In light of the recent COVID-19 pandemic - OPTASY would like to offer DRUPAL website support for any Healthcare, Government, Education and Non-Profit Organization(s) with critical crisis communication websites or organizations directly providing relief. Stay Safe and Stay Well.

Apigee Developer Portal Kickstart or Apigee’s Integrated Portal? What’s the Best Developer Portal Solution for You?
Drupal
Drupal 8
Tips

Apigee Developer Portal Kickstart or Apigee’s Integrated Portal? What’s the Best Developer Portal Solution for You?

by Adriana Cacoveanu on Feb 13 2020

Here you are, facing an impossible dilemma: is the Apigee Developer Portal Kickstart on Drupal 8 the best solution for the developer portal that you're setting up? Or should you go with Apigee's integration portal instead?

How are they different in terms of provided features? How do your own requirements and constraints influence your choice?

Now, let's dive right into:

 

  • what the Apigee developer portal is
  • when to consider Apigee's integrated portal
  • why and when to choose Drupal 8 Apigee Kickstart
  • what could discourage you from using the Drupal distribution

     

1. What Is Developer Portal Apigee?

You're already building APIs that expose your services to developers from your team and to those outside your enterprise, right?

But you want to go beyond merely building APIs: you want to provide the best developer experience, as well. One that would entice developers to use those APIs.

And this is what the Apigee developer portal is mainly designed for:

To help you "lure in" those admins and developers using APIs managed by the Apigee platform.

 

2. Choose Apigee Integrated Portal If...

... it's a basic marketing or developer documentation website that you're planning to put together.

One that should integrate with a subset of features exposed vis Apigee's API management platform.

Tip: think twice before choosing this solution if you need to integrate API revisions, load balancing, monetization or various complex documentation structures with your developer portal, etc.

 

You'd Want to Use the Integrated Portal Solution Because:

  • it's an easy to build, easy to use portal, integrated with Apigee Edge, that you have in mind
  • it's a simple developer documentation website that you're setting up
  • it's a basic, turn-key developer portal solution that you need
  • it provides you with hosting on Google Cloud, support and maintenance
  • it makes documenting and managing your APIs fairly easy

 

Apigee's Integrated Portal Top Features:

  • Create pages using page editor
  • API Documentation
  • Access control to portal content and APIs
  • Customize design elements via SCSS style sheets
  • Advanced customizations (customize domain, configure your email, custom registration fields, extend portal using scripts)
  • Create pages using page editor
  • Analytics via Google Analytics and custom analytics tracking
  • Add menus for navigation
  • Self-service registration for developers to build apps using your APIs
  • Markdown and HTML to compose content

     

3. Choose Apigee Developer Portal Kickstart If...

  • it's a powerful developer portal platform that you need 
  • it's a highly flexible, fully customizable solution that you're looking for
  • you need to get your developer portal up and running, integrated with Apigee Edge, in no time

     

Apigee Developer Portal Kickstart or Integrated Portal? What Is Drupal 8 Apigee Kickstart?

Source: docs.apigee.com

Are all these 3 requirements on your priority list?

Then Apigee's distribution for Drupal 8 might just be the best way to set up a new developer portal. Or to move your current one from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8.

 

You'd Want to Use the Apigee Developer Portal Kickstart Because:

  • it does most of the Drupal 8 module installing and configuration work for you
  • it provides you with step-by-step guidance to install Drupal 8 core, integrate your portal with Apigee Edge, and customize its theme
  • its theme's Bootstrap-based, enabling you to easily customize and brand your website
  • it's faster and more extendable
  • it's forward-compatible with Drupal 9
  • it's, overall, highly customizable: you get to create fine-tuned brand experiences
  • it provides you with sample content, as well, so you can set up your developer platform quick and easy
  • it operates with already familiar Drupal 8 concepts: content types (e.g. Basic pages, article, forums...) media types, etc.

