CMS stands for Content Management System — a platform that allows you to easily control your website and the content on it. With a well-optimized CMS, even less tech-savvy members of a team can add new blog posts or gallery images — and developers themselves can expand the website by adding new features and pages much faster than they would do without a CMS on hand.
Drupal is considered one of the best content management systems on the market. The platform powers approximately 1.5% of all websites worldwide and is used by approximately 3.3% of professional developers.
What makes Drupal stand out?
Many developers make a clear distinction between Drupal and other major content management systems. This is because Drupal gives much more freedom of development, allowing Drupal developers to create a content management platform and website tailored exactly to your unique needs. Due to this, Drupal is often referred to not as a CMS but a CMF — content management framework, helping in building CMS experiences matched perfectly to a business.
What are some features of Drupal that make it stand out on the market?
- It’s one of the best options for building more scalable websites. Drupal, unlike WordPress or Joomla, other popular CMS solutions, is used primarily by high traffic sites, such as online marketplaces.
- Drupal offers better cybersecurity solutions than other similar CMS solutions. The platform is even used by the official website of the White House!
- Drupal has been developed primarily to power large websites, not blogs or small portfolios.
- The system helps your developers significantly speed up the process of web development.
- Drupal supports some of the most popular web technologies, including PHP and the Symfony framework.
- Drupal offers better performance than other similar solutions.
Why hire Drupal developers?
Drupal is a complex platform, and there is no denying it — it has been built by developers for developers. Is it wrong? Definitely not! If you wish to build huge, scalable websites, using complex solutions like Drupal is the only way to secure your product’s top-notch performance and reliability.
But this also means that to truly grasp the power of Drupal, you will definitely need to hire Drupal developers. How can they help you leverage the platform’s potential?
Hire Drupal developers to…
- Install Drupal on your server without an issue.
- Create a scalable, future-proof website.
- Tailor the content management system to the exact needs of your company so even less tech-savvy team members can add new content to the website easily.
- Add new features using Drupal plugins.
- Develop new plugins used exclusively by your company.
- Maintain stunning performance of your website.
- Create unique Drupal templates and attract customers with amazing UX.
- Assure perfect optimization of your website for mobile devices.
- Set up data analytics systems for your website.
- Solve any issues with the website fast.
What are the most important hard skills for a Drupal developer?
The first step in the process of hiring a Drupal developer is assessing the hard, technical skills of your candidate. Below we list the most important such skills — without them, your Drupal developer won’t be able to deliver the results you need within the deadline you give them.
- Extensive experience with the Drupal environment
Understanding Drupal is more than just being able to install the CMS on a server and adding new pages to it. An experienced Drupal developer should be able to build new Drupal templates from scratch, be familiar with all the relevant API, as well as know-how to add new functionalities, both using plugins and by writing their own code.
- Proficiency with front-end languages
HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, the trinity of front-end development, can be easily utilized in Drupal. Knowing these three languages is crucial to effective Drupal template development.
- Proficiency with PHP
PHP is one of the most popular technologies used for developing the back-end of websites and Drupal is also based on it. Proficiency with PHP is a must for your Drupal developers as knowledge of the language allows them to better optimize your site’s performance.
- Experience with additional server-side operations
But successful back-end management is more than just PHP development. To make sure your website is truly future-proof, hire Drupal developers with experience in other back-end operations, such as database management with SQL.
- Knowledge of relevant frameworks and libraries
By utilizing front-end and back-end frameworks and libraries, your Drupal developer can expand the functionality of the platform more efficiently and get you the right results faster. As Drupal itself is based on one of the most popular PHP frameworks, Symfony, previous experience with this tool is definitely a must.
Why you should never forget about soft skills
The most innovative websites are not an effect of solely technical excellence but also thinking beyond pure coding. If you want to take your product truly to the top, hire Drupal developers with the following soft skills…
- Creativity
To deliver unique front-end solutions and actively participate in the design process.
- User empathy
To always build websites with the target customer in mind.
- Amazing time management
To easily switch between all the tasks that a developer is responsible for.
Best Drupal developer job interview questions
To make sure your candidate indeed has all the skills they claim to have, you should run a proper technical interview with them. If you are not familiar with Drupal yourself, ask an expert in the platform to assist you. This can be either another Drupal developer, a software consultant, or an IT project manager.
Some of the technical questions that Drupal developers are often asked during interviews are:
- What is the taxonomy system in Drupal?
- What are hooks in Drupal?
- $argv and $argc — what is the difference between the two?
- What is the most efficient way to load classes in PHP?
- What is "spaceship operator”?
- How do PHP sessions work?
- When would you use a PHP destructor?
- if( !strpos( $haystack, $needle ) — what’s wrong with this code?
- What is the difference between single quotes and double quotes in PHP?
- How would you create a singleton class in PHP?
Assessing the company fit of a Drupal developer
Even though the market of Drupal developers is quite limited, you should not ignore reviewing how well your candidate actually fits your business. A perfect match between your business and a Drupal developer can bring amazing results faster than you’d expect and provide you with an expert who truly understands your needs.
When you hire Drupal developers, consider the following three areas of company fit.
- Product fit
Websites should not be considered one specific category of a product — there are so many things that a website can be used for that you need to look for relevant specialists to really provide you with top-quality service. Think, for example, about an online marketplace with hundreds of thousands of products — if you want to build one, you don’t want a Drupal developer who worked mostly on 10-pagers for small businesses but rather a true e-com veteran.
- Industry fit
The first step to creating an amazing website is understanding the customers that will visit it. Hire Drupal developers with previous experience in your industry as they most likely already worked with the type of customer you are aiming for.
- Company culture fit
Just like soft skills, company culture match can significantly boost morale and innovation across the whole company. Hire Drupal developers who share the same values as your business — consider things like the preferred style of management, work environment (startup-like vs corporate), or approach to remote work.
Who else does your web project need?
By utilizing the power of Drupal, your new Drupal developers can build a website for you that’s truly scalable. But a great tech might not be enough to make your product successful. Connect with other experts, such as web designers, data scientists, or mobile developers, to take your business to the next level with full confidence.
And if you need to hire a team of IT professionals fast, get in touch with us. At Ideamotive, we run an industry-leading network of IT talents looking for new career opportunities. Whether you want to hire Drupal developers, digital designers, or even AI experts — we can connect you with the right people based on your unique requirements.
Get in touch with us today and assemble a team that will bring your company the success you desire.
