Drupal Web Development - 4 Faux Pas To Avoid In 2021

You can't deny the fact that web development has become easier since the advent of content management systems (CMS). Amidst all the CMS platforms out there, Drupal is one of the oldest platforms that power over a half million websites on the internet spanning a host of domains including eCommerce, education, healthcare, finance, corporate, blogs, and many more. Despite the fact that Drupal makes web development easier, many website developers don’t know how to use this open-source platform effectively, resulting in poor speed and performance of a website. To avert this scenario, it’s important that a Drupal development company you hire doesn't make the most common mistakes during the development stage. Let’s look at them:- 

1 Poor Content Architecture 

Many developers begin website development without having a clear plan in place. It is important to note that not having a coherent plan in mind can end up with a messy content structure that delivers a poor experience to the visitors and eventually leads to the failure of your business. One way to overcome this mistake is reducing the number of content fields, types, and tables since too many fields can easily create confusion for content creators. 

For instance, instead of creating two separate fields such as "news" and "articles", developers can keep only one of them since both of them refer to the same thing. Furthermore, creating a slew of fields for every content type will not only bring unnecessary complexity but also take a toll on your website performance. Therefore, it is recommended to design a clear blueprint before the development begins. Take out time to devise how the architecture should look like or if you are running out of time, you may seek help from a professional Drupal web design company. 

2 Installation of themes and modules in the wrong directories

This mistake is committed mainly by newly Drupal developers who are habitual of installing modules and themes in the wrong folder structure. Upon making this cringe-worthy faux pas, simple tasks like upgrading to the new iteration of Drupal or debugging becomes an uphill task. Ergo, it is strongly recommended not to install modules and themes in the root directory, instead save them in the right directory. If you don’t know how to perform this task, you may seek help from seasoned Drupal developers.  

3 Needless Coding

Another mistake that is committed by many developers is that they write endless codes to develop modules. This not only consumes a lot of time but also delays development. However, there is no need for excessive coding since Drupal being a popular content management system has over 47,000 modules that can be used simply to get the desired functionality. The best part is all these modules are fully tested by experienced professionals, so it makes no sense to write excessive code when you already have ready-to-use modules for the same. 

4 Forget to create regular backup of a website 

You’ll find many newbie developers tend to ignore creating a backup of a website during the development. Being new in the industry, they don’t have an idea how taking backup can save them from a disaster if anything goes wrong. Ergo, it is strongly recommended to those developers to create a regular backup of a website, no matter whether you are making minor changes or fixing something big. 

Summing Up

With every passing day, the popularity of Drupal CMS is burgeoning. Today, businesses of all sizes are embracing this platform for web development. If you are also planning to leverage the potential of Drupal CMS, you should avoid making the common mistakes listed above in this informative piece.