How to Avoid Drupal Pitfalls

Introduction

Drupal is a free, secure, flexible, and effective framework for developing dynamic websites. However, this is only true if you know how to avoid the pitfalls that could prevent you from fully enjoying the qualities of Drupal. This article talks about common dangers when developing Drupal projects and how to avoid them.

Custom Code

Always check if there are contributed modules that are a good fit before spending development time with implementing a custom solution. The obvious drawback is the additional cost of developing and maintaining the custom solution. Additionally, it will extend the project timeline and when this solution becomes incompatible with future Drupal updates (especially security updates), the cost of fixing this issue will be on you.

Module Addiction

Using contributed modules to customize your Drupal project is a good practice. But everything in excess is bad and contributed modules are not an exception. Installing too many modules affect the performance of your website and increase the complexity of your project. Additionally, this can also increase the number of bugs and potential conflicts between modules. In order to maximize the value brought by contributed modules, it is best to keep them to a minimum and always uninstall modules that are not being used.

Slow to Develop

Building a website with Drupal takes considerable knowledge to do it rapidly. Because Drupal is a comprehensive system that includes the back end (business logic and database) and front end (building the page sent to the browser), separating front end development tasks from the back end is not trivial. Rapid development with Drupal is possible, but that is best achieved with developers and designers already familiar with Drupal.

Conclusion

Building an efficient and effective Drupal website is mostly a balancing act between using custom code and contributed modules. If you are looking for a team to help you bring a project to life using Drupal, do not hesitate to contact us.