How Drupal Maintenance & Support Helps Create Seamless Website Performance

In today’s interconnected world, business success depends on establishing a robust and effective digital presence. To maintain and enhance this presence, it’s essential to have a platform that not only caters to the customer preferences and organizational needs of today, but also has the flexibility to adapt to the evolving needs of the future.

Building a website, application or project on the Drupal content management system (CMS) achieves this two-part goal. However, launching a website, web app or e-commerce platform is just one step in an organization’s digital journey. For it to be continuously active, functional and secure, every Drupal project must be consistently updated.

It is crucial to have a dedicated Drupal support and maintenance partner who can ensure the platform is performing optimally. While “performance” may seem like a simple or one-dimensional concept, its effectiveness is influenced by numerous factors. In this article, we will explore these factors and outline the services an effective Drupal partner should provide to enable optimal performance.

Why should you care about a regular Drupal maintenance plan?

“Cybercrime is the greatest threat to every company in the world” – Ginni Rometty, former IBM chairman, president and CEO

Security is a critical aspect of performance. A compromised website or app can have serious and far-reaching business implications, from operational headaches to financial loss to the destruction of customer trust and more. To avoid these scenarios, every Drupal project requires consistent monitoring and immediate action in the event of a potential breach. While this, in itself, is reason enough to partner with a top-notch support and maintenance team, there are additional benefits to consider.

Customer satisfaction and retention depends on quick access to new features

Drupal is an active open-source community with a global presence. “Drupalers” work on contributions around the clock to improve and add to its core features. An expert Drupal support partner can help organizations stay abreast of these updates to improve website performance and retain a competitive advantage.

Additionally, with Drupal 7 (D7) reaching its end of life in January 2025, most Drupal 7 users will need to migrate to Drupal 10, which requires the expert assistance of a trusted Drupal service provider. If D7 users aren’t migrating, they will still require D7 support beyond its end of life. However, a timely migration to Drupal 10 will enable its users to provide customers with compelling, secure digital experiences.

Continuous SEO implementation is essential for enhanced content visibility

Improving organic reach and optimizing content for a higher SEO ranking is not a one-and-done job. With search engine algorithms evolving constantly, SEO strategies and tactics should be consistently updated and evaluated. Drupal offers a wide selection of features and modules that can help with SEO goals. Even with these built-in SEO solutions, however, there is still immense value in partnering with a Drupal SEO expert to ensure the tools are working properly and yielding tangible results.

Agility is a key element of business growth

Measurable, consistent growth is a primary goal for any business. To achieve growth in an interconnected world, organizations must proactively adapt and react to users’ digital behavior. This includes making rapid content updates, enhancing website features and adjusting offerings based on user behavior. Though technical expertise is not always required for content updates, implementing new features and enhancements typically demands far more specialized technical knowledge.

Organizations are already challenged to keep the business running across multiple departments, so managing yet another technical aspect can prove daunting. Entrusting Drupal support and maintenance to a skilled technology partner is a more practical, cost-effective option for businesses seeking an agile digital presence that can adapt to serve evolving customer needs. With the ins and outs of the Drupal project in the hands of an expert tech partner, an organization’s internal team can focus its efforts on pursuing larger business goals.

Website downtime can damage brand reputation

Consider this: you are about to make an essential purchase via an app and the website crashes just before you’re able to complete the transaction. Would you trust the website or brand with another purchase?

Poor website performance, feature failure, server outages and many other technical issues are all detrimental, but avoidable. Dedicated support and maintenance play a vital role in keeping a site’s uptime and reliability. With expert partners working meticulously on an organization’s Drupal technology, these sudden breakdowns can be avoided with preemptive action. Instead of unforeseen outages, businesses can schedule website downtime and even notify users beforehand via email or push notification.

Consistent oversight enables website speed

No one wants their website users to experience lags, slow response times or glitches in the code. Consistent code cleaning, bug fixes and timely updates can help enable constant uptime and speed optimization. An updated Drupal website also ensures accessibility, benefitting users in low bandwidth areas.

Avoiding the dreaded 404 error

404 errors can pop up unexpectedly from various sources and for a variety of reasons. While error pages may not damage SEO, they can accumulate to harm overall user experience and lead to a potential loss of customers. Additionally, a malfunctioning button, form or hyperlink can also hamper the browsing experience. To mitigate this, a dedicated team can perform user acceptance testing to identify and remove the glitches before users encounter them.

Undo ‘accidental delete’ with site recovery

Accidental webpage – or even full website – deletions are, unfortunately, not uncommon occurrences. A Drupal maintenance expert can assist with the backup process, which is an essential safeguard for any organization with a digital presence. This is just one more way skilled Drupal partners support seamless, secure business operations.

What should businesses expect from expert Drupal maintenance services and support?

As a Drupal company that has been actively involved in this space for over two decades, Material knows service level agreements vary from provider to provider. However, any organization in the market for a trusted Drupal partner, should keep these standard services in mind:

• Security patch and core updates

• 24/7 monitoring

• Incident management

• Reducing technical debt

• Performance optimization

• Continuous enhancements & bug fixes

Material is a proven Drupal leader.

For businesses seeking to get the most out of their Drupal website or platform, partnering with a proven Drupal company like Material yields numerous benefits, from agility to cost savings to peace of mind. Our expansive suite of support and maintenance services is meant to handle the complex, integrated and ongoing needs of your organization’s Drupal properties. We believe in understanding your business and then building a customized plan to meet your needs. With deep experience navigating the business and technological nuances involved in a Drupal deployment, we have the expertise to help you successfully launch, maintain and optimize your Drupal site.