Choosing a company that provides web development services is not as simple as shopping for other services. If it’s your business you’re getting the website for, its success and reputation inevitably hinge on how good the website looks and functions.
Professional web development services are too often offered by people who are not necessarily a good choice to work with. It is, therefore, a critical hire. Here are a few things to keep in mind in order to make sure you make the right decision.
Take time to notice personal qualities. Professional competence is important, but if the person is reliable, they will be truthful about their abilities as well. They will also stick to your spec, and deliver quality results on time. Look for drive, determination, and passion in the people you’re hiring. If all those qualities are there, you are on the right track.
Try them out on a mini project. Before you up and spend your entire web development budget on what may turn out to be a bad choice, try them out. Website designers for small business are usually understanding and will take on a smaller job first. This will allow you to gauge the quality of their work and general performance before making a big commitment.
Focus on the essentials. Experience and knowledge are not the same thing. Whether the Canadian web design company you’re interviewing can answer particular questions about JavaScript’s history or when PHP was created. What is important are things like:
How many developers do you have working on each project? How do they communicate, especially when editing the same website?
Do you have a designated web designer or is the development team responsible for web design as well?
What are the current design trends for businesses in our industry?
What are the steps you would suggest to take in our particular situation?
Take the time in hiring, but once you did, keep an eye out on things. Even when you’re sure you made the correct choice, don’t be in a hurry to leave it all to the company. Web development services demand constant communication. Stay on top of things, make sure you get frequent updates and be ready to make a hard choice if things go off the rocker.
Keep those 4 things in mind when hiring a company for web development services, and you should be perfectly fine. Good luck!
Serge Karpyuk / Mar 10'2017
Here you are, super excited and quite proud of your content-driven Drupal website that:
you can customize it to your liking
“spoils” you and your team with a highly flexible editorial workflow, with a great administrator experience
comes with unmatched scalability which allows you to project your business far into the future, in other words: to dare and to dream big.
No matter what “floods” of traffic and “truckloads” of data/content the future has in store for you, Drupal's got you covered!
How about speed?
It would be a pity to compromise its powerful heavy content-handling capabilities “in the name of” top speed now wouldn't it?
You don't have you!
Your content “load” and your Drupal website's complex architecture can remain “unharmed” while you continue to dream big in terms of page loading super speed if you implement these 10 techniques to speed up your Drupal performance:
1. Is Your Site Running on The Latest Version of Drupal?
As obvious, quick, and easy (compared to other “tweaks for speed”) as this performance booster might be, there still are Drupal website owners or Drupal developers that overlook or underestimate it!
Don't be one of those who rush in to implement the more advanced performance-improving tactics and skip the “elementary” ones!
So, you've got our point: always make sure to update to the latest version of Drupal.
Needless to add that it's that version, the last released one by the Drupal community, that has all the bugs and errors that you might be facing right now already solved. Not to mention that all the other “surprise” upgrades and improvements that it's been supercharged with while your site was still running on an older version.
2. Boost Your Drupal Performance Using a CDN
Get used to picturing your Drupal website's visitors as “highly demanding”!
They might be impressed with your site's (high quality) content richness, but their first impression will worsen, drastically, if that "highly valuable" content takes ages to load!
Therefore, consider relying on a content delivery network (CDN) for delivering the content (obviously!) that your users will request at a higher speed.
3. Configuration Changes: a Simple, Yet Effective Performance Tuning
Before you rush to tackle the bigger issues affecting your Drupal performance, make sure you do all the basic configuration settings!
Such as this configuration "trick" here, aimed at helping you to boost your Drupal performance: got to Administer- Site configuration- Performance.
It's there that you can make your own "inventory" of all the options at hand for JavaScript optimization, CSS optimization, and page cache. They're handy speed-boosting options, so why not use them? It's just a matter of box-checking after all!
Make sure to check all the key boxes there such as "Compress cached pages", "Aggregate JavaScript files" (and the CSS ones, of course - CSS JS aggregation), "Cache pages for anonymous users" etc.
4. Spare The Resources Invested in Displaying 404 Error Pages
No matter how brilliantly customized and appealingly designed your 404 error page might be, it will still use valuable server resources!
So, you might want to first get your website scanned using software such as Screaming Fog or Online Broken Link Checker. To identify its “weak points”, its non-existing pages, broken URLs, and ineffective content sections than to rely on a Drupal-dedicated module for displaying a 404 error page each and every time there's a requested content-related issue.
For all the other cases when you have no choice and you just have to get the “resource-consuming” 404 error page displayed, you might want to enable Drupal Fast 404.
It's one of Drupal's modules designed with speed in mind, you know! It will use just 1 MB of your server's memory.
