Drupal Web Design & Development · Richmond VA
When your website has to do more, you need a platform that can.
Garza Web Design is a Richmond, VA Drupal shop and Drupal Association member. We design, build, migrate, and maintain Drupal websites for organizations whose sites have to do more than a template can — and we'll tell you honestly if yours doesn't.
Drupal
Drupal development from a team you can sit down with
01 / The right call
When Drupal is the right choice — and when it isn't
Drupal is the right call when your website has to do things, not just say things: multiple locations that each need their own pages, a catalog with hundreds of items, member or client areas behind a login, several people editing content with different permission levels, or approval workflows before anything goes live.
Those requirements break template builders — you feel it as workarounds piling up, plugins fighting each other, and edits that take longer every month. Drupal was built for exactly this weight class, which is why it runs so many government, university, and enterprise sites.
And when Drupal isn't the right call — a five-page site for a business that needs the phone to ring — we'll say so and build you the simpler thing. Drupal is a tool, not a religion, and recommending the wrong tool would cost us the next seventeen years of referrals.
Good fit if: your list of website requirements has stopped fitting on one page.
02 / Modern Drupal
Drupal 11 websites your staff can actually edit
Drupal's old reputation — powerful but painful to edit — is out of date. Modern Drupal 11 gives your team an editing experience they can actually use: update a page, add a news item, or swap a photo without calling a developer or fearing you'll break the layout.
We build every Drupal site around that day-two reality. Your content is structured — locations, services, people, projects each have their own shape — so editors fill in fields instead of wrestling a blank page, and the design stays consistent no matter who's typing.
Underneath, you get what Drupal is known for: speed, accessibility, and a security track record institutions trust. The same search-first discipline from our SEO work is built in, so the power under the hood never comes at the cost of being found.
Good fit if: the person who "knows how to update the website" just gave notice.
03 / Stuck on old Drupal
Drupal migrations & upgrades
If your site runs Drupal 7, 8, or 9, it's past end of life — no more official security updates, with the risk compounding quietly every month. If you're on Drupal 10, you're safe for now, but Drupal 11 is where the platform is headed.
We plan and execute these moves for a living. An upgrade from Drupal 8, 9, or 10 to 11 is a managed, contained project. From Drupal 7, honesty matters: the platform changed so much that a "7 upgrade" is really a migration — your content, users, and rankings move to a rebuilt site. Anyone who quotes it as a quick update hasn't looked closely.
Either way you get a fixed quote, a plan that keeps the current site live until the new one is ready, and redirects that protect the Google equity your old site earned.
Good fit if: your site works fine but the version number behind it keeps you up at night.
04 / Kept current
Drupal maintenance & security updates
Drupal's security team publishes advisories on a regular rhythm, and the sites that get compromised are almost always the ones nobody was watching. With us, someone is watching yours. We track the advisories, apply core and module updates, and test that the update didn't quietly break the thing your staff uses every day.
It's the same promise as our hosting & support, applied to a platform we know deeply: your site stays current without you tracking release announcements, and when you need a change or something looks off, you call one number and a Virginian who knows your Drupal site answers.
Good fit if: your Drupal site hasn't been updated since the person who built it moved on.
05 / Skin in the game
A Drupal Association member, here in Richmond
Anyone can list Drupal on a services page. We're a member of the Drupal Association — the nonprofit that supports the platform, its security infrastructure, and its worldwide developer community. Membership isn't a certification; it's skin in the game, and a signal of where our work actually lives.
What that means for you: a team that follows the platform's direction and security releases as a matter of course, working from an office at 1011 E Main St in downtown Richmond — where you can sit across a table and plan a complex build in person, since 2009.
Good fit if: you're vetting Drupal vendors and want proof beyond a logo on a slide.
06 / Why local
Why a local Drupal shop beats a generalist for complex sites
Complex websites rarely fail on code — they fail on understanding. The catalog that was modeled wrong because nobody asked how your inventory actually works; the workflow that fits how a consultant imagined your office instead of how your office runs. The fix for that isn't more code. It's proximity.
A local Drupal shop can sit in the room with the people who'll live in the site — your editors, your office manager, your IT contact — and watch how the work actually flows before deciding how the site should. That's the difference between a generalist agency that treats Drupal as one more checkbox and a shop that builds on it deliberately: the hard part of a Drupal project is mapping your organization into structure, and that mapping goes wrong at a distance.
It matters after launch, too. Complex sites evolve — a new department, a new location, a new workflow — and the team that modeled your content the first time makes those changes in hours, not discovery meetings. With us that team is at 1011 E Main St in Richmond, at 804-447-0670, and it's the same all-Virginia team year after year. For a site your organization depends on, that continuity is the feature no platform provides.
07 / Straight answers
Drupal questions organizations ask before they call
Is Drupal overkill for a small website?
Sometimes, yes — and we'll tell you when it is. A five-page site whose job is making the phone ring doesn't need Drupal's machinery, and putting it there adds cost and upkeep without adding customers. We build plenty of simpler sites for exactly that reason. Drupal earns its keep when the requirements list grows: multiple editors, structured catalogs, member areas, workflows. Bring us what your site has to do, and you'll get an honest recommendation either way — that's what the free consultation is for.
Can you take over an existing Drupal site?
Yes — inheriting Drupal sites other teams built is normal work for us. We start with an audit: what version you're on, how far behind security updates you are, what custom code is lurking, and what shape the content is in. You get that assessment in plain English with a fixed price for getting the site healthy. From there we can maintain it, host and support it, and develop it forward — without you re-platforming just because the original developer disappeared.
What about upgrades from Drupal 7, 8, 9, or 10?
Drupal 7, 8, and 9 have all reached end of life, which means no official security support — those sites should move, and sooner beats later. From Drupal 8, 9, or 10, the path to Drupal 11 is a managed upgrade we scope with a fixed quote. From Drupal 7, it's honestly a migration to a rebuilt site — the platform changed that much — but your content, users, and search rankings come along, and the old site stays live until the new one is ready.
Free consultation · straight answers
Have a project too big for a template?
Tell us what your site has to do. You'll get a straight answer about whether Drupal fits — and a fixed price if it does.