Drupal is a highly admired content management system (CMS), which is open source and has the global popularity of its wonderful features and functionality. There are millions of web pages already created on this platform in all domains like education, healthcare, e-commerce, business, finance, blogs, etc. including that of many leading corporate firms.

When the requirement is to build top-class feature rich web applications with the need for delivering optimum performance all the time, most of the developer now choose Drupal as their first avenue. Speed and performance are two factors making Drupal the top choice for top developers. Drupal now ranks high on the list of the most flexible and scalable open source CMS of today.

Web design on Drupal

Drupal comes with many inbuilt and easy to use themes and plug-ins for the designers to instantly use and customise based on your needs. Drupal is capable of building dynamic and feature-rich websites without any faults or issues. However, the designers and developers, especially the fresher ones tend to make a lot of mistake on Drupal by getting confused and overwhelmed with the multitude of choices available there.

Here in this post, we will discuss some of the most significant mistakes to avoid by Drupal designers and programmers while weaving a functional website on this user-friendly platform. Read this carefully any many of these tips will come handy for the newbies to avoid mistakes and ensure quality Drupal web design work.

Drupal mistakes to avoid

Using improper content architecture

The first and most crucial Drupal mistake many tend to make is the use of irrelevant architecture. You can see this on many of the hosted Drupal sites too, which ultimately affects the overall site performance and acceptance. Content is the essential part of any CMS website today, and this shouldn’t be taken lightly. At any cost, following the web development process without properly understanding and defining the content requirement at the first point will only end up in failure. Designer and programmers are advised to reuse the standard fields and content types.

Wrong installation and folder structure

Another mistake which most of the fresh Drupal programmers tend to make is using the wrong folder structure. This is resultant from faulty installation of the modules and themes. Committing this mistake makes the debugging of the website and upgrading it to the new version a complicated process at a later stage. For this reason, it is recommended that the designers should route the module and themes to the appropriate directories than putting them at the root level.

Over-coding

Many times, excessive coding also leads to Drupal website mishaps. Customised coding for Drupal web pages is a very tedious task, and new developers tend to make many mistakes in it. No doubt that Drupal is a multi-featured CMS, which has more than thirty thousand modules handy to bring in almost all imaginable functionality to the website. So, instead of imitating custom coding, newbies can better use the ready-made modules to do minimal customisation base on your needs. As these are fully tested by the professionals at the best web design Company near me, these modules may ensure better stability to save a lot of time and money.

Ignoring backup

Another biggest mistake used to happen from the side of Drupal Developers is not taking appropriate backup of the website. This can have a highly negative impact in case of any crash. The fresh Drupal developers don’t fully understand the importance of backup in web development and tend to avoid it. So, it is essential to remember and take a backup before making any changes to the website or installing any new modules. Doing this will help you to restore the previous data in case of any damage in between.

Downplay the need for speedy search

In fact, Drupal CMS is slow. Web developers who are trying to build a custom website on this platform should make use of tools like Solr Search on Drupal, which help enhance the search functionality. Speedy search is essential to make sure that your users are satisfied with the website and also to take advantage of keyword searches.

Avoiding the need for spam control

Another biggest mistake is avoiding the importance of spam control due to ignorance or intentionally by giving priority to alternate tasks. One should know that appropriate use of spam control on Drupal site help to protect the websites from spam content which ultimately spoils the repute.

Not creating a user-friendly interface

Drupal newbie also tends to downplay the importance of making a user-friendly interface, especially for the backend users. At the first point, using Drupal should be made as simple and user-friendly as possible to ensure better functionality. For this, the developers are always recommended to create user-friendly interfaces for the back-end users too.

Not following W3C guidelines

This is most common among Drupal website designer and developers who don’t stick to the standard format and structuring guidelines. The solution for this problem for such programmers is to write the code manually as per the latest guidelines and standards of W3C (World Wide Web Consortium). This approach will not only make the codes standardised for future references and debugging, but also make them error-free, easily understanding, and well documented.

Ignoring SEO-compliant design practices

Another mistake developers tend to make is to avoid the importance of SEO-compliant web development techniques, which ultimately degrade the search engine performance irrespective of the aesthetic and features of the website. In the modern world, a site doesn’t exist at all if it is not indexed by the leading search engine crawlers to be shown on top of the search results. Things to take care of are:

  • Using Apt keywords
  • Accessing Google Analytics
  • Using proper meta tags.
  • Following image specifications and alt text.
  • Proper on page techniques from SEO perspective etc.

To conclude, these are some of the most common mistakes, which are the biggest ones too to be avoided if you keep an extra eye on these. Irrespective of the level of complexity, if you take an informed and error-free development approach, it will save your website from a lot of troubles over time. With this done properly, debugging and scaling up of the website also become much easier along with maintaining quality, fully-functional, error-free, and user-friendly website.