     

In a nutshell: take the Apigee Kickstart developer portal as a convenient package with all the Drupal 8 modules and libraries that you'll need to quickly put together a developer community.

One that's connected to Apigee Edge, exposes your APIs and publishes the API documentation that developers need.  

 

Apigee Developer Portal Kickstart Top Features:

  • API Catalog page
  • Modules for FAQ, Blogs, and Forums
  • 16 pages with preloaded content for demonstration
  • API documentation content type
  • Customizable site theme
  • “Getting Started” page
  • Developer Portal homepage
  • API doc landing page with demo content and vocabulary

     

4. You'd Hesitate Using Drupal 8 Apigee Kickstart Because...

  • it makes you dependent on this Drupal distribution's maintainers; on their updates and security patches releases 
  • it "ties" your developer portal to the distribution's predefined theme, content layout, font, colors...

     

So, you'll first want to check that the distribution — Apigee Kickstart Drupal in this case — is regularly and properly maintained.

5. The Best Solution for Your Developer Portal Is...

  • the one that meets your customization needs
  • the one that complies with your time constraints
  • the one that fits your team's level of expertise in setting up a developer portal

     

Apigee Developer Portal Kickstart or Integrated Portal? Different Types of Developer Portal and Their Features

Source: docs.apigee.com 

In short, choosing between an integrated portal and a Drupal-based one starts with setting your requirements (and your constraints) against each solution's benefits and key features.

Are you time-limited, but do you also "crave" power of customization over your future developer portal? The Apigee Kickstart Drupal might be the best solution for you.

Do you need a ready-hosted turn-key platform to set up your developer community on? Are you already an Apigee Edge for Public Cloud customer?

Then Apigee's integrated portal might suit you best.

The END!

Integrated portal or Drupal-based portal: what would you choose? And why?

Development

We do Web development

Go to our Web development page!

Visit page!

Recommended Stories

DesignDrupalDrupal 8Web Design
What Are the Benefits of Web Accessibility for Your Business?

What Are the Benefits of Web Accessibility for Your Business?

  For people with disabilities, web accessibility is highly beneficial. They use multiple assistive technology tools that often require accessible web design and apps to function properly.  It is obvious how web accessibility benefits users with disabilities, but what about businesses? What are the advantages of building accessible sites for your company? Keep reading, and you'll discover seven key benefits of making your website ADA-compliant.    Why do companies hesitate to invest in web accessibility?   A survey of around 500 U.S. business leaders and web designers shows the main reasons behind the reluctance of some companies to make a website accessible. Most of the respondents confessed they are worried about the financial investments and potentially high costs (73.6%), while 66.9% think optimizing their sites for accessibility will require too much time.  We are here to tell you that making your website accessible for people with disabilities doesn't require too many resources, will highly benefit the user experience, and most probably keep you away from web accessibility lawsuits.    7 Benefits of Making Your Website Accessible   1. Increased traffic on your site. There's a myth regarding accessible websites that says accessibility only benefits the visitors. However, by improving the user experience and making it accessible for anyone, you plant the seeds for: Higher traffic rates on your site Better user engagement Improved search engine optimization rankings Higher conversion rate   2. Lower risk of legal complications. As legal requirements regarding web accessibility are getting tougher, optimizing your site for people with disabilities becomes non-optional—unless you don't mind being prosecuted. Make sure your site meets specific accessibility guidelines and pay attention to the accessibility standards required by the industry that you're operating in.    3. Bigger customer base. Making your website accessible means addressing the needs of bigger social groups, and that, in the long term, could lead to you growing your customer base. By investing in accessible design, you can attract more visitors that are likely to engage with your brand on a long-term basis.   4.  A more innovative business mindset. Building accessible design for your website visitors challenges you to deal with unanticipated issues and thus puts your creativity at work.  The constraint of adapting your design so that it incorporates a whole set of accessibility features challenges you to... come up with innovative solutions—and to preserve that mindset for innovation in the long term. In the current dynamic digital landscape, staying creative and ready for innovation is key to keep up with the ever-changing trends.    5. Boosted SEO efforts.  You can improve your site's accessibility by adding ALT-text to images, writing clear content, or choosing a clutter-free page layout. All of these steps also mean good SEO practices.  So, by making your website more accessible, you're also making it more SEO-friendly. You probably already know the importance of investing in robust SEO strategies in today's digital landscape. It's all about how high you rank on SERPs and the level of visibility that your website is gaining.    6. Improved brand reputation.  Accessibility is also essential for your business as it helps grow your brand reputation. By ensuring your website's universal design grants equal rights and easy access to your content, you raise awareness and build a positive reputation around your business.  Today, having an inaccessible website is the digital equivalent of sticking a big KEEP OUT sign in front of your business.    7. Faster page loading time.  It has been proven that if you improve a page's level of accessibility, you boost its speed score. As modern internet users demand fast website experiences, you want to improve your page loading times to keep up with your visitors' needs. By implementing features designed for users with disabilities, you're making your site a better place for all users.    There are many ways in which you can promote accessibility on your website. For example, users that struggle with visual impairments benefit the most from screen readers to help them understand the content on a particular website. This is a way to make your website accessible for people with sight issues and offer some support in making their daily lives a bit easier.    Hopefully, this article sheds some light on the importance of web accessibility for your business and how building a universal design for your site can positively impact your brand.  For more insights on how Optasy can help you make your website more accessible, check out our Drupal Website Accessibility services.    Photo credit: Wirestock on freepik.       ... Read more
Raluca Olariu / Jul 12'2021
DrupalDrupal 8
6 Experts Talk About the Advantages of Using Drupal

