better brand engagement and recognition.

2. Semantics & Code Validation
Although it’s not too difficult to learn HTML tags and other encodings to create a decent-looking website, a professional Drupal web development company knows more details from the work. Moreover, it can provide Drupal web design and development services with better semantic knowledge and code validation.
Furthermore, your coding should not only be semantic correct but also adhere to the industry standards and best web development practices. Code validation ensures that all tags are properly closed, embedded, and updated, which can only be made sure by the best Drupal web development professionals.

3. Cross-browser Compatibility
There are various large and popular browsers and many other small browsers to choose from. Since not everything is made the same, it is very important to ensure cross-browser compatibility of your Drupal website.

4. Website Optimization
Website optimization has different dimensions. Your website content needs to be optimized for a variety of things like loading speed, performance, search engine optimization, and conversions. The concept of website optimization is dynamic and requires strong expertise to identify the flaws and loopholes that are hurting your website. In this case, a Drupal development company might be an ideal option for your Drupal site development plan because it is kept up-to-date to deliver the best experience for its customers and to maintain its market presence.

5. SEO Compliance
Search engine optimization or SEO is one of the important digital marketing techniques used by professional website designers. However, professional Drupal can hire the best SEO specialists to get the best results for ranking your website. If you hire freelance Drupal developers, there is no guarantee that the developer can offer the best professional SEO services, but if you hire Drupal developers from a professional Drupal development company, you will get only proven and result-driven solutions.

6. Dedicated Support & Maintenance
To avoid the introduction of bugs, technical glitches, or security issues on your website, it is very important to keep your Drupal site up-to-date and maintain it to ensure its optimal performance. When you hire a Drupal website development company, you get dedicated and round the clock Drupal support and maintenance services so you can reach the experts at any time to solve your issues.

Why Choose Us for Drupal Development Services?

At Drupal India, we not only note your project requirements but also understand it correctly and better than others. We take your business vision seriously and use our expert skills as well as creativity to deliver the best Drupal web development solutions.

Here are a few reasons that differentiate us from other Drupal web development companies.

  • We have years of experience in providing world-class Drupal development services to our global clients.
  • With us, you can hire Drupal developers for your project at affordable prices.
  • Our packages are highly customizable and can be tailored according to your project requirements.
  • We are completely transparent in our work processes as well as billings.

    • We Offer Complete Drupal Support, Always!

    If you have any questions or need to get a quote for our Drupal development services, please feel free to drop a message or call our Drupal experts. We are always at your service, 24x7x365 days!

    FAQs

    Q.1. What is included in your Drupal development service?
    Ans. Our complete suite of Drupal development services include:

  • Drupal Customization (CMS) and Custom Templates Development
  • Drupal Website Development with Responsive Web Design
  • Custom Drupal Module Development
  • Custom Drupal Theme Development
  • Drupal Third-party Integration
  • Develop Customize Plugins
  • SEO Compliant Websites
  • E-Commerce Development Services

    • Q.2. Why choose Drupal CMS for website development?
    Ans. Drupal CMS helps in developing responsive websites and web applications to deliver the best customer experience. By supporting the best web development practices of a responsive web design approach, Drupal helps in delivering an impeccable content experience to the users every time and on every device.

    Q.3. Who is using Drupal CMS?
    Ans. Drupal CMS is widely used software for building responsive and customer-centric websites. Drupal is being used by all the Fortune 500 companies, influential news outlets, and notable organizations. Some of the examples of companies using Drupal CMS include General Electric, eBay, The Economist, Whitehouse.gov, etc.

    How to Use Web Components for Enhancing Your Drupal 8 Website

    Drupal is the most widely used web development framework. Drupal 8 enables you to utilize the advantages of component-based web development. This adds to the swarm of benefits of choosing Drupal website development for your business. Developers around the world are increasingly catching up with web components.

    Web components are bundles of different technologies that enable you to create reusable custom elements. These elements could be HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and others. In this blog, we will discuss how to build and use web components on your Drupal 8 website.

    Drupal has recently launched the 9.0 version. However, it would be some time before most websites move the newest version. That means a significant number of sites are still on Drupal 8. Besides, the core code of Drupal 9 is not very much different from Drupal 8.9. So, let’s delve deeper into the web components.

    Why build a component-based website frontend?

    The short answer is you get to write reusable code. HTML web components dramatically improve the efficiency and quality of your coding. With web components in place, you no longer need a database for all your content. The component-based web development approach creates consistency in terms of performance. The development team doesn’t have to use the same technology stack repeatedly. Besides, the management and distribution of the project workflow become easier.

    Components for Drupal Website Development

    Ask any software developer and they will tell you how reusing code can improve efficiency. It saves time and effort giving you focus more on the creative aspects of coding. But reusing code is not easy for custom markup structures. And that’s where web components come into play.

    Web components play crucial roles in improving the overall efficiency of Drupal website development projects. They streamline your web development processes and reduces complexity. Web components save a substantial amount of time in designing and developing various parts of your web solution.

    The component-based UI development approach for Drupal 8 requires three major steps.