5. How Heavy Is Your Website's “Load” of Unused Modules?
It's in a CMS's nature (and Drupal's definitely no exception) to “ship with” a heavy load of modules and plugins.
Now, can you remember our advice from a previous post on this blog? “If there's a module for it, it doesn't mean you have to rush in and install it on your site” (or something like that; if you want to test my memory you can always look over that blog post again).
Therefore, consider it as a “spring cleaning“ for your Drupal website!
Go through all of them, make a list including 3 major categories: the “crucial” ones, the ones you've actually never used, and those which, once uninstalled, wouldn't impact your website functionality at all (be “cruel”, be “honest” with yourself!).
You'll be surprised by how much load you'll ease your Drupal website off just by carrying out this task: disabling and even removing all the unused/unnecessary Drupal modules from your site!
Combined with a well-tuned cache (that we'll be tackling in this post, as well), getting rid of your modules overload is probably one of the most efficient ways to boost your Drupal website's performance!
6. Speed It Up: Aggregate Your CSS and JavaScript Files
And here's another factor that dramatically influences your website's overall performance: Drupal's “burden” of CSS and JavaScript files!
It's Drupal itself that provides the solution: it enables these files' aggregation so that they load together and significantly improve your website's front-end performance.
Fewer HTTP requests will automatically lead to faster page loading time, as simple as that!
7. Is Your Website a Drupal Cache System-Powered One?
Learning how to trigger Drupal's cache system's “superpower” is one of the best tactics to boost your Drupal website's performance!
If we are, to sum up, in a very rudimentary manner, how Drupal's caching system works, it would be something like this:
a user lands on your website
tries to access a certain page on your site
that specific request gets stored (a copy of it, course) in an easily accessible location so that it will load quicker for the next user who'll land on your site and try to access the very same page
Got it?
Now since it's a whole caching “system” that we've referred to, you should know that there are dedicated Drupal modules that you can put in charge of all the caching going on on your website:
The Internal Page Cache module: caches and stores anonymous visitors' page requests, delivering them much quicker to future users trying to access them
The Internal Dynamic Cache module: a great “tool” for improving your page load time both for anonymous and for logged-in visitors
You simply can't afford (it would be quite “reckless” to overlook this performance-booster) not to use Drupal's cache system to its true potential. Especially since it “overwhelms” you with so many types of caches that you only need to enable:
page caching
panel caching
PHP caching
Views caching
8. Is Your Current Web Hosting Satisfying Your Need for Speed?
A fast web hosting is key when it comes to optimizing your Drupal website for high speed!
It's one aspect that you can't afford to get “tight-fisted” about! So, you may want to keep the distance from those web hosting providers offering you “irresistible” prices at the cost of shared resources that will just bog down your website.
Piece of advice: make sure to choose a Drupal-specific host!
It's another great “trick” when you want to boost your Drupal performance!
9. Set Up a Reverse Proxy and Your Drupal Server
Call this technique an “HTTP accelerator”!
It will streamline the whole cached copies delivery process thanks to the “go-between” server that it relies on.
10. Optimize The Main “Culprits” for Low Speed: Images
That's right, it's the load of images on your website that's consuming most of its resources and, implicitly, which have the greatest impact on your site's loading speed.
The solution?
Optimize, optimize, then optimize some more!
And since when it comes to images optimization is just another word for compression, you do that: compress the images slowing down your Drupal website!
Tip: among many other built-in “treats” that the innovative Drupal 8 spoils us, developers in Toronto, with, there are its awesome image optimization features.
We're referring here to Image Styles, for instance (then you get “by default”) which enables you to optimize your images' sizes so that they're the perfect fit for any type of device, irrespective of its screen size!
And this is our “decalogue”! Our list of 10 speed-up techniques, ranging from basic to a bit more advanced, that you should consider when you decide to boost your Drupal website's performance!
How does your own list of top speed-boosters look like?
If you want to access proactive Drupal support for your development projects, contact Optasy.
Adrian Ababei / Mar 08'2017
When you’re making a decision about which Toronto web design agency to hire, you’re making a decision about the future of your business.
A well designed, quickly loading, a good looking website will bring you, clients, increase sales and lead to success. A bad website… well, let’s just say it will cost you more.
If you’re a small business, looking for an affordable web design Toronto studio is understandable. It’s perfectly achievable too. There are good web design agencies in any price range. There are bad ones in all price ranges as well.
So how do you make sure to hire the Toronto web design agency that’s right for you?
Here are a few considerations that can help you make the right decision.
