With the ever-growing technologies and business scenario over the past few years, Drupal has earned a reputation as one of the leading and highly-celebrated content management systems for all sorts of organizations. Whether it is a small scale business or a large corporation, Drupal has been chosen by companies of different scales and sizes across the globe. Besides, Drupal has also been put in the first priority for building government websites of various countries. This is because it does not only provide you with a robust open-source framework but also a humongous wide range of features that are designed to serve different purposes.
However, it takes a skilled Drupal developer to build a professional Drupal website that can align with your business goals and be flexible enough to evolve with your business. Now you must be wondering how you will determine whether a developer has substantial knowledge to stand out on the expectations of Drupal web development. Well, there is a simple way for you to ensure that you hire the right developer and that is to have the knowledge of Drupal development yourself. Continue reading to know what are the skills that you must look for in a Drupal developer.
Understanding of PHP & PHP Frameworks
One of the major skills that a Drupal developer should have is to have a strong grasp of PHP and its frameworks. Although there are many developers that straight off from one CMS to another yet when you are developing with Drupal, the developer is required to know foundational coding languages in order to be familiar with the development process. Hence, you should make sure that the developer that you are working with, must have knowledge of PHP & PHP frameworks. Additionally, having knowledge about MySQL is also important for custom Drupal development, and also for setting up the Drupal database. Along with this, JQuery should also be understood as it facilitates to carry out standard DOM, effects, events, and AJAX functions.
Experience in Installing & Building Drupal Modules
Another skill that you must consider while hiring Drupal developers that they must be accustomed to installing and building Drupal modules. This is because these modules help in integrating various third-party services and tools with your website. As a result, your website can become a hub that allows accessing many of the most used tools from one place to another and also the tools that are highly customized for your website visitors to use. However, there is no set list of particular modules that you can ask your developers to include on your website but they should be familiar enough to install the Views module, Panels module, and Tools module. Though when the developer has an understanding of module installation, it is very easy for him to install whatever modules your website would require.
Hold on Version Control with Git
Git and GitHub are widely utilized by developers in order to achieve version control across various project sizes and types. Though Git and GitHub have become quite common practices still you must know whether your developer uses these tools. Now you must be thinking about why it is important to know this. Well, that is because Git itself helps developers to work more efficiently as it makes the management of project files easier. Additionally, because you can store code in a GitHub repository for each version of your Drupal project so even if your developer goes wrong with any code in the future, there will still be an option for reverting it to prior versions.
Debugging & Updating Drupal Website
Now that we have had a discussion about using the Git version control, the next skill that your developer should have is to know how to debug and update the Drupal site. So, make sure that your developer has the ability to identify bugs in their code. However, it is difficult to find each and every bug during the coding process yet addressing as much as possible can prevent further issues that may occur down the road and will potentially save a lot of time and effort. Additionally, debugging during the development process can prove to be very helpful that can save on a lot of trouble after the site goes live. So, make sure that you choose to hire a Drupal developer that essentially offers post-launch maintenance and support because not all the developers provide it. So, by ensuring that, you can make your website bug free and updated enough to provide the best quality user experience.
So, these are some of the top skills that you must look for when hiring a Drupal developer for your Drupal web project. And considering all these skills, we can say that Auxesis Infotech can be the best pick for your project as it not only has a great team of developers and designers but also has an adequate set of resources to deliver the best results.
