Top 4 Drupal 9 Benefits That Have Produced a New CMS Design Species

Australia-based digital design agency and Premier Pantheon Partner Morpht provides valuable thought leadership at the forefront of the digital mad dash. Managing Director of Morpht, Murray Woodman, had this to say about this rapidly evolving landscape and where Drupal 9 fits in: “Over the years, we’ve seen an explosion in the number of marketing and social platforms on the market,  and many new services are coming and going — creating  a rapidly evolving landscape. Leveraging the strengths of Drupal 9 is critical on the enterprise-level. Drupal is well placed to be a key player in the evolution of the open web.”

Over the years, we've seen an explosion in the number of marketing and social platforms on the market, and many new services are coming and going — creating a rapidly evolving landscape. Leveraging the strengths of Drupal 9 is critical on the enterprise-level. Drupal is well placed to be a key player in the evolution of the open web.

- Murray Woodman, Managing Director of Pantheon Partner Morpht 

The launch of Drupal 9 has brought about more accessible upgrade paths and increased functionality that delivers cross-functional performance, along with expanded and dynamic developer tooling. These benefits and more are leading the charge in a very muddy CMS space, and these top 4 Drupal 9 benefits are carving their own niche in the CMS design arena. Check them out below.

1: API-First Architecture

The modern API-first architecture of Drupal 9 enables new types of automation, integrations, and delivery methods. The need to accelerate integration with new devices and applications with speed is steadily growing, and the upgrades made to Drupal 9 have prioritized this feature and made it easier to drive integration needs from one platform to another. 

Drupal 9 also allows developers to embrace decoupled architecture, which promotes scalable, flexible, and resilient architecture ready for the future.  

2: Enterprise-Grade Platforming

Slow-loading websites harm your business. In fact, it's proven that websites with better performance boost SEO rankings, improve visitor conversion rates, and provide a better user experience to the visitors — all which collectively help in the growth of your business. On Pantheon, Drupal 9 has the fastest performance in the industry, along with powerful developer tools, automated workflows, and enterprise-grade security measures. 

The latest releases of third-party libraries and new architecture will give your teams what they need to create hyper-drive experiences by integrating JavaScript frameworks. Running industry-standard continuous integration workflows for your Drupal sites and enhanced search features with Solr 8 are a few other bells and whistles that devs can expect. 

3: Allows For Exploded Personalization Capacity 

The value of personalization is overwhelmingly clear and much-needed to achieve and maintain a competitive advantage. Personalized experiences are skyrocketing, and 45% of online users are far more likely to use websites that cultivate a unique experience. The ability to personalize websites without limiting modifiers or custom coding makes Drupal 9 personalization quick and easy, and puts the power of customized editing back into the hands of editors. 

For almost a decade, Morpht has grown to be a trusted industry-leading expert in this area. Their Drupal 9 personalization-focused starter kit, Convivial, delivers a personal site right out of the box, ​​with the ability to track and customize content according to user interests and browsing history with clean and ethical tooling. Woodman commented on Convivial's critical role within Drupal 9. "Freedom is key when it comes to personalization and one of the best features Convivial brings to the table is that you can easily integrate many diverse, best-of-breed services that provide development freedom and flexibility."

The key to successful personalization is having solid content to support the user experience and knowing what you want to say to your users. Once you have the strategy, then it becomes a matter of implementation. Drupal 9 provides an excellent base for the management of content and there are now a number of contrib modules which bring personalization to life.

Convivial makes use of a number of contributed modules to deliver a personalized user experience. Open-source modules such as Personified and Smart Content allow content to be customized according to the user's context. Woodman notes that "The key to successful personalization is having solid content to support the user experience and knowing what you want to say to your users. Once you have the strategy, then it becomes a matter of implementation. Drupal 9 provides an excellent base for the management of content and there are now a number of contrib modules which bring personalization to life."

4: Advanced Innovation

Drupal 9 has harnessed the power of open-source CMS, and teams can now utilize core enhancements to increase the pace of collaboration, growth, and innovation. Alongside easier upgrade paths, core release cycles that offer new features, and a much-improved editor experience, content editors will enjoy a seamless experience navigating post creation sections, custom toolbars, quick edits, and content moderation options. 

Drupal 9 also offers the chance to continuously optimize for more engaging digital experiences. In addition, teams have the capacity to launch faster and more frequently, and will get access to a predictable, reliable pattern of upgrades, which deliver new features that will keep your site on the cutting-edge.

Why Platforming Matters  

Drupal 9 is paving the way for the new digital era and has sparked industry-leading CMS design solutions that are shaping Drupal's legacy and solidifying it as a future-forward CMS. When you combine the innovation and flexibility of Drupal’s new and improved architecture (API-first, easier to decouple), then add all the benefits of a powerful WebOps SaaS platform like Pantheon, you get a truly optimized Drupal experience. 

Here’s how Pantheon makes this happen: 

• Integrated Composer on Pantheon adds additional value and better site development by allowing for fewer merge conflicts, smaller repositories, and a sleek workflow.

• You can unlock options and flexibility with Drupal 9’s powerful APIs, which enable new types of integrations, automation, and delivery methods. 

• We consistently serve up accelerated performance, elite dev tools, automated workflows, and impenetrable security measures.

For more information and in-person events for those Ausssie Drupal users, see Morpht's Managing Director Murray Woodman in action and check out what’s happening in the Sydney Drupal Users Group.