Can you feel the wind of change blowing, the “scent” of new possibilities in the air? I know I can! And I've been feeling it and embracing it ever since I discovered and started to harness its power in my own Drupal web development projects. I'm talking about the Paragraphs module for Drupal, a module that's so much more than... just another innovative, buzz-generating Drupal module to be added to the “pile” of groundbreaking Drupal “tools”. It's a whole new way of creating content on a Drupal site, an entire bundle of possibilities for crafting a Drupal's site look and feel. But now let's cut the abstract talk and talk “real” features, real functionality.
First of all, you might be wondering what was the “gap” that this module had to fill in. Why was it needed in the first place (since some of us were perfectly OK with the standard WYSIWIG editor, right?).
Well, the context where the Paragraphs module has been “conceived” was dominated by two main factors:
- a need to adapt to the web's new realities: “responsiveness” had started to be the name of the game in the digital world
- a drawback of Drupal's “old way” of creating and structuring content, of its WYSIWIG editor: it could not cope with the content editors' growing need to create 100% responsive content “on the fly”
So, the Paragraphs module was born! And what started like a “mission” to build a tool that could empower editors and grant them unmatched convenience in a responsive content-dominated digital world, soon started to grow into an entire bundle of powerful features and functionality!
Here are some of them:
1. It Lifts the Content Formatting Burden Off Content Editors' Shoulders
… enabling them to focus all their energy and creativity on producing high quality, unique content instead of using it for structuring and formatting it.
Instead of accumulating frustrations when using Drupal's conventional editor for strategically editing their content only to discover, once viewed on a mobile device, that, oh well, it turned into pure chaos! With enlarged or shrunk images floating all over the screen and their texts pushed in the very the bottom of the screen!
The Paragraphs module comes to put an end to the long series of such dark scenarios which have made editors' blood pressure rise alarmingly high for too long!
Thanks to the “components” philosophy backing it up, Paragraphs provides you with separate fields for images, videos, text and pretty much for any other content medium. Practically your end-users won't have the standard “body” at their disposal anymore. It gets replaced by a set of Paragraph types/components standing for text blocks, image slideshows etc.
So, you get to enter and edit to your liking each piece of the puzzle making up a web page. And all these pieces won't risk to compete and thus to sabotage one another!
As a Drupal developer, my job (which the Paragraphs module streamlines a lot) is to set up the template for the page's components and the styles that the content editor will then use for entering his/her unique content.
Zero risks for that content to look weird or amateurish on mobile devices, zero risks for the non-technical editors to mess something up and zero risks for this pre-established format to look different on various pages of the website.
And also unlimited control over the way your (or your client's) site looks on various devices (thanks to the pre-established template of components)
Consistency throughout the entire website + Flexibility for controlling how your site looks on certain devices!
In addition to cutting all these “risks” off your list, you also get to empower your end-user (the content editor) to create responsive content on-the-fly by using the template you will have put together! Not to mention that he/she'll gain more time to invest in “polishing” and perfecting his content (instead of making “risky” moves using the WYSIWYG editor)!
2. The Paragraphs Module Enables Us to Re-Use Code
And, as a Drupal developer in Canada you will definitely empathize with me when I say that: “This is huge!”
Practically it allows you to start each new project with a huge head start and thus to save lots of hours of work. You get to easily import the code you (or other Drupal developers of your team) will have already used for certain individual components and even the code used for whole pages (“clusters” of components) to your new projects.
Isn't that amazing? A great proof that the Paragraphs module doesn't just help you empower your end-users, the content editors I mean, but that it also comes to streamline you own work, as well. It's been built both with content managers and back-end developers, too, in mind!
3. It Eliminates The Risks of Non-Technical Editors Messing Things Up
The “components” method takes the pressure of “messing something up due to lack of technical know-how” off your end-users' shoulders. And this is what I'm talking about when I refer to the “empowerment of the end-user”.
You know how editors often times need to add styles in the WYSIWYG editor's view source mode. Well, with the Paragraphs module for Drupal everything's so nicely structured and organized beforehand, that they can't risk breaking your “masterpiece” (your template).
The text field will already been defined, the image field, as well. All they need to do is simply fill in the blocks with their cool content!
The result: a clean and neat way of laying out all the individual elements, all the content pieces of a web page (not to mention the consistent way of laying them out throughout the whole website).
The risk of unintentionally breaking something in this perfectly structured “puzzle” goes down to zero!
4. Moreover, It Has that Familiar, Easy to Use Drupal Interface
And this is another great aspect that comes to ease both your and your end-users' work. You won't need to invest time in learning how to operate in a brand new interface.
The Paragraphs module “feels” like Drupal core!
Unlike other Drupal modules that come “equipped' with their own distinct user interface for you to get yourself familiarize with.
In other words: editing a page with Paragraphs, from the interface standpoint, will be as intuitive as you (and your end-users) hoped it would be.
Now, as you can easily tell, I'm still under the strong impression (the best one) that this module has left on me! It's turned out to be such a great tool that helped me not just to streamline my entire workflow, but to “future-proof” my web projects as a Drupal developer, too. Since empowering my end-users sure is all about future-proofing my work after all!
How about you? Have you tried it already? Are you maybe excited about other features than those I've listed here? For instance I didn't have the time to mention the whole collection of of design options that the Paragraphs modules “spoils” us with!