What Does a Site Builder Do in Drupal? Alejandro Madrigal Breaks It Down

Staff Reporter

Avoid These 5 Common Mistakes When Upgrading Your Drupal Site

In the second instalment of 24 Days of Drupal, Alejandro Madrigal unpacks what it really means to be a site builder, drawing from his own early experiences grappling with Drupal’s interface-heavy workflow. Initially confused by the abstraction of content fields and automatic markup, he came to see the strength in site building—solving complex needs without needing to touch code.

Alejandro emphasises how early structural decisions, such as field naming conventions, can impact performance, template complexity, and content management in the long term. He suggests using generic fields across multiple content types to reduce database joins and rendering overhead. He also advocates for leveraging Drupal’s view modes, display settings, and tools like Layout Builder, UI Patterns, and Display Suite to manage presentation cleanly. These small but strategic choices define the site builder’s role: making the rest of the team’s job easier by thinking ahead. More insights are promised in future posts in the series.

Reference: And exactly what does a site builder do? (Part 1) [24 Days of Drupal Day 2] by Alejandro Madrigal (alemadlei) (3 December 2025)

Site Building

Layout Builder

Disclosure: This content is produced with the assistance of AI.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this story do not necessarily represent that of TheDropTimes. We regularly share third-party blog posts that feature Drupal in good faith. TDT recommends Reader's discretion while consuming such content, as the veracity/authenticity of the story depends on the blogger and their motives.

Note: The vision of this web portal is to help promote news and stories around the Drupal community and promote and celebrate the people and organizations in the community. We strive to create and distribute our content based on these content policy. If you see any omission/variation on this please reach out to us at #thedroptimes channel on Drupal Slack and we will try to address the issue as best we can.