Building a Mobile-Friendly Website with Drupal: Best Practices

Starting the process of building a responsive website with Drupal offers up a world of opportunities for a smooth user experience. We’ll go through the best practices in this post to make sure your website not only satisfies mobile-friendly requirements but also achieves exceptional functionality and appearance. Together, we will explore the world of Drupal and discover how to create a website that fluidly adjusts to the changing needs of mobile visitors.

Why It is Important to Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly

On a smartphone or tablet, a website meant for desktop viewing may not be viewable. It is important to make sure your website is responsive and appears great on all devices, so users can visit it on any device.

There are several advantages to making your website mobile-friendly, including:

  • Faster loading speeds, which is important for mobile devices
  • The probability that visitors will not stay on a website more than a few seconds is low
  • Websites with enhanced Search Engine Optimization (SEO) capabilities

Thankfully, making your Drupal website mobile-friendly is not too difficult. All you need are a few specific modules and some time.

How to Use Drupal to Create a Responsive Website 

You may make your Drupal website mobile-friendly by using the following advice. Assumed to be up and running already is a minimum of a simple Drupal website.

For assistance with any of these stages, if you are new to Drupal, you might wish to hire a developer. Even if you do decide to work with a developer, this tutorial will help you get comfortable with the essential terminology so you will be prepared with the right questions to ask.

Install a Mobile Menu

First and foremost, it is critical to have a menu that is mobile-friendly. By doing this, you can make sure that your navigation links work correctly on small displays.

The “hamburger” symbol is arguably the most often used type of mobile menu. A straightforward symbol consisting of three horizontal lines takes the place of the menu as the screen gets smaller to a specific width. The site’s main menu appears in a stack that is optimized for mobile devices when you click on the icon.

Next, click the Install New Module button and use the file browser to submit the tar.gz file. The module should now be available for you to use to customize the menu on your website. Remember that throughout the installation process, you have the option to customize the module if you so want.

Minify your code

Fast loading times are essential for mobile websites, as we have already discussed. For a large website, the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files may grow big. The method of “minification” involves deleting pointless components from the code of your website to make it render more rapidly and allow for quicker loading speeds.

Installing the Minify module on your website will allow you to minify your code. Go to the module website, get the tar.gz file, and extract it from the computer’s archive.

After that, upload the generated folder to the Drupal modules/ area of your website. The module may then be enabled by choosing Enable Newly Added Modules under Administration > Modules on your dashboard.

To activate the minify module automatically, check the box next to it. This ought to speed up the loading of your website on desktop and mobile platforms alike. By going to Administration > Configuration > Performance and following the instructions there, you may also customize the module.

Use Caching for Browsers

The next method is browser caching, which saves information so that a visitor’s browser does not constantly download the same resources. With caching, browsers are instructed to “save” specific data so that it will not have to be requested and sent each time a user views a new page on your website (or returns later).

For instance, a huge background image on your website may cause your pages to load more slowly. It may, however, be locally kept on each visitor’s device via browser caching, negating the need for a single download.

You may set up browser caching in Drupal as a built-in feature by going to Administration > Configuration > Development > Performance in your control panel.

Image Optimization

Your website can take slower to load on mobile devices if it has a lot of huge picture assets. As a result, optimizing your photos is another technique to make your website load faster without sacrificing quality.

Before you publish a picture to your website, there are several simple techniques to optimize it. Moreover, you may use the ImageAPI Optimize module in Drupal itself to optimize photos.

You must first download the module’s tar.gz file, just like you would with any other. After that, you may install the module and make it active on your dashboard.

After that, choose ImageAPI Optimize as the default toolkit by going to Administration > Settings > Imageapi. On this page, you may also adjust the module’s parameters. This will automatically make all of your website’s photos mobile-friendly.

Add @media Rules for Image Sizes

Image optimization results in smaller file sizes. Nonetheless, the dimensions of a picture on the screen also matter. On a laptop screen, an 800 x 600 pixel image would be good, but how would it appear on a 400 x 700 pixel phone screen?

Fortunately, Drupal’s @media rules allow you to confine pictures based on the screen size of each viewer. To accomplish it, you must:

  • Verify that the modules for responsive images and breakpoints are activated
  • Utilizing the Breakpoint Module, establish your “breakpoints.” You may use these standard screen sizes to make layouts that are responsive. For instance, you may choose a separate breakpoint for tablets, a third for cell phones, and a normal laptop screen
  • To specify the image styles for every breakpoint, navigate to the Responsive Images admin page. When viewed on a smaller screen, this will compel your photographs to resize

Furthermore, Google provides a free online course that teaches users how to use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to make responsive pictures. If you would want to know more about responsive photos and some best practices for mobile image style, this might be helpful.

Conclusion

As we come to the close of our investigation into using Drupal to create a mobile-friendly website, it is clear that the foundation of a successful online presence is the marriage of robust functionality with adaptable design. Adopting the best practices described here will provide you the ability to build a website that not only satisfies but beyond mobile visitors’ expectations. The options are unlimited when Drupal serves as your basis, and your digital journey is well-positioned for success in the constantly changing mobile world. Cheers to an online experience that’s user-centric, future-proof, and flawlessly responsive!