News and media websites appreciate sensations. OK, here is a real sensation for them! No other word is big enough to describe Drupal 8 — the latest version of the famous site-building platform. Drupal 8’s benefits are awesome for all kinds of sites. But today our software development agency has a special journalistic investigation — we’ll discover how Drupal 8 can be useful, particularly to news and media websites.
Drupal 8’s benefits for news and media websites
Easy media handling as a priority for Drupal 8
News and media website editors regularly create, upload, or edit various kinds of multimedia. Making these processes convenient was a priority in Drupal 8. And the goal has been successfully achieved!
The new media handling system is superb. It lets editors manage audios, videos, images, and files exactly in accordance with their preferences. This includes working with both locally stored media and those from third-party sources (YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, SlideShare, and every other site imaginable). Editors can save media in the library for further use, create custom media types, use the drag-and-drop and the oEmbed features, and much more.
This is achieved thanks to the awesome Media module that came to the Drupal 8 core as of Drupal 8.5.x. It remains the focus of developers’ attention, with new features added frequently. The Media module is also extensible with many useful contributed modules that touch every aspect of media handling.
Super convenient content editing
Tons of content every day — that is often the reality of news and media websites. Luckily, working with content is a joy in Drupal 8.
Inline editing without leaving the page lets your content managers quickly fix any possible typos with no need to visit the admin dashboard.
Other benefits include the drag-and-drop features, copying directly from Word, super easy image adding, the clean and modern HTML5 markup, the possibility to shape your toolbar as you wish, handy content previews, and much more.
Among the freshest novelties are the Content Moderation and Workflows modules in Drupal 8 core that help you create fine-tuned content moderation processes with different content states.
This works perfectly with Drupal’s flexible system of user roles and permissions. For example, your news publication workflows can involve a copywriter, an editor, a moderator, and anyone else you want with any permissions you decide.
Drupal 8’s exceptional multi-language features
Especially for international news and media websites, multiple languages are important. However, even local resources find this feature very useful. It helps them bring their message across to more audiences.
Drupal 8 has absolutely fabulous multi language possibilities. The four built-in modules let you add languages to your websites. You have a choice of over 100 languages, and their interfaces are already translated by the community.
You can also decide exactly what will be translatable on your site. In addition to interface, Drupal 8 lets you translate website configuration (account settings, users roles, comment types, and more).
And, of course, you can translate content.
Editors will appreciate how easy it is to add translations to their pieces of news.
Third-party integration is in full bloom
Thanks to Drupal 8 unmatched integration capabilities, your news and media website will easily interact with external systems.
RSS feeds, social media integration, monetization tools, content sharing to IOS or Android applications are just a few examples of this.
Drupal 8 is API-first — it has special core modules for outputting any content via a REST API. Non-RESTful approaches are also possible.
While outputting your content, the magic Drupal 8 modules converts it to the necessary format (JSON, HAL, and so on).
High speed and special caching techniques
Drupal 8 will take care of your website speed, even during very high loads. It has great built-in caching modules.
One of them, the BigPipe module, offers a very special technique that raises the perceived loading speed. It instantly delivers the unchanged parts of your website to users (your header, news categories etc.). The dynamic elements, like your newly added pieces of news, “arrive” next. Thanks to this, your readers are not bored — they do not wait for the whole page to load.
Mobile responsiveness as a key
Users consume news website content from all possible devices, often on the fly. Is your website ready? Drupal 8 has a mobile-first approach and is perfect for creating mobile responsiveness.
All website elements will adapt themselves to various device screens (shrink, grow, hide) to create a great user experiences with minimum zooming and scrolling.
To recap
We have only raised the veil a little bit — Drupal 8 has plenty of other treasures. If you wish to order the creation of an amazing Drupal 8 news and media website, or upgrade from Drupal 9 to Drupal 10 — you are welcome to contact our Drupal expert team.
You, your audience, and your editors will be delighted with Drupal 8!
