Should they upgrade to a newer version of Drupal or switch to a different content management system (CMS) altogether?

While upgrading to Drupal 9 or 10 may seem like the obvious choice, for many companies, transitioning to WordPress might be a more cost-effective and efficient solution.

Let’s look at why WordPress could be the better option for businesses weighing their CMS migration plans.

The End of Drupal 7: What Does It Mean?

The end of life for Drupal 7 means that there will no longer be any security updates, patches, or official support for the platform. This creates significant risks, including security vulnerabilities, compliance issues, and the inability to fix bugs. Businesses continuing to run their websites on Drupal 7 after the EOL date will have to take on these risks themselves, relying on either expensive custom development or third-party solutions to maintain their websites.

So, if you’re still on Drupal 7, an upgrade is essential. However, the question remains: is it better to move up to Drupal 9 or 10, or make a shift to WordPress?

Cost of Upgrading to Drupal 9/10 vs. Switching to WordPress

One of the biggest factors to consider in this decision is cost. Upgrading from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9 or 10 is not a simple task. Due to major structural changes between Drupal 7 and newer versions, it often requires a complete rebuild of your site. This can be time-consuming and expensive, with many businesses facing significant development costs just to maintain their current site’s functionality.

On the other hand, switching to WordPress is typically much more affordable. WordPress has a large ecosystem of plugins, themes, and resources, meaning that many features can be implemented without the need for custom development. Additionally, WordPress tends to be easier for non-technical teams to manage, reducing long-term maintenance costs.

For businesses looking to save money while also gaining flexibility, WordPress often emerges as the clear choice.

Ease of Use and Content Management

Another compelling reason to switch to WordPress is its ease of use. WordPress was designed with non-technical users in mind, making it simple to manage content, update pages, and make changes without needing a developer’s assistance. Its intuitive user interface is one of the reasons why WordPress powers more than 40% of all websites on the internet.

Drupal, while powerful, is known for being more developer-centric. For businesses with in-house development teams or complex technical requirements, this may not be an issue. However, for organisations that need a flexible, user-friendly CMS for marketing teams or content creators, WordPress offers a much smoother experience.

WordPress Offers Greater Flexibility for Most Businesses

Many companies using Drupal 7 initially chose it for its scalability and robustness, especially if they had complex site needs. However, WordPress has evolved significantly in recent years and is now able to handle a wide range of site types, from small business websites to large-scale eCommerce platforms.

For businesses that don’t require highly customised, complex features, WordPress provides all the flexibility needed while offering a much lower learning curve. With its vast library of plugins, themes, and integrations, WordPress can be customised to suit nearly any business requirement without the need for extensive custom coding.

Additionally, WordPress has a strong developer community and ongoing support. This guarantees that new features, updates, and security patches are consistently rolled out, ensuring that your site remains secure and up-to-date.

SEO and Marketing Integration

For businesses focusing on marketing and SEO, WordPress is often the better choice. WordPress is highly optimised for search engine performance out of the box and has numerous SEO plugins like Yoast and All-in-One SEO that help users improve their rankings without needing technical expertise.

Drupal is certainly capable of strong SEO performance, but it often requires more manual intervention and technical understanding to configure. This makes WordPress a better choice for marketing teams who want to take control of their SEO without relying heavily on developers.

Community and Support

Both Drupal and WordPress have active user communities, but the sheer size of WordPress’s user base makes finding help, resources, and third-party developers easier and more affordable. Whether you need troubleshooting advice, a new plugin, or help with custom development, the WordPress ecosystem provides abundant support options.

Is WordPress the Right Move?

The decision between upgrading to the latest version of Drupal or switching to WordPress depends on your business’s specific needs. However, for many businesses using Drupal 7, WordPress offers a more cost-effective, flexible, and user-friendly solution that can grow with their needs.

If you’re looking to minimise costs, simplify content management, and make your website more accessible to non-technical teams, switching to WordPress is likely the smarter choice. With its strong community support, robust plugin ecosystem, and easy-to-use interface, WordPress can provide your business with the digital flexibility it needs moving forward—without the complexities of managing a Drupal upgrade.

