By separating the content from the underlying code, a CMS empowers individuals and businesses to manage websites without requiring extensive technical expertise. Whether you’re building a blog, launching an eCommerce store, or managing a corporate website, a CMS provides the tools you need to maintain your online presence efficiently.

Let’s answer what is a cms, explore the differences between a CMS and blogging, and look at how to choose the right content management system for your site.

CMS Meaning: What Does CMS Stand For?

Still not sure how to answer the question what is a cms? The term CMS stands for Content Management System. It is a platform that serves as the foundation for building, organizing, and maintaining websites. A CMS empowers users to manage the content lifecycle seamlessly. Here are its core functionalities:

1. Creates Content: Users can easily draft, format, and publish various types of content, such as blog posts, web pages, multimedia, and more, using a visual editor or intuitive interface.
2. Manages Content: A CMS acts as a centralized repository for organizing and storing text, images, videos, and documents. It also supports tagging, categorization, and search functionality, making it easier to locate and update existing content.
3. Delivers Content: The CMS dynamically serves content to website visitors through pre-designed templates or themes. This ensures a consistent and visually appealing presentation across devices and browsers.

By integrating these capabilities, a CMS allows individuals and teams to focus on creating high-quality content rather than grappling with complex code or backend systems.

Key Features of a CMS

Whether you’re a solo entrepreneur, a blogger, or part of a large organization, these features are what make a CMS an indispensable tool for building and maintaining a professional, user-friendly, and scalable online presence. A CMS typically includes the following features:

• User-Friendly Interface: Provides an intuitive dashboard where users can easily navigate and manage their website without requiring coding skills. Tasks such as creating pages, uploading media, and customizing settings can be done with simple clicks.
• Themes and Templates: Offers a variety of pre-designed layouts to create visually appealing websites quickly. Many CMS platforms also allow extensive customization to align with branding and specific requirements.
• Plugins and Extensions: Extends the functionality of the CMS by adding features like SEO optimization, social media integration, advanced analytics, eCommerce capabilities, and more. The availability of thousands of plugins ensures flexibility for different use cases.
• Media Management: Enables users to upload, organize, and edit multimedia content such as images, videos, and audio files. Advanced tools often include cropping, resizing, and optimization for faster loading times.
• Multi-User Collaboration: Supports teamwork by assigning roles (e.g., administrator, editor, author, or contributor) with specific permissions, ensuring smooth collaboration while maintaining control over the website’s content and structure.
• Version Control: Tracks changes made to content, allowing users to view, compare, and restore previous versions. This is particularly useful for maintaining consistency and avoiding errors.
• SEO Tools: Includes built-in or plugin-based tools to optimize website content for search engines. Features often include metadata management, XML sitemap generation, and keyword analysis to improve visibility.
• Responsive Design: Ensures that websites built using the CMS are mobile-friendly and function seamlessly across various devices and screen sizes.
• Analytics Integration: Facilitates the integration of analytics tools like Google Analytics to track visitor behavior, measure performance, and gain insights for improvement.
• Security Features: Provides built-in or add-on capabilities to protect the website from threats such as malware, DDoS attacks, and unauthorized access, with features like SSL support and regular updates.

Is a CMS and Blogging the Same Thing?

No, a CMS (Content Management System) and blogging are not the same thing, but they are closely related. Let me explain the distinction:

CMS (Content Management System): A CMS is a versatile software application that allows users to build, manage, and maintain websites of various types, including blogs, eCommerce stores, corporate sites, portfolios, and more. It serves as a foundation for organizing and delivering content on a website. While blogging is one of the functions a CMS can perform, it is far from the only one.

Examples of CMS Functions:

• Creating and managing blog posts.
• Building landing pages or product pages.
• Managing multimedia (images, videos, etc.).
• Running eCommerce platforms (e.g., Shopify, WooCommerce).
• Hosting forums, community portals, or corporate intranets.

Blogging: Blogging refers specifically to the activity of creating and publishing regular written content, often in a journal-style format, on a website. It typically involves posts focused on a particular topic, niche, or personal experiences.

Features of Blogging:

• Writing and formatting posts.
• Categorizing content with tags or categories.
• Engaging with readers through comments.
• Sharing posts via social media.
• Tracking engagement metrics like views or shares.

How Blogging and CMSs Are Related

Despite being different, the two are very closely related. In general, all CMSs support blogging, but not all blogging platforms are CMSs.

A CMS often includes blogging features as part of its functionality. For instance, WordPress was originally designed as a blogging platform but has evolved into a full-fledged CMS that supports eCommerce, multimedia, and more. Similarly, platforms like Ghost and Medium are primarily designed for blogging but can include some CMS-like features.

Blogging is a subset of what a CMS can handle. A CMS provides the infrastructure to support blogging and much more. If your goal is to create a broader website with diverse functionalities, a CMS is the right choice; if you’re focused purely on content creation, a blogging platform may suffice.

What Are the Best CMS Options?

WordPress

WordPress is the most widely used Content Management System in the world, powering more than 40% of websites on the internet. Known for its flexibility and ease of use, WordPress caters to everyone from individual bloggers to large enterprises. This free CMS offers a rich ecosystem of themes and plugins, allowing users to create virtually any type of website—whether it’s a personal blog, a professional portfolio, an eCommerce store, or a corporate site.

Best For: Bloggers, small businesses, eCommerce stores, and even large-scale websites.

Features:

• Extensive library of plugins for functionality such as SEO, social media integration, and analytics.
• Thousands of customizable themes for various industries and purposes.
• Strong community support, including forums, tutorials, and third-party resources.
• Scalability to handle everything from simple blogs to enterprise-level websites.

Shopify

Shopify is a leading eCommerce platform designed to help businesses build and manage online stores effortlessly. It is an all-in-one solution that combines website creation, inventory management, and payment processing into a single, user-friendly package. Whether you’re a small retailer or a large-scale merchant, Shopify offers tools tailored to streamline your operations and boost your sales.

Best For: eCommerce websites looking for an all-in-one solution.

Features:

• Built-in payment gateways, inventory tracking, and shipping tools.
• Access to a wide range of eCommerce-specific apps to enhance store functionality.
• Secure hosting and robust performance optimized for online shopping.
• Customizable storefronts with a focus on mobile responsiveness.

Drupal

Drupal is a powerful and flexible CMS that caters to enterprise-level websites, government portals, and organizations with complex content needs. Known for its advanced capabilities and scalability, Drupal is ideal for projects requiring high levels of customization, robust security, and the ability to manage large volumes of data and traffic. Despite its steep learning curve, Drupal offers unparalleled flexibility for developers and organizations seeking tailor-made solutions.

Best For: Enterprise-level websites, government portals, and other complex projects.

Features:

• Highly secure framework suitable for sensitive data applications.
• Advanced user permission controls for multi-user collaboration.
• Flexible and customizable design for large, data-heavy websites.
• Scalability to handle high-traffic volumes and complex workflows.

Joomla!

Joomla! is a versatile CMS that strikes a balance between user-friendliness and advanced functionality. It is ideal for websites that require a mix of flexibility and simplicity, such as forums, community portals, and small-to-medium-sized business sites. With a strong focus on multilingual support and a variety of extensions, Joomla allows users to build dynamic and interactive websites without extensive technical expertise.

Best For: Websites requiring a mix of flexibility and ease of use, such as forums or community portals.

Features:

• Advanced content management capabilities for dynamic website needs.
• Integrated multilingual support without the need for plugins.
• Variety of extensions for added functionality.
• Intuitive backend that balances customization with usability.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a powerful eCommerce plugin designed to transform WordPress into a fully functional online store. Known for its flexibility and extensive customization options, WooCommerce empowers users to sell physical products, digital goods, and services seamlessly. Its deep integration with WordPress makes it an ideal choice for businesses looking to combine content and commerce in one platform.

Best For: Small-to-medium-sized businesses, entrepreneurs, and WordPress users who want to expand into eCommerce.

Features:

• Built specifically for WordPress, enabling users to leverage existing themes, plugins, and the platform’s blogging capabilities.
• Offers a wide range of themes and extensions to create unique online stores tailored to various industries.
• Supports physical, digital, and subscription-based products with features like inventory management and product variations.
• Integrates with major payment gateways, including PayPal, Stripe, and credit cards, ensuring smooth transactions.
• Ideal for startups and growing businesses, with the ability to handle a few products or thousands as your store expands.
• Includes built-in SEO features, discount codes, and email marketing integrations to boost sales and visibility.

Squarespace

Squarespace is a sophisticated and visually focused CMS tailored for creative professionals, small businesses, and individuals looking to showcase their work online. Known for its stunning templates and all-in-one platform, Squarespace offers everything you need to design, launch, and maintain a professional website, even without technical expertise.

Best For: Creative professionals, portfolios, and small businesses.

Features:

• Elegant, modern templates optimized for visual appeal.
• Built-in tools for SEO, analytics, and eCommerce.
• Seamless integration with third-party services like payment processors.
• Reliable hosting and a simple, intuitive interface.

Magento

Magento is a robust and highly customizable CMS designed specifically for eCommerce businesses. It is ideal for enterprises and large-scale retailers looking for advanced capabilities to manage and scale their online stores. With powerful tools for marketing, catalog management, and customer segmentation, Magento stands out as a solution for businesses with complex needs and substantial growth potential.

Best For: Large eCommerce businesses with advanced customization needs.

Features:

• Robust eCommerce capabilities, including multi-store management.
• Advanced marketing tools like customer segmentation and loyalty programs.
• Highly scalable for businesses with significant growth potential.
• Flexible APIs for integration with third-party systems.

