What Makes Drupal an Excellent Community Platform
Drupal is a popular open-source CMS platform with millions of users around the world. Businesses of all sizes use it today for various purposes. There are many reasons behind the popularity of Drupal. Some of these include low implementation costs, no vendor lock-in, and flexible enterprise-ready architecture.
The platform supports speedy implementation and digital innovation as well. However, one of its most striking features remains the open-source community support. Drupal developers can be a part of the global community and get guidance or help from their peers who build with Drupal. This article looks at reasons why Drupal makes for an excellent community platform.
The Importance of Building Product-Based Online Communities
A community platform offers a domain you can use to target your prospects. It will also help in nurturing and growing both the product and the community.
Here are several reasons why you need to build product-based communities.
- Accelerated growth
A community platform will be an excellent place to target your prospects. You can even educate them about the benefits and pitch your services that help them meet their business goals. The involvement of the community through ideas and suggestions helps in the evolution of the product. Communities also help in improving user engagement.
- Brand loyalty
Getting new customers onboard is always more costly than retaining them. Moreover, your current customers have a better chance of making more purchases than new ones. Offering a positive experience to your existing customers will make them come back for more each time. A community platform is ideal to prove the worth of the product and target the right prospects.
- Improved engagement
A community portal can drive traffic to related websites of the community. As there will be a lot of information shared by community members, there will also be a good chance of search engines capturing that. It will eventually lead to better search rankings and content discoverability.
| The Drupal community has more than 1.3 million members from around the world. |
How Does Drupal Support the Creation of an Online Community?
Drupal comes with a comprehensive set of tools that aid better collaboration. Whether it is an open or closed community, the options are endless for users. Here are the tools that support the creation of an online community of Drupal users.
- Enterprise tool
It provides a better collaboration with your colleagues from different parts of the world, without the need for any intranet. You also do not have to worry about exchanging information through emails.
- User-created content framework
Instead of working on different tasks, users can focus on a shared goal. Such a collaboration is resource-beneficial as team members work on common objectives.
- Libraries
These help in archiving information created by past users. New users can access all of that information through search functions.
- Speedy turnaround
Though Drupal might have a speedy learning curve, it is still easy to build and customize content with Drupal. The development process is much faster, making it helpful for fast-paced businesses.
- User-friendliness
Drupal has all the hallmarks of a good product community. It is easy to use and merge. Developers can also add and customize modules to get new functionalities.
- Sharing of information
Drupal enables easy sharing of information with everyone. Users can add blogs, FAQs, social media handles, and emails in Drupal 8 easily.
- Easy distribution
Developers and the community can distribute information easily, which gives them more time to focus on content and marketing strategies.
- Multi-language support
You can collaborate with anyone from any corner of the world without worrying about the language barrier.
| Drupal 8 platform supports 94 languages without the need to install any additional components. |
- Seamless integration
Drupal simplifies the integration of third-party tools. It becomes possible through the community-contributed modules of Drupal.
- Mobile support
Drupal 8 supports excellent mobile responsiveness through its out-of-the-box features. You no longer have to worry about bringing on-page experience of mobile users at par with desktop users.
- Regular updates
There are seamless upgrades to the platform release at regular intervals by the platform. You can expect an update once every three months.
Community Initiatives of Drupal
The Drupal community is responsible for the quick and seamless growth of the platform over the years. Based on the community feedback, Drupal developers regularly add new functionalities. Besides enhancing the functions of the platform, it also eases other aspects like modules and templates.
A Drupal-powered CMS will ensure that you get better functionalities and simplified use with time. Furthermore, the Drupal platform will remain free for a lifetime. So, you do not have to worry about spending a dime behind it.
When it comes to the developer side, everyone can propose new solutions. If other community members like the suggestion, they will support the initiative through the development process. It also leads to quick implementation of the idea and continuous improvement of the platform.
Over the years, the developer community has created several top Drupal elements through feedback and suggestions. The system today supports several features like having substitute descriptions for graphical elements on websites. It is beneficial from both the SEO and WCAG guidelines perspective.
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