As the clock ticks down on Drupal 7’s end of life, now is the time to assess your options and decide whether migrating to a more user-friendly and cost-effective CMS like WordPress is the right move for your business.

Imagify is a powerful image optimisation plugin designed to speed up WordPress websites by reducing the file size of images without compromising quality. As images are often one of the largest contributors to page size and load times, optimising them is essential for enhancing website performance, improving SEO, and providing a better user experience. Imagify, developed by the same team behind WP Rocket, offers an easy yet comprehensive solution to compress images and boost page speed. To understand how Imagify works and how it can transform a WordPress website, let’s explore its features and benefits in detail.

At its core, Imagify reduces the file size of images using advanced compression algorithms, making images lighter and faster to load without visibly affecting quality. Imagify supports three levels of compression: Normal, Aggressive, and Ultra. The Normal level provides lossless compression, which reduces the file size without any quality loss. The Aggressive and Ultra levels offer lossy compression, where some quality is sacrificed for smaller file sizes. These options allow users to choose the best balance between image quality and performance based on their specific needs.

One of Imagify’s standout features is its ability to optimise all types of images, including JPEG, PNG, and GIF formats. It also supports WebP conversion, a next-generation image format that provides superior compression compared to JPEG and PNG, further reducing load times. Imagify can automatically convert images to WebP format and serve them to compatible browsers, ensuring optimal performance without additional manual work from the user. WebP images typically offer up to 30% more compression than traditional formats, contributing to faster page load times and improved user experience.

Imagify provides an easy-to-use interface directly within the WordPress dashboard, where users can bulk optimise images already uploaded to the media library. This is particularly beneficial for websites with large image libraries, as it saves time by optimising all images in a few clicks. The bulk optimisation tool also ensures that any newly uploaded images are automatically optimised, maintaining consistent performance improvements across the site. For users with existing websites, this feature can significantly reduce the overall page size and boost load speed without the need to manually re-upload optimised images.

Another significant benefit of using Imagify is its ability to optimise thumbnails and image sizes generated by WordPress themes and plugins. When images are uploaded to WordPress, multiple copies are created in various sizes for use in different areas of the website. Optimising only the original image would not be sufficient for performance improvements. Imagify ensures all image sizes, including thumbnails, are optimised, maximising the speed benefits across all parts of a website.

Imagify integrates seamlessly with popular page builders, such as Elementor and WPBakery, and e-commerce platforms like WooCommerce. This ensures that product images, sliders, and other visual elements critical for engagement and conversion are also optimised. Given that e-commerce sites are typically image-heavy and depend on fast loading times for better conversions, using Imagify can be especially beneficial for online stores.

To further enhance performance, Imagify offers the “Resize on Upload” feature, which allows users to set a maximum width and height for images. This is particularly useful for preventing unnecessarily large images from being uploaded, which can bloat the site and slow down load times. By resizing images to the optimal dimensions needed for display, users can avoid excessive file sizes and ensure consistent performance.

Imagify’s optimisation process is handled in the cloud, meaning it doesn’t place a burden on the user’s server resources. When an image is uploaded, it is sent to Imagify’s servers, optimised, and then sent back to the WordPress site. This ensures the optimisation process is fast and does not affect the performance of the website during image compression, even when bulk-optimising large libraries. Additionally, Imagify provides a backup feature, allowing users to keep the original images in case they need to revert the changes or adjust the compression level.

Imagify also provides clear and detailed statistics on image optimisation results, helping users to see the percentage reduction in file size and how much space has been saved. This transparency allows for better decision-making regarding which compression levels are most effective for a particular site’s needs. For developers and advanced users, Imagify offers a robust API that enables custom integration with other platforms and applications, allowing for greater flexibility in managing image optimisation workflows.

For websites aiming to score highly on performance metrics like Google’s PageSpeed Insights, optimising images is a critical factor. Imagify helps achieve better scores by addressing the “Serve images in next-gen formats” and “Efficiently encode images” recommendations, both of which directly influence the Core Web Vitals that Google uses as part of its ranking algorithm.

