At eighteen73 we’ve been building Drupal websites for over 15 years and have a dedicated team of developers with the experience to get the most out of the platform.
We do have a couple of different CMS’ in our tool belt and always recommend to the best choice for each project, with Drupal most frequently coming into the fold for especially large and bespoke projects that call for a little bit extra content control; often for enterprise, public sector, and educational institutions.
The Power of Drupal as a Framework
Drupal, in conjunction with an expert developer like eighteen73, is so much more than a CMS – it’s a content framework.
With built-in features like structured data, flexible APIs, multisite, multilingual, user roles, and content workflows, it has so much power built in it’s core. As little or as much of it can be exposed as needed.
Its scalability, extensibility, and robust architecture is unmatched. Whats more, it’s open source model and active development community make it endlessly supported and completely free of licensing costs.
Why Drupal Excels for Enterprise, Public Sector & Education
Enterprise: Complex Needs, Complex Solutions
- Custom integrations (CRM, ERP, Single Sign-On)
- Granular permissions, editorial workflows
- Performance and caching for high-traffic use
Public Sector: Accessibility, Security, and Compliance
- WCAG accessibility support out of the box
- Community-backed security team
- Popular amongst governments and councils
Education: Multi-site, Multi-user, Multi-purpose
- Departmental autonomy with central governance
- Role-based content management for staff, students, faculty
- Easy syndication and content reuse
Drupal in Action
The smaller details of what we do tell as much of the story as entire projects, so here are some specific examples of functionality we’ve built into Drupal websites to help organisations meet their needs.
SheerLuxe: Layout Builder
Using Drupal’s built-in Layout Builder ensures you have the best first-party experience in the CMS, and the peace of mind for an upgrade path in the future. We were early to adopt the Layout Builder when Drupal added it to the CMS so we learned how to get the most out of it while it was still being refined.
When it came time to redevelop the content editing experience for SheerLuxe we applied the Layout Builder because it perfectly met their needs, with its ability to give the content team a visual editing experience whilst limiting them to predesigned (yet thoughtfully flexible) building blocks.
Over time, the building blocks have evolved but our forward-looking implementation means we’ve been able to work with SheerLuxes designers to keep the website looking fresh and seamlessly apply design changes to old content as well as new without ever introducing breaking changes.
As SheerLuxe is a media outlet with a large editorial team, we felt it important to deliver an intuitive experience that minimises their onboarding for new staff. Giving the CMS a simple user interface is a considered a major focus for everything our development team produces. In SheerLuxe’s case, this has been proven by the lack of user friction experienced by site admins, and subsequently very few support requests.
Visit Herefordshire: Data Integration
While Drupal is practically limitless for content management, there are times when it makes sense to have a hands-off automation that leans on content from an external source, saving the content team from a laborious job. This was the case for Visit Herefordshire, which has a separate web app for local businesses to manage their online directory listings. Their Drupal website was designed around those business listings, with all categories feeding in from the external source. This simplified things for Visit Herefordshire, preventing the need for their team to double-handle listings in the website’s CMS.
We setup an importer to run frequently in the background, collecting changes to directory listings and automatically importing them into the website’s database as a special kind of content. This content cannot be edited in the CMS at all (saving conflicts) and it is presented on the website in an entirely consistent manner.
Since the website launched, hundreds of businesses have be added and thousands of changes have been made with the directory, with not a single piece of content management being requirement in the website’s CMS itself.
NMITE: Student Applications
We have been working with Hereford’s New Model Institute for Technology and Engineering (NMITE) since its very early days, in fact the Drupal website that we built has served them from the establishment’s pre-launch, through today, and hopefully for a long time to come.
During that time they naturally started to accept undergraduate applications and needed a robust process. Not only for prospective students and their own administration, but also to achieve accreditation to offer a university education. We agreed the process would feel better within the website itself so built an application process within Drupal.
The multistep applications handle applicant data with the upmost security by storing encrypted content and not making it available to any CMS users unless they have a extremely restricted role. Those with the role can review applications while securely signed into the CMS.
We needed a trusted partner to design a secure, professional, and auditable application system. Eighteen73 built a system that met accreditation needs and made the process seamless for applicants and staff alike.
Let’s Talk Drupal
We’d love to hear from you if you have Drupal project in mind or would like some advice on whether or not it’s the right fit for your needs.
We don’t only service new builds – we are here to help with website audits, upgrades and maintenance too.