No, seriously!
Sure, one of the biggest reasons the Drupal CMS is popular among smaller organizations is the very attractive ($0.00) price tag. But a less obvious strength of this platform is also one that makes it an even more cost-effective choice: A well-built Drupal website can be superior in both functionality and usability for day-to-day content managers.
That’s right, organizations can have powerful, feature-rich websites, without needing advanced webmasters on staff for everyday site updates.
The key is Drupal’s almost limitless flexibility. The users and developers in the Drupal community have built an extensive collection of contributed (non-core) modules, all of which were created to meet needs, solve problems — even address pet peeves.
Website builders can achieve back-end user-friendliness, without sacrificing functionality, by taking advantage of a number of contributed modules that facilitate customization of workflows and interfaces. Here are some of my favorites:
- Create an additional or alternate content administration page with Views Bulk Operations, an extension to the all-powerful Views module. With VBO, you can provide a simpler, more functional interface for managing the site’s content.
- With Node Convert, content admins can convert nodes to and from any content type. The process can be even smoother if you set up Node Convert Templates — which also help ensure the safe transfer of any custom content (CCK) fields.
- Make content entry a little less tedious — and a little more standardized, in some cases — with Node Clone (works just like it sounds: create a new node by copying an existing one).
- Improve the node adding/editing interface with any of the following modules:
- Save and Edit: Adds a “Save and Edit” button to node forms (to apply and save changes without leaving the node-edit form), along with an option to have nodes not be published when “Save and Edit” is used (in which case a “Publish” or “Save and Publish” button can be added)
- Node and Comments Form Settings: Options for hiding and configuring various elements of node and comment forms (i.e. hiding the Input Format and “Split summary at cursor” fields), plus the added feature of a “Cancel” button for node forms.
- Workflow: Allows for setting up multiple, custom workflows for node types — for example, a workflow could move users through the Draft, Reviewed, and Published “workflow states” for a Press Release node type. Additionally, each stage of a workflow can trigger specific actions, like an email being sent to a content administrator or a message being displayed to the current user.
If you build or manage a Drupal website, what other features should be on this list?
Whichever platform you use, think about your website’s back-end usability — what do you really like about your CMS, and what makes you want to throw your computer out the window?
