A Drupal showcase website: interactive mapping, faceted search and modular editorial content

The need: something to explore, not just to read

A showcase website does not simply publish pages: it has to let people explore a territory, a heritage, a collection of places. The challenge is twofold — a rich experience (map, search, media) for visitors, and a flexible editing tool for the team, so content can live without asking for development work on every page. The whole architecture follows from that.

An interactive map, not a clickable image

The heart of the experience is an interactive map. We built it on MapLibre GL (smooth vector rendering, with no proprietary dependency), fed with GeoJSON generated directly from Drupal: each place is a geolocated entity (geofield), exposed through a GeoJSON view and displayed as filterable points. In practice, the map and the content are never out of sync: you edit a place in Drupal and it appears on the map. It is a data-driven map, not a static illustration.

Faceted search that handles the volume

Exploring means filtering. Search relies on Search API indexed in Solr, with combinable facets (theme, type, location…) and reusable search blocks. Solr brings speed and relevance on large volumes where a database search runs out of steam. Coupled with the map, search becomes a real navigation tool: you filter, and the list and the map respond to each other.

Modular editorial content, without a proprietary page builder

Pages are built from reusable components (Paragraphs, with a rich editor and a block library), complemented by referenced views and a front-end component system. The team assembles its pages from approved blocks — sections, media, lists, map — without writing code and without the debt of a proprietary page builder. Freedom of composition, within a framework.

Media and galleries, accessible by default

A showcase website is highly visual. We integrated galleries and accessible carousels (keyboard navigation, screen readers), clean handling of images and SVG, and responsive videos. Accessibility is not an end-of-project fix: the media components are chosen and configured to be usable by everyone from the start.

International reach, SEO and privacy

The website is multilingual (content and interface strings, with a tooled translation export/import workflow), properly optimised for search (metadata, readable URLs, redirects, sitemap) and respectful of privacy (consent management, anti-spam protection for forms). All of these are built into the foundation rather than added afterwards.

Rich, but maintainable

A feature-rich website is only valuable if it remains sustainable. The project runs on Drupal 10 / PHP 8.2, hosted on a managed cloud, with a modern quality chain: tooled code review, static analysis (PHPStan), functional tests (Codeception), detection of deprecated APIs ahead of version upgrades, continuous integration and error monitoring (Sentry). This is what makes it possible to add a map layer or a search facet without weakening the whole.

Taking over or enriching a feature-rich Drupal site

For an agency, the question is: can such a rich website be taken over and enriched without breaking everything? Yes — because it is structured: explicit geolocated data, indexed search, component-based content, tooled quality. We know how to audit a feature-rich Drupal site, understand its map, its Solr index and its editorial model, and extend it — a new map layer, a new content type, another language — properly.

Frequently asked questions

In short: a successful showcase website is well-tooled exploration — a data-driven map, faceted search, modular editorial content — built on a modern, maintainable Drupal foundation. Rich for visitors, simple for the team, easy for an agency to take over.