Look for relevant experience. Markets and industries are different. If an agency worked with fashion shop websites in Europe, it doesn’t mean they will know how to build a website for a Toronto hi-tech company or a local car repair shop. They may, or they may not. Picking a company that worked with clients in your industry locally is the safer choice.
Affordable is not the same as cheap. Remember there’s the trio of things: Fast, Cheap, Good. You can only ever choose two of them. Choose fast and good, and it won’t be cheap. Choose cheap and fast, and you won’t get quality results. But it can be affordable. As we just said above, there are good companies in all price ranges. Just don’t make it your top priority.
See how communication works. Are emails answered quickly? Do they provide detailed answers? The company you’re hiring should sound interested and reliable. They should be able and happy to explain what exactly you’re getting for your money. Make sure you’re also available, to establish good communication and trust, of course.
Portfolios are important, but checking them won’t hurt. Unfortunately, it’s not impossible for businesses - in any field, for that matter - to exhibit projects that are not their own. Luckily, it’s easy to check. All you need to do is contact their client and ask how the service was. This way you gain a confirmation that the portfolio project is real, and also find out about how good it was working with the firm. An honest Toronto web design agency will only encourage that.
We hope this helps. Good luck in your search and a subsequent new project!
Adrian Ababei / Mar 02'2017
Many businesses now decide to create an app.
There are many reasons for it. Some businesses simplify transactions with existing clients this way. Some find it helpful when attracting or retaining clientele. In other cases, the app is a bonus with cool, interesting features that make clients happy.
Whatever your reason for considering mobile web app development, there is something that you should decide first.
Apps are different. There are native mobile apps, hybrid apps and web applications. They all have similarities, but they have differences as well.
Let’s give you a quick overview about what them.
Native Apps
Most of what we know about mobile apps comes from native applications. Each is developed to work on mobile devices only, with versions for different platforms, even if it’s the same application. An iOS app won’t work on Android, Blackberry or Windows phones, and vice versa. They have been the default for a long time, the reason being that their functioning on each device is optimized for that device. That makes a better user experience.
The problem with them, however, is that they have to each be built from the ground up. If you want your app to work on iOS, Android, Blackberry and Windows phones, you need to essentially produce 4 different applications. That can be costly, and you need to make sure the company you hire has all the necessary mobile web development tools to get the job done on all four.
Web Apps
Let’s continue with the mobile web app vs native app comparison, and return to the hybrid application a bit later.
The web app can run on all devices regardless of the system, but it may have difficulty displaying well on some browsers and screen sizes. There are adaptive and responsive web apps that attempt to fit in different viewports, which they do with increasing if not perfect success. At the same time, the web app won’t be able to operate your camera, so anything that takes pictures is not an option here. This is not all bad, since - again - it will save you lots of development time and more than a bit of money. Just make sure it’s right for your purposes.
Hybrid Apps
This is a combination, or rather a compromise between the two. The hybrid app will appear in app stores, increasing its discoverability, but will run in the browser.
What’s sure though, is that the decision is not clear-cut. You choice of app should be the optimal solution to your specific needs.
Just ask your native or mobile web app development experts and see what they say.
Good luck with your project!
Adrian Ababei / Mar 02'2017
We just couldn't keep it to ourselves! Especially since we're fully aware that you, our long-time or new partners, are “responsible” for this recognition. Being ranked there, among all the top web development companies in Canada's so competitive digital landscape, is an overwhelming honour for our team. But also an incentive for constant self-improvement and a huge responsibility! No doubt about that!
Allow us to express our gratitude for your acknowledgment of our work!
Of the expertise and the creativity that we've invested in delivering relevant, adaptive and overall business success-driving digital experiences. Not the “one size fits all“ type, but the one reflecting our customers' visions and geared toward helping them meet their business goals!
We simply love what we're doing!
And we love getting better and better at what we're doing! That's it! No secret “ingredient” in this “formula for success”.
It's our passion for our work that has allowed us to broaden our offer of services from (exclusively) building Drupal websites to developing custom modules, theming, offering maintenance and support and delivering adapted Drupal e-commerce solutions, as well.
And yet, we did add a not so secret ingredient to this formula for success: “always putting clients first”!
And this prioritization includes both the input that our clients give us during their web projects development, as well as their own visions and goals. For we're never putting together “just” visually-appealing, functional Drupal websites: we develop Drupal websites that respond to our customers' particular needs and which help them achieve their own business goals.
What we're actually trying to say to you is: "Thank you, we take a bow before such a recognition of our work! It's been and will continue to be an honor working with you"!
Another “culprit” of our pure enthusiasm (we won't be getting over this news soon... if ever) is the research company who's put this top itself: CLUTCH!
