They've trusted Metadrop
From leading real-estate news outlets to major multi-title media groups, publishers across Southern Europe and beyond have relied on Metadrop to build, run and scale their Drupal platforms.
Metadrop builds high-traffic, SEO/GEO-driven Drupal platforms for news publishers and media groups. We deliver editorial workflow at scale, low-risk migration and the performance to survive traffic spikes.
Why Drupal for media & publishing
News publishers and media groups live and die by organic traffic, publishing speed and uptime under load. Drupal is the enterprise-grade open-source CMS built for content-heavy, high-traffic, multi-market publishing, which is why serious media organisations run their titles on it.
Why Drupal for Media & Publishing
News publishers and media groups live and die by organic traffic, publishing speed and uptime under load. Drupal is the enterprise-grade open-source CMS built for content-heavy, high-traffic, multi-market publishing, which is why serious media organisations run their titles on it.
Built for traffic spikes
A caching and CDN architecture that holds up when a story goes viral, so the site stays online through the surge.
Editors self-serve
Newsroom teams publish, schedule and restructure content without waiting on developers or a release cycle.
SEO/GEO by design
Clean URLs, structured data, hreflang, sitemaps and AI-crawler controls that protect and grow organic and generative-search visibility.
Multilingual & multi-country
Run many country and brand sites in 30+ languages from a single governed codebase, with cross-site content syndication.
Ad-tech and audience-ready
Native integration with analytics, ad-monetisation and audience-engagement platforms such as Chartbeat, Marfeel and Tealium.
Open source, no lock-in
An auditable codebase you own outright, with no per-seat license fees eating into thin publishing margins.
Talk to a senior Drupal team that runs high-traffic media platforms every day.
Performance under traffic spikes
A breaking story can multiply traffic in minutes. We engineer the platform so a spike is a good day, not an outage.
- Multi-layer caching: Redis, Varnish and a Fastly CDN absorb read traffic so origin servers stay calm under peak load.
- Cache warming & smart invalidation: fresh content propagates fast, and an article update never triggers a thundering-herd cache stampede.
- Asset offload & optimisation: S3 media offload, HTML minification, WebP images and lazy loading keep Core Web Vitals healthy under load.
- Proven at scale: performance stacks tuned for high-traffic news platforms carrying millions of monthly readers.
Need to diagnose where your current platform breaks first? Our hosting & DevOps team scopes and runs the performance and infrastructure layer.
Editorial workflow at scale
Volume publishing needs more than a text box. We model the full newsroom workflow directly into Drupal so a large, multi-role editorial team moves fast without stepping on each other.
- Content moderation states (draft, in-review, approved, archived) mapped to your editorial sign-off chain.
- Editorial calendar, planner and kanban so editors plan, assign and track stories across the pipeline visually.
- Scheduled future publishing and automated unpublishing for embargoes, campaigns and timed releases.
- Role-based editorial access so section editors, contributors and freelancers see and touch only what they should.
- Revision history and audit trail on every piece, with content locking to prevent conflicting concurrent edits.
Migrating from WordPress & legacy CMS
Legacy or proprietary CMS lock-in, WordPress hitting its ceiling, or a Drupal 7 end-of-life deadline: migration is where most publishing projects start, and where SEO risk is highest. We de-risk it.
- WordPress to Drupal migrations that preserve content structure, URLs, redirects and rankings, so there is no traffic cliff after go-live.
- Legacy Drupal upgrades (Drupal 7 → Drupal 8/9/10/11) with full content and configuration migration, clearing technical debt in the move.
- SEO-safe cutover: URL mapping, 301 redirects, structured data and metadata carried across so organic visibility survives the switch.
- Test-first delivery (BDD) so behaviour is verified before it touches production.
For the migration mechanics and a scoped plan, see WordPress to Drupal migration.
SEO & GEO for publishers
For a publisher, search visibility is the business model. We treat SEO and generative-engine optimisation as platform architecture, wired in from the start.
- Technical SEO foundations: clean crawlable URLs, canonical handling, XML sitemaps, structured data (Article, Organization, Q&A schema) and fast render.
- Core Web Vitals tuned for the ranking impact of speed on content-heavy pages.
- GEO readiness: structured, liftable content and AI-crawler controls so your journalism surfaces in AI answers, not just blue links.
- Multilingual SEO: hreflang and per-country metadata so each market ranks in its own language and region.
Already live and losing ground in search? Start with an independent technical SEO audit.
Multilingual & multi-country syndication
Media groups rarely run one site. We consolidate a network of country and brand titles into one governed estate that still respects local editorial autonomy.
- One codebase, many sites: run multiple country sites and in-group subsites from a single, maintainable platform.
- Cross-CMS content syndication via SSO so titles in the group share and republish content across the network.
- RSS and wire syndication in and out, feeding aggregators, apps and partner platforms.
- Elasticsearch-powered search for fast, faceted, multilingual discovery across large archives.
