Drupal 8: A Brand-New Standard for Creating a Unique Digital Experience

Drupal 8 has many new features and improvements compared to the previous version of the platform. The new, improved CMS offers five new groups of functions creating a rich form builder that is easily extendable and customizable:

• Easy third-party software integration: CRM, marketing automation tool, and emailing
• “Mobile-first” approach
• Simplified content writing
• Better support for multilingual websites
• Faster loading of web pages on mobile devices

Alliance Interactive is a leading, Washington, DC-based Drupal maintenance company with more than 17 years of experience in website development, hosting, security, and support. Acting as a trusted partner, Alliance Interactive helps organizations implement updates and security fixes to increase the performance of their websites, as well as providing organizations with a wide range of digital marketing services.

Easy third-party software integration: CRM, marketing automation tool, and emailing

Thanks to the possibilities of the extensive integration of Drupal 8 with third-party tools, it is now possible to work with the tools of your choice (marketing automation platform or CRM). The idea is that the functionality of the Drupal CMS constitutes the backbone of a digital marketing approach with a variable constellation of marketing tools, freely chosen by the user. The fact that Drupal encourages its users to practice their usual marketing software means that Drupal 8 uses RESTful web services that enable other applications to read and update information on your website via the web. This means that the applications have the possibility to “communicate” in the background of your website via a standardized protocol.

In Drupal, this allows content to be offered immediately to other applications from the website administration interface, but also to other applications to modify content through this same interface. With this feature, it becomes very easy to connect third-party applications to integral parts of the Drupal database.

Not just suitable for mobile, but “mobile-first”

Drupal 8 is made for modern editing. At all levels, it is thought to be not adapted to the mobile devices, but rather “mobile-first”, both in terms of theming and image management. All the basic embedded themes in Drupal 8 are responsive. The administration pages are easy to use on mobile devices, so you can manage your content from anywhere. Tables are shrinking correctly and the new administration toolbar is mobile from the start. The key element to ensure compatibility of a website with mobile formats, HTML5, is now fully supported in Drupal 8.

Also, Drupal now resizes images depending on the screen size. Poorly-adapted images can slow down the loading of websites on mobile devices. Since the page has trouble loading the image at full size, the device must convert it, etc. At a time when mobile devices have never had such powerful screens, it would be a shame to deprive the website of its images or to display them tiny and vague. This is where the “picture” element comes in. By simply adding a larger image, regardless of its position on the page, Drupal will automatically resize it by resolution depending on the device reading it. Viewing, editing, and working with images has never been easier!

An improved administration interface for more practical content writing

Drupal 8 includes a whole new administration interface. Even though it has been completely remodeled, the concepts of Drupal 7 remain the same, but the functionality is significantly improved.

Toolbar

The toolbar is much more flexible and compact, and it is now fully responsive and configurable; the buttons are easy to add and use on mobile devices. This mobile-friendly administration interface offers a multitude of possibilities. In particular, it offers a possibility for quick editing of small errors in the text.

Content previewing

Drupal 8 allows web editors to view a created or modified page without publishing it. Although it hasn’t received much attention in the existing literature, this function is very promising. The displayed web editor looks exactly how it would look like as a published page, which previously was not the option because the page preview was generated with a standard theme. In preview mode, Drupal 8 also allows the user to switch between several models, eg. normal page, text callout, or list view, and to see the rendering of content edited in different contexts. But that’s not all—it also allows the user to see what the content will look like on different screen sizes. In older versions of Drupal, it was not possible to preview the navigation elements, but Drupal 8 offers the possibility for the unpublished menu items to be displayed in preview mode.

Better multilingual website support

Support for multiple languages ​​is a huge improvement for Drupal developers, business owners, and website visitors. This new function is especially beneficial if you require a website that is aimed at visitors from different countries or regions. Drupal 8 offers the possibility of having several language versions of the same content and use the same graphic elements with localized content. Another advantage: the administration interface “speaks” the language of the user, even if several users from different countries use the CMS. To take advantage of this functionality in previous versions, one had to install up to 30 extra modules, which represented a lot of work (and cost). In Drupal 8, support for multiple languages ​​is a ready-to-use feature.

Faster loading of web pages on mobile devices

Suppose you want to visit a web page of 860 KB with, on the one hand, broadband access, and, on the other hand, a smartphone with a 3G function. With high-access speed, it takes 150 ms to load the page, whereas, with a 3G connection, it takes 1500 ms. Drupal 8 resizes the images, taking into account the screen size of the device.

If the screen is small, like on a smartphone, Drupal 8 shrinks the image and at the same time reduces time considering its weight. For someone who uses a 3G network, charging time may pass from 1500 ms to 474 ms, which is 68% faster! This function is configurable, so you can choose how the platform actually resizes the images.

As you can see, Drupal 8 introduced many great new features that improve day-to-day management, content writing, image editing, and the overall quality of your website. Now that you’re more familiar with these improvements, do you think there’s value in upgrading to Drupal 8?

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