Cool Things We’re Building in Drupal
Drupal gets a lot more interesting when you stop treating it like a traditional CMS.
We’re using it to connect business systems, personalize customer experiences, manage massive datasets, power advanced location tools and create cleaner workflows between the website and the platforms our clients already use.
Here are a few of the things, as a Drupal agency, that we’re building right now.
Advanced Salesforce Integrations + Personalization
For some of our larger B2B clients, the website is deeply connected to Salesforce.
We can post lead information directly into Salesforce, map data to the appropriate objects and workflows, and use information from those systems to create more personalized website experiences.
That means the website can become part of a much larger customer journey instead of simply handing off a form submission and calling it a day.
We’re especially interested in the next layer: using advanced rules and customer data to change what users see based on who they are, where they are in the buying process or what we already know about them.
Smarter Dealer Locators with Maps, Geocoding and Lat/Long Data
Location-based experiences can get surprisingly complex when a client has hundreds or even thousands of dealers.
We’ve been doing extensive work with Google Maps and the Geocoding API to create highly granular dealer searches using latitude and longitude calculations, distance, service areas and other location-based criteria.
Google Maps remains one of the most powerful mapping platforms available, particularly when accuracy and geocoding are critical. The tradeoff is cost, especially at scale.
For projects where we want more flexibility, visual customization or lower operating costs, OpenStreetMap can also be a compelling option.
The result is much more than dropping pins on a map. We can create useful lookup tools that help customers quickly find the right dealer, service location or resource based on where they actually are.
Drupal + CRM = Less Duplicate Work
Drupal's API capabilities make it particularly strong when the website needs to communicate with other business systems.
For B2B and manufacturing clients, we're increasingly building websites where form submissions and customer information move directly into CRM systems instead of relying on email notifications, exports or manual data entry.
This ties directly into our Zero Waste Marketing philosophy.
If the information already exists, move it. Reuse it. Let the systems talk to each other.
The less data your team has to enter twice, the better.
Massive Product Catalogs Without Massive Headaches
Some of our clients manage enormous product catalogs, sometimes exceeding 100,000 products.
In those situations, Drupal doesn't necessarily need to become the master database.
Instead, the client can continue managing product information inside its CRM, ERP or other internal system, and Drupal can consume that data and turn it into a fast, searchable customer experience.
Product names, specifications, categories, documents, availability and other information can flow into the website automatically.
Again, the principle is simple: don't maintain the same information in two places if you don't have to.
That's Zero Waste Marketing applied to product data.
Fighting the Bot Problem
Bots have become a very real operational issue for modern websites.
Excessive bot traffic can waste server resources, inflate analytics, increase bandwidth and hosting costs, hammer APIs and create unnecessary noise throughout the entire technology stack.
We're spending more time working deep inside Cloudflare, using Web Application Firewall rules, bot controls, rate limiting and other security tools to separate legitimate visitors from traffic that provides no business value.
It's not the flashiest part of web development.
But when thousands or millions of unnecessary requests disappear, everybody notices.
Turning Third-Party Course Data Into Better Education Experiences
We're also doing interesting work in education, where course and class information may live entirely inside another platform.
Using APIs, Drupal can pull that information into the website and transform raw course data into polished calendars, searchable class listings, filters and registration experiences.
The third-party system remains the source of truth.
Drupal becomes the customer-facing experience.
That allows organizations to keep the operational system they already depend on while dramatically improving how students, members or customers interact with the information online.
And We’re Always Looking for the Next Interesting Problem
These are some of the projects we're working on today, but they're really examples of a larger philosophy.
The most interesting Drupal work often happens at the edges of the CMS, where the website connects to Salesforce, mapping platforms, CRMs, product databases, security systems, analytics and other business applications.
That's where Drupal becomes more than a publishing platform.
It becomes part of the infrastructure that helps the organization work better.
And that's usually where things get fun.