Worldwide famous for the innovative methodology it uses for conducting its researches, an efficient “blending” of:
interviewing both past and present clients of the “target” company
evaluating the quality of work
evaluating its industry experience
... it's become one of THE top go-to resources providing decision-making information to all companies interested in contracting software services providers.
At the end of this news-type of post, allow us to make a “pledge”:
“Not to rest on our oars, to turn this honor into a responsibility (and thus not to get “intoxicated” by “fame”) and to approach our work with even more professionalism and determination in helping our customers meet their goals!”
Adrian Ababei / Feb 22'2017
Speed is a crucial ranking factor! So what do you do when you're a Drupal website owner or a Drupal web developer facing the challenge of having to supercharge your site with “only” the bare essentials in terms on Drupal modules for SEO?
There are two possible scenarios here:
you invest a huge amount of time reading all that has been written on each one of Drupal's SEO-oriented modules, you install each one of them and “take them for a spin” and eventually (after hundreds of cups of coffee and lots of more or less “zen” meetings with your developers and SEO “gurus” you manage to eliminate the “redundant” SEO modules from the “must-haves” list
you scan through our list of 5 “bare essentials”, including the indispensable Drupal SEO modules, leveraging all the research work we've done and our own experience as web development company in Toronto.
If scenario no. 2 aligns with your goals of reducing time and boosting your SEO strategy's efficiency, then let's not wait any more time!
Here is out list of 5 essential Drupal Modules for SEO:
1. Metatag
“Getting your website Google-friendly by describing its content for the search engines”. This is how we could sum up what this Drupal module does.
The search engine results related to your website get more relevant!
To detail a bit: Metatag allows you to add various meta tags to your web pages. The list includes tags ranging from title tag (a significant on-page ranking factor) to meta description, canonical URL etc.
The great thing about it (if you're short on team members who could add the proper metatags to each and every web page on your site) is that you get to set it up so that it automatically adds meta keywords and tittle tags for you.
Still, consider this automation as the very last solution on your list, since nothing can beat a copywriter/content writer/SEO specialist in person adding the best context-based keywords to your content.
And there's more! Metatag is a highly customizable module and where do you add that it's “equipped” with multilingual support, too!
2. Google Analytics
You do have a Google Analytics account, right?
Just teasing! Anyone operating in the digital landscape has at least one GA account!
Well, Drupal's ready to help you leverage the most-used website statics service through a dedicated module.
Install it, select precisely those downloads/links/content types on your website that you want to closely “monitor” and turn the insights you'll get into (more) traffic for your website.
Besides its quick and easy installation process and its feature allowing you to track precisely those sections on your website that you're most interested in, the Google Analytics module comes to simplify your whole data tracking workflow, too!
It means that won't be “forced” to add the GA tracking code to each and everyone of your “target” pages. It's enough for you to put the tracking ID in the configuration page (the module's configuration page) and Google Analytics will take it from there!
Find out where your visitors come from, at what time of day, what pages they go to more often, what are their preferences, what keywords they type in the search box etc. etc.
Say “hello!” to “powerful” data!
3. Pathauto
Be honest with yourself: you can't expect your website to be “search engine friendly” if it's (still) a bundle of “/node/4” type of URL aliases!
This is where Pathauto comes in handy! Install it and get your website a link aliases “makeover”!
What this modules does is that it aromatically generates search engine and (implicitly) user-friendly URL aliases for various types of content on your website.
Say “goodbye” to “/node/4” type of URL aliases and say “hello” to “far easier to digest” /category/title-of-article instead types of links.
And when we say “various types of content”, we do refer to terms, taxonomy, users, modes.
This is definitely one of those Drupal modules for SEO that you don't want to skip supercharging your website with. It will translate into a major boost in rankings!
4. Redirect, One of the Essential Drupal Modules for SEO
Website optimization means (among many other things) “dealing with duplicate content issues”.
Here is another one of Drupal's modules for SEO, Redirect, that lifts a heavy burden off your shoulders (or at least off your team's shoulders).
It cleans up and prevents duplicate content issues.
The checks that it runs include:
tracking down trailing slashes
tracking down the current URLs' alias and redirecting them if those aliases are not being used
scanning access to private URLs, ensuring that your website's visitors can access them
5. XML Sitemap
XML sitemaps are probably the most efficient way of making your Drupal website more “inviting” for search engines. More “welcoming” for bots to crawl in and “inspect” your site's deep structure.
And you do want do make your website “search engine-welcoming” now don't you?
Drupal's XML Sitemap module, one of the must-have Drupal modules for SEO indeed, automatically puts together your website's sitemap, according to your own settings, and it “delivers” it to search engines.