    Twig engine for Drupal 8: Using the Twig engine you can tweak the extensive templates. After defining the Twig template, you can reuse it across the Drupal website development project.

    Component Libraries: These libraries allow you to build template files such as JavaScript or CSS. You can assign namespace for the files and use them anywhere in the Drupal code. For instance, you can use Drupal module development without writing code from scratch.

    The KSS Node library: This library allows you to store all the component templates developed for your Drupal website. The components could include markup, styles, and JavaScript files, among others.

    Key Advantages of Using a Component-based UI

    Component-based Drupal web development has wide-ranging benefits. Here are the most striking ones.

    • Creates a consistent user experience across the website and web app.
    • Makes the UI design process faster and more efficient.
    • Perfectly streamlines the entire web development process.
    • Significantly reduces the time for setting up functionality and UX design.
    • Allows you to seamlessly reuse all your web development components.
    • Web components integrate easily into your Drupal website development process.

    Wrapping up

    The web component-based approach makes your Drupal web development project faster and better. The ability to reuse codes, among many other things, significantly changes the way you code and design the solution. Be it improving the user experience or saving developers’ time and effort, web components help you in many ways.

    At Drupal India, a Drupal development company, we offer clients an array of options for choosing development and technology stack for their projects. We always use the approach that best suits the client’s specific business needs. Our developers stay updated with all the latest tools and tech trends to stay at the forefront.

    FAQs

    Q. What is the programming language for Drupal?

    Drupal is a PHP-based web development framework. PHP supplies the logic and MySQL provides the database. The operating system installed on the server to power this process is Linux. The Apache software handles the requests for pages and publishes them.

    Q. How long does it take to develop a Drupal website?

    The development time of a Drupal website depends on your requirements. If your requirements are limited and predefined it takes comparatively less time. We build Drupal websites in the shortest turnaround time possible.

    Q. How much does it cost to build a Drupal Website?

    The development cost for a Drupal website depends on what kind of solution you need. Costs are lower for a website with basic themes and features. If you need a high-performance site with more advanced features, the cost will be different. Drupal India offers competitive and flexible pricing every kind of web solution.

    5 Reasons Why Drupal CMS Development is the Best Choice for You

    With the digital landscape constantly changing, there are increasing demands on content management systems and organizations to keep up with consumer needs. Today, users are looking for more personalized experiences, improved connectivity between devices, and highly interactive elements in their web experiences. Drupal CMS development is an ideal solution for you as it will help you build a website that grows with the changing digital technologies and business needs and help you achieve your business objectives.

    Why We Recommend Going with Drupal CMS Development Over Other CMSes?

    Needless to say, Drupal is one of the best website solutions because of its robust and flexible infrastructure, open-source modules, and innovative and responsive designs. It offers countless free tools and information to help you get the right design, features, and functionality.

    The latest Drupal 8 and Drupal 9 versions are emerging as the leading platforms to meet the demand for interactivity, personalization, and scalable tools in the year 2020. Drupal users gain access to a plethora of dynamic, flexible, and ever-evolving modules that enhance the functionality of the website.

    As a professional Drupal development company, we are well-versed in Drupal CMS development to create a powerful website enriched with great features and functionality. We help Drupal users to make the most out of the Drupal CMS to deliver excellent web experience to their audience.

    If you’re still wondering why you should hire Drupal developers for your website, here are 5 strong reasons that will encourage you to choose Drupal CMS for your business website.

    Nearly one million Drupal users cannot be wrong!

    5 Reasons to Choose Drupal CMS for Your Website in 2020-21

    1. An Excellent Web Experience Management System

    Drupal is considered to be a flexible web experience management system that gives you the ability to integrate your preferred CRM software such as Salesforce, or inbound marketing platforms into your website instead of using proprietary automation and analytics tools.

    And this is why, as an experienced Drupal development company, we believe that Drupal is the best choice for organizations that want to seamlessly integrate their preferred third-party technology with their websites.

    2. Creates Targeted and Personalized UI/UX

    Drupal 8 and 9 versions have a wealth of built-in user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) tools and modules that meet the needs of the modern customers looking for personalized, interactive, and targeted web experiences.

    Drupal 8’s advanced system also makes it easier for our Drupal website developers to build and maintain the website, saving them from countless hours of frustration and expletives.

    How Drupal leads in UI and UX in 2020

    There is a seemingly endless list of built-in and contributed modules that enrich your Drupal website. There are Drupal modules for specific purposes including:

    • Content personalization – Drupal offers several content personalization modules to help you deliver relevant content to your users based on their needs and preferences. Some of these modules include Personalization Module, Browsing History Recommender, Commerce Recommender, and Context-Menu Block.

     

    • Better caching functionality – Drupal provides enhanced page loading efficiency and speed thanks to BigPipe and other Drupal caching optimization modules.

     

    • Responsive design – Drupal 8 and 9 come with a responsive web design that scales and modifies to fit any screen, thereby helping users to access your website from any device.

     

    • Social media modules – These modules easily connect online customers to your social media feeds from your website.

     

    • Contextual blocks – Drupal provides drag and drop blocks to rearrange the appearance of text and images on your website. You can also repeat the same block in multiple places throughout your page which gives you greater design flexibility.