Imagify is an essential tool for anyone looking to optimise images on their WordPress website. With features like multi-level compression, WebP conversion, bulk optimisation, integration with popular plugins and platforms, and detailed optimisation statistics, Imagify provides a comprehensive solution for reducing image file sizes and speeding up website load times. By using Imagify, website owners and developers can ensure their sites are faster, more efficient, and better equipped to meet the demands of modern web performance standards.

WP Rocket is a leading caching plugin for WordPress that enhances website performance by optimising various aspects of how a site loads and functions. In today’s digital landscape, where site speed directly impacts SEO, conversions, and user experience, WP Rocket stands out for its ability to optimise WordPress sites effectively. To understand how WP Rocket speeds up a website, we need to explore its key features and the mechanisms it employs to reduce load times and boost efficiency.

At its core, WP Rocket is a caching plugin that creates static versions of dynamic pages and stores them on the server. When a visitor requests a page, WP Rocket serves the static HTML version instead of generating the page dynamically via database queries and PHP scripts. This greatly reduces server load and speeds up page delivery.

One of WP Rocket’s primary functions is page caching. By enabling caching, the server can bypass resource-heavy dynamic requests, improving load times. WP Rocket also includes cache preloading, which generates cached versions of pages ahead of time, ensuring that visitors always experience fast load times. This proactive approach means pages are ready to serve immediately, reducing delays that would otherwise occur when generating content on the fly.

WP Rocket optimises static files such as CSS, JavaScript, and HTML through minification and concatenation. Minification strips unnecessary characters like spaces and comments from code, reducing file size. Concatenation merges multiple CSS and JavaScript files into single files, decreasing the number of HTTP requests to the server. Together, these optimisations reduce both file size and server requests, resulting in significantly faster page loads, particularly for sites heavy on scripts and styles.

A standout feature of WP Rocket is lazy loading for images and iframes. Instead of loading all visual elements at once, lazy loading only loads them as they enter the user’s viewport. This reduces initial load times and conserves bandwidth, providing a smoother experience, especially for media-rich sites. Lazy loading is particularly effective in reducing the frustration and bounce rates associated with slow-loading pages.

WP Rocket also tackles database optimisation. WordPress databases can become bloated over time with data such as post revisions, drafts, and spam comments. WP Rocket’s built-in optimisation tool cleans up the database, reducing its size and making queries more efficient. Regular database maintenance is crucial for sites with frequent content updates or e-commerce functionalities, where maintaining an optimised database ensures smoother operations.

Other advanced features include GZIP compression and browser caching. GZIP reduces the size of files sent from the server to the browser, speeding up page loads by minimising data transfer. Browser caching stores static files like images, CSS, and JavaScript locally on the user’s device, reducing the need to reload these resources on subsequent visits. These features particularly benefit returning visitors by significantly improving perceived speed and responsiveness.

WP Rocket further improves performance with Critical Path CSS optimisation and deferred JavaScript loading. Critical Path CSS optimisation ensures that only the essential CSS needed for above-the-fold content is loaded first, while the rest is loaded asynchronously. Deferred JavaScript loading postpones the loading of non-essential scripts until after the main content has rendered. These strategies prioritise content visibility, speeding up the user’s perception of site loading times.

The plugin also integrates with Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) to serve static content like images and scripts from geographically distributed servers. This reduces latency by delivering content from the server closest to the user, further optimising load times for global visitors. By combining caching, file optimisation, and CDN support, WP Rocket provides a comprehensive approach to enhancing both front-end and back-end performance.

WP Rocket supports e-commerce sites by excluding dynamic pages, like shopping carts and checkouts, from caching to avoid issues with user sessions. This makes it particularly suitable for WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, and other WordPress-based e-commerce platforms. By automatically handling critical pages, WP Rocket ensures a fast, reliable shopping experience while maintaining essential functionalities.