Due to their dynamic nature, search engines always get the newly updated version of your website's system of URLs.
Now allow us to encourage you to adopt a good XML sitemap-related practice, as well: if you're dealing with a large website, it's always best to organize your multiple XML sitemaps into categories!
Other good practices linked to XML sitemaps and their “automatic” nature (the module gets automatically updated every time you delete or add a new web page to your site) would be:
removing noindex pages
“freeing” your sitemap from PPC pages
removing all the blocked pages
avoiding to weight down your sitemap(s) with non-200 pages
… and the list of common sense (after all) “rules” could go on and on!
And these are the “bare essentials”, the key Drupal modules for SEO that you need (not “should”) to install on your website!
They do make the basic, yet powerful SEO “kit” that will supercharge your site with all the must-have SEO-oriented functionality. It's the perfect “kit” that will help you avoid the risk of using too many of your website's resources with unnecessary SEO modules and tools.
As you can see, we've left out the off-site SEO tools, the content optimization ones (that you'll find useful in case you have no dedicated SEO specialist or team in your company and you want to implement your SEO strategy in-house) and plenty of other Drupal modules for SEO which fall into the “optional” category.
Now your turn! What does your own “kit” of essential Drupal SEO modules include?
Adrian Ababei / Feb 21'2017
“Out-of-the-box mobile-responsiveness”, “highly flexible, personalized content delivery”, “high page-load speed”, “multilingual capabilities” and the list of Drupal 8's cool features can go on...
These are but some of the possible answers to your legitimate questions: “What's it in for me, a digital marketer?” or “What's in it for my online marketing team/s?” or “How can I turbocharge my marketing strategy with Drupal 8?” or “How will it supercharge my SEO efforts?”
Face it:
no framework comes optimized out-of-the-box
you need to enable your digital marketing team to grow independent from the IT department (time is money, after all or)
“just” an impeccably coded website, with a stunning, visually-appealing design, won't help you reach the conversion rate that you're dreaming of
you need to effectively reach out to your own target audience, which leads us to one of the present day's biggest digital marketing challenges: delivering hyper-personalized, segmented content (by audience), across all the available social media channels and devices out there.
Now that we've pointed out the main challenges that you're facing these days, as a marketer, let's find out how Drupal 8's marketing tools can help you overcome them:
1. Take Content Personalization To a Whole New Level
“Personalization”, “hyper-personalized, relevant content” are the key “trendy” terms on every digital marketer's lips these days!
And on every Drupal web developer striving to do “the seemingly impossible”: personalizing the websites he/she builds, no matter how challenging this might sound.
Well, good news: Drupal 8's ready to provide you with the right tools for achieving this “mission impossible” type of goal!
Here's how:
it allows you to divide your audience into several customer segments
next, once you've gathered all the valuable data about each one of those sub-units, you get to craft the particular, personalized content relevant for each one of them
last, but definitely not least: you get to deliver your personalized content across all channels, all devices, in real-time
In conclusion: after it empowers you with segment-targeted data (and we'll talk about that, as well, in a future post on the Google Analytics module in Drupal 8), it also delivers you the right tools for actually leveraging that data.
For turning it into the content featuring a high level of personalization that your website visitors actually expect to find on your site.
2. From a Mobile-Ready Mentality to a Mobile-First One
In other words: with Drupal 8 mobile responsiveness has leveled up from an add-on to a core functionality!
All of its core themes are responsive! This is probably one of the biggest leaps into the post-browser future that any framework out there has take so far!
Considering this, it wouldn't be too bold to predict voice-based interactions to be implemented in Drupal 8 sooner than you expect!
And there's more!
It's not just your Drupal 8 website's visitors that get to enjoy a mobile-authentic experience on your website, but you, too, get to benefit from its built-in mobile responsiveness feature.
Your administrative interface, too, is mobile-optimized in Drupal 8!
In other words: you get to clear caches, produce and manage your content right from your own mobile device!
3. Simplified Content Creation, Management and Delivery
Since content is still almighty king and, therefore, content marketing plays a key role in your digital marketing strategy handling your content easily and quickly is crucial for you, right?
Not to worry: Drupal 8's got your back!
Its content-as-a-service functionality comes to streamline your whole content marketing plan:
its WYSIWYG editor turns creating and editing content, directly on the web page, into a matter of point-and-click
its unified web-interface allows you to handle all your content-related tasks in one place and to easily deliver it across all channels and platforms (social media channelrs, web, mobile etc.)
it enables you to handle your content (whether it's creating/editing or delivering it) on-the-go, right from your mobile device
you get to check, beforehand, how your content will look on various devices
you get to scan through a whole collection of image size (alignment, shape) options
lots of Drupla 7's add-on modules are now part of Drpal 8's core; and here we cannot help not mentioning Views, one of the most popular module enabling you to pick the format that you want for your content to be displayed in
“Simplified” is the right word to describe the authoring experience in Drupal 8, don't you agree?
