Views Of Drupal Developers On Maintenance In Drupal Development

Drupal is one of the most revered content management system (CMS) platforms out there in the market. It is highly scalable, flexible and robust in nature. Many large organizations and corporate companies that need to maintain huge websites often prefer Drupal. Like any other web technology, a newly hosted Drupal website would perform at its best. However, with time, it is likely to get sluggish if the website is not maintained properly. Drupal developers offer support and maintenance service as a package. There are many developers who have observed that maintenance first approach has always helped them withstand the tides of time. Listed down are some of the important observations of Drupal developers.

The large number of contributed modules, themes, and Drupal distributions is considered as the stronghold of Drupal CMS. The secret of maintaining a successful website throughout its life cycle lies in identifying the right modules and themes and the custom codes. There are a number of websites that offer valuable lessons on how to maintain the Drupal website. However, there are no established guidelines on the module usage for websites. Maintenance issues crop up even while the Drupal development team decides on the modules on the themes of the new website. Often hasty developers ignore the issues only to face a larger crisis at a later stage. Business owners should realize that slighting maintenance first approach in Drupal development can affect the longevity of the website.

Both business owners and Drupal developers should unanimously agree on maintenance first approach. This approach will not only reduce the costs involved in maintenance at a later stage, but also help the website withstand future updates and

upgrades.

Since many large enterprises and organizations utilize Drupal, often websites have over hundred plus modules installed in them. Most of the Drupal distributions also have over a hundred modules installed in them. Unless the developer follows the maintenance first approach, it will become very difficult to ensure all of them work together to provide good user experience. Drupal developers have always followed the maintenance first approach, and they have never faced any major issues during the maintenance of the websites.

Last but not the least is the version upgrade in Drupal. With Drupal community working on the latest version of Drupal, it would be apt to mention the possible issues that developers would face while migrating from Drupal 7 to version 8. The information on Drupal 8 has been quite encouraging to the Drupal developers, as the community is working to further strengthen the strong holds of Drupal. Many developers agree that they did not face many challenges while migrating from version 4 to 5 or from version 5 to 6. However, a few admitted that migrating from version 6 to 7 did pose them a few challenges. With maintenance first approach, developers can have a complete control over what they are doing and the expenses on re-doing the website can be averted.

Drupal has as one of the largest open source developer communities in the world. So, you can imagine how skilled Drupal developers. Only they can assure your websites are in good status and well maintained.