WP Rocket is not just a caching plugin; it’s an all-encompassing performance optimisation tool for WordPress sites. Through features like caching, minification, lazy loading, GZIP compression, database optimisation, and CDN integration, WP Rocket tackles multiple facets of website performance. It offers a robust solution for website owners and developers who want to maximise site speed, reduce load times, and improve user experience efficiently.

According to this article on DesignRush about website improvement, addressing slow loading speed is crucial for websites.

English playwright Edward Bulwer-Lytton (who?) once said “the pen is mightier than the sword”.

That pen is even more mightier when the words are accompanied by some powerful imagery – especially when it comes to creating an effective website. You know the sort of website we mean – one that moves and motivates the user to do what you want them to do.

In our previous two blogs about creating effective websites we talked about the all-important initial planning phase (where you establish why your website should even exist and why your target audiences should care) and the need for powerful, persuasive copy.

This time around we’re going to talk about the value of good imagery on your site. And the key word here is good. How many sites have you visited where the photos have been taking on someone’s iPhone while they’ve had the shakes? Or they’re badly lit? Or just look plain awful?

Imagine the impression these images give the user about the business.

Studies have shown that people remember 80% of what they see and only 20% of what they read. There’s also research attesting to the fact that 65% of people are visual learners and that the brain can process an image in just 13 milliseconds. And since we’re talking research, a study among Generation Y’s website preferences highlights that they like pages that have a main large image (they prefer “a picture-based method of communicating information rather than a text-based method”).

All of which reinforces the importance of having good photos on your site.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been talking about the importance of good planning, good copy and good imagery when it comes to creating a website that works.

As a wrap-up I thought it would be worth collating the above point and some other key considerations in that wonderful thing that people call “A Checklist”.

Checklists are good. According to philosopher and novelist Umberto Eco (he’s the guy who wrote The Name of the Rose – remember?), lists help to “make infinity comprehensible”.

Or in other words, writing a list helps you get things done.

More importantly, checklists help you get things done correctly. During World War II, over 12,500 B-17 superfortresses were produced to bomb Germany and Japan.

These massive planes were flown by young men who had been plucked from civilian life and who had no previous aviation experience.

To help reduce the risk of pilots smashing into the ground, the control tower or each other, they were given an “approved B-17F and G Checklist”. This list covered everything from hopping into the cockpit to taxiing the plane to a halt. It was designed to ensure the crew could properly configure the plane for flight and maintain that level of quality throughout the flight and in every flight.

The good news is that it worked.

So with history on our side, here’s a checklist for bringing together all the elements you need tick off before pushing the “Go Live” button for your website.

1. Planning – you’ve identified your website’s objectives, and the reason why users should go there.
2. Copy – you’ve got your text sorted for each page (you may have done this in-house or used a copywriter from the web development Agency you’re working with.) Remember, if you want your site to rank organically, you’ll need to have implemented an SEO strategy to identify key words and phrases to use.
3. Imagery –  these could be photos or illustrations or a mix of both. Do you need to get photos taken (make sure they’re of a good quality that reflects well on your business)? Can you use photolibrary imagery? Do they tell the story you want to tell? Do they work with the copy?
4. Logos and Icons – do you have a version that’s suitable for website use? Is there a smaller version available for mobile view or favicons? If you need icons, can you get away with stock icons or will you need ones designed from scratch?
5. The Database – if you’re building an online store, using WordPress with WooCommerce, you’ll almost certainly need to provide a product database. It’s important that you discuss how this needs to be set up with your developer as this can impact on the time enormously. (A note here – if the data needs to talk to other systems, such as an inventory management system via APIs, it will need to be presented in a specific way. Again, discussing requirements with your developer early on is key).
6. The Deadline – you’ve got a go-live date in mind. How flexible is this? Or is it set in stone to be in synch with other marketing activities? Make sure your web developer knows the end date. They’ll then come back to you with a timeline showing when key deliverables need to be provided – both in terms of what you supply to them, and what they supply to you. It’s amazing how one missed deliverable date can throw everything out and lead to wailing and gnashing of teeth (to put it mildly).
7. The Budget – this should be established as part of the planning phase but I feel it’s worthy of mentioning separately as well. It may be that what you want your site to achieve simply can’t be done with the funds available – in which case you need to come up with a separate checklist that prioritises your site’s wish-list into an order of importance. You work your way down the list, achieving as much as possible now and then ticking off the others as budget permits further down the track (your website agency account manager can help you with this). Don’t worry if you can’t achieve everything in Phase One – as long as your end goal has been identified from the start the website can be built to allow for adding on as required in the future. As one CEO who shall remain nameless since I don’t have their name once said: “prioritise until it hurts”.