4. Build Your Global Presence With Drupal 8
Now you do realize that one couldn't possibly create hyper-personalized content without an efficient multilingual system to could rely on, right?
Good news: Drupal 8's ready to support your global presence!
It's ready to deliver you the tools that will help you speak all your users' languages.
It makes territory-specific content creation a lot simpler.
But let's talk facts, shall we?
1. the once just a partial and, moreover, a difficult to use translation-oriented support (think Drupal 7) has turned into a built-in multilingual system in Drupal 8
2. it's not just the administration interface that you get to translate, but you can rely on Drupal 8's translator for links, titles and entire web pages on your website
3. your visitors get to choose from a list of different languages that you'll provide on your Drupal 8 site
4. we're talking about “built-in” multilingual functionality: every component is translatable by default (and we're talking about 94 different languages available in Drupal 8 core)
In other words: with Drupal 8 it's easier than ever to... go global!
5. Get Ready to Deliver Content at Top Speed
If time is money and more conversions lead to more money, then we can as well say that: optimized page load time guarantees you... more earnings, right?
And it will also boost your website in rankings and it will implicitly help you improve the overall user experience on your site.
Luckily, Drupal 8 is built with high page load speed in mind!
Let us point out to you some of the major enhancements that have dramatically improved its performance from a page load time standpoint:
it has tremendously improved caching: its relies on cache tags and on Cache Content API, which allows it to perform context-based caching
it uses the “bigpipe technique”: the Bigpipe module, part of Drupal 8's core, will display the cachable/static content first and then the dynamic/uncachable content. Therefore, your web pages will load faster, while your visitors still get the latest version of your website
In conclusion: with its critical improvements, aimed at optimizing Drupal 8 at a page load time level, you'll get to deliver your hyper-personalized content at high speed!
Is this 5 arguments-pleading strong enough for supporting our statement that Drupal 8 is, indeed, any digital marketer's dream come true? It empowers him/her (no need of much technical expertise for turning any Drupal 8 website into a true “marketing-machine” of the future), it simplifies his overall authoring experience, streamlines the whole marketing team's workflow and it easily boost their SEO efforts, too.
Have we left anything out?
Adrian Ababei / Feb 15'2017
Have you had enough of hearing and reading about cutting-edge Drupal's innovative features? About all the improvements that its developers have implemented to this version of Drupal? About its:
unmatched functionality
about how it can upload files a top speed
about how it comes equipped with cool multilingual add-ons
about the truly innovative mobile-first mentality that it embeds
and about its goal to cut out the middlemen and empowering the end user even more?
About extended control, put in the hands of developers, builders, content editors and site admins?
And now you want some of all that, too, right?
You want to gain such control over your own site, as well, to supercharge it with such power and to get it aligned not just with the present-day digital trends, but to those of the future, as well. Those that Drupal 8's developers have already anticipated?
Then go ahead! But, before you upgrade to Drupal 8, take some time to go through our set of 6 tips on how to get your site properly prepared for this significant upgrade
Preparation is key for a smooth and effective upgrade to Drupal 8, you know!
1. Before You Upgrade to Drupal 8: Audit Your Current Site
No business/website owner “worth his salt” could possibly have high hopes from upgrading his website if he skips this major step!
How could you project its evolution if you're clueless (or have just a vague idea) of where it's standing right now, from a technical standpoint?
So, before you rush in to install all those “uber cool”, feature-rich Druipal 8 modules on your website, you'd better start building the rock solid foundation of your future Drupal 8 website. Open a forever reliable Google doc. and start filling it up!
Start examining your current website and write down the answers to a couple of key questions:
What sections of your current site do you use most frequently?
What sections of your site are barely ever used?
Is your current administrative interface user friendly enough?
Are there any broken links or inefficient workflows on your site?
Write down everything that you find relevant in your Google doc., ranging from those aspects/workflows on your website that you won't give up to, to all the challenges that you're facing as you're closely auditing it, thoroughly.
Don't forget to write down all your migration-related expectations, as well!
As you and your team will have your moments of inspiration and will “burst” with new innovative ideas that you could implement on your site, make sure to write them down in this soon to become your priceless resource: your Google doc.
You may not realize it now, but this document “locking in” all the key aspects of your current website will be “pure gold” once you delve deeper and deeper into all the other stages of this site preparation for migration process!