6 Experts Talk About the Advantages of Using Drupal

  As the digital landscape is constantly evolving, there is an increased pressure on web content management systems (CMSs) to keep pace with the needs of the modern consumer.  To meet these complex demands that revolve around highly personalized and interactive web experiences and streamlined connectivity between devices, companies require websites that can support these goals.  One of the most powerful enterprise-level CMS platforms, Drupal, can handle more complex projects and its capabilities, as the Drupal founder, Dries Buytaert, reveals, only get better with experience.    Why is Drupal web development the right choice?   There are multiple competitive advantages that organizations can reap from using Drupal to handle their online presence. How do you know if Drupal is the right choice for your next web development project? Check out this list of key features and capabilities that Drupal offers and see how they can fit in with your needs and demands.   Are you looking to highly customize your website and content? Drupal's widely-known customizing power allows you to adjust and edit over 16,000 plug-ins and modules. If you need a CMS that can support your web development projects by implementing additional custom features like CRM, security, or SEO, with a focus on customizability, then Drupal might be the best fit.   What do the experts say? Nick Wilde, a Full-stack developer (including DevOps) at North Studios, thoroughly recommends Drupal for companies looking to change and customize their digital approaches:  "I love a *lot* of the changes in Drupal 8 compared to 7 or 6, but most of them didn't really change the way I worked. I mean, sure, using slightly different hooks etc. - but that's not really any different than integrating with different modules to my mind at least. What really did change my way of working was the Configuration Management Initiative's work, and by changed I mean massively improved. Yes, some degree of custom integration is possible with Drupal 7 with hook_update_N() and/or the features module, but in Drupal 8, a solid reproducible, testable CI and deployment process is not just possible but easy. (Yes, I'm a smidge of a fanatic about DevOps and process, despite being primarily a developer). When doing complex back-end work, moving to an Object Oriented system has felt like coming home since I started programming with Python in an OOP code-base.”   Is flexibility important for your web development project? A major selling point of Drupal lies in its rich potential to build and manage a wide range of content types, whether it is a blog post, podcast, or any other custom content types. By enabling a flexible design platform, Drupal allows users to create and manage content-rich media or eCommerce sites.    What do the experts say? Alex Moreno, a software architect, based in London, is helping big companies with their Drupal and IoT projects and has revealed how he uses Drupal's flexible core capabilities to catch up with the ever-evolving technology transformations: “Although you could flex Drupal 7 to adapt to this changing environment, the real power and flexibility comes with having a Drupal 8 architecture, where this flexibility is already in the core. That has implications for performance, adaptability, simpler architecture of services around Drupal, etc.”   Are you considering scalability as an important asset for your web project? If so, Drupal is a winning choice. When accommodating content growth becomes a challenge, Drupal steps in with its tremendously scalable capabilities and supports your growth in an effortless manner.    