Bringing your business online is exciting, but there is a lot of work to be done. Before you begin creating exciting content or creative designs there are two choices you need to make. Select a web hosting company and what platform you will build your website on.

Unfortunately, neither choice is easy, but both are equally important. The platform you choose to build on will dictate the options you have available to your website and not all platforms are created equally. One of the best decisions you can make is choosing the Drupal platform and a Drupal hosting provider.

What Will Your Website Include?

Before you make any choices, you need to have a plan for your website. Without proper planning the choices you make will most likely be the wrong ones. For example, will you be selling any products or services from your website? If so, then you will need to set up an e-commerce friendly website. Will your website contain a lot of video content? Video content takes longer to load and is more expensive to host.

Do you have any skills in web development or will you hire a web developer? While making a website has gotten much easier over the years, Drupal is not exactly the most beginner friendly website. You may want to look at other platforms like WordPress, which is beginner friendly. Regardless of what you want to do, you need a clear plan of action before picking a platform.

What is Drupal?

Drupal is a free open source software that was created in 2000 and is used by 1.9% of all websites with a content marketing share of 3.5%. This makes Drupal the third largest content management system in the world. It has evolved over the years and offers a wide array of features that experienced web developers will find useful.

It is important to note that Drupal is not as user friendly as some of the other platforms, which can make it a poor choice for complete beginners. However, if you already have experience in web development and PHP language, you will find Drupal to be an excellent building platform.

What About the Competition?

Drupal is the third largest platform in use behind both WordPress and Joomla. There are a lot of platforms to choose from, but most choose the WordPress platform because it is the most accessible platform for beginners. To understand why you should pick Drupal, it is important to compare it to other platforms.

It is also worth mentioning that switching between platforms is completely possible, but it will require a lot of work and time, so it is important to choose the right platform from the beginning. The choice you make doesn’t have to be final, but it will save you a lot of headaches if it is.

What Advantages Does Drupal Offer?

Every platform has its own advantages and disadvantages and Drupal is no exception. Unlike other platforms, Drupal offers core support for multilingual websites, which is extremely important when you are trying to reach as many people as possible. When it comes to custom content types, taxonomies, and user roles, Drupal is more flexible in the options available.

In a perfect world, most website building platforms would be equally secure, but in reality, Drupal has this advantage. In fact, security may just be Drupal’s best-selling point. The Drupal platform is used by many government agencies and entities that value security. Hacking and cyber attacks are becoming more rampant and having the best security available is important.

Connecting your website to other platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google Analytics, and many others is easy with Drupal. It offers a wide array of third-party API support to help connect your website with the most popular platforms.

When you select Drupal, the possibilities are endless.

Is Drupal Right for You?

Drupal offers the ability to make any type of website, but if you do not have any prior web development knowledge, the platform’s high learning curve is an issue. However, if that is not a problem, Drupal is an excellent platform choice to build a new business website on. It offers you the possibility to create enticing designs and the user functionality needed for any business website.

It is imperative that you test the platform you choose before committing. While any platform you pick may sound perfect on paper, everything is different once you start using it. Testing the platform is the best way to find out if Drupal is the right choice for you.