All-In-One Guide: Drupal Consulting, Development, & Maintenance

There are several positions and job roles associated with Drupal development, and each of them entails a different set of tasks and responsibilities. All these roles also demand an extra level of experience and skills. As Drupal is a vast framework, an expert who is skilled in one area might not have the talent to manage or develop another CMS site.

For example: If you need to hire a drupal developer if you want someone to develop a website using Drupal. But, if you are new to Drupal, you might need to hire a consultancy to guide you to start to finish. Likewise, if you have an existing Drupal website and are looking for maintenance and support service, you need to hire a Drupal maintenance and support expert. Since Drupal is a complex framework, it's one of the key reasons why so many role possibilities exist within the ecosystem.

With increasing demands on web content management systems (CMSs), users are looking for more personalized experiences, better connectivity between devices, and more attractive elements in their websites to wow their customers. Drupal has become the leader and the perfect enterprise-level CMS platform for handling complex projects.

At AddWeb Solution, our Drupal consulting services help clients collaborate with our Drupal consultants and participate in every step of the process. From an analysis of business requirements to the designing of Drupal site development, QA testing, deployment, maintenance and upgrades. This blog will tell you the critical difference between Drupal consultancy, development, and maintenance services. Let's start with Drupal consulting first.

Our Drupal Consulting Services

Here are some ample reasons why we are excellent when it comes to delivering Drupal consultancy services to our clients:

• 100+ Drupal websites developer till now
• Knowledge of Drupal integration with other systems
• Team of Acquia Certified Developers
• Agile Drupal consulting methodology
• Creating award-winning, creative Drupal solutions, and sites
• Collaborative and transparent approach
• Competitive rates for hiring Drupal consulting talent
• A cross-functional, global team of Drupal experts
• In-house, front-end developers: Business Analysts, UX/UI Specialists & Designers.
• Proven track record of Drupal delivery
• Rigorous (QA) testing before your site "Go-Live."
• SEO & SEM services to drive traffic and improve conversions
• Shorter development times translating to lower costs

Drupal is a favorite CMS for web developers and programmers due to its modular structure and availability of basic functionalities in its core. Developers can use add-on modules and features, and plugins as per their needs. Since it is an open-source developer, several free and paid templates, themes designed by third-party developers are widely available on the web and for free.

To use this open-source CMS solution to your advantage, you need to customize it to meet your needs. Here come the Drupal developers in the picture. A drupal developer can develop a fully functional site and customize it as per your needs.

Here Are Some Best Practices For Drupal Development

Set up a local environment

All size projects and their developers should have a dev and live environment; Drupal developers should have local settings. It would help if you focused on DevOps in the Drupal ecosystem, but before you jump into DevOps, make sure you have the basics first and add complexity only as necessary.

Use a project tracker

Invest in a project tracker and include project managers, content and QA specialists, and anyone else playing any role in the project. It is necessary to avoid last-minute chaos and keep everyone in the loop.

Also Read: 10 Tips For Drupal Experts To Build An Amazing Drupal Website

Utilize a remote Git repository

Make sure you and your team members are well-aware of Git as early and often as possible.

Define information architecture

While defining the information architecture (IA) for the site, involve all stakeholders. There's nothing worse than knowing a gap in the content part at the end of a project, and you don't have time to fix it. Get the granularity right when defining IA with the help of user feedback early in the process from all stakeholders.

Use the Configuration System

You can use Drupal 8's configuration system to push non-code configuration changes between environments quickly. Make sure the entire team has an understanding of the tools and participates in the process. The configuration system will ensure a solid developer workflow and encourage team members to update and test the configuration locally before pushing it to remote development environments.

Skills to looks for a while hiring a Drupal developer

As you start interviewing your potential developers, you have to discuss and verify the skills they offer. To make things simpler and the process easier for you, we've mentioned several areas in which your developer should be skilled. By demonstrating these skills, you will be able to hire a Drupal developer who will create the perfect Drupal website for your needs.

A Strong Grasp of PHP & PHP Frameworks

While many developers jump from one CMS to the next, your developer should be familiar with the foundational coding languages like PHP. Your developer must have expertise in PHP and willing to learn PHP frameworks.

Likewise, your developer should know MySQL and JQuery to handle the custom Drupal development task for you. Knowledge of MySQL is for setting up your Drupal database, and experience with JQuery makes it easier to carry out standard DOM, events, effects, and AJAX functions.

Experience in Installing & Building Drupal Modules

Drupal modules enable you to integrate several third-party services and tools with your website. Your site can be a point of contact for accessing many of your most frequently used tools and offer a highly customized tool for your website visitors to use.

Debugging & Updating a Drupal Site

Your potential Drupal candidate should have the ability to identify bugs in their code and experience in using Git version control. No developer can notice every possible error or issue during the coding process, but addressing bugs during the coding process helps save time and prevent further problems from occurring in the future.

An In-Depth Knowledge of Drupal Security

With Drupal, you get excellent security for your website. Yes, it may be one of the most secure CMS systems out there. However, it's not entirely protected from security threats, and your Drupal developer should be able to understand how to keep your website safe.

They need to ensure that the website and its modules remain up-to-date on time. Your developer should take additional measures like installing security modules, block bots and access to valuable files, and many more.

Every website needs regular maintenance and upgrades to stay competitive and error-free. The same goes for Drupal. Developing a Drupal site is not enough to keep it up and to run; you need to hire a Drupal maintenance and upgrade service provider like AddWeb Solution to keep your website up-to-date and away from security threats.

The primary use of maintenance mode in Drupal is that it allows your website to use themes without requiring the database. Meaning, it locks out all users who do not have access to "use site in maintenance mode' or administrator roles. Also, a maintenance mode will use a template different from the live site, normally maintenance-page.tpl.php.

You can use maintenance mode in situations like:

• Site installation
• Version upgrades
• Database failure

At AddWeb Solution, we offer maintenance and support packages that are budget-friendly and customizable to meet client's unique requirements. Our Drupal maintenance experts assist clients with the latest security updates, site upgrades, audits, user interface development, content updates, and more.

Also Read: 10 Things You Need To Know Before Starting As a Drupal Web Developer

Whether you are looking for a Drupal consultant, developer, or support and maintenance services, our experts are available to your benefit. We have several years of hands-on experience in delivering all-in-one Drupal development services to several types of clients. Our agile approach and year-long expertise make us the right choice for people looking to develop well-organized, highly functional, and attractive sites.