     

    • Comment fields – Both Drupal 8 and 9 allow you to display comments on multiple places on your web page. Also, you can have different types of comments, such as private notes to users and adding comments to comments.

     

    • Multilingual functionality – These modules are built right into Drupal 8 and 9 core that empower you to translate your website or display the language on your website shift depending on the user’s geographic location.

     

    • WYSIWYG editor – This is an awesome feature that allows you to look at how the text and images they’ve entered into the text editor are going to appear before clicking the “Publish” button.

     

    • Quick Edit – This Drupal module enables you to type directly into a text editor in Drupal to reduce the time required for adding and uploading content to your website.

     

    As a top-notch Drupal development company, we keep the customer experience in mind during the development phase and therefore, build your storefront on the Drupal foundation to enhance your website’s UI and UX. If you want to create an impactful and user-friendly storefront, just hire Drupal developers from us and the team will create a website that will deliver a pleasant customer experience.

    3. Contextual Digital Experiences

    Drupal CMS offers users the right tools to create a personalized customer experience. Your website caters to the needs of the customers, guiding them throughout their buying journeys. Access to powerful APIs is an important ingredient all websites need if they want to outperform other websites. The best part of Drupal is that its international team of experts continually updates and improves features and functionalities already built into the Drupal CMS.

    Drupal provides several new APIs which simplify and streamline the development process, and make the website more intuitive for customers:

    • The RESTful Web Services API in Drupal 8 supports a decoupled Drupal website that facilitates communication between native mobile iOS or Android apps and the Drupal site and integration with web services.

     

    • Render API improves the user experiences through faster page rendering and enhanced caching protocols.

     

    • The Translation API in Drupal can adjust and display languages on your website depending on the geographical location of your viewers.

     

    In addition to this, Drupal’s flexible interface makes it easy to adjust it to fit almost any system architecture with tools and features that enhance the experience of customers and developers.

    Our talented Drupal website developers are proficient at using the full potential of these APIs to create the most desired user experience of the Drupal website.

    4. Innovative and Technologically Advanced Marketing Tools

    Today, static websites have been replaced by dynamic content across various digital touch-points. Therefore, companies are looking for CMS that keeps pace with the new sales and customer engagement technologies. Drupal CMS development excels in the eCommerce field as well. Drupal has been seamlessly integrated into commerce platforms of giants like IBM, Tesla, Magento, Puma, and Motorola to improve sales through enhanced customer interactions.

    The Google Analytics module helps you to gather relevant customer data and make improvements to optimize how well your Drupal site interacts and engages your target audience

    5. Cutting-edge Tools for Metadata and Taxonomy

    Having a semantic structure plays a crucial role in the working lives of content authors and managers. Drupal’s Metatag module is an auto-tagging tool that allows you to add Meta tags to your Drupal site automatically, which is a key element of search engine optimization. This module enables you to shape how your content looks on social media sites with APIs like Twitter Cards for Twitter and Facebook’s Open Graph protocol which allows you to share consistent messages across platforms.

    Having a flexible and intuitive taxonomy system is another important asset for websites in 2020. Drupal comes with a built-in taxonomy system that is engineered to simplify how you organize your content using keywords. This comprehensive content classification system offers many advantages: it helps in organizing information on your website, including by theme, and navigating to search terms and setting viewing options. Drupal’s flexible, built-in taxonomy system is designed to support your company’s growth, so you can continue adding more content and features to your website without affecting your CMS’s performance.

    Wrapping Up

    In addition to these advantages, Drupal CMS also offers reliability, scalability, and high-end security for your Drupal-based website. As of 2020, there are more than 0.56 million live Drupal sites. Organizations have adopted Drupal CMS development faster and for the right reasons. It can easily handle high traffic, and therefore it is widely used for enterprise-level, large-scale and busiest websites.

    Drupal India is the most reliable Drupal development company that is backed by a team of seasoned Drupal website developers who are well-versed with the Drupal CMS. If you want to build your website on this solid foundation and leverage the power of Drupal CMS, hire Drupal developers from us and we’ll help you soar high in the digital world.

    FAQs

    Q.1. How does outsourcing to a Drupal development company work?

    Ans. We will collaborate with you to understand your requirements and assess the project scope. We will offer you a detailed project proposal along with suitable engagement models to choose from. We will start our development process after the signing of the contract.

    Q.2. Can I hire Drupal developers on a full-time basis?

    Ans. Yes, you can. We offer ready-to-hire Drupal developers who have vast experience and expertise in Drupal CMS development, on a full-time basis.

    Q.3. How do I assess the progress of my Drupal website development project?

    Ans. Our agile project management approach enables us to regularly communicate about the progress of the project to clients, concerned teams, managers, and other stakeholders. We provide timely reports on your project’s status.

    Have more questions? Send us your questions and we’ll answer them shortly!

    Drupal and Salesforce Integration to Boost Your Business Productivity

    CRMs help businesses to easily communicate with their existing and potential customers. And, this is the reason why many business owners prefer integrating the CRM software with their websites. Fortunately, the seamless third-party integration opportunities in Drupal 8 help you integrate your CMS with any third-party systems of your choice, which is one of the significant benefits of Drupal website development. The main focus of this blog is specifically on Drupal and Salesforce integration.

