“Portland Webworks stood out from the other companies I applied to because they use Drupal for their content management system (CMS) of choice,” says PWW developer Dang Tran. “After 10 years of working on web development, I wanted to focus on complicated projects using the Drupal CMS and I saw many big and diverse projects showcased on the company’s website.”
Dang’s experience is similar to that of the entire Portland Webworks Drupal team. They enjoy the diversity and depth of our Drupal clients and projects and appreciate that many of the sites we build provide important public services to citizens. Since our first Drupal project in 2014 with the Iowa Department of Administration, we’ve found Drupal to be the best fit for government teams that need to update and manage large sites requiring depth of security and functionality.
What is Drupal?
“Drupal’s global community is made up of experts and specialists that share what they make for the greater good,” explains Hellen Fitzpatrick, PWW’s Drupal Software Development Manager.
As a free and open-source software, Drupal is based on PHP technology, and was launched as an open source content management platform in 2001 by Dries Buytaert. Originally named Drop.org, after drop of water, or druppel in Dutch, Dries intended to change it to dorp for village in Dutch, but instead typed “drupal” for the domain registry and the name stuck. Today the Drupal open-source community is made up of more than 1.39 million members worldwide (March 2022), with active contributions from 124,000 users providing thousands of free modules to extend the core functionality.
“Drupal’s rich feature set is coupled with a supportive community and commitment to excellence,” notes PWW developer Rasha Sharif.
What does Drupal do?
“Drupal is a blank canvas for creating secure and scalable websites and web applications,” says Hellen. “It’s empowering to work with Drupal knowing it can be molded into a custom solution for our clients that’s intuitive to use.”
Our clients from public sector admin teams appreciate the following Drupal content management options:
Design:
- Page building tools for non-technical users enable flexible page structures that ensure quality and consistency.
- Fully customizable, mobile-responsive design templates provide an intuitive and engaging user experience.
- Management of diverse media types (images, videos, audio) provides tagging, filtering, and sorting capabilities.
- Compliance with accessibility standards (508, ADA, W3C) includes reputable auditing tools.
Content:
- Content auditing, versioning, and automation features make it easy to create and edit content.
- Role controls and workflow automation enable content authoring, review, approval, and publication.
- Google Analytics and event-driven metrics provide insights into site performance and user behavior.
- Content translation offers language-based user preferences.
Features:
- Maps, event calendars, and social media integrations enhance user engagement.
- Solr search capabilities enables in-document search, dynamic ranking, and natural language support.
- Streamlined information architecture includes need-driven browsing features.
How we use Drupal
“The Drupal CMS allows the freedom to create completely unique web applications to suit the individual client,” says developer Brian Martino.
Portland Webworks Drupal developers collaborate with our Creative (UX/UI), Project Management (PM), and Quality Assurance (QA) teams, as well as the client stakeholders, throughout the entire Drupal site development process. Initially, the Creative Team clarifies project goals, business requirements, user personas, internal and external stakeholder feedback, then creates the wireframes, prototypes, visual designs, and a style guide and visual pattern library for the developers to use for design consistency. See the Creative Team Spotlight for more details on the role of UX/UI.
The technical workflow involves multiple sprints, with code and configurations progressing through various branches and environments. Tools including Docker, Composer, Drush, and Lando facilitate the development process, ensuring consistency and efficiency. Bitbucket is the preferred platform for the centralized code repository, version control, and automation of build and transfer processes.
Following an agile process of iterative development, sprint planning, continuous integration, and quality assurance testing, Project Management oversees the project backlog of stories in Jira. As individual stories are recorded in Jira, our developers address items via a standardized process in which the developer pulls code from the Main Branch to the local workstation, makes commits and pushes to the Feature Branch where it is subjected to automated testing and undergoes peer code review. Code is then merged into the Development Branch, triggering automated testing and deployment to the QA environment. This process is repeated for each backlog item/story, with multiple developers working concurrently.
QA is integrated into the entire workflow, with dynamic unit tests and manual testing in the QA and Test environments before being pushed to the Stage environment. See the Quality Assurance Spotlight for more on the role of QA.
When both the content and content management tools are ready, content migration processes occur concurrently with the development workflow. Recently, integration with Large Language Models (LLMs) and other AI tools has turned many formerly manual coding and content tasks into automated workflows.
“Augmenting Drupal with AI is transforming the experience of creating, finding, and consuming content for clients and audiences alike,” says developer Adam Kempler, who founded the AI Lab to explore options using LLMs and other AI technologies.
Here’s more about some of our Drupal team members, and what they have to say about working with Drupal.