What do the experts say? Drupal expert, Malabya Tewari, talks about how Drupal Modules can help build a responsive design and flexible user experiences: “When I started my career with Drupal 6 briefly and then moved on to Drupal 7, I really liked the abundance of modules Drupal 7 had. ‘There is a module for that’ was a common statement while building a feature. When I transitioned to Drupal 8 and when it was in its pre-release state, there were no contributed modules. Of course, views and entity reference were in core, but it lacked the huge pool of modules that Drupal 7 had. Instead, Drupal 8 had some great flexible and robust components which mostly worked for me. Even though there was a lot of learning to do, pretty soon I got the hang of it and found out that you don't need a module for that. That's how it changed my working approach with Drupal 8 because I can build a lot of great things without any contributed module.”   Do you need greater functionality around your site's translation capabilities? Drupal 8 supports 100 different languages for translation, and these multilingual features come with the installation interfaces. That means that you can build your multilingual Drupal website easier than ever before, at no additional costs.    What do the experts say? Penyaskito is a Drupal contributor and developer at Lingotek, who manages a cloud-based translation management system for their clients. He speaks highly of Drupal's multilingual capabilities: “Thanks to the Drupal 8 Multilingual Initiative, translation is not an afterthought in Core anymore. And thanks to the clean APIs that were designed with this in mind, we are able to improve every day functionalities for our clients in our integration with Drupal 8. While with other CMS we devote time constantly to integrate with contributed modules or alike, we can focus on new functionalities as this APIs make us compatible with most contrib modules out of the box without any extra effort on our side.”   Are you interested in building a content management framework based on API architectures? Drupal's caching modules support faster page loading, optimized bandwidth, and a robust web performance to meet the needs of the modern digital consumer. Whether used for content publishing or for optimizing the user interface, Drupal's 8 API-based architecture is a top upgrade compared to previous versions.    What do the experts say? Let's see what Dries Buytaert, the father of Drupal and CTO of Acquia, has to say about Drupal's web service APIs: “You want to enable your developers to easily deliver content to different devices, channels, and platforms. This means that the content needs to be available through APIs. This is aligned with Drupal 8's roadmap, where we are focused on web services capabilities. Through Drupal's web service APIs, developers can build freely in different front-end technologies, such as Angular, React, Ember, and Swift, as well as Java and .NET. For developers, accomplishing this without the maintenance burden of a full Drupal site or the complexity of configuring standard Drupal to be decoupled is key.”   If you are not yet sure about choosing Drupal for your next web development project, we are more than happy to help you with professional advice tailored to your needs and demands. Contact us and let's start your outstanding web development project.   Here's another quote from a Drupal expert, Nick Lewis, on how Drupal 8 is influencing the way he approaches his tasks:  “Drupal 8 is looking very interesting indeed, a big leap forwards from its previous versions. I’m busy working out how to get D8 modules up and running for a client project. Well I am working on a project right now for a large global fast food outlet (here in the UK), switching from one very popular CRM system into D8 as it will cut costs tremendously and not only that, recruitment will be easier given Drupal’s wide adoption in the community.”   Photo credit: Den Harrson on Unsplash.  ... Read more
Raluca Olariu / Jul 01'2021
DrupalDrupal 8Tips
6 Secrets Behind the Best Drupal Web Development Projects

