Top 10 Drupal Websites in Asia: From The Jakarta Post to... the Mitsui Chemicals

What are the top 10 Drupal websites in Asia? 

What famous Asian brands, newspapers, NGOs, key players in various industries, have their websites powered by Drupal?

To answer your question, we've done some digging and put together a selection of the best Drupal-based websites in Asia, ranging from the most popular to the most niche ones:
 

1. Mitsui Chemicals Inc., Japan  

Japan's leading chemicals manufacturer runs its multi-site infrastructure on Drupal.

Why Drupal?
 

• because of the powerful multi-site and multi-language features that it provides, out of the box
• because Drupal enables them to store content centrally and then share it, personalized for each country, across their ecosystem of sub-sites: Japan, Germany, China, Singapore
   

In short: Mitsui Chemicals Inc. needed a robust CMS. One that could withstand its heavy structure of domains and groups of sites and enable them to manage all their content on a single platform.

2. ABS-CBN News and Current Affairs, Philippines

The news division of this reputed media corporation in the Philippines —  ABS-CBN — has its website powered by Drupal.

And the reasons why they chose this CMS are... pretty obvious:
 

• we're talking about a complex network of various types of content: video, multimedia, story...
• the website delivers critical news in real-time, so Drupal's feature of processing and publishing data in real-time is critical for them
• the newspaper has a whole community of online readers built around it, so it depends on Drupal's access control system
   

A content-heavy, high trafficked website, that updates its content in real-time… Drupal's built precisely for this type of scenarios.

And that's why ABS-CBN News and Current Affairs is listed among the top 10 Drupal websites in Asia.

3. The Haribon Foundation, Philippines

Now, we couldn't have left out non-profit organizations from our list of popular Drupal websites in Asia, now could we?

The Haribon Foundation is a biodiversity conservation organization in the Philippines, that trusted Drupal for turning its website into a user engaging one.

One that tells their story right to all the future volunteers, donors, members, and partners.

Why Drupal?
 

• because it ships with plenty of built-in functionality, enabling them to get their website up and running in no time
• because it provides them with a robust taxonomy system, which enables them to categorize and organize their content 
• because it's scalable: it's built to accommodate all future initiatives, no matter how bold, and all future loads of traffic
• because it's open-source 
• because it's easy to use by non-technical users (anyone can create, add, publish, and further edit content)
   

4. The Beijinger, China

A community website with an audience made of English-speaking expats living in Beijing, China.

Why did they go with Drupal?
 

• because of the different types of content that they display on their website, ranging from forums to events, to reviews, podcast, blog, directory, photo gallery
• because a significant part of the content is user-generated, which means that they can get the most of Drupal's user role and permission-based access control system 
• because they needed a CMS that could grant them the best editorial experience: adding and editing so many types of content, on different sections of the website, had to go... smoothly
   

5. The Jakarta Post, Indonesia, One of the Top 10 Drupal Websites in Asia

The largest English language newspaper in Indonesia, The Jakarta Post is on the list of the key media sites using Drupal.

A heavy load of content, that needs to be updated in real-time... these are just 2 of the key factors that turned Drupal into the only CMS suitable for this high trafficked newspaper site.
 

6. Amman Stock Exchange, Jordan

Another one of the top 10 Drupal websites in Asia, due to:
 

• the crucial role that this economic platform plays in the region 
• the outstanding user experience that it provides, despite the complex technical challenges that it needs to deal with “in the backstage”
   

Why did they choose Drupal over any other CMS option?
 

• Drupal enabled them to provide their users a mobile-first experience: a seamless user experience was crucial for the Amman Stock exchange website, with users being enabled to view charts, graphs, and tables on the go, from any devices
• Drupal provides the right tools to “empower the end-user”: users can set up and easily manage their own portfolios on the website, set filters for the content that they receive, personalize their notifications, etc.
• Drupal's robust enough to withstand high spikes of traffic
• Drupal integrates seamlessly with their ecosystem of third-party systems, that provide the Amman Stock Exchange users with market and financial information
• Drupal is multi-lingual right out of the box: Amman Stock Exchange could provide a personalized experience to business owners and investors from all over the world
   

7. Pacific Aikido, Japan

The Aikido dojo, which been teaching its classes in and around Tokyo since 1991, has its website powered by Drupal.

And it's no surprise to anyone why they chose it:
 

• Drupal makes it plain easy for the end-users to manage their own content: students and parents can log in and engage in conversations with the site owner, while the latter can upload and update content quick and easy
• Drupal's conveniently extensible: it enabled the team working on this project to implement the Image API and thus enable the site owner to upload his/her own images nice and easy
   

Images that get resized automatically, by default, once published on the website...

The website's both a public-facing site and an easy to use private back-end, where students and parents can communicate with the site owner.

8. Playtika, Israel

We can't put together a list of the most popular Drupal websites in Asia and not include Playtika, the leading gaming company based in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Since Drupal ships with a whole collection of responsive tools and responsive themes, it made it a lot smoother for their UI and UX design to look great on both their web and mobile websites.

9. Al Bawaba, Jordan

This independent digital news, blogging, and media platform — the largest one in the Middle East — is on all the “Top 10 Drupal websites” selections.

Why did they decide to build their digital presence with Drupal?
 

• because they have a large, diverse, and expanding content team — different types of editors, researchers, journalists, publishers — so they decided to leverage Drupal's system of user roles and its flexible content workflow
• because they depended on Drupal's powerful SEO features
• because they were facing increasingly high volumes of content (multimedia content here included) and Drupal's built with content-packed websites in mind
   

An efficient digital media assets solution and a conveniently scalable CMS were critical for this content producer and distributor in the Middle East.

So, Drupal was the only CMS framework that checked all the requirements off their list.
 

10. Taiwan Environmental Information Center    

Another NGO — the “product” of a larger non-profit and non-governmental organization: Taiwan Environmental Information Association —that's earned its place among the best Drupal websites in Asia.

Their website stands out as an extensive network of environment-related information: editorials, green events, feature articles, news...

Now, the reasons why they trusted Drupal with their digital presence are clear to anyone:
 

• it's open-source
• it empowers the content team to add, edit, and publish content (multiple types of content) on the fly
• it's extensible and conveniently scalable
• it's non-technical user-friendly
   

The END!

This is how our list of “top 10 Drupal websites in Asia looks like”.

What other websites would you have added?


Image by Lizbet Palmer from Pixabay