2. Keep It Under Version Control
Sometimes it's Drupal's innovative nature itself that could turn into its own weak point!
The “empowering the user” goal, aimed at turning the whole configuration changes into a matter of point and click could also turn breaking up a site into a matter of just a few seconds.
Good news: through its Configuration Management Interface (CMI) Drupal 8 promises to put this possible scenario away for good!
What you can do, for avoiding such an unwanted scenario to happen, is to capture updates via code and to roll them into your production site. Rely on version control and on Drupal 7's Features and Configuration Management modules.
Implementing such a good practice will automatically guarantee you a more streamlined Drupal 8 workflow and a “safety-net” if something wrong happens: you can always roll back those trouble-making changes.
Ever-so-useful practices, like this one, will always watch your back!
3. Re-organize Your Team: Set Up a Modular Workflow
Preparing your team, as well, and not just your current website, is another crucial step of this whole “preparing to upgrade to Drupal 8” process!
Drupal 8's own distinct nature (compared to other versions of Drupal) calls for a far more scalable, modular approach to its CMS design and content authoring.
Therefore your team, as well, should be structured differently.
This calls for a different type of workflow! One where each team's leader gets assigned to coordinate it, to make sure the overall vision gets properly implemented, while each member of the team gets manageable tasks (one class file per developer, for instance).
Separate implementations, several distinct tasks assigned to each team member will put together the Drupal 8's specific workflow: a much more scalable, easy to handle and therefore efficient one.
With each member of your team focusing on a specific part of the project and a leader coordinating the whole team, they'll get to respond to any occurring challenges in a far more promptly manner!
4. Audit Your Current Modules, One by One
With your team now ready to enjoy all the advantages and to handle all the challenges of Drupal 8-specific modular and scalable workflow, it's time to run an audit on your modules, as well!
It's crucial that you have everything, at the modules' level, up to date, before you upgrade to Drupal 8!
Take a close look:
Are there modules on your site that you haven't been using in a long, long time and so, are just taking up space there?
Are there deprecated modules on your current website?
Are there modules which have been updated on Drupal.org, but not on your website, too?
Take each one of your Drupal 7 modules and closely examine them, discovering which ones are still active, which ones aren't up to date etc.
There might not be an equivalent in Drupal 8 for each one of your Drupal 7 modules, but even so, it is crucial that you have your Drupal 7 ones active and updated.
Are there any custom modules on your current Drupal site?
Then rely on Drupal Module Upgrader. The command-line will streamline the entire module converting/updating process from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8.
To sum it up, these are the 3 key steps you should take during the module audit stage:
analyze the current status of each one of your modules on Drupal.org
discover which ones of your Drupal 7 modules already have a Drupal 8 equivalent available
find out what Drupal 7 modules have been transferred to Drupal 8 core
5. Run Security Updates Before You Upgrade to Drupal 8
Is installing the latest Drupal security updates part of your “routine”?
It should be!
It saves you huge amounts of time, especially when you're preparing your site for critical changes, like this one here, when you're about to ugrade to Drupal 8.
Not to mention that it safeguards your whole online presence, your entire business, after all.
Therefore, make sure your site runs on the latest version of Drupal, that both your core and your contributed modules are properly secured. That all the recently patches have been installed before you upgrade to Drupal 8.
You wouldn't want precisely this upgrade to turn into a source of major vulnerability for your website from a security standpoint, now do you?
6. Keep Up With The Latest Module Changes
Get informed before you upgrade to Drupal 8!
This means that you shouldn't rush in to perform the migration until you haven't updated your own knowledge regarding Drupal's modules:
what modules will be part of Drupal 8' core?
what modules are already deprecated?
what modules are no longer part of the “contrib” section in Drupal 8?
Find out what's new in Drupal 8, in terms of modules: which ones have “leveled up” in the “hierarchy”, which ones are no longer aligning with Drupal 8's mentality and innovative nature and so on.
Find out all about what's changing, what's trending and what's not, anymore, in terms on Drupal modules, before you migrate your website.
This is our set of 6 tips and tricks for preparing your website for a smooth upgrade to Drupal 8. Do you have any other “preliminary procedures” that you usually undertake before migrating your website from one version of Drupal to another? Feel free to share!
Adrian Ababei / Feb 13'2017
Have you decided to finally turbocharge your existing website with some of all that functionality and innovative features that Drupal 8's been so appraised for? Or maybe it's no migration/leveling up involved, but you're actually facing the challenge of building a brand new company website and you want to “charge” it with some of all that Drupal 8 power and flexibility that the whole community of Drupal developers is so excited about? Then you must be wondering which are the best Drupal 8 modules that you could select for your new or your “to be migrated” website!
