Hire Drupal Developers

Drupal is a PHP-based open-source CMS that powers a significant portion of large-scale government, higher education, and enterprise websites. It is more complex than WordPress by design – its architecture is built around highly configurable content types, a detailed user permission system, and a capable views system that allows complex content queries to be built without writing code.

Drupal’s strength is structured content. Where WordPress treats most content as posts with metadata, Drupal allows content architects to define rich data models with specific field types, validation rules, and display configurations per content type and view mode. This makes it the right platform for sites where the content structure is complex – government services with multiple content types and strict publishing workflows, university sites with faculty profiles and course catalogues, or media organisations with multiple publication brands on one platform.

Drupal 10 (the current major version) uses a modern PHP architecture with Symfony components under the hood, making it a legitimate enterprise platform from a technical standpoint. The trade-off is a steeper learning curve than WordPress for both administrators and developers. How To Migrate WordPress New Host Without Downtime.

Drupal work on Codeable typically involves:

• Custom module development – building Drupal modules that extend the platform with new field types, views plugins, content workflow logic, or third-party integrations.
• Theme development – building Drupal themes using Twig templates and modern front-end tooling.
• Content architecture – designing and building the content type structure, field configurations, and taxonomy system for a new or evolving Drupal site.
• Drupal 7 or 8 to Drupal 10 migration – older Drupal versions are end of life and sites still running them need to upgrade.
• WordPress to Drupal migration (or vice versa) – when a site outgrows WordPress’s content modelling capabilities, or when a Drupal site needs the simpler WordPress editorial experience.
• Headless Drupal – using Drupal as a content repository and API server with a separate front end consuming JSON:API or GraphQL.

Drupal development is a specialised skill and experience matters. Look for developers who are familiar with the current Drupal 10 architecture – Drupal 7 and Drupal 8/9 experience does not transfer fully to Drupal 10, particularly for developers whose module development relied on older API patterns.

For module development, ask about their approach to Drupal’s plugin system, services and dependency injection, and the hook system. A developer who writes Drupal modules correctly will follow Drupal coding standards, use the plugin API rather than direct database queries, and test modules before deploying.

For content architecture work, ask how they approach content modelling – how they decide between using content types, taxonomy, paragraphs, and custom fields. Content modelling decisions made early in a Drupal project are difficult to reverse later.

Common Drupal problems: How To Set Up WordPress Multisite.

• White screen after update – a PHP fatal error from a module that is not compatible with the updated Drupal core or PHP version. Enable error reporting in settings.php to see the specific error.
• Cache not clearing after content changes – Drupal’s caching system is aggressive. Running drush cr (cache rebuild) from the command line clears all caches. Persistent cache issues after a rebuild indicate a misconfigured caching backend or a module caching problem.
• Views query returning incorrect results – a relationship or filter in the view is not configured correctly. Enabling the Views query display shows the actual SQL query being run, which makes debugging much faster.
• Media uploads failing – a file permissions issue on the server, or the public or private files directory is not configured correctly in settings.php.
• Module update breaking existing functionality – Drupal contributed module updates occasionally introduce breaking changes. Testing updates on a staging environment before applying to production is essential.

Drupal requires regular security updates. The Drupal security team releases security advisories for core and contributed modules, and applying them promptly is important – Drupal sites, particularly government and enterprise ones, are high-value targets. The Drupal admin dashboard shows available updates, and the update process for contributed modules is managed through Composer.

Drupal’s database can accumulate cached data, watchdog (database log) entries, and old revision data over time. Periodic database maintenance – clearing old watchdog entries, removing unused revisions, running database optimisation – keeps performance stable.

Drupal major version upgrades (e.g., Drupal 9 to Drupal 10) require developer work – checking contributed modules for compatibility, removing deprecated API usage, and testing the site after migration. Unlike Drupal 7 to 8 (which was a complete rebuild), recent major version upgrades are manageable with the right tooling.

When posting a Drupal project on Codeable, specify the Drupal version and whether the project involves Drupal development specifically or a migration between Drupal and WordPress. These attract different developer profiles.

For module development, describe the business logic as clearly as possible. Drupal’s architecture allows many different approaches to the same problem, and a clear description of what the module needs to do gives the developer the information needed to choose the right approach and estimate accurately.

For migrations, be specific about the source version and what content needs to move. Drupal 7 to 10 migrations can use the Migrate module in Drupal core, but complex sites with custom fields and content types require custom migration plugins. A developer who has run Drupal migrations before will identify the complexity quickly.