Whether Drupal’s user base is growing or stagnant in size has been a hotly debated subject. For years.
As an open source content management system, the power of Drupal is made freely available to the entire global web and software development community.
In terms of numbers, it’s probably fairly safe to say that Drupal’s current growth isn’t explosive. It’s there, though, for sure.
With the previous launch of Drupal 8 and subsequently growing adoption, the CMS is certainly starting to bring new functionality to the table than Drupal has ever seen before. In fact, in many ways, Drupal 8 can be seen as a complete re-write of the core fundamentals of the CMS. It behaves in very much the same way as Drupal 7 for site builders, but for complex infrastructure and in particular for developers, it’s like a CMS on steroids.
Given the changes and advancements that Drupal 8.5+ brings, there remains a huge (and now growing) market for the CMS, with over a million websites powered by Drupal across the globe. And statistics for Drupal 8’s current adoption show no signs of slowing down.
So let’s talk about the shifts. If Drupal is on the rise in 2019, why are so many developers concerned by a perceived decline?
Because the devil is in the detail!
At some point, perhaps five to ten years ago, Drupal was seen by many as a direct competitor to the likes of other open source content management systems. We’re all used to reading comparison articles highlighting the pros and cons of alternative website building platforms such as WordPress and Joomla. The reality is, Drupal has never really sought to compete with these solutions, and with the changes in Drupal 8, and what is prepared for Drupal 9, Drupal seems to be actively, and deliberately taking even further steps away from how these “competitors” behave as CMSs.
The web has itself made massive developments over the last five years, but platforms such as WordPress are seemingly “stuck” in the era of Web 2.0 (which is a problem, believe me). Drupal is now taking steps to adopt the latest of technologies with the release of Drupal 8, and with plans to further this with the upcoming arrival of version 9.
Drupal doesn’t actively look to compete with simple site building tools, though it’s still entirely possible to use it as one. It’s a beast of a CMS. We’d go so far as to say that it has mastered the art of content management, what with the advancements made in the present version, and is now prepared to start taking on new, bigger things.
From here on, Drupal should be known less as a CMS, and more as an infrastructure development and delivery tool for websites and other web applications.
Case in point, many of our clients are large organizations, including Fortune 500 companies, who are using Drupal to accelerate their utilization of the modern web. And that’s exciting.
Enterprise users, rejoice.