Highly custom websites can be difficult to handle on the administrative side, such as managing everyday tasks like content management. They can be difficult to update and to integrate with other tools.

Drupal’s build is unique and Drupal’s Views module is a good example of that combined custom flexibility and simple admin management.

Drupal Views: Building Your Website

Drupal is a modular system, which means that enabling custom functionality and features is as simple as turning on the right module.

Views is a Drupal module that can be used to create, display, and manage lists of content. For example, if you wanted to feature a block of content on your webpage that displayed the last blog posts written within a certain period of time, or links to events pages, or if you wanted to build a webpage that displayed images and blurbs about past client work, you could use the Views module to create a custom display.

Here’s an example from our own Drupal website:

Each of the lists of content in this video is made with Drupal Views, although they’ve been customized to look incredibly different from each other.

Typical websites use content types to build out sections of their websites, such as their blog or news feed. When a blog comprises thousands of single-page posts, you don’t want to manage the list of views for a blog index by hand. Views take the underlying content in the individual content type and create the index or list view for you, allowing you to customize with added filters and sort orders.

What Is The Benefit Of Views?

• You can side-step building a custom display from scratch and instead take advantage of a module that can utilizes relationship data to display various lists.
• Custom navigation aids, such as menus or filters, can be easily set for each list.
• You can use Views to create a webpage just as easily as you can a single “block.” What this means is that you can drop in a Views block on the webpage you’re building out. Managing blocks in Drupal is a simple process that doesn’t require advanced technical skill, and can be done by website administrators.
• Because of the block format, you can also feature multiple Views on the same page.
• You can set any parameters for the view, compiling custom lists.
• Views is tightly integrated with other modules in your website, and can easily support API connections.
• As an open-source module, Views is much more secure than any custom code. Views is constantly being updated, having bugs discovered and smoothed out, and made more efficient by Drupal’s community. Custom code doesn’t receive that kind of consistent attention.

Using Drupal to Build a Better Website

Like many of the features on Drupal, Views is something that will require initial development work in order to set in place, not to mention web design in order to theme it. However, Views is the perfect example of how Drupal sets itself apart from other CMSs. Most other systems require you to make a decision between ease of use and scalable customization. Drupal’s unique build and features allow you to have both, without compromising either, putting it at the forefront of website technology.

Considering Drupal as your website platform? Find out more about evaluating content management systems— including platforms like Drupal, WordPress, and Adobe Experience Manager—in our white paper: How to Evaluate Website Technology Platforms.