    As a leading Drupal development company, we have extensive experience in integrating Drupal websites with various CRMs, so you can reach us with your requirements at any time.

    What is Salesforce?

    Salesforce is an industry-leading cloud-based Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution that brings businesses and customers together. The term ‘Sales’ in its name clearly signifies its main objective, that is, to help businesses effectively manage their sales, customer service, marketing automation, collaboration, and analytics. The software gives the sales, marketing, commerce, and other in-house teams a common view of every customer.

    Integrating Salesforce with Drupal CMS is an effective way to streamline workflows of various departments in your organization and establish a long-term relationship with your current and prospective customers.

    Key Benefits of Drupal and Salesforce Integration

    If you’ve indulged in Drupal website development, your sales and marketing team can leverage the power of Salesforce through seamless integration between the two systems. Below are some of the benefits that you’ll enjoy with Drupal and Salesforce integration

    • Increased efficiency in the workflows of sales and marketing
    • Time and cost-saving due to a fully integrated system
    • Grab and retain prospective customers with the help of instant email notifications
    • Opportunity to track your competitors
    • Both uni/bi-directional data sharing between Drupal and Salesforce is possible
    • Smooth synchronization that helps in creating and updating the data easily
    • Enhanced data protection thanks to the authorization features

    So, if you’re planning for Drupal-Salesforce integration, you may hire Drupal developers from us and they will help you with seamless Drupal integration with Salesforce without disrupting your live sales or overall website. We have a pool of experienced and highly-skilled Drupal specialists who have successfully integrated a wide range of third-party applications and systems with Drupal CMS-based websites.

    How Drupal and Salesforce Integration Works?

    The common objective of any integration is a perfect data exchange. Drupal websites need to pull from as well as push the data to Salesforce. Thanks to Drupal 8’s API-first approach, any integration has become a breeze. Additionally, Drupal boats a wealth of pre-built contributed modules that facilitate any sort of integration. So, of course, there is a useful Salesforce module for Drupal 8, called the Salesforce Suite that ensures a seamless integration.

    The Salesforce Suite includes a bunch of submodules, so let’s take a look at these modules one by one.

    Modules for Integrating Drupal with Salesforce

    The Drupal 8 Salesforce Suite Module

    The Salesforce Suite is the main module for Drupal integration. The module synchronizes Drupal website’s entities like users, content nodes, etc. with Salesforce objects such as contacts, organizations, etc. The exact relationship between these two is provided by field mapping. Salesforce Suite helps in importing and exporting data in real-time or asynchronously, based on the Cron runs. The Drupal 8 Salesforce Suite module version has been updated in 2020.

    As a professional Drupal development company, we follow the best Drupal and Salesforce integration practices that help us save time and effort consumed in the integration process.

    The Salesforce Suite Submodules

    Here’s how the specific tasks are carried out by the powerful group of the submodules available suite’s Drupal 8.4 version:

    • Salesforce Integration – This submodule takes care of the smooth Drupal and Salesforce integration.
    • Salesforce Mapping – Field mapping is used to effectively synchronize the exchanged data. This submodule in the suite maps Drupal entities to Salesforce objects.
    • Salesforce Mapping UI – The handy user interface of this submodule allows you to efficiently manage the mapping settings.
    • Salesforce JWT Auth Provider – This module is responsible for the key-based Salesforce authentication.
    • Salesforce Logger – This tool provides for the consolidated logging of the Salesforce Log events.
    • Salesforce Webform – This submodule in the suite provides support for webforms fields in the mapping process to provide seamless Drupal Salesforce webform integration.
    • Salesforce Push – This member of the suite particularly manages the pushing of the Drupal data to Salesforce when any changes or updates are made on Drupal.
    • Salesforce Pull – It’s the opposite of the previous module. It is responsible for importing the Salesforce objects based on the mapping.
    • Salesforce Soap – This tool exposes a SoapClient service to connect with the Salesforce SOAP API.

    Different Architectural Approaches

    There are several architectural approaches when it comes to data flow that caters to different requirements and gratifies different needs. Let’s take a tour of the different architectures:

    Real-Time Push

    Real-time integration facilitates the export of Drupal objects to Salesforce immediately. You get the feedbacks that indicate whether the item failed to export and the data is available in Salesforce or not.

    • Strength – Fast, limited, update lag, avoids UX, can avoid race conditions
    • Weakness – Less durable and reliable

    The Drupal 8 salesforce Cron based push service was introduced to construct database queues, normalizing queue items, augmenting queue operations, and implementing error handling. The Cron based sync facilitates Drupal’s core API schedule synchronization from Salesforce to Drupal.

    • Strength – Handles large volumes well, can be stopped and started when needed
    • Weakness – Slow, lags and risk the update conflicts

    Work Queues

    The queue-based batching system running in the background allows for the sending of many objects to the Salesforce as early as possible. In this architecture, instead of the objects being sent to the Salesforce at a given time, as soon as it is created, edited, deleted it goes into the queue where it waits to be exported to other items.