Other CMS Options to Consider

In addition to the popular CMS platforms mentioned above, here are other noteworthy options that cater to specific needs:

1. Ghost: Known for its minimalist design, fast performance, and built-in SEO tools, Ghost is ideal for those who need a distraction-free platform dedicated to publishing. It is best suited for bloggers and publishers focusing on content creation.
2. Weebly: Weebly offers simplicity and affordability for new website owners. Best for small businesses and beginners, it offers a drag-and-drop editor, pre-designed templates, and integrated eCommerce tools.
3. TYPO3: Designed for enterprise-level websites requiring multilingual support, TYPO3 offers advanced features for large organizations, including scalability, multilingual capabilities, and enterprise-grade security.
4. BigCommerce: With it’s comprehensive eCommerce tools, multi-channel selling, and strong API integrations for advanced customization, it is mean for larger storefronts and enterprise retailers with complex needs.
5. Contentful: Contentful separates the backend from the frontend, giving developers the flexibility to deliver content to multiple platforms, including apps and IoT devices. It’s best for developers and organizations that need a headless CMS.

These additional CMS platforms provide specialized features that can help you build a website tailored to your specific requirements.

What Are the Benefits of Using a CMS?

A CMS offers a wide range of benefits, making it an essential tool for website management. Here are the key advantages explained in detail:

• Ease of Use: Most CMS platforms are designed for users with little to no technical expertise. With an intuitive interface, tasks such as creating pages, uploading content, and managing settings can be done with minimal effort.
• Cost Efficiency: By reducing the need to hire developers for routine updates and maintenance, a CMS significantly cuts down operational costs. Many platforms also offer free or affordable options, making them accessible for individuals and small businesses.
• Customization: A CMS allows you to personalize your website with a wide variety of themes and plugins. This ensures that your site reflects your brand identity while providing the functionality you need.
• Scalability: As your business or project grows, a CMS can scale with you. Whether you’re adding new pages, integrating advanced features, or handling increased traffic, most platforms are equipped to adapt seamlessly.
• SEO-Friendly: Many CMS platforms come with built-in tools or plugins that simplify search engine optimization (SEO). Features like meta tag customization, XML sitemaps, and keyword analysis help improve your site’s visibility on search engines.
• Community Support: Popular CMS platforms such as WordPress and Drupal have large, active user communities. These communities provide forums, tutorials, and third-party resources to help troubleshoot issues, find inspiration, and share best practices.
• Flexibility Across Industries: Whether you’re running a blog, an online store, or a corporate website, a CMS can accommodate various types of content and functionality, making it suitable for diverse industries and purposes.
• Time Efficiency: With features like pre-designed templates and drag-and-drop editors, you can save time building and maintaining your website, allowing you to focus on other priorities.
• Security Features: Many CMS platforms offer robust security options, such as regular updates, SSL support, and malware protection. These features safeguard your website and its data from potential threats.

By leveraging these benefits, a CMS empowers users to efficiently manage their online presence while saving time, money, and effort.

How Do You Choose a CMS?

Selecting the right CMS is a critical decision that can impact the functionality, scalability, and user experience of your website. To make an informed choice, consider these factors:

1. Purpose of Your Website: Define your primary goals. Are you building a personal blog, a professional portfolio, an eCommerce store, or a corporate website? For example:
   • Blogs: WordPress offers excellent tools and plugins for content creation.
   • ECommerce: Shopify or Magento provide robust solutions for online stores.
   • Portfolios: Squarespace or Wix excel at creating visually appealing designs.
2. Ease of Use: Assess the technical expertise of your team. Platforms like Wix and Squarespace are beginner-friendly, featuring drag-and-drop editors and pre-built templates. For advanced users, Drupal or Joomla provide deeper customization options but require technical knowledge.
3. Customization and Features: Evaluate the level of customization required. WordPress is highly flexible with thousands of themes and plugins, while platforms like Shopify focus more on streamlined, out-of-the-box eCommerce functionality.
4. Budget: Determine your financial constraints. Free CMS platforms like WordPress.org require you to purchase hosting and a domain but offer extensive flexibility. Paid platforms like Shopify and Squarespace include hosting and support in their subscription fees, making them all-in-one solutions.
5. Scalability: Consider future growth. Choose a CMS that can handle increased traffic and additional features as your needs evolve. WordPress and Drupal are particularly strong in this area, supporting everything from small sites to enterprise-level applications.
6. Support and Community: Look for platforms with active communities or dedicated support teams. Popular CMS platforms like WordPress and Joomla have extensive online resources, including forums, documentation, and tutorials, to assist with troubleshooting.
7. SEO and Performance: Ensure the CMS has built-in SEO tools or supports plugins for optimization. Features like meta tags, mobile responsiveness, and fast loading times are essential for search engine rankings and user experience.
8. Security: Evaluate the security features of the platform. Look for options that include SSL support, regular updates, and compatibility with security plugins or extensions.
9. Integration Capabilities: If your website needs to integrate with other tools (e.g., CRM, marketing platforms, or analytics), verify that the CMS supports these integrations seamlessly.

By carefully weighing these factors, you can select a CMS that aligns with your specific needs, ensuring a solid foundation for your website’s success.

From WordPress and WooCommerce to Joomla!, Drupal, Ghost, and more, A2 Hosting offers affordable CMS Hosting for virtually all platforms. Simply choose the right hosting for your needs and install the CMS that fits your needs. You get premium hardware for the best site performance along with our no-risk money back guarantee, 99.9% uptime commitment, and 24/7/365 in-house customer support. Compare web hosting now and get started today.

The post What Is a CMS and How To Choose the Best Content Management System appeared first on The A2 Posting.

Fortunately, there are ways to demystify Drupal. There is something of a steep learning curve, but you don’t need to have a deep technical background in order to master it. With a beginner’s guide (and a little patience) anyone willing to take some extra time can how to use this CMS effectively.

In this post, we’ll tell you a bit about the history of Drupal, as well as the advantages of the platform over other website builders. This will help you decide if it’s worth investing the time and effort required to learn it. Finally, we’ll offer a short guide on how to get started. Let’s begin!

A Brief History of Drupal

First, let’s go over a bit of history. Drupal got its start as a message board named Drop.org, founded by Dries Buytaert and Hans Snijder. In 2001, Buytaert released Drupal as an open-source code, so that others could modify and expand upon it.

Drupal’s first big break came in 2003 when it was used to build DeanSpace, a large collection of connected message boards used for members of the Howard Dean campaign to communicate with each other. It has since expanded into the complex CMS that it is today. Yet, it’s still built by a collective open-source community.

One of the big changes between the original iteration of Drupal and where it is now is that in 2007, the developers incorporated a What You See Is What You Get (‘WYSIWYG’) editor:

This means that, even if you end up hiring a web developer to create your site, there’s a user-friendly interface where you can create text, images, and other content. WYSIWYG editors give you the independence to run your site without constantly having to send text changes back and forth to a developer. You can even try out a free online demo to see what using this editor is like.

The Pros and Cons of Using Drupal for Your Website

Although Drupal is very powerful, it is also somewhat difficult for beginners to learn. That may lead you to wonder why should you use Drupal instead of a simpler system, such as WordPress or Joomla!

Ultimately, Drupal is an excellent middle ground between those CMS options and building your own website from scratch. It enables you to create complex sites, but also has an extensive library of modules that save you time, and let even dedicated non-coders add new features to their sites. Even if you hire a developer, it can save you money in the long run versus an HTML site. That’s because its WYSIWYG interface enables you to make text and content changes on your own.

If you put in the time to understand Drupal, it can be quite rewarding. For coders in particular, there’s an entire community out there building systems that anyone can use. It also offers higher security and better enterprise-level scaling than any other CMS on the market. Plus, once your site is set up, the dashboard is relatively easy to use.

However, if you’re planning to build a Drupal site on your own, you should probably have some coding experience under your belt. It can take a significant amount of time and effort to learn the system from scratch. The main con is that, if you don’t want to hire a developer, it is not as beginner-friendly as WordPress or Joomla!

Pros of Drupal CMS

1. Highly Customizable: Extensive flexibility with custom content types, fields, taxonomies, and views, it offers a wide range of themes and modules to build unique websites tailored to specific needs.
2. Scalability: Ideal for large-scale websites with heavy traffic and complex functionality, it supports multisite functionality, making it suitable for organizations managing multiple sites.
3. Strong Security Features: It is recognized for robust security measures, including regular updates and a dedicated security team. Drupal is trusted by governments, enterprises, and higher education institutions for secure applications.
4. Advanced User Role and Permission System: It offers granular control over user permissions, allowing precise management of what users can do on the site.
5. SEO-Friendly: Modules like Pathauto, Metatag, and XML Sitemap make optimizing for search engines straightforward. It’s clean URL structures and customizable meta tags contribute to better SEO performance.
6. Open Source: Free to use with no licensing fees, backed by a large, active developer community, Drupal encourages innovation with contributions from thousands of developers worldwide.
7. Multilingual Capabilities: It includes native support for building multilingual websites without relying heavily on third-party extensions. The core modules include features for translation and localization.
8. Excellent for Complex Content Needs: Handles large amounts of structured content effectively, making it ideal for content-heavy websites like news portals or academic institutions.

Cons of Drupal CMS

1. Steep Learning Curve: Drupal requires advanced technical knowledge to fully utilize its features, particularly for developers and administrators. Non-technical users may struggle with its interface compared to platforms like WordPress.
2. Time-Intensive Development: Building and maintaining a Drupal site can be more time-consuming than using simpler CMS platforms. Customization often requires significant time and effort due to its complexity.
3. Resource-Heavy: Drupal’s robust features and scalability demand more server resources, which may require investing in premium hosting. Performance optimization may require technical expertise or additional modules.
4. Smaller Module Ecosystem: While the module library is extensive, it is smaller compared to WordPress’s plugin repository. Finding a module for specific functions might be more challenging.
5. Limited Themes and Design Options: It has fewer pre-made themes compared to WordPress or Joomla, requiring more custom development for unique designs. Some themes may not be as user-friendly or visually appealing out of the box.
6. Developer Reliance: Customizing or maintaining a Drupal site often requires the help of a professional developer, increasing costs for businesses without in-house expertise.
7. Upgrades Can Be Challenging: Major version upgrades (e.g., Drupal 8 to Drupal 9) often require significant work, as backward compatibility isn’t guaranteed. Custom themes and modules may also need adjustments during upgrades.