Ad-tech, analytics & monetisation
Reader attention only pays if it is measured and monetised. We integrate the audience and revenue stack cleanly into the platform.
Audience analytics
Real-time engagement measurement with Chartbeat wired into editorial decision-making.
Ad and revenue platforms
Monetisation and audience-development tooling such as Marfeel integrated into templates and page flow.
Tag and data management
Tealium tag governance for consistent, consent-aware tracking.
Paywall & subscription-ready
Architecture prepared to integrate reader-revenue, metered and gated-content models. We integrate the paywall; your billing engine stays as it is.
Maintenance, governance & long-term support
A live news platform is never "finished": it runs 24/7 and can never quietly break. We operate it for the long term under a defined, accountable model.
- Preventive & corrective maintenance with proactive monitoring and defined response times.
- Continuous security patching and Drupal core updates on live, business-critical platforms.
- Ongoing evolution, with new features, sections and integrations delivered on a stable release cadence.
- Independent technical governance through Tech Leadership as a Service: we audit and coordinate your internal newsroom-tech team and other vendors so a complex multi-site estate stays cohesive.
- 15+ years Drupal, Drupal Silver Certified Partner, delivering across 50+ countries and 30+ languages.
Our experience in media & publishing
Selected, anonymised outcomes from our media and publishing engagements.
- Ran a multi-country real-estate news platform, 3 country sites plus 14 subsites on a single Drupal codebase, migrated from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 and later upgraded to Drupal 10.
- Built a high-volume editorial workflow (content moderation, editorial calendar and kanban planning, scheduled future publishing and role-based editorial access) for a leading news outlet.
- Integrated audience-analytics and ad-tech/monetisation platforms (Chartbeat, Marfeel, Tealium) into a high-traffic media site.
- Engineered a traffic-spike-ready performance stack (Redis, Varnish, Fastly CDN, S3 offload, cache warming) for a news platform under heavy load.
- Delivered Elasticsearch-powered search plus RSS and cross-CMS content syndication across an in-group network of media sites.
- Migrated an online magazine from WordPress to Drupal, rebuilding the editorial workflow and contributing two engagement modules back to the Drupal community.
Frequently asked questions
Why choose Drupal for a news or publishing website?
Drupal combines enterprise-scale performance, native multilingual and multisite support, a mature security model and rich editorial workflows, which is the exact mix a high-traffic publisher needs. It absorbs traffic spikes through layered caching and CDN, lets editors self-serve without developers, and runs many country and brand titles from one governed codebase, all with no license cost and no vendor lock-in.
Drupal vs WordPress for publishers: which is better?
For a large, frequently-publishing, multi-author or multi-site operation, Drupal is the stronger fit: it handles complex editorial workflows, granular permissions, multilingual multisite and high traffic natively. WordPress suits smaller sites with light publishing. Once you need governance, scale and structured content across a network of titles, Drupal wins on total cost and control.
Can you migrate our WordPress or legacy CMS site without losing SEO rankings?
Yes. We map every URL, set up 301 redirects, and carry structured data and metadata across so organic visibility survives the cutover, with no traffic cliff after go-live. We have migrated publishing sites from WordPress and from legacy Drupal (including Drupal 7 end-of-life) using this SEO-safe method.
How does Drupal handle sudden traffic spikes when a story goes viral?
We engineer a multi-layer performance stack (Redis and Varnish caching, a Fastly or equivalent CDN, media offload to S3, HTML minification and cache warming) so read traffic is absorbed before it reaches origin servers. Spikes become a good day rather than an outage, and Core Web Vitals stay healthy under load.
Can our editors manage content without involving developers?
Yes. We build editorial workflows with moderation states, an editorial calendar, planner and kanban, scheduled future publishing, role-based access and reusable components, so editors and section teams create, schedule and restructure content independently. They publish at newsroom speed, not release-cycle speed.
Can Drupal run multiple country sites and languages for a media group?
Yes. We run networks of country and brand titles from a single governed Drupal codebase in 30+ languages, with cross-site content syndication via SSO, RSS and wire feeds, per-market SEO with hreflang, and Elasticsearch-powered multilingual search across large archives.
Does Drupal integrate with ad-tech, analytics and paywall platforms?
Yes. We integrate audience-analytics, ad-monetisation and tag-management platforms (including Chartbeat, Marfeel and Tealium) directly into templates and page flow, and prepare the architecture for paywall, metered and subscription reader-revenue models. We integrate these platforms and keep your billing engine as it is.
How much does a Drupal news or publishing website cost?
It depends on scale: number of sites, languages, migration complexity, integrations and traffic. We scope in phases so you can launch a strong v1 and add capability over time rather than paying for everything up front. Tell us about your platform and we'll give you a realistic, tiered estimate in a free consultation.
Talk to a media & publishing Drupal expert
Tell us about your platform (your traffic, titles, languages, current CMS and where it hurts) and we'll scope a free, senior consultation with no commitment. We'll translate the technical picture into clear business decisions.