Look on the above list as your guide to website happiness. Include it as part of your planning process and it will make the whole thing a lot smoother and easier – and at the end of it you’ll have a website that works the way you want.

Those of us who can remember miserable first dates can attest to the veracity of that hoary old chestnut: “First impressions count.”

It’s the same when it comes to building your website. After all, it’s all about trying to woo a prospect. And in fact, the pressure to impress quickly is even greater.

As a rule of thumb, when someone lands on your website, you only have a few seconds to convince them to stay there. If, in that time, you’ve haven’t shown them that they’ve come to the right place and that they can clearly identify what to do next, then you’ve pretty much lost them.

In our previous blog we talked about buttoning down your website’s “why”. Now we’re going to talk through the first step in bringing that “why” to life. It’s called “writing copy”.

At the risk of sounding too technical, a website should ideally consist of words and pictures that convince the user to do what you want them to do.

Sounds simple, I know. But the devil is in the detail.

Many sites I’ve seen have simply been regurgitations of a business’ mission statement. The copy tends to be what the specific business wants to say, rather than what the user wants to hear.

When you’re working on copy for your site, you need to keep going back to the “why”.

So what do you need to say in order to convince (or seduce, if we’re getting crude about it) the user to take the desired course of action?

A good place to start is to take your “why” and break it down to a sentence of less than 15 words.

The movie industry does this all the time. It’s what they call a “high concept story” – where a movie’s plot, audience demographics and what makes it original can be summed up in a single sentence (sometimes that sentence ends up as the movie’s title – like “Snakes on a Plane”. There, four words and you know everything you need to know).

Using your sentence of 15 words or less as a platform, you can then build the copy content up, fleshing out the promise of your “high concept story” with supporting facts that will add credibility to your argument.

Let’s say you’re a construction company who targets the education sector. Your “high concept” could be “we build places where great minds can grow.” That’s going to help hook the user. Now you need to reel them in by providing all the other key stuff they’ll need to know – like projects you’ve worked on, how the way you do things is going to make their lives easier, your team of experts, and wonderful things that their peers are already saying about you.

There are words. And then there’s waffle. Waffle is lots of words living together without a purpose.

Waffle is bad. Unfortunately, it happens to be quite a thriving species in the website world.

When you’re writing the text for your website (or reviewing text that someone else has written for you) keep going back to your “why”. That’ll help to avoid the waffle.

Every word needs to count – to support the argument you’re making and convince the user that you’re the business they’re after.

There’s no real rule around how much text makes a wonderful website.

Sometimes less is good, with a few carefully worded headlines and succinct copy being all that’s needed. If you want to rank well in Search Engines, however, then long text is the better way to go. But that doesn’t mean waffling. In fact, if SEO is a key driver, using the right words is key. We’d strongly recommend that you conduct an SEO strategy before you start. This will identify key words that people are typically typing into google to search for businesses like yours.

We’ll talk more about an effective SEO strategy in an upcoming blog called (funnily enough) “Effective SEO Strategies”.

A few things to consider regarding copy:

• Use lots of subheads to break up long text. People love to skim., so subheads should give them enough information to make a decision.
• Think in terms of benefits to the user. People are coming to you for a solution, so let them know how you’re going to make their life happier.
• Use words like “you” rather than “us”.
• Creating problem/solution scenarios is a good way to empathise with your target market and make your offering relatable.
• Make frequent use of strong calls to action. You’ve whet your audience’s appetite. Now tell them what to do next – eg make a phone call, fill out a form, book an appointment etc.
• Don’t be boring. Every business has an interesting story to tell. Yours has. So tell it. People love stories and tend to respond to them more than just a litany of facts and figures.