How to Get Started with Drupal

As we’ve mentioned, Drupal can seem daunting at the start. However, getting started and beginning to experiment with its powerful systems is well within reach.

There are a few simple steps you can follow, if you want to create a new Drupal site as a complete newbie:

• Purchase a hosting plan with one-click install feature. A hosting plan with Drupal pre-loaded saves you the trouble of figuring out how to install it yourself – which is perfect for beginners (plus, our Drupal hosting comes already optimized for speed and performance).
• Familiarize yourself with the platform. You can either buy a book, or peruse one of the many free online tutorials for beginners.
• Understand the terms. Skim through Drupal’s helpful glossary to familiarize yourself with key phrases you’ll need to know.
• Get to know the core modules. The core modules are at the heart of this CMS. Understanding what they are and how they work is vital.
• Begin building your site. As we’ve discussed, Drupal 8 comes with a WYSIWYG editor that you can use to start adding text and images to your pages right away.
• Ask for help when needed. For anything you don’t understand, it has an active forum that’s very accepting of questions.
• Consider hiring a professional. If you’re lost, or if you’re creating a very complex site, consider hiring a professional to get the ball rolling. Then, focus on learning how to update content and make small changes once your site’s framework is in place. For example, if you can’t find a module that does what you want, you may end up needing to hire a programmer to build you something custom.

Drupal is a flexible and powerful solution for websites. This is especially true if you either have some coding experience yourself, or the resources to hire a designer. Once you put in the effort to learn how the system works, you’ll be able to take advantage of its security and enterprise-level scaling ability (among other advantages).

Get started with reliable, affordable Drupal Hosting from A2 Hosting. Launch a new site quickly or let our Guru Crew migrate your existing site to our platform for free. With A2 Hosting, you get premium hardware for ultra-fast performance. Plus, our hosting is backed by our no-risk money-back guarantee, 99.9% uptime commitment, and 24/7/365 in-house customer support. Compare hosting plans now and get started in minutes.

The post An Introduction to Drupal (And How to Get Started) appeared first on The A2 Posting.

Backend & Technical Improvements

As all eCommerce business owners begin to buckle down and get ready for the upcoming holiday season many are focused on bringing new traffic to their sites to take advantage of the increased spending during Q4. But what happens when your site isn’t ready for the traffic and crashes in the middle of your biggest Black Friday Sale of the year? We want to make sure your website is fast and ready to receive all the new visitors coming your way. Here are some of our team’s top technical tips to make sure your site is ready this season.

Stay Up to Date with Updates

Keeping your website up-to-date is one of the most important maintenance techniques for your eCommerce site. Before the holiday traffic starts, be sure to have all the latest updates installed – both for the CMS itself and any plugins/ modules/add-ons that you already have installed. Luckily for all the website owners out there, it is easy to automate this process by signing up for automatic updates for major and minor releases of WordPress core and plugins. You also have the option to receive email notifications anytime there is a new release available. These updates will provide additional functionality, performance boosts, and patches for known security vulnerabilities. It’s important to verify these updates for compatibility with your combination of plugins and server configuration before updating your production site. This makes sure you don’t update and accidentally break your site.

Identify Your Resource Weaknesses

One of the secret tips to keeping your eCommerce website functioning smoothly is making sure you’re not approaching your resource limits. You should ask yourself…Have you looked at your traffic from last year? Did you run into any issues during your big sales? If so it may be important to check to see if you should move to a plan with more resources to help support a smoother customer experience. Not sure what resources to look at? Here are four important ones to check:

• Disk Space: This refers to the amount of room on your account to store files, including all of your text, code, and images.
• Memory Usage (RAM): RAM stores working data and is a vital part of a computer’s performance. A2 Hosting’s RAM options on our VPS and Dedicated plans range anywhere from 4GB to 128 GB DDR4 ECC, so we have options for any sized website!
• CPU Usage: This is the central processing unit that processes and runs instructions. We offer the choice of AMD and Intel CPUs on our Dedicated hosting plans!
• Inode Usage: This correlates with how many files you can store on your website. If you’re an eCommerce company with lots of files it may be important to get a plan with access to more inodes. Read our knowledge base articles to learn more about how to manage your inode count.

If you’re nearing the maximum usage afforded to your current plan we encourage you to upgrade! Interested in going even faster? Check out A2 Turbo, available on most plans! Confused about what all the web hosting resources are? Check out this blog on four web hosting resources to consider when choosing your hosting plan.

Try a CDN

That’s right, that CDN you’ve been debating? Now is the time to go for it. But what is a CDN? A CDN, or Content Delivery Network, works by utilizing dispersed servers. They use a global network of servers to store static assets for your web page, such as images, at multiple locations closer to the visitor to your site. Not only does this reduce load time as the assets are being delivered from a closer physical location to the customer, but this also reduces the load on your server as it does not need to service that portion of the request. This way visitors from around the world can access your site and all of its information from a server that is closer to them. Here’s a list of the benefits of using a CDN:

• Faster loading speed
• Boost in reliability and response time
• Better global reach
• Increased number of users at one time
• DDoS protection

A2 Hosting offers Cloudflare, a popular CDN, for our customers’ use.

Cache, Cache, Cache

Caching is a great way to speed up your site! Caching stores your web pages in memory, so the server can serve them very quickly, instead of fetching them from the disk each time. This is a way for your site to generate static html versions of dynamic pages that are frequently requested. Caching significantly reduces the load placed on the server to deliver that page as well as speeding up response times. Most web frameworks offer this as an option either directly integrated in the framework or as an additional plugin. Ensuring caching is enabled can make an enormous difference on the amount of traffic and number of concurrent users your site can handle. Our A2 Turbo plans come with Litespeed caching preinstalled! Read our knowledge base article to learn how to use Litespeed on your site.

Improve Your Database Indexing

A frequently disregarded aspect of website performance and scaling is the database itself. Databases include many options to make performance better and one of the most critical is ensuring you have good indexes in your databases.

A lack of indexes, or poorly designed indexes, can increase the time it takes to execute a database query by an order of magnitude. Creating basic indexes is relatively simple and optimizing indexes for your specific use case is something your web developer can typically do for you.

Similarly, it is important to make sure any database queries you are running are well written. It is very easy to write a poor database query during testing or development just to get things working and it is vital to go back later and ensure the query is written as tightly as possible to eliminate unnecessary operations to get the data you actually need.

Traffic Control

How many visitors can view your site? Only as many as your server will handle. This is why it is imperative to ensure that you have fast and reliable hosting. If you frequently experience drops in connection or other general server issues, now is the time to switch to a fast, reliable server. If you’re looking for 99.9% uptime, turbo speeds, and 24/7 guru crew support check out our plans available at A2 Hosting.

Upgrade Your Hardware Stack

You can upgrade the hardware stack powering your website to provide additional resources. A2 Hosting provides an extensive array of packages designed to meet your hosting needs. Our turbo packages are perfect for handling holiday traffic surges. These servers include NVME SSD drives for lightning-fast disk operations, Litespeed web server for dramatically improved page load times, and AMD EPYC CPUs for very high concurrency to handle the flood of holiday visitors. We also have VPS and dedicated server options for those extremely busy websites to ensure your server is not the limiting factor to your business growth during this holiday season.

Security

Security is a must if you don’t want your site becoming unresponsive, or worse, displaying undesirable content. Aside from running updates on the CMS and plugins, removing unused plugins and themes from your site will help reduce potential vulnerabilities.

Install an SSL

All traffic that provides users a way to send any type of information to your site should be secured over HTTPS with a valid SSL. A2 Hosting offers both free and paid versions of different SSLs. To learn the pros and cons of each read this blog. Using an SSL Certificate will help protect your users’ information. The presence of this certificate will help verify your identity to any potential customers and let them know that there’s an encrypted connection when transmitting their information. The great part about paying for an upgraded SSL with A2 Hosting is added security and the benefits of displaying a trust badge. These are symbols you can add to your site that will assure customers that their information is secure and your site is trustworthy (it also avoids the nasty “Unsecured” message that browsers display that makes users worried).

Check Your Authorized Users

You’ll also want to check on your list of authorized administrators/content editors. If you’ve had turnover at the company or previous contractors who have completed work on your site, double-check that their permissions have been removed by reducing their permissions, or deactivating their accounts (this applies to the CMS, as well as any server access that you may have given them). If the system provides for 2-Factor authentication, be sure you update your staff about these settings. Make sure they are aware of the new requirement, that they have their authentication setup, and that each user account is configured to require 2FA.

Increase Your Payment Security

Online security has always been important but in 2021 it’s absolutely essential. You want your information and your customer’s information to be safe and secure to help build consumer trust. Make sure you implement these strategies to help secure your site before the holiday sales:

Implement an Address Verification Service (AVS)

Don’t let those suspicious credit card transactions get by you! An AVS is a fraud prevention system that will help your eCommerce store limit its fraud and chargebacks.

Require Card Verification Value (CVV)

The CVV is the little number on the back of debit cards. By requiring customers to enter this information when trying to check out, you can add an extra level of security to every transaction.

Check Your Payments Processor

It’s also a  good idea to check the fine print on your payment processing system. Make sure you have the right setup so those sales don’t go down the drain when your customers can’t pay!

Make Sure Everything Works As Expected

Testing your key systems to make sure everything you are relying on to go right is a critical point. If you’re in eCommerce, double-check your payment processing is running smoothly.

You most likely have email notifications from your site either to customers (sending out updates, responding to contact submissions, order confirmations, etc) or to your staff (notifications of contact submissions, orders received, etc) – you’ll want to make sure these are being received by their intended target. Just because your site says it’s sending the message, doesn’t necessarily mean the customers are receiving the messages.