    The queue items are then selected based on the configurable schedule and then exported to the Salesforce in batches. Batching the data enables synchronization and increases the performance by using fewer API calls.

    • Strength – Reliable, high-performing, and has a shorter time lag
    • Weakness – Large changes create backlogs, the potential risk of update conflicts

    The Future of Drupal Integration with Salesforce

    Drupal integration with Salesforce brings immense opportunities for improving sales and marketing. Integrating Salesforce and Drupal is a cost-effective solution to increase sales. If you’re able to get Drupal and Salesforce integration deployed to your operation and organization, you’ll definitely enjoy streamlined and optimized business processes, both in the short and long term. This will ultimately boost your sales and make the entire process simpler and effective.

    Wrapping Up

    All Drupal CMS installations are unique because of the different modules and customizations that they use. Therefore, the integration has to be set up differently by an expert. Hire Drupal developers from us and they will get the job done in a matter of minutes. If you already have a Salesforce instance set up, we’ll be happy to explore the suitable integration options. If you’re new to or have less knowledge about Salesforce, we can work with your Salesforce developers to make sure your data is organized in a way that reduces the integration effort and costs.

    As a leading Drupal development company, we offer a complete suite of Drupal website development services and solutions that drive better results for our global clientele. If you’re looking for other Drupal website development services, you may hire Drupal developers at Drupal India for the required services.

    FAQs

    What other third-party systems and applications can you integrate with Drupal CMS-based website?

    Being a top-notch Drupal development company, we have the required expertise in carrying out Drupal integration with a wide variety of third-party applications and systems seamlessly. Our wide spectrum of the Drupal integration service includes:

    • Drupal and ERP systems – SAP, SharePoint, NetSuite, etc.
    • Drupal and CRM systems – SugarCRM, Zendesk, Salesforce, Hubspot, Adobe Test and Target, ExactTarget, Janrain, etc.

    How to integrate Drupal with Salesforce CRM?

    Drupal integration with Salesforce can be a daunting task. If you’re new to this, you may hire Drupal developers at Drupal India and they will help you set up Salesforce on your Drupal website.

    How do I contact you for Drupal integration with Salesforce service?

    You may contact us for the required service through emails, phone calls, Skype, or WhatsApp.

    Need to Integrate Salesforce CRM with your Drupal Website?

    How to Choose Perfect Hosting Service for Drupal CMS Website?

    Drupal is a robust and secure CMS for web application development. Several developers and business enterprises leverage the power of this innovative Drupal CMS for reaching their target audience. If you are among such users, you might know that web application success depends on the hosting solution it offers for the smooth deployment. While website requirements are not something extraordinary but still not every owner have expertise in Drupal development and thus needs expert guidance. Being a store owner, it is important to focus on Drupal Hosting Services to meet special considerations of the website & visitors.

    In this blog post, we will be discussing important factors that you must consider before investing in web hosting. First, let us focus on the important factors that several store owners usually miss during Drupal development that on later stages make a huge impact on the website performance. Irrespective of the website size, features & traffic, your web hosting provider should offer the below-given features.

    1. Security

    Make sure the hosting plan offers predefined security measures. Yes, every necessary step needs to be taken to ensure website security is not compromised. But in terms of server security, the Drupal CMS Hosting provider has complete responsibility. Check whether the hosting provider has a server with the latest software integrated or not. In addition, there should also be DDoS protection, along with firewall and anti-malware software.

    2. Speed

    Speed is another important parameter of the utmost importance. No one prefers visiting a slow & sluggish website. Drupal website’s performance can be improved if it is not properly optimized. But optimizing the website is not the only solution. What if the hosting server is already slow in performance? It is important to opt for web hosting that takes extra care regarding the infrastructure to make sure the hardware is never overloaded. You can consult Drupal developer to check whether the hosting provider is using the latest software for caching or not. It is the website admin’s responsibility to set up a caching solution on the self-managed servers.

    3. Compatibility

    Be sure to verify your Drupal website hosting specifications and compare them with the offered by the web hosting provider. Before moving ahead, check for the PCI compliance to ensure the website does not experience any unnecessary compliance problems.

    4. Technical Support

    Technical support is highly significant as the website can come across issues related to speed, performance and optimization at any moment of time. Things usually go wrong when you least expect them to. What if your website becomes down when giving any presentation to the client? You would need quality technical support from Drupal Development Company to bring desired results. Technical support should be available 24/7 to ensure no business loss is experienced. You might be thinking it is too much to ask for 24/7 support when a few dollars per month is paid for Drupal hosting. It is highly important to pay a little extra to avail of quality support.

    So, these are the important features to consider when investing in Drupal Hosting Services for your website.

    Types of Web Hosting Services

    1. Shared Hosting

    Shared hosting is like using one wifi connection by multiple people in a room. Since multiple people are using it, the sum of money gets divided. It is a perfect hosting service for startups and small businesses. Shared hosting offers the best opportunity in a tight budget, and so you have to spend less.

