Placing unique, interesting and valuable content on your website and creating an effective content marketing strategy is a way to attract users’ attention to your business and convert your potential customers. Drupal is the best choice for content-heavy sites, because it offers convenient content modeling and provides many opportunities to work with different types of content, including text, images, video, audio and even interactive H5P content. This allows content authors, editors, and publishers to focus on content itself, which is their main subject of concern, rather than on delving into technical issues. So let’s look in detail at how the eighth version of Drupal can simplify the process of working on website content and make it a joy.
What useful things can Drupal 8 offer to content editors and publishers?
Time savings with CKEditor in Drupal 8 core
A favorite of many users, CKEditor is a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor with a convenient user interface that displays content close to the end result visible on the website. Now CKEditor is finally put in the Drupal 8 core by default, so that there is no more need for its separate installation. This content editor provides you with all basic things you need to edit and publish your content. If it’s not enough, you can easily get additional functions with different modules and plugins like CKEditor Anchor Link. The latest version, CKEditor 4.6 allows you to drag’n’drop a file, edit it inline and much more.
ALT text becomes obligatory in Drupal 8
Unlike D7, Drupal 8 shows a red asterisk near the field where you have to write an alternative text for every image you upload. This means that your content isn’t allowed to be posted online until this field will be filled. You may think that providing obstacles to the publishing process can’t be considered as an improvement. However, ALT text allows search engines to show results of image search, so it’s important for your SEO, and looking out for your SEO is always in your best interest. Moreover, it is used by screen readers to help people with sight disorders perceive your content, so ALT tags help your website meet web accessibility standards. They also tell users what your image is about when it has problems loading. So, Drupal 8 will prevent you from skipping alternative text.
Drupal 8-based Thunder for professional publishing
Open source origins is an advantage of much software, including Drupal. So now you can appreciate one more nice content management system under the GNU General Public License called Thunder. The members of Thunder Coalition can develop new modules and add new functionality to, then share their contributions for free for an unlimited time. That is a benefit of open source community. So besides being maintained by the main team, this CMS is continually improving.
Thunder distribution is created on the basis of current Drupal 8 functionality. It has many built-in features that publishers usually have to add. You can schedule your content by setting not only a date when it will be published, but also time of removal of either a whole article or single images. You can work on your content on the go from any device while enjoying a great mobile experience. Content is published as easily as Facebook Instant Articles, which reduces their loading time. Thunder integrates with many third-party systems like Nexx.tv to manage multiscreen videos and Riddle to create quizzes.
More moderation states with Workbench Moderation module
There is a suite of Workbench modules, and Workbench Moderation is one of them that already has a stable release for Drupal 8. It broadens the opportunities for working on website content when many people are involved and advanced control of the access rights and the workflow. One of the main features of Workbench Moderation module is that it allows you to add an unlimited number of transitional content states besides the default “published” and “unpublished.” You can also keep on reviewing and improving your content after it has been posted on the live site.
Take advantage of these cool things for publishers, and monitor Drupal 8 for further improvements. Our blog will help you keep pace with new events in the Drupal world. If you need any assistance regarding your website, contact our Drupal web development agency.