In our next blog we’ll talk about the importance of imagery, how it needs to work well with copy, and other key considerations around getting a working website up and… working.

Having a website that actually works for your business as opposed to one that’s simply there will be determined by what you do before you even start googling for a web design agency.

Yogi Berra (the New York Yankees catcher, not Boo-Boo’s pal) said: “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.”

There are a lot of websites out there that have ended up in that nebulous “someplace else”

And why? Simple really. There was no planning.

Planning is key. Objectives don’t tend to work without one. To throw another quote out there, this one from aviation pioneer Antoine de Saint-Exupery: “A goal without a plan is just a wish.”

This is so true when it comes to creating an effective website.

In this, the first in a series of blogs about creating websites that work, we’ll talk about that all-important planning phase.

The “why” may seem obvious, but it’s actually the hardest thing to pin down. And if you don’t get the “why” right, you’re going to end up with a meandering site that has no clear objectives (which will in turn confuse the user and get them clicking elsewhere).

The “why” is in effect your site’s reason for being. It’s core. It’s fundamental truth (if you want to get all boomshanka about it).

Once you’ve got the “why” sorted, you’ll be surprised at how smoothly everything else slots into place.

Here are some thought-starters to help you with your “why”.

• Provide a positive first impression to potential clients or employees;
• Generate more leads for your sales team;
• Generate direct revenue (e.g. online store);
• Be a great resource of information;
• Build your brand;
• Start an ongoing relationship with users;
• Motivate visitors to take some kind of action or get behind a certain cause.

Once you know your ‘Why’, it’s logical to put a sensible strategy in place to achieve it. So how much strategy do you need and who’s going to come up with that strategy?  This will depend on several different factors and is usually different for every client.  Let’s use a couple of case studies to illustrate the point:

• A small busy local mechanic on the corner has been in business for 20+ years, is well known and gets most of their business through word of mouth and repeat business. They don’t need more business, however they’d like to provide information to clients around their area of expertise, updates around business hours during Covid Alert Levels, and provide directions to their workshop as it’s in a tricky to find location.

The strategy for example may be to develop a very simple website, perhaps with only a handful of pages, focusing on their history in the community, perhaps with a page outlining their particular areas of expertise and a very clear contact page, not only showing a relevant Google map but also a graphic or good quality photograph showing how to navigate to their shop.

This is an example of a simple strategy – often a client will come in knowing this, or we may draw this out of them via a series of questioning during an initial consultation.

• A large construction consulting firm is well established and has a solid client base with a firm grip on a several key sectors of the market. With this said – they’re looking to expand their service offering into new market sectors to gain more revenue share.

There’s a lot to think about before diving into a new or revised website build here.

Do they need a dedicated website to focus on the new market, or can they simply add pages / content onto their existing site?  Does the new offering require a new brand or can it be effectively represented under the existing brand?

How are potential clients in the new market sector interacting in the digital space? Are they actively searching for said services in Google search and if so, is there a large enough commercially viable search base to warrant an accompanying SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) of SEM (Search Engine Marketing) content plan for the new website?

What about social media channels? Is the business active in those spaces too – and if so, how can this be leveraged to increase the effectiveness of the site?

Is there a high level of competition in their new targeted sector which may give a steer as to how much work needs to be done in order to compete effectively?

What do their potential users want to see on a website – e.g. relevant project case studies, areas of expertise, staff bios showing years of competence in the industry, relevant credentials / associations with industry bodies etc?

Is a focus group needed to draw out this information either internally or externally?

With the above in mind, what journey do we need to take the user on to achieve the desired goal laid out in the “Why”?

We’ll talk more about the Journey in our second blog: “You’ve Got The Why – Now the How..