    2. Virtual Private Server (VPS)

    It is a slightly better option than shared hosting. A VPS is shared by a limited number of people. The expenditure is higher for each pocket, however so does the service quality. The benefits comprise larger consumption with better speed. Instead of sharing a complete server, each site is allocated a certain amount to use. It is a perfect hosting service for the small to medium site traffic websites.

    3. Cloud Hosting

    Cloud hosting allows multiple servers to work together so it looks like one huge server. The benefit of cloud hosting is that when there is a surge in your website traffic and it is beyond the limits, a significant amount is, then, shifted to another server. This helps in traffic management without spending extra bucks.

    4. Dedicated Hosting

    In all of the hosting services discussed above server is shared with other organizations. In a dedicated hosting server, each website gets its individual server. Dedicated hosting offers greater freedom over the resources. With no sharing of resources, you can use the server to its capacity. Dedicated hosting is best known for their high-speed performance and best for the sites which drive a large volume of traffic.

    Conclusion

    Thus, we now have proper information regarding Drupal hosting. The following points need to be kept in mind when opting for a hosting package:

    • Server speed
    • Security methodology
    • System software and compatibility
    • Quality of technical support

    Depending on the size of the website and the amount of traffic, you can opt either shared, or semi-dedicated, or dedicated hosting. The above-mentioned tips will help you to choose the best Drupal hosting for your website. A VPS is a great choice if not planning to invest in a dedicated server or shared hosting.

    How JSON API Enhances Drupal Commerce & Other Enterprise Websites

    Drupal is wildly popular – both as a CMS and an eCommerce platform. As demands for innovation in web development rise, developers are looking for more ways to attract users. An API-first approach gives developers immense scope for creating new features and enabling flexibility. Most Drupal Commerce developers use it as a front-end and back-end tool to create web solutions. So, an API can dramatically change the look and functionality of a web solution.

    Today, more and more people visit websites from a mobile device than a desktop. Hence, your business website must be responsive to all kinds of devices and operating systems. That’s where APIs come into play. The developers of Drupal have identified the immense potential of APIs in web development.

    Why APIs Are Important in Web Development 

    An API is an agreement of request and response between the developer (vendor) and the user (client). APIs are used mainly for exchanging data. They connect the front end with the back end of a software solution. APIs also define the accessibility of resources associated with software development.

    API-first web solutions enable flexibility in terms of interacting with different kinds of devices and systems. This means your business website can much more than just being a traditional website. API-first websites can easily embrace different channels. Drupal Commerce developers have advocated this approach for a long time now.

    Integration of JSON API to Drupal 8 Core 

    The idea of JSON: API became widely popular in the JavaScript community. JavaScript Object Notation, or JSON, is the most common data exchange format for web solutions. This API has replaced XML due to advantages like its lightweight nature. Besides, JSON is compatible with almost every modern programming language. So, whether it’s a website development or Drupal migration services, the API is always useful.

    Advantages of Implementing JSON API to Drupal Websites

    JSON: API allows programmers like Drupal Commerce developers to make their solution more versatile. They can decide how the API should interact with the web solution’s data model. In Drupal Commerce solutions, the API enables the creation of customized resource routes, among other benefits. Here’s a list of key advantages of using JSON API specifications.

    1. Consistent Structure 

    JSON is incredibly consistent in terms of its structural behavior. It helps front-end developers to make the designs and layout more attractive and responsive. Consistency goes a long way when it comes to developing Drupal Commerce solutions development.

    2. Cross-platform compatibility 

    JSON: API specifications are widely supported across platforms and operating systems. Besides, the API makes the implementation of client libraries easier. Since it’s compatible with virtually every programming language and web development framework, developers love this API.

    3. Productive web development

    Designing and developing an API is often a time-consuming and complex process. JSON provides you with a set of specifications to design API without any hassle. It makes the web development team more productive. Also, developers can focus on the creativity and flexibility of the solutions they build.

    How JSON Improves Drupal Web Development

    The JSON API specifications help developers in many ways. They simplify sophisticated technical processes and development pathways. Here’s how it changes your website.

    No configuration needed

    Once you implement the JSON specifications, it makes the resources accessible with relevant verbs, endpoints, and development fields. The API doesn’t allow any modification to the configurations. This makes the deployment of a web solution simpler and quicker.

    “Relationships” object

    With “relationships” objects, you get all the required information related to the development resource. The resource could be the author, image fields, entity references, etc. Developers usually need to make additional requests to get access to the information. But with JSON in place, you can add a request parameter “include” to specify the required fields.

    Filtering resources 

    You can apply filters to selectively retrieve the required resources. Theses resources can further be added using the “filter” parameter. Developers need to specify the field on which they want to do the comparison.

    Paging, sorting, and more 

    JSON also enables you to use paging. It’s a technique to divide the long listing of items into different pages. Developers can also use a “sort” parameter to specify the field and the sort direction.

    Conclusion 

    JSON API specifications change your Drupal website for better – both technically and aesthetically. In terms of functionality, it helps eCommerce websites with billing management, shipping, and various other areas. For business websites, the API specifications significantly improve flexibility and responsiveness across platforms. At Drupal India, we built a diverse range of enterprise-grade web solutions using the Drupal CMS. You can hire Drupal developers from us to build API-first and design rich websites.

