
Drupal Planet
Ways to measure your website’s effectiveness
We've worked with many clients over the years, who all have very specific website development needs. While some clients may share common goals, each may approach those business goals in different ways. But, time and time again, we usually start by asking a client in what ways are they measuring their website's effectiveness. In this 4 part series, I'll discuss identifying purpose and overcoming obstacles, complaints of current site capabilities and establishing budget, metrics to success and selecting a vendor, then finally risk tolerance and disaster recovery planning.
Part 1: Identifying your purpose and overcoming obstacles
One of the first questions we frequently ask our clients is, how would you gauge your website's effectiveness? We ask this because your website should not only reflect your brand, but in many cases, drive part of your revenue. A WordPress site can be a great start for companies that are strictly brand-centric, and will give you a strong web presence. However, if your goal is a website that not only represents your brand, but also comprises a mixture of e-commerce, registration systems, reporting tools, etc., then a WordPress site will not make the grade.
Part 2: Complaints of current site capabilities and establishing budget
Another couple of questions we ask our clients are what complaints do you have with your current website and what would you like it to do better? Some clients respond that their website is just plain stale and they’d like something new/modern. Drupal lets you easily change up your entire look on a regular basis, like putting on a fresh outfit!
Drupal 8 Configuration Management in the real world - workflow and gotchas
Panacea, or disaster? Drupal 8 Configuration Management was supposed to solve all our woes when it came to dealing with deploying configuration. In many ways it's a vast improvement, but in some ways it has almost made matters worse.

Ask Freelock: What e-commerce platform would you recommend?
Shan asks,

Drupal vs WordPress: Why there are no objective comparisons
WordPress versus Drupal. Republican versus Democrat. Two debates where the differences seem so broad, people can't even seem to agree upon fundamental facts. Why? Why is it so hard to find an objective, clear comparison of WordPress and Drupal? I've had several people ask this.

11 Questions Businesses need to ask themselves when choosing a Drupal host: The Comprehensive Freelock Hosting Guide
When choosing any service provider, a crucial question is, "What happens if something goes wrong?" When you're choosing a hosting provider, we like to dig a bit deeper, and ask what risks are likely to be an issue for you?
Here are some of our questions:
D8 Development: Console, Menus, and Entity load/save basics
I learn best when I have a problem to solve, and with one of our D8 upgrade projects, we had a mess to clean up in the menu system.
Fixing broken URL Aliases on a Drupal 6 -> Drupal 8 migration
So there are definite "gotchas" to migrating content from Drupal 6 to Drupal 8, when you take away the assumption that the ids throughout the system will remain the same.
Ask Freelock: Why haven't you migrated to Drupal 8?
Richard asks:
Just a question after reading an article posted here back from January 21, 2016 on Drupal 8, why Freelock.com has not moved to Drupal 8? Just wondering if there was a particular reason we should avoid before jumping in? Thanks.
Why you need maintenance on your Drupal Site
Yesterday the Drupal security team gave a dire warning about extremely dangerous security vulnerabilities in multiple contributed modules. The fixes, and the details, would be released at 9am Pacific Time today.

Git Branch Strategy meets Continuous Deployment
Our branch strategy based on Git Flow did not survive. It was getting a bit old in the tooth, but the final blow was automation.