All notifications should have some way of retrieving the same information (contact submissions should be stored in the CMS as well as the staff email notification). Here’s our Knowledge Base section on web testing and development to help you get started!

Code Freeze

Your site should be well developed ahead of time to accommodate any changes you want to see during the holidays. By implementing a code freeze, you increase the reliability of your site by reducing the impact of your changes to the underlying system. This will require some advanced planning regarding what you will want from your website.

Have a Disaster Recovery Plan

Having a disaster recovery plan in place before you need it is critical in recovering from any unseen website disasters that may occur. At the very minimum, you’ll want local backups of your database and the site files. If you’re able to get offsite backups too that’s even better!

The second half of your recovery plan is knowing how to restore the backups. It’s just as important to know how to restore your backups as it is to make sure you have them.

Front End Website Optimizations

Getting ready for the holiday shopping season and looking to make some changes to your site? Well look no further, we have a list of great optimizations to help you thrive during Q4. Read more to learn about how we recommend you tweak your online store for success!

Choose the Right Hosting Company and Hosting Plan

Choosing the right host for your site is an essential part of speeding up your website. Our turbo plans at A2 Hosting are 20x faster with 99.9% uptime! Once you’ve found the right host make sure you’re on the right sized plan for your needs. Don’t run your large eCommerce site with heavy traffic on a shared server because it may not be able to handle the number of resources you’ll need, especially on heavy traffic days like Black Friday. We recommend a VPS or Dedicated plan if possible.

Use A2 Optimized

These days 47% of customers expect a website to load in two seconds or less. The internet is full of opportunities to shop around and if users have to wait, they may abandon your site for another one with similar products. Website speed is affected by many different factors. One big thing that could be affecting yours is your resource usage is too high for your current plan. Some factors that could be affecting this are images, JavaScript, and CSS files. Images should be compressed, and JavaScript and CSS files should be minified and combined if possible.

Image Optimization

Another area to consider is optimizing your images for web delivery. Modern cameras and even cell phones take very high-resolution images. These images can be very large resulting in slow page load times. We recommend either getting rid of them or compressing them so they take less time to load. Most web frameworks include tools to generate efficient thumbnail images as well as render high-resolution images at a lower resolution better suited to web delivery.

Go for Mobile

Many years ago – designs of websites changed to be designed mobile-first because of the shift to mobile devices so this one is likely already covered…but if not, you’ll want to work on this. If your site is not accessible from a mobile device, you will be missing out on potential users. Mobile-friendly sites do not need to replicate 100% of the desktop content or features, however, mobile users should not be missing out on anything critical. All the same, information should be able to be gathered and should be able to do so just as easily. Navigation around the site should be smooth for mobile users without having to do complicated gestures. Here’s a blog to help you through the steps of testing if your site is mobile-friendly.

Informative Website Content

If you have good information all over your store this will help your customers find their answers before they resort to your online chat boxes. Here are some elements to make sure you include or edit for clarity:

• FAQ sections
• Contact us page
• Ways for customers to reach your team (live chat, phone number, email, ticket system ,etc.)
• Social platform links for customers to check out or reach you there

Importance of Call/Chat/Ticket Functionality

Users come to your site for one thing – they are looking to get something from you – that is either information or a product. Your job is to make that as easy as possible. Hopefully, by now, your site is fast, reliable, mobile- friendly, and you’ve checked to make sure everything is working as planned – but sometimes you just can’t predict what your users are going to need. Adding a Support/Chat/Ticket feature to your website gives you an easy way of allowing users to contact you and receive a timely response. Users don’t have too much patience when it comes to getting feedback and this option gives them a way to contact you on their own terms.

Many times when a user is extremely frustrated they may want someone to walk them through a fix. That’s when having a calling system comes into play. There’s nothing like having someone fix a problem step by step over the phone, especially when you’ve tried everything and are very frustrated. Adding this functionality to your business gives users a chance to connect with the people behind a brand, which can be vital when building brand loyalty.

Give Some Love to Your Sales Team and Instructional Content

A lot of the time the people behind your phone and chat lines are having the most frequent interactions with your customers. That’s why it’s important to ensure they have a lot of training not only on your product but also on who may want to buy it and why. Taking extra time to address your clients’ questions now can go a long way when it comes to building a relationship and creating a repeat customer. Investing in interaction now with a potential client could lead to a fruitful relationship for you both in the future.

Adding a human element to a website can help potential clients feel more comfortable and be more willing to make a purchase. Creating an open line of communication with your potential clients for further discussion is very important during the customer buying process. Once that line of communication is opened, it’s time to start thinking about conversations with potential clients. When discussing options with clients, take the time to get to know them and their situation. The reasons they’re shopping with you will vary, and each individual interaction should be given the proper attention and assistance to help find the right solution. The goal here isn’t just to answer generic questions about a product or sell the most expensive option available. Instead, try to find out:

• why the client is looking to make a purchase
• if they have any particular pain points
• what is the reason they’re interested in your product

By investing the time to properly understand the client, it’ll help set up future interactions and hopefully create a long-term relationship. In the days of internet selling and fast purchases, the human element can be the difference between a client purchasing from you or another retailer. While these tips may be simple, the fundamentals of human interaction can often have the largest impact.

Write More Effective Product Descriptions

Determine Your Target Customer

Before you can begin writing the perfect product descriptions for your customers you need to identify who they are and empathize with them. If you don’t know who your target customer is, you won’t be able to write proper descriptions and your efforts will fall short of the mark.

You can do this by using the 80/20 rule. On average, 80% of sales come from 20% of your customers. If you’re trying to narrow down and find your target audience it would make sense to start by examining the top 20% of those who purchase from you already. To begin, use past purchasing data and gather customer profiles of your top 20% of customers. Now examine these profiles and look for patterns in their demographics and psychographics. Use these patterns to create personas. Personas are fictional customers that you can give a name, sex, age, career etc. By visualizing your customers in this way it is easier to write directly to them and create product descriptions that they would find appealing.

Show and Not Tell

When writing product descriptions, it’s important to remember to use clear
and descriptive language. You need to show your customers the benefits of your products rather than just telling them what they are. For example, for a service product don’t just tell your customer, “Our _______ service is reliable.” Instead, show them how reliable it is in your description: “Our ____ service is backed by an uncompromising Service Level Agreement that guarantees 99.9% uptime, a support staff with expert admins availability 24/7/365, and a 30-day hassle-free 100% money-back guarantee.”

Improve Your SEO

While high-quality images are important, search engines can’t see images – or not yet anyway. Images of your products may speak 1,000 words to your target customers and convey the emotion you’re trying to share, but they do little for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). To get your site to rank and become visible to potential customers, you must include product descriptions that are loaded with potential keywords. That way your site will begin to rank for related words to your products and your site will show up in more relevant google searches.

Make Your Descriptions Uniquely Yours

The bottom line is, your brand needs to be authentically itself and your product descriptions should embody this. To get noticed, your description copy needs to break through any commoditization noise that may surround your product. Don’t just look at your competition and try to write a description that’s 10% better, add something unique in your product’s description copy that directly taps into your brand’s authentic self.

Optimize Your Checkout Process

The holidays are the best time to get quick conversions but that can be made more complicated when you have a confusing checkout process. Now is the best time to take a look at what you have and try and spruce it up. Here are a few tips we recommend to make it as effective as possible:

• Add some urgency by including a count-down clock at the top that specifies how soon your sale is ending.
• Avoid adding in surprise costs at the end like large shipping fees. Extra costs are an issue for 60% of cart abandoners according to Optinmonster.
• Include multiple payment options. BigCommerce found that this can triple the conversion rate of your store.
• Highlight your security with a trust seal. You can purchase this with a paid SSL Certificate with A2 Hosting!
• Ask for your customers’ payment information last. You want to give them some time to make sure they trust your site and have all the details of their purchase in order before they start giving you their private payment information.
• Ideally use a single-page checkout process. You want it to be relatively straightforward with as few steps as possible. The worst thing is to have so many extraneous steps that you lose a potential conversion midway through the process.
• If you’re currently running a single- page checkout, declutter your form and only have your customers fill out the most necessary information.
• If you’re running a multi-page checkout try adding a progress indicator at the top of it! That way your customers can count down their progress rather than guessing how long it’s going to take to actually be able to buy from your store.
• Include areas that resolve frequently asked questions. If your support team notices they’re being asked the same questions all the time, include some answers. You can insert FAQ sections or flyouts with critical information that will inform your customers.

At the end of the day, you’re always going to lose some of your customers during the payment process no matter how well your cart is optimized. To try and convert this lost traffic follow up with those potential customers by sending abandonment emails with special discounts. This will serve as a great reminder of your store while also giving them some incentive to purchase from it.

Digital Marketing Strategy

The holidays are right around the corner so it’s a great time for eCommerce companies to capitalize on the opportunities that come with an increase in traffic. With proper preparation, online stores can gain brand recognition and increased conversions as they sail into the new year. Read more to learn about how to crush your digital marketing strategy this upcoming holiday season.

Pricing and Promotional Techniques

Effective pricing is a science and it’s never too late to start leveling up your pricing strategy game. The holidays are a great time to dive deeper into what makes pricing work and how you can use it to your advantage to increase conversions through promotions and deals. But before you begin to decide on your promotional pricing strategy, it’s important to first understand some basic pricing techniques:

• Price Skimming: To price skim, start your prices high and then lower them as you become more competitive in the market.
  Marketing Penetration Pricing: When your company is first starting out, set your prices low so you are more competitive than your competition.
  Premium Pricing: If you have a more wealthy target audience and are selling high-quality products you can start your prices high to signal quality and luxury appeal.
  Economy Pricing: This is when you set lower prices and target customers who are looking to make larger savings overall.

While these are good long-term pricing strategies, you may want to implement short-term pricing and promotions for the holiday months. Here are some examples of different promotional strategies to use to encourage quick conversions.

Refer-a-Friend: Tap into your clientele’s social networks and use social proof to your advantage! Give your customers some type of reward if they refer their friends to your products.