6 Secrets Behind the Best Drupal Web Development Projects

  You know a top-notch Drupal website when you see it—it has personality, it's flexible and intuitive, and it doesn't compromise on the user experience. The most successful Drupal web development projects are well planned by development teams and Drupal experts to match the needs of the existing online environment and promote a robust online presence for various companies.  Regardless of the nature of the development project, all successful Drupal websites seem to have some things in common—the secrets of web development masters that turn Drupal projects into art. This article will look at ten best practices that the most successful Drupal experts use to build highly functional and secure websites.    Secret #1 Revealed: Build a robust project plan from the get-go.   Knowing exactly where you're heading with your Drupal project can frequently make the difference between success and failure. That's why you must start by setting the organizational website requirements and creating strategies with the end-user in mind. In other words, know what's what from the beginning of your Drupal project and follow this scheme throughout your development journey. Benefit: Easier to avoid getting stuck in the complex nature of Drupal development projects.    Secret #2 Revealed: Put the user experience first.   If there's one thing you shouldn't compromise on when building a website, it's the user experience (UX). After all, the success of a website is determined by whether or not the end-user is comfortable with the site's functionality and UX. The secret here lies in empowering the user with a satisfactory level of control so that it can fully enjoy and immerse into the content of your website.  Benefit: Boost your audience's engagement and generate more visitors.    Secret #3 Revealed: Choose a reliable, secure web hosting service.   The digital environment means connection, and that's what a web hosting service can offer to you—it allows all your site content to be seen anywhere at any time. When choosing a web hosting partner, pay attention to elements like loading speed, uptime score, and the cost-performance index. Benefit: Improved site performance and security.    Secret #4 Revealed: Make the most out of Drupal modules.    A successful Drupal web development project lies on a foundation of highly customized and optimized modules. To maximize the potential offered by Drupal modules, consider what needs you may be able to address by installing a specific module and how it can shape certain functionalities and content sharing capabilities on your website.  Benefit: From flexibility to time efficiency, modular development meets a wide range of demands in your Drupal projects.   Secret #5 Revealed: Work on your project step by step.   It is widely known that Drupal web development can be pretty complex, and that's why many companies choose a Drupal development agency or outsource their companies to other experts. But if you wish to do it yourself, make sure you set realistic milestones. The lack of project leadership can be a confidence killer for even the most experienced developers and may cause your Drupal development environment to become a highly unproductive one.  Benefit: Boost productivity and confidence amongst developer teams.   Secret #6 Revealed: Build solid brand identity.   Part of what makes the user experience a great one is the ability to make the user comfortable. Solid UX/UI design relies on consistency, bringing comfort to the visitor as it makes him feel in control and know what to expect. If you want to position yourself as a trustful brand with a robust online presence, create a style guide with basic typography and a color palette. Also, don't be afraid to introduce new design elements from time to time to spice things up a bit and re-engage your audience.  Benefit: Attract and retain more customers.    Content management systems like Drupal provide multiple benefits, but Drupal projects can also be hard to handle—if you want to build highly successful websites. With these six best practices at your fingertips, you can manage and optimize your Drupal project more quickly and efficiently.  If you find that you can't reasonably handle Drupal's complexity and want to make more of its performance-enhancing capabilities, let us take care of your project. At Optasy, we put all the six best practices outlined in this article at work and more. See how we can revolutionize your Drupal web development project,    Photo credit: Ben Kolde on Unsplash.     ... Read more
Raluca Olariu / Jun 02'2021

Need a new Project?

Dare us to shape and boost your idea(s)!

Start a Project

(416) 243-2431

Contact

(416) 243-2431

Toronto Downtown

First Canadian Place,
100 King St. W. Suite 5700, Toronto

Toronto West

2275 Upper Middle
Rd. E, Suite 101
Toronto

New York

1177 Avenue of the
Americas, 5th Floor,
New York