Drupal Webhosting Comparison UK

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Drupal Hosting Comparison & Requirements

Drupal is one of the most versatile Content Management Systems on the market. With its flexible architecture and extensive customization options, both beginners and experienced developers can create impressive web projects. The Drupal hosting providers in our comparison offer specially optimized web hosting packages that are perfectly tailored to the requirements and features of Drupal to ensure maximum performance and security for your website.

What is Drupal?

The developers of Drupal describe the software as a Community Publishing System. However, objectively speaking, Drupal is a Content Management System and framework optimized for use on the web and social media. In plain terms, the developers of Drupal took the best approaches from Content Management Systems, forums, wikis, blogs, and eCommerce systems and created a modular system for communication, publication, and eCommerce.

The history of the CMS begins in 2000 at the University of Antwerp in Belgium. There, students connected their computers to a wireless network. It soon became clear that the network lacked a tool for fast communication and file sharing. Student Dries Buytaert then developed a website in the university network that could be used for communication and file sharing. After completing their studies, the former students wanted to stay in touch, so they decided to register the website under a domain. After some naming confusion, they settled on the final name Drupal, which can be loosely derived from the Flemish word "Druppel" (drop) with some effort. In April 2001, drupal.org was registered as a domain. Since then, Drupal can be downloaded, used, modified, and distributed free of charge under GNU GPL 2. This also applies to all themes and modules available for download on drupal.org. Only for commercially created themes and screen designs do providers issue an invoice.

Requirements for Drupal Hosting

Drupal is platform-independent and can be operated under the operating systems Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, GNU-Linux, xBSD, and Solaris. Apache http is recommended as the web server, but the system also runs on Microsoft IIS, Nginx, Lighttpd, and others. PHP is used as the scripting language, with almost all themes and modules created in this language and available in source code. MySQL, PostgreSQL, or SQLite can be used as the database system. By using additional modules, the use of Microsoft SQL or Oracle is also possible. The required PHP memory_limit depends heavily on the number of modules used.

For further details on the technical requirements of Drupal web hosting, please refer to the following table:
 

Detailed information on the technical requirements for the latest version can be found directly from the developer at: https://www.drupal.org/docs/getting-started/system-requirements

Basic Functions with High Functionality

Even without additional modules, the base, also known as Drupal Core, already offers high functionality. This includes user management including rights control, discussion forums, comments, blogs, and the aggregation of RSS feeds. The entire system is modular, with unnecessary functions being easily deactivated at any time. This allows for a gentle use of available system resources. As a hypertext system, Drupal can manage large parts of the content in so-called nodes. The only exceptions are taxonomy pages, comments, and user profiles. Easily readable and search engine-friendly URLs help users navigate the pages. Automatically generated URLs can be easily edited. Nodes can also be available under multiple addresses (URL Alias). A redirect function allows URLs to be forwarded to other nodes or external addresses. Each node is given a unique ID by Drupal, which remains unchanged as long as the node exists. All nodes can be found using a search function, and external search functions can also be integrated optionally. If a website is under high load, certain functions can be deactivated to avoid a denial of service. When a desired limit is reached, functions are automatically deactivated. The real strength of the CMS lies in the ability to optimize the Drupal Core's functionality through numerous extensions.

Drupal Themes - the visual appearance

Drupal's visual appearance is determined by themes. Upon installation, some themes are already available, and more can be downloaded for free at drupal.org. Additionally, there are theme shops where special and particularly high-quality themes can be purchased. By separating design and content, the CMS allows for easy theme switching with just a few clicks, resulting in a completely different appearance. For example, a different interface can be used when creating content than what users see on the website. By using additional modules, specific sections of the website can be styled with a different theme. Developing new themes is not easy, as it requires CSS, HTML, and PHP knowledge. Under these conditions, there is a noticeable lack of high-quality and visually appealing Drupal themes.

Flexible expansion through additional modules

The modular structure of the Drupal Framework and Core Module allows for almost unlimited expansion of the CMS. It's no wonder that there are countless extension modules available now. These modules can intelligently enhance the basic functions of the system, but installing them can sometimes bring a host of issues due to compatibility issues between individual modules.

In any case, you should definitely install the Views and Content Construction Kit (CCK) modules, two user-friendly interfaces that allow even non-technical users to create content, for example, for blogs. The accompanying Views module allows inexperienced users to select specific nodes, search content based on sophisticated criteria, and sort the results. Search results can be displayed in tables, as an unformatted list, and in other output formats. The combination of Views and CCK enables individuals without programming knowledge to quickly create content and outputs.

The Pros and Cons of Drupal

• Contains important management tools
• Project tracking
• Document management
• File functions
• Object-oriented content management
• Large community
• Open Source, possible to use without a license
• Regular updates
• Difficult for beginners to understand
• Installation of additional modules required
• The dependency of modules does not always work smoothly
• Often a challenging update process

Alternatives to Drupal Hosting

Content Management Systems (CMS) are an integral part of the internet. In today's information society, there is an endless amount of data, information, and knowledge. Companies use the web as a marketing tool and communication channel. Open-source solutions with scripting languages like PHP, Perl, or Python are increasingly important in the realm of CMS. As alternatives to Drupal, options such as Wordpress, Joomla, Magento, and Typo3 are available.

Also, explore Drupal VPS Hosting as a powerful alternative.