• Buy One Get One Free: This is a great way to entice your customers to try out multiple items from your store.
• Free Shipping: It’s always difficult to get to the checkout and see that shipping costs are going to add $10 or more to your purchase. By swallowing this cost you may raise your overall conversion rate.
• Free Item with Purchase of $X or More: Some customers may be buying holidays gifts in bulk. This is a great way to encourage customers to buy more of your products.
• Loss Leader: A loss leader is when you discount a product or service lower than its production cost. Some companies use this strategy to try and attract new customers or to sell more expensive products. It can also be a smart tactic if you’re trying to penetrate a new target market.

Plan Out Your Target Audience and Social Media Advertising Strategy

To ensure your promotions are a success it’s important to put a lot of thought into your advertising strategy and approach it with a target audience in mind. That way it’s easier to decide how you want to strategically choose the products you are featuring. When determining your product choice and targeting within your marketing campaigns, each social network has different options to choose from. Here’s a list of the different types of audience segments on some of the most popular social platforms:

Facebook/Instagram:

• Location: You can choose by city, community, and country.
• Behavior: Base your ads on behavioral attributes like prior purchases or device usage.
• Demographics: Choose from different demographics like gender, age, education levels, job titles, and more.
• Interests: You can segment your audience by hobbies or traits like the type of movies they like to watch or their dietary preferences.
• Connections: This allows you to decide if your audience is currently already connected to your business or unfamiliar with your products. This can be important if you’re trying to target an audience that is currently already interested in your business for an easier conversion rate.
• You can also use lookalike audiences which are created from source audiences of people that already interact with your ads! This connects you to people that are very similar to people that already follow your page.

LinkedIn:

• Job Experience: This includes job titles, seniority, job functions, member skills, and years of experience.
• Education: You can target based on degrees, subjects studied, schools attended.
• Demographics: Unlike Facebook and Instagram this is only split by age and gender.
• Company: You have access to target audiences based on industry, company names, company followers on LinkedIn, the growth rate and company size, and company category.
• Interests and Traits: Segment your audience by your potential customer’s interests, the groups they are a part of, and their traits.

Twitter:

• Demographics: You can filter by location, language, device (like phone type), platform (like phone carrier), Wifi (like internet provider), age, and gender.
• Targeting Types:
  • Conversation: This is based on the content of people’s tweets and conversations.
  • Event: Target people who attended various online and offline events.
  • Tweet Engager: Market to people that have organically engaged with your previous tweets.
  • Keyword: This allows you to search based on words your target audience used in previous tweets.
  • Movie and TV: If people mentioned any tv or movies this is how you would interact with them.
  • Interests: Twitter offers over 350+ present interests to choose from.
  • Look-Alikes: Like Facebook, Twitter lets you target people who behave similarly to accounts that already follow you.

YouTube:

• Audience targeting: Find people based on their interests, who they are, their daily habits, what they’re looking up, and their interactions with your business. This is split up based on google analytics.
• Affinity: Reach people based on their lifestyles, passions, and habits.
• Life Events: This narrows your audiences based on milestones like graduations or getting married.
• In-Market This allows you to target people who are looking up products and businesses similar to yours.
• Custom: Craft this audience based on keyword research, URLs, and apps.
• Remarketing: This helps you reach people that have already had some sort of historical engagement with your videos.
• Detailed Demographics: This is more like the other platforms and helps you create target audiences based on shared traits like their hobbies, occupations, or ages.
• Similar Audiences: This is like the lookalike audiences from above and allows you to find people that are similar to consumers that already follow you.

Publicize Your Sales with PPC and Google Ads

Now that you have a well-thought- out marketing strategy in place it’s important to promote and publicize it! PPC and Google Ads are a great way to increase the traffic to your site. Get that keyword strategy together and start bidding on the words that are most relevant to your business. It’s amazing what a good PPC strategy can do to garner traffic and conversions. Here are some things to keep in mind:

• Make sure the landing page you’re linking to is relevant and optimized for conversions.
• Optimize your negative keywords so your ads aren’t showing up on searches that don’t align with your strategy.
• Research and understand the basics of keyword matches:
  • Broad: match searches with any words or synonyms of your target words
  • Broad Match Modified: match only with searches that include all of your keywords within the query
  • Phrase Match: match only when searches use the exact phrase you are targeting plus searches that include the meaning of your keyword
  • Exact Match: match searches that have an exact keyword match and order (searches must contain all keywords in the exact order you list them plus close spelling errors)
• Adjust your bids for geotargeting. If your products are weather dependent or popular in certain areas you can adjust geotargeting spending so your ads show up to people in the most appropriate locations.
• Run mobile-centric campaigns. We recommend checking your campaign conversions by device so you can see which ones to shift to target certain users’ search preferences.

Capitalize on Heavy Traffic and Grow Your Email List with Lead Gen Tactics

Lead gen, lead gen, lead gen. It’s always important to keep building your mailing list with potential customers. With all the traffic you’re bringing in from the holidays, now is a perfect time to implement some new tactics! Here are some ideas:

• Add a place on the homepage where they can enter their email to gain access to special mailing lists (like a newsletter).
• Implement pop-ups with places for them to submit their emails in return for different deals or discounts.
• Create an interactive quiz or tool that requires them to enter their email to get the answers.
• Create special contests where you can only enter by giving you their information.
• Provide gated offers or informative content that require an email to access.
• Offer free trials so you can collect more than just their emails.

Be Strategic About Your Email Marketing Tactics

It’s important to tap into your established leads list with a well- thought-out email drip campaign. You want to make sure you’re touching your pool of potential holiday shoppers more than once to remind them about your upcoming sale and create some urgency. This is a great opportunity to use some advanced email tactics like last-chance opportunities and special offers catered to certain mailing lists. Here are a few rules of thumb to follow:

• Split your email lists into segments and groups so you can specialize the copy, graphics, and promotions displayed.
• Use perfect timing setting options when sending your emails so it lands in your customers’ inbox at the time they are most likely to open it.
• Use A/B testing on your sales emails to see which strategies worked the best so you can utilize them for your next sale.
• Optimize your emails for mobile. Around 47% of emails are opened on people’s phones according to email marketing firm Litmus. Here are some quick optimizations you can use:
  • Use one-column templates.
  • Increase your font size.
  • Make your call to action easy to identify, in the middle of the page, and easy to tap.
• Measure your performance as you go by looking at open rates, click rates, and eCommerce data through UTM tracking and your email marketing providers’ tools.
• Implement a last chance email list. Look at your email results a few days before the end of the sale and send a last chance email offer to some of the mailing lists with the highest open rates.
• Remind loyal customers why they subscribe: If your brand has a mission that’s months in the making, the holiday season may be a great time to remind your customers of their goals outside of the products you offer. This mission may be the reason why your customers stuck around in the first place.

Some email marketing plans have begun to change since Covid-19. Read our blog to see how it may impact your strategies this year!

Create Holiday Content Converts By Adding Retargeting Pixels to Your Ads

Did you know that 96% percent of customers will leave a website without actually purchasing anything? Utilizing retargeting pixels in your ads is a great way to bring customers back to your website! But what is a retargeting pixel and how does it work?

By attaching a small piece of code to your site you can track potential customers that leave your eCommerce stores and display more advertisements on Facebook and Google to remind them of your sale! This is a very effective marketing strategy because it helps you turn some of your bounced traffic into conversions down the line.

Check out our blog that describes how to implement retargeting pixels into your marketing campaign!

Ready, Set, Sell!

Now that you’ve worked on the back end of your website, the front end of your website, your digital marketing strategy, and everything in between, you are prepared and ready to capitalize on all of the positive things that come with the holiday season. If you have any further questions or want to ask our team about anything stated above feel free to contact our sales and support teams! We are available 24/7/365 and love talking with you!

The post The Ultimate Guide to Getting Your eCommerce Website Holiday Ready with A2 Hosting appeared first on The A2 Posting.

A Little Market Research

Before looking at the strengths and weaknesses of these two CMS, let’s first look at which is more prevalent in the market. When looking at google trends, WordPress is by far the more popular platform in all regions. WordPress takes approximately 59.8% market share versus 4.6% for Drupal. Although this fact is enough to confirm WordPress is the best choice, understanding the specific features of each CMS can help you make a more informed decision when choosing the right one for your site.

Why is WordPress Popular?

WordPress is popular among bloggers and small and larger enterprises because of the following advantages:

• Ease of use: WordPress is known for its ease of use and does not require high technical expertise when first starting out.
• Learning curve: WordPress is a simple interface. Its themes and WYSIWYG tools allow users to start from scratch and have a fully functional website in just a short period of time.
• Large support community: It’s easy to get support and help with any issues because WordPress has a large group of users who are well connected on different internet groups. There are so many forums out there to search on so you can get expert help quickly.
• Affordability: You can develop a WordPress site on your own or you have the option to hire WordPress developers. Luckily WordPress developers can be much more cost-effective compared to Drupal developers due to its popularity.
• Extensive plugins and themes: You can extend your site’s functionality, look, and feel with over 50,000 WordPress plugins and 5,000 Themes!

Why is Drupal STILL a choice?

Many government agencies and large corporations still prefer Drupal because of its outstanding security features and content taxonomy. Here are a few reasons why Drupal is still a choice:

• Security: Drupal’s security is its top-selling point. It offers security reports and is much more transparent on its security features compared to other CMS. Drupal ensures data security with frequent security updates, including SSL and CDN support for full website protection.
• Multi-Language support: Drupal supports character sets and easy language management variants without the need for an external plugin to help websites in different geographical locations.
• Taxonomy: Drupal’s taxonomy allows for better content categorization and works really well for large content websites to facilitate faster site search.

 Drupal or WordPress: Which Is The Best For Me?

