Real estate websites require a robust and visually appealing platform that can match the standard of the houses they showcase. Drupal, with its numerous strengths, is a compelling option to build such websites.
The platform is highly flexible, SEO-friendly, secure, and offers tens of thousands of add-on modules that can cater to any client’s needs.
Introduction to Drupal
Drupal is a free, open-source content management system (CMS) that helps people build and manage websites. It allows users to easily create and customize websites without needing to know complex coding or programming languages.
Drupal is used by millions of people worldwide, from individuals to large organizations, and it has a large community of developers and users who contribute to its development and support. With Drupal, you can create all sorts of websites, from personal blogs to large e-commerce sites or government portals, and it offers a wide range of features, including flexible content creation, user authentication and permissions, search engine optimization, and mobile responsiveness.
Drupal was created by Dries Buytaert, a Belgian computer science student, in 2001. Buytaert originally created Drupal as a message board for himself and his friends, but as the project grew, he realized its potential as a content management system.
Buytaert released the first version of Drupal as open-source software in 2001, allowing other developers to contribute to its development and use it for their own projects. Since then, Drupal has evolved into a widely-used CMS, with millions of users worldwide.
Buytaert continues to lead the development of Drupal as the project’s primary maintainer and community leader. He has received numerous awards for his contributions to open-source software, and he currently serves as the CTO of Acquia, a company that provides commercial support and services for Drupal.
Overall, Buytaert’s creation of Drupal has had a significant impact on the world of web development and content management, enabling countless individuals and organizations to create and manage their websites more easily and effectively.
Let’s dive deeper into some of Drupal’s particular benefits for real estate websites:
Real Estate Integration with third-party systems:
Real estate websites often require integration with booking, scheduling, and payment systems. Drupal’s third-party integration capabilities in Drupal 9 are unparalleled, allowing for complex data exchange scenarios and outputting website content to mobile applications. Making it easy to process Drupal Development on your website
Automatic Formatting of Images:
On real estate websites, users often submit content with photos. Drupal’s “image styles” feature enables automatic formatting of user-submitted images to ensure they fit the desired look and size, especially important for property listings on the main page.
Advanced Taxonomy System:
Drupal’s taxonomy system allows for multi-level categorization of real estate operations, property types, geographical locations, and more. This system offers advanced options that are highly beneficial to real estate websites.
Easy Filtering and Sorting:
Drupal’s filter options are easy to set up and allow users to sort real estate listings based on their preferences, such as location, date, or price. Users can also filter content by specific criteria, making it easy to find what they need.
Smart Search Functionality:
Drupal’s search modules, such as Search API, Apache Solr Search, and Search API Solr Search, allow for a user-friendly search experience on real estate websites. These modules offer features such as typo tolerance, highlighting of search queries, location-based search, and autocomplete.
Specialised Real Estate Drupal Modules:
Drupal has several contributed modules specifically for the real estate industry, such as Drupal Real Estate, Drupal RETS Real Estate Framework (dRealty), Immoclient, and Rooms. These modules provide ready-made solutions for classified ad sites, booking and room management, and advanced MLS and RETS opportunities.
Mobile-Friendly Display:
Drupal 9 is mobile-first, making it ideal for building mobile responsive websites and native mobile applications. This feature is particularly important for real estate websites, as many users may visit them on the go.
User Roles and Content Moderation:
Drupal offers an advanced system for creating user roles and giving them permission to view, edit, and delete content. Content moderation workflows in Drupal 9.5.x provide additional benefits for real estate websites.
Multilingual Options:
Drupal’s multi-language capabilities make it easy to implement multiple languages on real estate websites, which is essential for international sites.
In addition to the specific benefits discussed above, Drupal offers several other advantages for building real estate websites.
Scalability is one such benefit.
Drupal is a highly scalable platform that can handle the needs of a small real estate agency as well as those of a large multinational corporation. The platform can accommodate an increasing number of visitors and data as the website grows and expands.
Flexibility is another important advantage of Drupal.
It can be customised to meet the unique needs of any real estate website. Developers can create custom modules that allow for the integration of various functionalities and third-party tools, ensuring that the website functions exactly as intended.
Drupal is also known for being user-friendly.
With an intuitive interface that makes it easy to manage and update content. Website owners can easily add and edit property listings, blog posts, images, and other content without needing specialised technical skills.
Another significant advantage of Drupal is that it is free to use.
There are no licensing fees or costs associated with the platform, which can save real estate agencies significant amounts of money in the long run.
Enhanced features are also readily available in Drupal.
The platform is known for offering a wide range of features and functionalities that make it easy to create dynamic and engaging real estate websites. This includes features such as responsive design, built-in SEO optimisation, and social media integration, among others.
Drupal is also globally accepted.
Making it an excellent choice for real estate agencies that operate in multiple countries or regions. The platform supports multiple languages, allowing website owners to create content in various languages and cater to a global audience.
Summary
Finally, Drupal is backed by a robust and active community of developers, designers, and users who are always working to improve and enhance the platform. This means that website owners can rely on ongoing support and development to ensure that their real estate website stays up-to-date and functioning at its best.