    FAQs

    Q. What is a JSON API?

    JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) is an encoding scheme that is designed to eliminate the need for an ad-hoc code for each application. It helps to communicate with servers in a defined way. JSON API module exposes an implementation for data stores and data structures, such as entity types, bundles, and fields, among others.

    Q. Is JSON a REST API?

    The REST architecture allows API providers to deliver data in multiple formats such as plain text, HTML, XML, YAML. JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is an easy-to-parse and lightweight data-interchange format. It’s different from REST API.

    Q. How much does it cost to build a Drupal website?

    The costs of developing a Drupal website depend on several factors. Design complexity, development time, type of features, etc. play an important role in calculating the final cost. Drupal India delivers design-rich Drupal websites and eCommerce solutions at a competitive price.

    How to Boost Your Website Ranking with Drupal SEO Modules?

    You’ve built an engaging & brilliant website with the help of top-notch designer and offering latest services. But you aren’t getting desired traffic to your website. Before making customization on design with support of Drupal web developers and content review, consider that you may have made an amazing website, but missing the attention of search engines. But no need to worry Drupal SEO modules are available that can be easily integrated within the website to get higher Search Engine rankings.

    What is Search Engine Optimization?

    SEO is commonly used with online marketing, but very few people actually have knowledge about it. SEO is an approach to improve website ranking by optimizing its content, URL and Meta tags. However overdoing it will also penalize your website by search engines and ultimately cause lower rating. You can’t just dump keywords and expect good results.

    Top Drupal SEO Modules for Website Optimization

    There are several crucial parameters on which search engine ranking depends, from Meta tags to site theme. But the most important step to perform when launching your website is integrating Drupal SEO modules that can help with a higher ranking.

    In several cases, you won’t have to touch the front-end of your website. With a simple customization and back-end administration, desired search engine results can be achieved to boost website traffic. In this blog post, we list the best Drupal SEO modules that every website must include.

    1. Site verification

    When building Drupal website, one of the important things need to be done is to verify your website. To verify your website it is important to ensure to search engines that your site is legitimate. A verified website always ranks much higher than an unverified one.
    The important thing about this module is that it’s designed for both technical and non-technical users. In simple words, this module simplifies site verification process. Simply install the module, and get desired ranking results.

    2. XML Sitemap

    Once your site is verified, it is important to set up an XML sitemap. This process lists out your site’s URLs for search engines, thus making it easy to crawl the website. For example, you can submit the XML sitemap in Google Search Console this will help the Google to index the pages.

    To initiate the process, you can use the XML sitemap module to start the sitemap generation. In addition, this module automatically submits to all the major search engines, like Ask, Google, Bing, or Yahoo. This help bots to automatically crawl and receive desired results for the website.

    3. Google Analytics

    Google is considered as the most popular search engine across the globe. Google generates over 5 billion searches on daily basis. With this in mind, a popular element for SEO practices will be Google Analytics, which gives in-depth insights and reports related to your website traffic from Google.

    By installing the Google Analytics module, Drupal development services integrate it to get the web statistics tracking system. In addition to that multiple statistics features to your site are also added, including the AdSense support, Page not found (404) tracking, Site Search support, and many more. With these remarkable features, you’ll gain better insight regarding how to meet target audience needs.

    4. SEO Checklist

    When basic parameters are met, it’s time to build SEO-friendly web pages and content for your site. But, if you’re new to SEO, you will see how much there is to learn for website ranking. In addition, when working with large volume of content, having an additional hand is always beneficial.

    The great news is that this Drupal SEO module offers just that. The module is not designed to improve your SEO but is equipped with the information to perform necessary website optimization. Plus, the feature to build SEO checklists can help to ensure you remain on task.

    5. Metatag

    Metadata, like Meta tags and Meta descriptions, help in further communication regarding what the content is about to the search engines. It is important to publish the content to add appropriate metadata to boost the chances of ranking for specific keywords. In several cases, the metadata is displayed like snippet present in the search results.

    By installing the Metatag Drupal module, you can automate the content structure. In addition, this module provides the liberty to override the auto-generated Meta tags or Meta descriptions. This ultimately takes more hands-on approach to optimization as required.

    Frequently Asked Questions

    1. What are modules in Drupal?

    A Drupal module is a collection of files having some functionality and is based on the PHP language. Because the module code executes within the website context, it can use all the functions and access all variables of Drupal core.

    2. Is Drupal front end or backend?

    Drupal is not just a frond end or backend. It is a CMS to manage your content with inbuilt template engine. Even Drupal can be used as service to store the content and use some front end tools for displaying content.

    3. What is Drupal architecture?

    Drupal is a free and open source CMS that allows organizing, managing and publishing the content and is built on the PHP based environments. Drupal CMS is highly flexible and robust that can be used to build large & complex sites.

    4. What is SEO and how it works?

    SEO also termed as search engine optimization, which is the process of optimizing the website to drive organic, or un-paid, traffic from the search engines. In order to perform this, search engines will scan, or crawl, multiple websites to understand what the site is all about.