Now that you know a little bit about the benefits of both CMS, it’s time to decide which one is best for you. Here’s a little checklist to start you off:

1. What’s your website for?: This is probably the first thing you need to determine as it can help you decide how complex your site needs to be and the duration you need to develop it.
2. Who will build the site?: Are you planning to develop the site yourself, hire a developer, or get a managed hosting provider to do it for you? If you plan to do it yourself then we suggest you pick WordPress. It’s easier to use, has tons of plugins, and has many WordPress hosting services to choose from. Plus a WordPress developer tends to be less expensive than a Drupal developer so you may save money in upfront costs.
3. Are you trying to start your site alone?: Working with an open-source tool means you may need help with errors or improvements. Choose a tool that has great support groups for beginners to even advanced-level users. Also, check if your hosting provider offers help for your selected CMS.
4. Who is your web hosting provider?: Almost all hosting providers offer hosting platforms for WordPress and Drupal these days. If you have chosen a hosting provider, check with them on options or support given for the CMS. We recommend A2 Hosting because of its excellent support and prices!

Now that you’ve gone through this quick checklist, it’s time to decide: WordPress or Drupal? Overall we recommend WordPress as the first choice for anyone who needs a CMS to develop a professional and attractive website quickly!

Conclusion

Before selecting your tools and platform, it’s vital to understand your website’s commercial and business goals. The right hosting provider and CMS are important when developing faster and cost-effective websites to gain a better online presence. A2 Hosting supports both Drupal and WordPress hosting, offering unbeatable speed for your site. Check out our WordPress hosting packages today and feel free to contact our sales team with any questions!

Related Resources

How to Install WordPress Using Softaculous

How to Install WordPress On Managed WordPress Hosting

How to Install Drupal Using Softaculous

How to Find the Right WordPress Plan

The post Drupal vs WordPress: What’s the Difference? appeared first on The A2 Posting.

Drupal: Should You Use it?

Before going any further, let’s discuss which types of websites Drupal is especially good for. We know that it is a robust and reliable Content Management System,  but there are a few specific cases wherein it is especially useful.

Drupal, in itself, has a lot to offer as a CMS and you probably can never go wrong if you select it as the CMS of choice. If you are building a business site, or planning a magazine or news portal with multiple authors, Drupal is a worthy fit. As a Content Management System, Drupal can scale depending on your needs. It can run gigantic websites as well as very small ones with relevant comfort.

However, Drupal’s unique selling point does not lie only in its scalability. Unlike most other CMSs, Drupal comes with SEO features as well as security settings out of the box. You likely will not even need a dedicated SEO addon, nor will you have to spend days hardening Drupal’s security. This means you can spend more time managing your website and less time configuring these settings. 

Of course, this also implies that unlike other CMSs such as WordPress, Drupal has a steeper learning curve for new users. Fortunately, there is an active community and extensive documentation available for Drupal users. Need more help? A2 Hosting support staff are experts with Drupal!

Tips and Tweaks for Using Drupal

Now that we’ve covered the basics of the CMS, here are a few tips to help your Drupal installation work faster and better:

1. Choose the right web host

It might seem a little obvious to say, but your web hosting solution matters a lot. And it is not just about “the server should be fast” anymore.

When running a dynamic script such as Drupal, your web hosting provider should be able to handle queries and calls efficiently. If the server is overloaded, no matter how good the hardware, your website will fare poorly. Make sure you pick a decent web host that can offer good memory limits as well as database connection limits (many smaller web hosts offer disk space and bandwidth, but the memory limits are too low to run a busy Drupal site).

2. Basic Optimization and Performance Tips

These measures apply not just to Drupal but to any software that you run. Firstly, always ensure that you are running the latest version of Drupal. With each new version, many performance enhancements, bug fixes as well as security patches are offered. Running an older version means you are missing out on crucial security and performance updates.

Secondly, make sure you rely on templates and addons only from trustworthy sources. Using Google to get “premium templates for free” or downloading via torrents is always a bad idea. Plus, if you do not need a particular addon or module, delete it or deactivate it. Having a large number of active modules can often slow down your website due to multiple memory calls and resources hogs.

3. Speed Improvements

You might come across this often repeated rumor that Drupal is slow by nature. This is more of hearsay and less of reality. By taking the correct measures to improve speed, Drupal can run very fast.

Caching, for example, is something you should definitely look into. Drupal offers two different types of caching, broadly speaking:- Page Caching and Views Caching.

Views Caching caches pages for logged in users as well. However, most of the time, you would not want this happening (a customized block, such as “My Recent Posts” meant to be unique for each user and frequently updated, can be cached by Views Caching). Page Caching is meant for general visitors to your website. It works by caching pages’ content into a database cache table, thereby preventing repeated database calls and queries. This in turn loads the page faster and consumes less server resources.

The best part is that Drupal does not really need a new plugin or addon for caching — head over to Configuration → Development and then tick the check box next to “Cache pages for anonymous users”.

4. Useful Modules

There are certain Drupal modules that can further improve the overall performance of your website.

If your website contains a lot of images, you might wish to compress or optimize them for faster load times. In that case, modules such as Image Optimize or ImageMagick can prove to be useful. Similarly, if you wish to implement “lazy loading” of images (such that an image is loaded only when the user scrolls to its location, as opposed to loading the entire page’s images in one go), Image Lazyloader can do the job for you.

Fast 404 is another useful Drupal module. It can scan and check your website for 404 errors and dead links and help you repair them.

Advanced CSS/JS Aggregation is something you should also consider looking into for improving the page load times of your site. This particular module aggregates the CSS and JavaScript on your web pages so that the code runs more efficiently and faster. This can yield faster page load times and better performance. You can also navigate to Configuration → Development → Performance and enable CSS and JavaScript aggregation therein, but the Advanced CSS/JS Aggregation module offers more in-depth and detailed features.

Drupal Optimization Tips Conclusion

So there you have it, some simple tips and modules to help you get more out Drupal and improve the overall performance of your website! Drupal is a robust, secure and reliable solution and with the right set of modules and tweaks, you can ensure that your website remains fast and free from issues.

The post Doing More with Drupal: Easy Optimization Tips appeared first on The A2 Posting.

Fortunately, there are tools in place to help you build a more responsive website with Drupal. Developers have created modules that enable you to include vital elements such as a mobile menu. With a little effort, you can optimize your site so that it looks and works well on smaller screens.

In this article, we’ll explain how to optimize your Drupal site for mobile devices in five steps. Let’s get moving!

Why It’s Important to Optimize Your Site for Mobile Devices

A website designed for desktop use can appear unreadable on a phone or tablet. Therefore, it’s important to ensure that your site is mobile-friendly, and looks its best no matter how viewers access it.

There are plenty of benefits to optimizing your site for mobile devices, such as:

• Improved loading times, which is crucial on cell phones.
• The unlikeliness that users will abandon a website that takes longer than a few seconds to load.
• Sites being able to benefit from improved Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Fortunately, it’s not too hard to optimize your Drupal website for mobile devices. All it takes is a little time, and a few particular modules.

How to Build a Responsive Website With Drupal (5 Key Techniques)

The following tips will help you make your Drupal website mobile-friendly. We’ll be assuming that you already have at least a basic Drupal site up and running.

If you are new to Drupal, you may want to hire a developer for help with some of these steps. However, even if you end up using a developer, this guide can help you familiarize yourself with the key vocabulary, so you know exactly what to ask for.

1. Install a Mobile Menu

First, it’s important to have a menu that’s optimized for mobile devices. This will ensure that your navigation links display properly on narrow screens.

Perhaps the most popular style of mobile menu is the ‘hamburger’ icon. When the screen shrinks to a certain width, the menu is replaced by a simple icon with three horizontal lines. When you click on the icon, it displays the site’s main menu in a mobile-friendly stack:

You can add this type of menu by installing the Responsive Menus module. On the module page, download the tar.gz file. Then in your dashboard, click on the Extend tab:

Next, select the Install New Module button, and upload the tar.gz file using the file browser. You should be ready to start using the module to style your site’s menu now. Keep in mind that you can also configure the module if you like, as part of the installation process.

2. Minify Your Code

As we mentioned earlier, it’s vital for mobile sites to load quickly. JavaScript, CSS, and HTML files for a large website can get bulky. ‘Minification’ is the process of removing unnecessary elements from your site’s code, so that it will render more quickly and enable faster loading times.

You can minify your code by installing the Minify module on your site. Visit the module page, download the tar.gz file, and unarchive it on your computer:

Then, move the resulting folder into your site’s Drupal modules/ section. After that, you can enable the module by going to Administration > Modules in your dashboard, and selecting Enable Newly Added Modules.

Check the enable box next to the minify module to start it working automatically. This should help your site load faster on mobile devices (and desktops as well). You can also configure the module by visiting Administration  > Configuration > Performance and following the prompts there.

3. Implement Browser Caching

Next up, browser caching is a way of storing data so that a visitor’s browser doesn’t have to download the same files repeatedly. Caching tells browsers to ‘save’ certain information, so that it doesn’t need to requested and transferred every time a visitor opens a new page on your website (or re-visits it at a later date).

For example, if your site has a large background image, it might slow down your pages’ loading time. However, with browser caching, that file could be stored locally on each visitor’s device, so it only needs to be downloaded once.

In Drupal, browser caching is a built-in tool that you can configure in your control panel by visiting Administration > Configuration > Development > Performance:

We’d recommend following the official guide to learn how to set up caching and what the different settings mean.

4. Optimize Images

If your site has a lot of large image files, it may take longer to load on mobile devices. Therefore, another way to speed up your site is to optimize your images, which lets you reduce their files sizes without compromising on quality.

There are plenty of easy ways to optimize images before uploading them to your site. You can also optimize images in Drupal itself, by using the ImageAPI Optimize module:

As with any other module, you’ll first need to download its tar.gz file. Then, you can install and enable the module in your dashboard.

After that, visit Administration > Settings > Imageapi, and choose ImageAPI Optimize as the default toolkit. You can configure the module’s settings from this page as well. This will automatically optimize any images on your site for mobile devices.

