subject: The Best London Drupal Developers Are In Demand [print this page] Drupal Acquia stands out as a software company with the fastest growth in the United States and has 3 yr growth in sales of 10,000%. Other companies closely involved with Drupal development have also had outstanding growth rates.
The UK Government has set a goal to reduce the ICT spend by the end of 2015, new ICT spending will be cut by stating that Public Cloud Computing Services should be used. Over 60% of the world's top 10,000 websites are now 'Open Source'.
The site "innovate.direct.gov.uk", is designed to encourage both developers and designers to showcase their work and share their expertise.
The British Council has organised a series of seminars with IXIS which include 'Simple Guide to Drupal Open Source' to help deliver the open source message. This guide gives tips and useful hints for public sector organisations. An important statistic is that over half of the world's top 10,000 websites use Open Source Technology.
The Drupal platform is used by some of the busiest and biggest internet sites; an increasing number of mega companies are moving to Drupal. In spite of the cost of migration, large savings will be made in the future.
Major Drupal Sites.
The USA Whitehouse - WhiteHouse.gov, McDonalds (Australia), the South African Government, Sony, Leffe (Belgium abbey beers), Java.net, Mattel, the worlds largest toy company. Yahoo has Drupal websites, e.g. research.yahoo.com, British Council, Playstation Asia, , Fuji My Pix, Sony Ericsson, Nokia, Google M-lab, Symantec, Adobe - Flex.org, Sanyo, FedEx,. United Nations - an Anti poverty event was organised on a Drupal site, CNN has CNNgo.com, which has been completely developed using Drupal. The main page for Duke University uses Drupal, as does Stanford Humanities centre. Other sites are BBC magazines, France 24,, Greenpeace UK and Digg.
What is Drupal
Drupal is an open source Content Management System (CMS), that is used worldwide and is increasingly the first choice for a commercial web project. It is also a CMF (Content Management Framework) with a PHP code base. It has a "Drupal core" together with many add-on modules, these (depending on requirements), give extra functionality to any site.
There are a huge number of modules available which provide extra features that are not in the Drupal Core; choosing the correct module is based on various considerations:-
. The specific modules function
. The specified functionality of the site
. Trial and error. The module may not work exactly as required. Thoroughly test any module, and if necessary try another module.
. How widely used the particular module is
What is a Theme
The theme changes the entire appearance of the site without changing the look and feel of the content. A theme may be specially written (coded) or an existing (contributed) them that has been shared with the Drupal community can be used. If the contributed theme does not have everything that is needed, then it can be modified.
Zen is a responsive yet simple and powerful HTML5 starting theme, with a mobile-first grid design. For someone building their own standards-compliant theme, Zen is easier to work with than Garland or Stark. The Zen theme has full online documentation, as well as lots of useful code comments.
Conclusion
Drupal has stood the test of time and is one of the best open source platforms. It is more and more being used by some of the biggest companies, as well as numerous Governments and major NGO's giving considerable cost savings, and delivering superior functionality. For reason outlines, it is hardly surprising that the best Drupal developers are in demand.