    Wrapping Up

    At Drupal India, our team has offered customized Drupal development services. You can hire Drupal web developers for your business needs and we provide solution that capitalizes on the qualities that set your website apart. Whether you’d like to build a brand new Drupal site or extend your existing site with the right modules, we can help.

    What’s New Changes Drupal 8.8 Update Brings?

    A number of major changes have been introduced with Drupal 8.8 latest release. The update was released in December 2019 and before the release of Drupal 9, it is a great move by the Drupal community. The release mostly focused on improving the management that will help the Drupal 8 developer in building a secure & smooth enterprise website.

    Let’s have a look at the features of Drupal 8.8

    1. Media Embedding with WYSIWYG

    This update is the much-awaited in this latest release. For website developers, this WYSIWYG integration is a decade long wait. The earlier poorly handled media embedding has become simpler for the content creators who wish to build and integrate the media embedding. Another benefit is that this feature comes with complete media management capabilities.

    2. New Admin Theme

    Claro is the latest Drupal admin theme with an improved look and better interface. On top of this update, the theme will bring a new refreshed design to Drupal 8. This UI change has been long in demand by the Drupal community. However, with the latest release, these requests are finally coming on board. The clean, concise and advanced look adds to the web accessibility feature.

    3. JSON API Module

    The Drupal 8.8.0 update empowered and fixed the below issues:

    • The include paths are now fixed for every resource in the resource collection.
    • The normalization of the resource is no more shared or leveraged.
    • The resourceTypeRepository computes ResourceType value objects on every demand.

    This change is a big boost to the growing ecosystem of contributed modules and hence, the JSON: API can develop faster working and communication by removing the necessity for an ad-hoc code.

    4. Complete Composer Support

    The composer has helped Drupal 8 development to become more streamlined with the PHP standards. The bonding between the Composer and PHP had started to build more with the Drupal 8 release. Now, Drupal 8.8 comes with more Composer plugins.

    • Drupal-composer-scaffold

    The new plugin will be in charge of automating the Drupal composer scaffolding in the right place. On top of that, this will offer a number of options for the setup approaches.

    • Drupal-vendor-hardening

    This plugin task is to eliminate some of the useless folders that are present in the vendor directories like tests or documentation. This is an important process when the vendor folder is comprised of the doc root.

    • Drupal/recommended-project

    This composer template helps in building the Drupal project structure which follows the suggestions presented in Drupal 8.8. These suggestions state that the vendor folder should be out of the doc root.

    • Drupal/legacy-project

    This template is used to generate a Drupal project that follows the old structure. But using this will not be suggested for Drupal 8.8.0 and further.

    5. Customized Browser Support

    Websites can run properly with the modern browsers that support CSS and JavaScript. While some browsers are getting outdated with time. But with Drupal 8.8 release the browser policy has been changed.

    It supports the latest release of browsers for both desktop and mobile browsers:

    • Google Chrome
    • Firefox
    • Opera
    • Microsoft Edge
    • Safari
    • Safari for iOS

    In addition to that the latest release is also supported by the desktop and mobile browsers:

    • Internet Explorer
    • Firefox ESR
    • Chrome for iOS
    • Samsung Internet
    • Chrome for Android
    • UC Browser
    • Opera Mini

    6. End of Life for jQuery UI

    In the method of switching to JavaScript solutions, the Drupal core is eliminating jQuery UI which allowed the developers to add experience components within the code. This collection of widgets is being eliminated for now and will be completely removed in the upcoming Drupal 9. The modules and themes dependent on it will have to search for a replacement contributed to the project.

    Frequently Asked Questions

    1. How often does Drupal update?

    Usually, Drupal releases updates on a monthly basis but when any security issue is observed an immediate release is also done. Make sure to enable the update status module and check for new releases every week.

    2. Is Drupal front end or backend?

    A Drupal developer is someone who codes in the PHP and other server-side languages. They code the custom modules, consume web services, automated tests, automate deployment, etc. They are also known as “backend Drupal developers”.

    3. How long does it take to customize a Drupal website?

    An enterprise-level website needs a lot of time to customize in comparison to the small websites. Overall the time required for the customization completely relies on the requirements and nature of changes required within the website.

    4. What is Drupal 8 good for?

    Drupal is the first choice of developers and business owners who need to build enterprise-level websites. It is a powerful CMS that is not only open-source but also offers high-level features to maintain the online branding image.

    5. What features Drupal 8.8 offer to developers?

    Drupal 8.8 offers multiple features that were missing in the earlier versions and were in huge demand for a decade.

    • Composer Support
    • Browser Support
    • JSON API Module
    • Claro Admin Theme
    • Media Embedment

    Wrapping Up:

    Drupal 8.8 update brings out a collection of features and quality of the life improvements that will definitely make the life of the site builders and content creators simpler. This release is an important release giving a clear indication for the arrival of Drupal 9. if you own a website or looking to build a website from scratch it is the perfect time to avail the services of this latest version. Drupal Development company can be consulted to build an engaging as well as secure enterprise website. They have all the resources to build, customize and migrate a Drupal website.