5. Add @media Rules for Image Sizes

Optimizing images reduces their file sizes. However, the amount of space an image takes up on the screen is important too. An 800 x 600 pixel image might look fine on a laptop screen – but what about on a 400 x 700 pixel phone screen?

Fortunately, you can use @media rules in Drupal to constrain images depending on each viewer’s screen size. To do that, you’ll need to:

1. Ensure that the Breakpoint and Responsive Images modules are enabled.
2. Set your ‘breakpoints’ using the Breakpoint Module. These are established screen sizes that you can use to create responsive layouts. For example, you could set one breakpoint for a typical laptop screen, another for tablets, and a third for cell phones.
3. Visit the Responsive Images admin page to define image styles for each breakpoint. This will force your images to scale down when viewed on a smaller screen.

In addition, Google offers a free online course in how to create responsive images using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This can be useful if you want to learn more about how responsive images work, as well as some best practices for styling images on mobile devices.

Drupal Conclusion

As is hopefully clear by this point, optimizing your Drupal website for mobile devices is vital. An increasing number of users prefer browsing the web on their cell phones, and they may abandon your site if it takes too long to load, or looks distorted on their devices.

Fortunately, there are simple steps you can take to improve the appearance and performance of your mobile pages. You’ll want to:

1. Install a mobile menu.
2. Minify your code.
3. Implement browser caching.
4. Optimize images.
5. Create rules to constrain image sizes.

Image credit: Pexels.

The post How to Build a Responsive Website With Drupal (5 Key Techniques) appeared first on The A2 Posting.

That’s where Drupal 9 comes in. It’s a free and open-source CMS that provides users with an intuitive back end to keep site management simple. In terms of features, it offers a range of themes and add-ons to support you as you create your website.

In this article, we’ll first go over what a CMS is, and then take a look at Drupal 9. We’ll also compare the current version to earlier iterations. Let’s dive in!

An Introduction to CMSs

While similar in several ways, a CMS differs from a website builder. The latter streamlines page creation, but limits customization options to preset templates and other components.

Website builders are often intuitive to use, making them appealing to beginners. However, like IKEA furniture, they may not give you the flexibility you need to add more complicated features. Instead, you might be stuck with whatever designs and functionality the platform provides.

By contrast, a CMS provides the fundamentals of your dream website but allows you to do much more. For instance, you can typically enhance a high-quality CMS with third-party add-ons, themes, and plugins to achieve unique designs and functionality with ease.

These tools enable you to modify your website to your heart’s content, and give both the front and back ends extra functionality you may want. Plus, you can usually apply custom code of your own as well.

However, unlike with a website builder, you’ll need to find your own hosting provider to accommodate your site. Some people also see CMSs as more difficult to use, although they’re definitely still user-friendly enough for beginners to pick up with a little practice.

A Look at Drupal 9 (And How It Compares to Previous Versions)

Drupal is an open-source CMS that emphasizes flexibility, ease-of-authoring, and the ability to customize your website. The latest version of the platform to be released in a stable form is Drupal 9:

You can enhance Drupal with different themes and thousands of add-ons called ‘modules’. They provide a wide range of functionalities to your site, including connecting it to Google Analytics, building front end features such as forms, and providing access to code libraries.

Drupal 9 is largely unchanged from the previous version, Drupal 8. In fact, the developer states that they built the new iteration mostly within the architecture of its predecessor. However, it still includes some valuable updates.

For starters, the Drupal 9 cleans up deprecated code from prior versions. It also features upgraded third-party software, as the earlier iterations were coming to the end of their life cycle. Specifically, platforms including Symfony 3 and Twig have released newer versions, which Drupal is now compatible with.

Certainly, the changes are more subtle compared to the transition from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8. Indeed, its immediate predecessor included drastic updates including enhanced support for mobile responsiveness, improved editing and uploading for the authoring system, and the introduction of Twig as the default template engine.

Although most of the enhancements in Drupal 9 are more behind-the-scenes features, they’re still important. Cleaner code should bring tighter security and better performance to your site. Both are key to your online content’s continued success.

Taking the Next Steps With Drupal 9

If you’ve decided that Drupal 9 is the CMS for you, your next step is investigating which hosting plans are available to support it:

Here at A2 Hosting, we offer scalable plans with lightning-fast speeds. Our services include uptime guarantees, as well as Turbo Servers providing performance 20 times faster than competitors.

Our Drupal Lite hosting option starts at $3.92 per month, but you can scale up to the Turbo plan for less than $10 monthly if you need additional features. We also offer a money-back guarantee, so you can confidently test our services out to see if they’re for you.

With A2 Hosting, Drupal will come auto-installed on your server. This saves you from the hassle of setting everything up yourself, enabling you to invest your time in the tasks you want to focus on, like publishing content.

Conclusion

Choosing a CMS can seem daunting at first, especially as it might seem more technically involved than a website builder. However, a more complex platform can offer a range of features and customization options that you may not enjoy if you opt for a simpler solution.

With Drupal 9, you’ll have plenty of customization options, including thousands of modules and numerous themes. With open-source software, you’ll have access to well-tested materials and a flourishing community for support.

Image credit: Pexels.

The post A Look at Drupal 9 (And How It Compares to Other Versions) appeared first on The A2 Posting.

Fortunately, if you’re using Drupal, you have access to a host of ready-made website themes. These tools can enable you to craft an aesthetically-pleasing Drupal website in a matter of minutes. Themes are also far more budget-friendly than working with a designer, so you’ll be able to save some money as well.

In this post, we’ll explain why using a professional Drupal theme is so important. We’ll then highlight some of the best places to find top-quality options. Let’s get to it!

Why Your Drupal Theme Matters

When it’s time to design your website, you have a few options. You can craft it by hand, for example, or work with a professional designer. Alternately, you can shortcut the process by using a few tools that provide you with a solid foundation.

Drupal is an excellent start – this open-source Content Management System (CMS) is both powerful and flexible. Yet a brand-new Drupal site is something of a blank slate. That’s where themes come into the picture. These add-ons can be installed on your site to completely overhaul its look and design.

In other words, a theme gives you a starting point for designing your site. The right one will offer a professional look that’s appropriate to your niche, as well as a host of optimizations for performance, security, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and so on. All you’ll need to do is add in your own content and branding, and make whatever tweaks you like to the theme’s basic setup.

3 (More) Places to Purchase the Best Drupal Themes

Of course, there are a lot of Drupal themes out there to choose from. It can be hard to know exactly where to start. Not too long ago, we published a list of some of the best places to look – we’d highly recommend giving it a read.

Since the right theme can make or break your site, however, you may want more than just a few options. With that in mind, here are three more excellent places to find quality Drupal themes!

1. Sooperthemes

If you’re building a business or e-commerce site, it can be worth investing in a high-quality premium theme. This may cost you a little more, but can provide the professional foundation you’re looking for.

Sooperthemes is a premium developer, which offers a handful of themes for both Drupal 7 and 8. They come in a range of styles, from minimalist to image-heavy, and focus on providing for the needs of small to mid-sized businesses. There are general purpose themes, along with niche-specific options for those in construction, app development, photography, marketing, and more.

The signature theme is Glazed, which is an open-ended framework featuring a ton of demo content and customization potential:

What’s more, all of this developer’s themes include the custom Glazed Builder, which is a drag-and-drop editing tool. This user-friendly solution makes it simple to tweak your chosen theme and demo content, without the need for a lot of technical know-how. Sooperthemes also offers a few handy modules that integrate smoothly with any of its themes, and give you more design options.

All in all, Sooperthemes is an excellent resource for anyone needing to put together a professional-looking website quickly. With the combination of theme and page builder, you’ll have the tool set you need to get your site off the ground. For $78, you can get access to all of this developer’s themes and modules (along with the Glazed Builder).

2. WeebPal

What if you’re looking for a broader selection of Drupal themes to pick from? If that’s the case, WeebPal is a solid go-to resource. It offers both free and premium theme options, as well as the choice to either pick up a single theme, or subscribe to a membership encompassing everything on the site.

There are a handful of free themes on offer, each one serving a specific niche and function – education, e-commerce, blogging, business, and so on. These can be easily downloaded from the site, enabling you to use them without any fuss:

The premium theme selection is more diverse, covering a range of styles and purposes. No matter what type of theme you’re in the market for, there’s a good chance you’ll find something relevant here:

It’s also worth noting that a generous selection of these themes were built specifically for Drupal 8, the latest version of the platform. There’s a filter that lets you easily sort out those themes, making it simple to choose something that will work smoothly with the platform’s most recent updates.

WeebPal strikes a balance between maintaining a consistent level of high quality, and offering a diverse selection of options. Most of the premium themes are priced between $49 and $68, and you can also get a membership with access to all themes for $249 per year.

3. ArrowThemes

ArrowThemes is another premium-only theme developer. That means you’ll need room in your budget to pay for a theme – yearly, if you want continued access to support. At the same time, it also affords you with access to more features, demo content, and customization options.

The selection at ArrowThemes isn’t particularly large, but it is diverse. There are e also two categories of themes to choose from. First, there is a handful of themes sold on ThemeForest, which you can buy individually:

You’ll also find a selection of themes that come bundled together with an ArrowThemes membership:

There’s a strong focus here on ‘art’ themes, designed for sites that require a strong visual style and lots of room for large images and other media. Most come with an impressive range of layout options, demo content, and other useful features (such as e-commerce integration).

ArrowThemes is worth a look for any Drupal user, but it’s particularly relevant for artists, photographers, musicians, and anyone looking to showcase a portfolio. The ThemeForest themes range from $48 to $58, while membership access starts at $59 per year.

Conclusion

In the past, designing a website was a difficult and long-winded process. Today, CMSs like Drupal offer a wide variety of themes that can make the job a lot easier. By installing a theme from one of the services we’ve featured in this post, you can ensure that your site both looks professional and runs like a well-oiled machine.

