Drupal is Great! Its Perception Might Not be.

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Artistic Drupal logo amid gears, charts; bright side vs stormy side contrast.

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I love Drupal! I have been working with it for 15+ years and I'm an active community member. I see great value in open source software and agree with Drupal's Digital Public Good philosophy. Drupal isn't only great open source software with an amazing community of people doing great work. It's a wonderful framework for content creation, third party integrations, structured content delivery, and so much more.

Perception Problems

If Drupal is so amazing, why aren't more people using it? Well, Drupal might suffer from a perception problem. Drupal has made great improvements since the days of Drupal 5, 6, or 7. With the Drupal 8, 9, and 10 releases, Drupal has improved the caching system, rebuilt the platform to focus on object-oriented programming, developed a configuration import & export system, made a number of improvements to the usability and user interface, and most recently has ensured a upgrade path that reduces the need for full rebuilds. Despite all these amazing improvements, people still think Drupal is an "old" CMS that is primarily developer-focused. 

Bad Implementations & Dated Information

The fact that Drupal is considered an "old" CMS by some is laughable. Anyone with an informed and current point of view knows that Drupal is one of the more modern content frameworks on the market. That being said, I have encountered misinformed people with a legacy outlook in the past, and here is where our story begins. 

Just last year I had a conversation with someone about building a Drupal-based platform to support 50 to 100+ websites. My recommended approach focused on Drupal's multi-site strengths and the benefits of a single code base. Having worked on a similar platform approach during the previous few years, I had great insight into ways this could be done efficiently and built to scale. My suggestion was met with a great deal of resistance around performance and scalability. The client pushed for building the platform with a single Drupal database to serve all the sites. I discussed the possibility of doing this and the risks I saw around performance, reliability, and scalability. At the end of the conversation, I asked why they believed a single database approach would be a better solution in this case. The answer did surprise me: I was told a previous platform build that the primary decision maker had been involved with used Drupal 7 multi-site and a similar architecture to what I was suggesting. The resulting system was considered to be a disaster, with performance issues and an inability to scale. I asked a few more probing questions and quickly determined that a lack of governance forced the platform team to fork code into custom code bases for each site and there my story ends. 

I'm sure many have similar stories to the one above where Drupal wasn't implemented correctly or was implemented using an older version with limited capabilities as compared to Drupal 9 or 10. Educating decision makers is key to breaking the negative stereo-types that Drupal has and reversing it's perception woes.

Open Source Isn't Secure

I have heard some say Open Source is not secure and that proprietary systems are more security focused. I'm sure the Drupal Security Team has something to say about that. Open source being insecure is a common misconception; I'll leave you to do your own Google search to see what people are saying. I have heard this same argument as it applies to Drupal in reference to the Drupageddon Drupal 7 security issue. Again, I highlight the work that the Drupal Security Team does to ensure Drupal and it's module eco-system remain secure. We have all seen private companies and proprietary software providers reveal security issues well after they had first been identified. These issues are usually loosely described and lack any meaningful detail on what they are or what data may have been impacted. Now consider the opposite position: the Drupal Security Team plus the thousands of Drupal developers world wide all working together to review and secure Drupal code daily. This is all done whenever possible in the open for transparency's sake, and so everyone can review and understand. I'll leave you, dear reader, to come to your own conclusion on Drupal and Open Source security overall. 

How Can We Improve Perception?

So, we understand that Drupal may have a perception problem. How do we fix it? How do we change people's opinion of our beloved CMS? In my opinion, we have to move toward an education, awareness, and excitement approach. The only way to change perception is by effective communication about the good and the bad parts of Drupal. So, what's the first step? It's easy! Continue reading. 

Talk More About It

Socializing and popularizing Drupal is important. Most people know what Wordpress or Squarespace are, but they aren't so clear on Drupal. Over the past few years, the Drupal Association and the greater Drupal Community have done a number of things to try to improve Drupal's outward perception. One of the first steps in this effort was the initiation of the Promote Drupal marketing initiative. This team got the conversation started and built a talk track around the benefits of Drupal. This past year, Dries unveiled a new Brand Guide which brings Drupal into the current digital brand landscape. If you aren't familiar with the new Brand Guide, here is a quick video to get you up to speed. More recently, the Drupal Association has doubled down on community marketing efforts by hiring two new marketing focused staff members. Lastly, Acquia indicated at it's New York Engage Event this past October that it plans to increase it's efforts around explicitly promoting Drupal by name as it's understandably a cornerstone of Acquia's business offerings. They see value in promoting the underlying technology and feel it benefits not only the company, but the greater community.

Keep Educating the Misinformed

As I stated above, some people are still living in a Drupal 6 or Drupal 7 world. We live in a Drupal 10 or Drupal 11 world where we have a state-of-the-art framework to power our websites and more. Recently, I asked someone "Why wasn't Drupal considered as a MACH technology?" and the reply was interesting.  

I think most frequently it's due to preconceived and outdated notions of what Drupal is and does - that it's a classic "monolith CMS" and built on outdated technology.

For me, this highlighted the need to change the greater perception of Drupal. However, it also pointed out the need to keep educating the misinformed. As a community we need to do more to talk about the things Drupal is good at, like how Drupal can be an API-first solution that rivals SaaS platforms like Contentful and Contentstack. Drupal's ability to easily integrate with third party systems and provide a BYOS (Bring Your Own Service) atmosphere to your organization makes it a powerful tool. It can act as a hub or glue for organizational platforms, allowing them to share data and provide valuable tooling. All this coupled with Drupal's upgrade path shifting away from "big bang" updates or platform rebuilds toward seamless version upgrades are some of the areas in which people may require further education. Misinformation attached to people's impression of Drupal can be dangerous to it's reputation and adoption, however, education can safe guard against this. 

Bottom Line

Drupal is great! Its perception seems to be trending in the right direction, but we still have work to do. New marketing efforts from the community, the Drupal Association, and companies like Acquia will help to improve Drupal's adoption in the wider technology community. Educating the miss-informed is an important part of improving the overall perception. However, emphasizing new features and improvements to Drupal is also a must. This is taking shape in the form of conversation, webinars, and presentations around Drupal CMS (Starshot). New features coming to Drupal like Recipes, Project Browser, and Experience Builder have the capability to catapult Drupal into a household name. The Drupal community is strong, its members are innovative, and the path forward is one of growth. Keep spreading the good word of how amazing Drupal is, and keep educating the misguided. Let's show the world just how great Drupal really is!