It’s a good question. Drupal, and other open-source software is free, so why should you pay for consultancy and development. Surely you can just download the software and setup your own site. Well, not quite…
I was busily working through the final stages of a site for a client this evening and was struck by the amount of small tweaks I needed to complete. The strength of Drupal, and one of it’s weaknesses, is the complexity and flexibility it provides. Sometimes just knowing which modules will do what you need and how they can work together can be daunting task for new Drupal site owners.
Most of my time was spent in small template and functionality changes that will mean the world to our client and their users. And that’s the way it should be. Most of all, I was simplifying the node creation and editing screens for the site’s ultimate users and editors. Drupal’s great, but most people have problems with the complex and confusing administration interface.
Many of our projects call on the same contributed modules; Views, CCK, Panels, Fusion theme etc. and we’ve become pretty slick and manipulating them so that when a client asks “Could we…”, the answer’s usually ”Yes!”.
But the very flexibility of core and contributed modules means that it’s very difficult for a Drupal novice to pick them up and configure them easily and quickly. Then you need to add on the permissions structure, roles and the complexities of theming. I’ve never come across a site we’ve completed without some degree of tweaking required.
When you hire a professional Drupal consultancy you get the experience and knowledge that comes from having come up against similar problems and already solved them. That allows your money to be well spent on building a robust, secure system and focussing on the user interface, architecture and experience. We also provide screen casts and simple, concise documentation to help with the everyday tasks that our customers perform themselves. Plus, when you have a really juicy requirement that’s not catered for by the myriad of contributed modules, we love to spend our time and effort getting that done just right.
Tags: development, drupal, work