Your question is more than legitimate, considering all those feature-rich Drupal 8 modules (and there are over 2000 of them!) that this latest version of Drupal is “seducing” you with.
And it will continue to get increasingly challenging to choose the very best, considering the fact that Drupal 8 is still a work-in progress. Its community is constantly:
porting modules from previous versions of Drupal
building brand new ones
putting together their efforts for making it even more stable and user friendly
Before we go on sharing with you our own list of five best Drupal 8 modules, allow us to give you a good piece of news! It's, in fact, part of the whole boosted functionality and extra cool features “battle plan” that Drupal 8's developers have put together for this version of Drupal: many of the highly popular Drupal 7 modules not only that have been ported to Drupal 8, but they're now in its core!
And now, let's enlist and detail a bit the modules on Drupal 8's “walk of fame”:
Best Drupal 8 Modules to Turbocharge Your Website With
1. Admin Toolbar
Why was there a need for a “new” admin menu? What “flaws” of the original menu needed to be fixed in Drupal 8?
Well, in Drupal 7, even though the admin menu enabled adding drop-down menus, it lacked responsiveness. A mobile-friendly look was greatly needed! One aimed at fixing the “barely visible, hardly clickable on mobile devices” issue of the former drop-down menus.
And so: Drupal 8's Admin Toolbar was born!
It's a fully responsive version, with enhanced drop-down menus functionality, streamlining the admin's workflow: admins can now break the habit of constantly clicking-through in order to get to various sub-menus.
Thus, an easy to use back-end interface for all those user roles in charge with content editing, producing or moderating is now available in Drupal 8!
There's more! Admin Toolbar comes with a sub-module, as well: Admin Toolbar Extra Tools! This one empowers admins to extend their menus' functionality even further: they get to add extra links for running cron, for flushing cache etc.
Talking about Drupal “empowering the user”, right?
2. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is any website owner's “best buddy”. It “obediently” delivers you pretty much any type of reports and comprehensive charts you need for monitoring your visitors' behavior and your site's overall performance.
Still, this is no news for anyone running an online business, especially not for someone operating in the digital “arena” of 2017, right?
Now, what Drupal 8 does, though its Google Analytics module, is that it streamlines your whole data monitoring and interpreting process, since it enables you to analyze your statistics right from your Drupal interface!
This is the “real” news!
3. Token
We couldn't have possibly left out precisely one of Drupal's most popular modules, right?
There isn't one web developer in Toronto, site administrator or website owner who could imagine carrying out their daily tasks without relying on tokens. They're Drupal's ultimate efficiency-boosters!
Acting as placehoders designed for automatically completing the tasks you assign to them, they streamline anyone's work.
Here's probably the most “rudimentary' example for you: a basic token such as [site:name] will automatically insert your website's name!
Basically what the Token module does, is that it supplies those tokens that are not available in core, especially fields, and also an user interface for you to use for scanning through the available collection of tokens.
On a greater scale, this module, one of the very best Drupal 8 modules, can work together with other modules, such as Pathauto, for carrying out more complex tasks, too. Tasks such as providing URL patterns for your whole Drupal website!
4. Devel
Devel is not just another one of the modules on our top five best Drupal 8 modules list: it's a whole “bunch” of sub-modules, in fact. One more “tempting” than the other, both for developers and for Drupal themers.
Let's highlight some of the most popular ones:
Devel Node Access: provides detailed information regarding the node access mechanism of your Drupal installation
Kint: a debugging tool designed to display variables and backtraces in a nicely formatted, organize way, thus easing your overall understanding
Web Profiler: adds a bottom toolbar presenting you all kinds of relevant stats, such as database queries, which services are being used, cache effectiveness etc.
Devel Generate: creates dummy entities, thus populating your test site with images, taxonomy, dummy users etc.
5. Pathauto
What makes Pathauto one of the best Drupal 8 modules?
It's marks the end of and “era”, the “node/4803” types of links era, and the beginning of a new one! One of the automatically generated user-friendly, easy to remember types of links.
The ones that your users will be more familiar with and that search engine will find easier to discover, read and index, as well.
As for you, say “hello” to a higher ranking in SERP!
“How does it work?” you say?
What Pathauto does, in Drupal 8, is that it generates URL aliases automatically: no more manually created Drupal links from now on.
Moreover (and this is huge!), it enables you (or, better said, it “empowers” you) to change the custom token system generating the URL aliases as you wish!
And this is our list of top five best Module 8 modules! The modules that we rely on for setting up and managing various features of the web projects that we carry out here, in our web design company in Toronto!
Which are your own favorite ones?
Adrian Ababei / Feb 07'2017