If you're looking for a powerful and flexible solution to upgrade your website and overcome tech stack siloes, Drupal 10 might just be the answer.
To get the full scoop on Drupal 10 and unlock its potential, we worked with our partner Acquia to sponsor the Ultimate Guide to Drupal 10 (download the full guide below).
Here for the summary? We're calling out Drupal 10's benefits and exploring new features, below.
Intro to Drupal 10
Drupal 10, the latest version of this robust digital experience platform (DXP), offers new functionalities, improved ease of use, and enhanced security.
Unlike proprietary CMS platforms that limit your choices to a specific vendor's ecosystem, Drupal is open-source, offering the freedom to choose the back end, front end, and delivery technologies that best align with your unique requirements.
Drupal's open-source solution is supported by a thriving community of over 45,000 contributors. By leveraging Drupal, you can innovate and solve problems without the constraints of vendor lock-in.
- Developers are drawn to Drupal because of its open-source flexibility, stability, security, and active contributor community.
- Marketers appreciate the ease of use of the powerful marketing tools that Drupal DXP offers, enabling quick and effective digital experience optimization.
- Business owners, on the other hand, value Drupal for its ability to enhance agility, foster innovation, and improve competitiveness.
Drupal is A Developers Dream
Drupal empowers developers by providing a flexible architecture for modern app development. In an increasingly crowded digital space, the ability to create and publish large volumes of content, while maintaining a visually distinct brand identity is crucial.
Drupal's architecture offers developers the flexibility to control their own code and data, allowing them to express the unique qualities of their brand. Whether you're looking for a traditional or headless approach, from simple to complex, Drupal covers the full range of possibilities for content management.
Let's explore some features that give developers more flexibility.
- Headless/Decoupled Support: Drupal supports a decoupled front end with its implementation of the JSON:API specification, allowing developers to use Drupal as a central content store for various front-end technologies.
- Mobile Experience: Drupal is designed with mobile in mind, incorporating responsive design across its functionality.
- Static Sites: The popular Tome extension allows Drupal to be used as a static site generator, while benefiting from its powerful backend.
Drupal 10 Streamlines Marketing
For marketers, Drupal offers a CMS that is both intuitive and marketer-friendly.
In today's rapidly evolving landscape, marketers need to act quickly to optimize digital experiences and campaigns. Drupal empowers marketers to do just that by working seamlessly with solutions that enable intelligent, personalized experiences across multiple channels.
With Drupal, marketers have access to numerous SEO features, martech integrations, visual website builders, live previews, reusable content, multilingual capabilities, enterprise workflows, and rich page templates.
The Layout Builder, one of Drupal's core modules, provides marketers with a powerful visual design tool for various use cases, making it easy to create engaging layouts for content.
Many of these capabilities can be implemented with little or no assistance from developers, giving marketers the autonomy, they need to deliver outstanding results.
Drupal Integration and Scalability
With over 46,000 pre-built integrations and extensions available, Drupal empowers users to customize website content exactly as desired.
Whether it's form creation, personalization, CRM integration, digital asset management, marketing automation, cookie management, social media marketing, or analytics, Drupal seamlessly integrates with the tools and platforms already in use.
This compatibility ensures that existing marketing tools can continue to be leveraged alongside Drupal, streamlining tech stacks and maximizing efficiency.
Scalability and performance are key considerations for any enterprise-grade platform, and Drupal excels in these areas.
Some of the most visited websites in the world, including those supporting high-profile events like the Olympics and the Super Bowl, rely on Drupal for its world-class performance and scalability.
Drupal achieves this through powerful caching mechanisms, BigPipe for smoother page loading, horizontal scaling to dozens of servers, deep CDN integrations for global availability, multi-region failover support for high availability, optimized HTML generation, JS/CSS aggregation, support for lazy image loading, and compatibility with modern image formats.
What’s New in Drupal 10?
Let’s explore some of the exciting new features introduced in Drupal 10.
The default front-end theme, Olivero, provides a modern and visually appealing design out of the box.
Additionally, the new Starterkit revolutionizes theme creation, offering a streamlined and efficient process.
The administration theme, Claro, enhances the user experience with its improved design and usability.
Drupal 10 also brings modern JavaScript components into play, gradually replacing jQuery UI. This modernization effort will continue with future versions of Drupal 10, ensuring that Drupal remains at the forefront of technological advancements.
Furthermore, CKEditor 5 replaces CKEditor 4, delivering a better authoring and editing experience. The collaborative editing feature, reminiscent of Google Docs, is available with the CKEditor 5 Premium Features extension for Drupal, enabling real-time collaboration among content creators.
With each iteration, Drupal core code performance improves. Drupal 10 focuses on streamlining and cleaning up the codebase, emphasizing core functionalities and strengths.
This renewed focus results in a leaner and more efficient Drupal core, ensuring optimal performance for your digital experiences.
Upgrading to Drupal 10
Upgrading to Drupal 10 is more straightforward compared to previous major version transitions.
When moving from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8, a complete site rebuild was often necessary due to extensive changes. However, with Drupal 8, the update process became simplified, making upgrades to future versions significantly easier.
For Drupal 9 users moving to 10, make sure to get the scoop by downloading the guide here.
New to Drupal 10?
If you're new to Drupal, getting started is a breeze. Drupal is completely free to install and run, with over 40,000 modules and 2,500 themes available to extend functionality and customize appearance.
SimplyTest.me allows you to test-drive a newly installed Drupal site in just a few minutes, giving you the opportunity to evaluate and customize, before committing to a full implementation.
The Future of Drupal 10 is Promising
With the release of Drupal 10 in December 2022, subsequent minor releases are scheduled, with 10.1 anticipated in June 2023 and 10.2 planned for release in December 2023.
These regular updates ensure ongoing support, security enhancements, and new features to keep your digital experiences ahead of the curve.
The Takeaway
In conclusion, Drupal 10 is a game-changer for businesses with outdated websites and siloed tech stacks. Its open-source nature, flexibility, extensive integrations, marketer-friendly CMS, scalability, and performance make it a compelling choice for enterprises looking to unlock their digital potential.
By partnering with Whereoware and Acquia, you gain access to a full-service digital experience agency and a digital experience platform built around Drupal.
Download the eBook today and embark on your journey towards a cutting-edge digital experience.
Download our Ultimate Guide to Drupal 10
Download our Ultimate Guide to Drupal 10
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