In addition to our previous picks, here are some of the best places to pick up Drupal themes.

1. Sooperthemes: A premium-only developer catering to small and mid-sized businesses.
2. WeebPal: Offers a well-rounded selection of both free and premium theme options.
3. ArrowTheme: A great place to find art-focused themes for showing off your portfolio.

Image credit: Pixabay.

The post 3 (More) Places to Purchase the Best Drupal Themes appeared first on The A2 Posting.

Fortunately, there are a wide variety of tips, tools, and tricks that can help you master the Drupal platform. Familiarizing yourself with these can ensure you’re making the most of your Drupal site, whether you’ve just built it or have been running it for a while.

In this article, we’ll look at the most critical things every Drupal user should know. Let’s get going!

1. How to Perform an Automatic Module Install

If you use Drupal, you’ll almost certainly want to download a module at some point. These code extensions can be installed on your site to add new functionality and features.

However, you want to be careful about how you install Drupal modules, especially if you’re a technical novice. In particular, you’ll have the choice to perform a manual or automatic install. If you’ve never directly interacted with files on a website’s server before, you should probably stick with an automatic installation.

If you try to use File Transfer Protocol (FTP) to install files onto your server manually, without understanding how this works and what could go wrong, you might create errors in your site’s directory by mistake. Therefore, automatic installs are a much safer (and quicker) choice for most beginners.

To perform an automatic install, first copy the URL of the add-on you want from Drupal’s module directory. Next, from your site’s admin dashboard, visit Extend > Install new module:

Paste the URL into the appropriate box, and click on the blue Install button. Drupal will automatically add the module files to your site’s database:

You will then be redirected to your site’s module list. Click on the box next to the module you just installed to enable it, and your new add-on will be ready to go.

2. How to Determine Which Modules Are Safe to Use

Since Drupal is an open-source platform, anyone can create modules. Inexperienced developers may write modules that have mistakes or security vulnerabilities. Installing the wrong module can harm or break your site, which is why it’s important to only install add-ons from trusted sources.

If you’re installing a module from Drupal’s own directory, look for a stamp of approval from the Drupal Security Advisory. It’s also a positive sign when a module has a large number of active installations. Plus, you’ll want to check out reviews from other users, and take a look at how recently the module was updated (anything over a year or so is a warning sign).

However, since the security advisory only covers projects hosted on Drupal.org, you’ll need to be even more cautious if you purchase a premium module from a developer. Again, this is where ratings and reviews from other Drupal users will come in very handy. When in doubt, test any new module out on a staging site before installing it on your live site.

Finally, if your budget allows, you may want to hire a developer to create a custom module. In that case, look for well-reviewed programmers who can show evidence of other successful modules they’ve built in the past. We’ll go over more about how to choose a qualified candidate in the next section.

Finally, it’s also important to scan your site with the Security Review module, and back up your site before and after installing any new software.

3. How to Hire an Honest Programmer

Next up, it’s important to know how to hire a reputable programmer. Since Drupal can be challenging for beginners to use, you may want someone to put your site together for you. Additionally, because Drupal does not have a wide variety of pre-built tools, you might need to commission some custom features.

Therefore, every Drupal site owner with at least a modest budget should know how to hire a programmer. However, it can be difficult to gauge whether a given programmer is going to be worth your money. An unscrupulous person might skip over key details or leave security vulnerabilities in their work, leaving your site open to hackers.

To find an honest programmer, you’ll want to stick with high-quality job sites such as Smashing Jobs and Authentic Jobs:

Be prepared to spend a bit of money – a professional developer will charge what they’re worth, so be wary of fees that seem far underpriced when compared to the competition. Also, as we mentioned earlier, ask to see samples of work and references before engaging a new programmer.

In addition, make sure that the programmer is well-versed in Drupal specifically. Just because he or she has an impressive portfolio in WordPress, for example, does not mean those skills will translate to Drupal. Even for professionals, each platform has its own learning curve, so you should make sure to hire a programmer with plenty of Drupal experience.

4. How to Optimize Your Website

Once your site is up and running, you’ll still need to maintain it and keep an eye on its performance. This includes making sure that your site is running at top speed. You want to keep your site’s performance high, since impatient users often abandon a site that takes longer than a few seconds to load.

Fortunately, there are many steps you can take to optimize speed in Drupal. You can even make improvements to your Drupal site directly from your A2 Hosting dashboard:

For example, make sure to enable caching, which uses stored browser files to reduce page loading times. You can also install modules such as Image Optimize, which automatically reduces your site’s image files for improved speed.

5. What to Do If You’ve Been Hacked

Last but not least, it’s important to plan for worst-case scenarios. No matter how careful you are, there’s always a chance your site will be hacked. In fact, there is a new hacker attack roughly every 40 seconds.

When it comes to hacking, prevention is the best policy. The first and most important thing you can do is maintain regular site backups. This gives you the option to easily restore your website if anything goes wrong.

In addition, make sure you’re using the most up-to-date version of Drupal, and always update your modules when new versions are released. This gives you access to the latest security patches. Of course, you’ll also want to use a strong password.

If you do think you’ve been hacked, you should immediately log into your A2 Hosting account and change the cPanel password. Then, you can follow this guide to combat the threat.

Conclusion

When you first build a Drupal site, it can seem like there’s a huge amount of information to take in. You’ll want to focus on the most crucial details first, in order to prioritize maintaining your site without becoming overwhelmed.

The five most important things everyone with a Drupal site should know include how to:

1. Perform an automatic module install.
2. Determine which modules are safe.
3. Hire an honest programmer.
4. Optimize your website.
5. Deal with hacking attempts.

The post 5 Things Everyone With a Drupal Website Should Know appeared first on The A2 Posting.

Modules are pre-built tools that can take your site to the next level. There’s a wide range of modules available, offering everything from website backups to developer tools (and much more). These are an excellent way to expand your site’s functionality, without the expense of hiring a developer to build custom solutions.

This article will show you how you can make your Drupal site even stronger, by introducing a few of the modules you’ll absolutely want to have. Let’s get going!

A Brief Introduction to Drupal Modules

Before we get started, let’s quickly go over the concept of modules. Drupal is an open-source CMS, and it comes with a certain set of tools out of the box. However, it can only do so much by default. That’s why the wider Drupal community of developers creates modules, which are a way of expanding the platform’s functionality easily and cheaply.

Some of the most useful modules, such as the CK Editor, end up being incorporated into Drupal over time. However, there are still many features you can only achieve with dedicated modules. Fortunately, any user can download and install a module on their site, even if you’re a relative technical novice.

Of course, not all modules are equally useful or safe. It’s important to avoid potentially harmful modules, for example, as they can be security risks. However, there are plenty of popular modules by reputable developers, which offer functions that can drastically expand the way you use your site.

How to Install Modules on Your Drupal Site

In a moment, we’re going to look at a few of the best modules out there. Before that, however, you’ll need to know how to install them. To add a module to your Drupal site via the automatic import feature, you can follow a few simple steps. First, in your site’s admin panel, click on the Extend tab and select Install New Module:

From there, you can perform an automatic import of the module’s files. Either paste in the module’s link from the Drupal extension directory, or click on Choose file and select the module’s .zip or .tar.gz file. You can download this file from the Drupal extension directory, or from a developer’s site once you’ve purchased a premium module:

Once the file is imported, select the option Enable newly added modules to start it up. From there, it may begin to work automatically, or you might have to configure some settings (depending on the module’s purpose and complexity).

If necessary, you can also install a module manually. This just requires extracting the contents of its .zip or .tar.gz file, and adding the entire folder to your site’s directory in the appropriate location.

3 Drupal Modules You Should Be Using

Now you know how to install Drupal modules, you’re ready to start deciding which ones you’ll add to your site. There are a lot of useful options out there, but many are only appropriate for certain types of sites. The following three modules, on the other hand, are essential in nearly any situation. Plus, all three are completely free.

1. Chaos Tool Suite

It’s no secret that Drupal can be a little challenging to use, especially for relative beginners. With that in mind, Chaos Tool Suite is a must for web developers working on Drupal sites. It offers a wide range of tools that make certain webdev functions easier.

This module’s key features include a form wizard, which helps you generate forms without having to manually code them, and tools that enable you to clean up your CSS to improve page loading times. You also get access to exportables and object caching, making it easier for your site to store and use ‘objects’. These are a way to store a set of variables and methods, so that you can easily reuse them on different parts of your site. This can be a huge time-saver.

2. Pathauto

Next up, Pathauto makes it far easier to create user-friendly links. Drupal does not have a built-in feature for automatically organizing URLs for certain types of content. Pathauto enables you to set up an automatic system for generating nested URLs.

For example, if you publish a blog post under a certain category, you could tell Drupal to use the URL yoursite.com/category/blog_post_slug. By default, the URL would simply be yoursite.com/blog_post_slug, which doesn’t offer the reader as much information. What’s more, this feature can also have a positive effect on your site’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

3. Backup and Migrate

Finally, backing up your Drupal site is crucial. If your site is hacked, or if something is mistakenly broken or deleted, having a recent backup in place enables you to ‘undo’ the problem. The Backup and Migrate module enables easy automatic backups, which can take some of the worry off your shoulders.

This module can also be customized to suit your unique needs. For instance, you can choose to back up all or just some of your site’s database. In addition, you can use this module to clone or migrate your site. This means you can quickly create a test environment, or even move your site to a new server.

Conclusion

Drupal modules are a smart way to expand your site’s functionality. They can help make your site more user-friendly, get it noticed, or simply provide helpful tools for everyday management.

Some of the most popular Drupal modules you might want to consider using on your site include:

1. Chaos Tool Suite: Provides a group of tools that make certain tasks much easier, including a form wizard and CSS caching.
2. Pathauto: Offers you a way to automatically generate SEO-friendly links.
3. Backup and Migrate: Makes it easy to set up automatic backups so you can restore, clone, or migrate your site.

Image credit: Pexels.

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