MEET OUR TEAM
Hellen Fitzpatrick: Software Development Manager
“Drupal is a blank canvas for creating secure and scalable websites and web applications. In the spirit of craftsmanship and collaboration, Drupal’s global community is made up of experts and specialists that share what they make for the greater good. It’s empowering to work with Drupal knowing it can be molded into a custom solution for our clients that’s intuitive to use.”
Hellen started in 2016, and has worked on several projects including:
- California Department of Health Care Services, Advocates for Human Potential (AHP)
- Idaho Department of Health and Welfare – Employment & Training Portal, Agency Portal, Child Care Check, Sound Beginnings
- Missouri Department of Conservation
- Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED)
- Minnesota Office of Higher Education – MyHigherEd
- Vermont Judiciary
- Washington Office of the Insurance Commissioner
Highlights from Hellen’s background include:
- Project Manager, Implementation Consultant, and Product Support Consultant at Tyler Technologies
- Certified Scrum Product Owner, Scrum Alliance
- Certified ScrumMaster, Scrum Alliance
- B.A., Business Administration, Magna Cum Laude, Northeastern University
- Web Design & Adobe Creative Suite, Maine College of Art & Design
Adam Kempler: Drupal Software Developer
“Augmenting Drupal with AI is transforming the experience of creating, finding, and consuming content for clients and audiences alike.”
Adam started as a contractor in 2004 and came on full time in 2016. He has worked on several projects including:
- Colorado Judicial Branch
- Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, CareerForce chatbot
- Missouri Department of Conservation & Teacher Portal
- Missouri Department of Commerce and Insurance
- Missouri Department of Transportation
- New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services
- New York Courts
Highlights from Adam’s background include:
- Developer / Founder, Adam Kempler Consulting
- Product Manager / Developer, Our Hometown
- Co-Founder, Celsius Technology Group
- Computer Science, Rochester Institute of Technology
- Graphic Design, School of Visual Arts
Dang Tran: Drupal Software Developer
“I love working on open source software and building flexible customizations that allow developers to extend and modify functions as needed. Drupal checks all the boxes. Furthermore, there are a lot of contributed modules from the community which are very handful and they save me a lot of time from solving problems at work.”
Dang started as a contractor in 2021 and became a full-time employee in 2022. She has worked on several projects including:
- Maine Department of Education (MOOSE – Maine Online Opportunities for Sustained Education and RREV / EnGiNE platforms)
- Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) & CareerForce chatbot
- Mississippi Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks
Highlights from Dang’s background include:
- Web Developer, National Athletic Trainers’ Association
- Web Developer, Lazada
- Web Developer, YouNet
Brian Martino: Drupal Software Developer
“The Drupal CMS allows the freedom to create completely unique web applications to suit the individual client.”
Brian started as a contractor in 2021 and became a full-time employee in 2022. He has worked on several projects including:
- California Department of Health Care Services, Advocates for Human Potential (AHP)
- Colorado Judicial Department
- Fermilab News Redesign
- Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED)
- Minnesota Office of Higher Education (OHE)
- Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO)
Highlights from Brian’s background include:
- BS Marketing, Indiana University Bloomington
- Economics, Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Rasha Sharif: Drupal Software Developer
“I enjoy Drupal’s:
1-Flexibility and extensibility
2-Robust content management
3-Scalability and performance
4-Security
5-Rich feature set, coupled with a supportive community and commitment to excellence, that contributes to its success as a versatile and reliable platform.”
Rasha started in 2022, and has worked on several projects including:
- Maine Department of Education (MOOSE – Maine Online Opportunities for Sustained Education and RREV / EnGiNE platforms)
- Maine Virtual Job Center
- Mississippi Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks
- Missouri Department of Conservation Teacher Portal
- Washington Public Disclosure Commission (PDC)
Highlights from Rasha’s background include:
- Drupal Developer II, Orange Web Works
- Drupal Developer II, 360 BC Group
- Drupal Developer, Diva
- Drupal Developer, iCard Trading, Inc.
- Drupal Developer, Dot.Jo
- Drupal Developer, Yoopixel
- B.S., Computer Information Systems, Yarmouk University
- Drupal 9 Site Builder, Acquia Certification
Meet our other teams
- Creative Team Spotlight
- Quality Assurance Team Spotlight
- Project Management Team Spotlight
- Dev & DevOps Team Spotlight
Join our team
We’d love to hear from you. We have a variety of remote and hybrid positions available.
- Check out our current job openings
- Contact us with any questions
- See PWW/GWW clients: Portfolio of work
- Visit us on social media: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram