How to make your Drupal website ready to comply with the Digital Markets Act (DMA)

Why comply with the Digital Markets Act?

The Digital Markets Act (DMA) is a regulation designed to foster fair and transparent digital markets in the European Union. Its main objectives are to ensure competition, safeguard user rights, and establish a level playing field for digital businesses. For companies that rely on access to the platforms and data of companies like Google, Meta and Amazon, getting prepared for DMS compliance should be the number one priority for businesses operating in the European Union and the European Economic Area. 

While direct DMA compliance is only mandatory for gatekeepers, being prepared for its impact will give you a leg up on the competition and will help to secure your future revenue. The DMA requires gatekeepers to make sure businesses using their platforms process user data in a privacy-compliant way. Therefore, EU-operating companies face obligations from Meta, Google, and other gatekeepers to meet consent requirements for data collection and to be able to signal it to the gatekeepers. The recommended way to do this is to implement a consent management platform (CMP), such as Cookiebot CMP, to collect and validate consent in accordance with policies and regulations.

Proper consent management will be necessary to continue using gatekeeper services like Google Ads or Facebook Ads. Failure to meet these requirements may result in disruption or even the inability to use gatekeeper services, which could significantly impact your online presence and marketing efforts, particularly if you are a small or medium-sized business heavily reliant on digital advertising revenue.

We’ll take a closer look at Drupal’s key features to help you understand how you can use them to your business advantage. Then we’ll explain how to implement Cookiebot CMP in your Drupal account so you can get your business ready for the Digital Markets Act with just a few clicks.

Related article: How to make your Dorik website ready to comply with the Digital Markets Act (DMA)

Exploring Drupal CMS advantages and key features

Drupal is a powerful content management system (CMS) that offers a wide range of features and capabilities for businesses and website owners. One of the best benefits of Drupal is its flexibility and scalability. With Drupal, you can easily customize your website to meet your specific needs and goals. This flexibility allows you to easily adapt and grow your website as your business evolves.

Drupal also offers a wide range of modules and plugins. These modules enable you to add features such as social media integration, audience customization, and analytics tracking. This not only enhances the user experience but also helps reach target audiences more effectively. In terms of SEO, Drupal helps you manage keywords, create metatags, generate sitemaps, and handle other essential SEO tasks. 

Drupal excels in helping you manage workflow. It provides reliable tools for defining workflows and managing content changes, which streamlines the content verification process. This feature is particularly important if your organization requires a systematic approach to content management, ensuring smooth collaboration and content delivery.

Another advantage of using Drupal is its multilingual capabilities. Drupal makes it easy to create multilingual websites, enabling businesses to reach a wider audience and improve customer engagement.

Key Drupal CMS features

Let’s take a quick look at some of Drupal’s key features that can help you manage and scale your business website:

• Headless CMS capabilities: Thanks to its built-in web services, Drupal can operate as a Headless CMS for mobile apps, decoupled front-ends, and other applications. It supports various web protocols, such as REST, JSON:API, and GraphQL, simplifying data integration and enabling the creation of feature-rich applications.
• API integration: Drupal is designed with API support in mind, making it a versatile platform for developing and managing applications that require rich functionality. This enables developers to build dynamic content, create mobile applications that sync data with Drupal servers, and integrate Drupal with other systems, like CRM or document management systems.
• Extensible modules: Drupal offers a wide array of plugins, called modules, that can extend its core functionality. With over 50,000 modules available in the official repository, you can enhance existing features or add entirely new ones. Notably, the Views module simplifies database queries, enabling you to create subpages or blocks without the need for SQL knowledge. Blocks can be customized to display content based on categories.
• Versatile themes: Drupal provides a range of themes, enabling you to customize the appearance of your website according to your preferences. Whether you have a specific design concept in mind, or just need something that works out of the box, you’ll find a theme that suits your needs.
• Predefined projects: You can conveniently download various predefined projects from Drupal’s official website, including JavaScript components, Drush extensions, and PHP libraries. For example, the Drupal Clean Package Composer Plugin streamlines the removal of unwanted files from installation packages based on defined rules.
• Flexible multisite options: Drupal offers different multisite configurations to suit your needs. The Classic Multisite configuration allows each Drupal site to have its own configurations and databases while sharing the same codebase. The Configuration Split module enables you to determine which configurations should be shared or removed. The Features module empowers you to define specific functions for import.
• User-friendly layout builder: The Layout Builder module provides an intuitive “drag and drop” interface, making it easy to create custom layouts for individual websites and entire content types. This ensures that your web pages can be tailored precisely to your requirements.
• Olivero front-end theme: Introduced in Drupal 9 and 10, the Olivero theme is the default front-end theme. It features a modern and responsive layout that runs smoothly on various devices, offering a user-friendly experience.
• Gutenberg module: If you have experience with WordPress, you’ll appreciate the presence of the Gutenberg module in Drupal. This user-friendly and customizable module enables you to add your own blocks to enhance your content.
• Robust user management: Drupal provides comprehensive user management features, enabling administrators to grant specific permissions to manage the site effectively. User accounts, roles and permissions can be configured in various ways, ensuring flexibility in managing user access. User profile fields can also be customized to gather additional information during the registration process.
• Secure authentication and password management: Drupal offers robust user authentication and password management features, including password reset and account recovery integrated with multi-factor authentication for enhanced security.

Consent management with Drupal CMS

Consent management plays a crucial role in business performance optimization and marketing personalization. It involves obtaining the necessary permissions from customers to collect and process their personal data, ensuring compliance with data protection regulations. Consent rates are key indicators of how successful your company is at providing users with a transparent, trustworthy consent management experience.

High consent rates are essential for your organization’s performance and profits. When customers provide their consent for personal data use, you can collect and analyze their data to gain valuable insights. These insights can be used to improve your products and services, increase revenue, enhance customer experiences, and help you make more informed decisions. 

On the other hand, low consent rates can limit the opportunities for businesses to optimize their performance. Without consent, you may be unable to collect and analyze enough valuable customer data, limiting your ability to personalize marketing efforts and improve conversion rates. 

In Drupal, you have the option to manage your consent in a privacy-compliant way with the use of Cookiebot Consent Management Platform (CMP), an advanced privacy tool that includes statistics and insights about user opt-in rates. The Cookiebot CMP is automatically updated every time new privacy regulations come into effect or are updated, so you can maintain compliance on your website without worrying about ever-changing privacy laws. Cookiebot CMP has been developed to meet the requirements of the Digital Markets Act, so it’ll help you to comply with them, obtain valid user consent and get ready for the additional new requirements coming from gatekeepers.

“Cookiebot CMP is set to be a game-changer in getting websites ready for the Digital Markets Act and the subsequent market shifts. Its seamless integration with Drupal CMS simplifies implementation on websites, providing businesses with a strategic advantage in adapting to the evolving digital landscape.”
Felipe Iregui, Director of Platform Partnerships at Usercentrics (Usercentrics is Cookiebot’s™ parent company)

Cookiebot CMP integrates smoothly with Drupal, enabling you to effortlessly generate and personalize consent banners, implement detailed consent choices, and monitor user consent preferences.

Step-by-step guide to adding the Cookiebot Consent Management Platform to Drupal 

For installing and configuring the Cookiebot CMP on Drupal you don’t need to have coding skills. You can do it yourself in just a few simple steps. Let’s dive into the process of adding a Cookiebot Consent Management Platform on your Drupal website.

Step 1: Sign up for Cookiebot CMP

To get started, sign up and create a Cookiebot™ account.

• Get started in 3 simple steps
• You can try our CMP for free for 14 days
• Full access to all premium features
• Extensive help center with guides and technical support ticketing
• You can cancel your subscription anytime

Step 2: Install Cookiebot CMP in the Drupal module

Video from our partner Hinto to walk you through installation of the Drupal Cookiebot Module.

Once you’ve signed up for Cookiebot CMP, install it on your Drupal website via the Drupal module.

• Log in to your Drupal Dashboard and navigate to the “Extend” section in the left sidebar.
• Click on the “+ Install new module” button.
• Search for the Cookiebot Drupal module and click on the “Install” button.
• Enable the module by clicking on the “Enable newly added modules” link.
• Configure the module by clicking on the “Configure” link next to the module.

Step 3: Configure the Cookiebot CMP Drupal module

Video from our partner Hinto with important configuration information about the cookie

In the configuration settings of the Cookiebot CMP Drupal module, you can customize the appearance and behavior of your consent banner. Here are the key settings you can adjust:

• Cookiebot ID: Enter your Cookiebot ID, which you can find in your Cookiebot account.
• Consent banner position: Select the position where you want the consent banner to appear on your website.
• Design customization: Customize the look and feel of your consent banner by adjusting colors, fonts, and styles.
• Cookie declaration: Enable the display of a cookie declaration to provide transparency about the types of cookies used on your site.
• Language customization: Choose the language for your consent banner to ensure that it is easily understood by your website visitors.

Step 4: Publish the consent banner

Once you have configured the Cookiebot Drupal module with your preferences, you are ready to publish the consent banner on your Drupal website. Simply save the configuration settings, and the consent banner will be automatically displayed to your website visitors.

Here you can read about all Cookiebot CMP modules available within the Drupal ecosystem, including:

• Cookie Consent Notice
• Cookie Content Blocker
• Cookiebot Ignore

Video from our partner Hinto to help you solve common challenges with installation.

Discover Drupal’s module that integrates Google Tag Manager with the Cookiebot CMP

Drupal’s GTM Cookiebot module makes it easy to integrate Cookiebot CMP and Google Tag Manager. Google Tag Manager cookie consent is especially helpful if your goal is to prevent cookies and scripts from GTM running before getting user consent. 

Simply set up a Cookiebot™ account, get a GTM ID, and input it on the configuration page in Drupal for smooth functionality. All additional external JavaScript can be added through GTM and will be checked by Cookiebot CMP.

For websites supporting multiple languages, there is also the option to customize language usage. You can define the language(s) for the consent banner, and, if preferred, assign a separate GTM ID for each language.

Additionally, this module generates a dedicated page that displays the enabled and/or available cookies on your website. This information is retrieved from your Cookiebot CMP account.

Benefits of using Cookiebot Consent Management Platform

By integrating Cookiebot CMP with your Drupal website, you gain access to a wide range of benefits that enable compliance with privacy regulations and enhance user experience. Here are some key benefits of using Cookiebot CMP.

Customization options

With Cookiebot CMP, you can extensively customize the appearance and behavior of your consent banner to align with your brand and website design and be user-friendly.

Automatic cookie scanning

Cookiebot CMP automatically scans your website to identify and categorize the cookies used, saving you time and effort in maintaining an up to date cookie inventory.

Consent management 

Cookiebot CMP provides a user-friendly consent management interface that enables you to track and manage user consents, ensuring compliance with privacy laws.

Multilingual support

Cookiebot CMP supports multiple languages, enabling you to provide a localized cookie consent experience for your website visitors.

Regular updates

Cookiebot CMP is automatically updated to stay up to date with the latest privacy regulations, enabling continuous compliance on your website. 

Improving DMA compliance on Drupal websites for better user experience

Here are some practical suggestions to enhance the UX of your Drupal website for better consent management.

Simple and clear information

Maintain transparency regarding your data processing activities, consent choices, and user rights. Use plain language and avoid technical or legal terms.

Detailed consent options

Provide detailed consent choices, enabling users to select which data processing services they agree to. This empowers users and increases transparency.

User-friendly design and navigation

Ensure your Drupal website’s design and navigation are easy for users to understand and use. Simplify the process of finding information about consent management and exercising their rights.

Transparent cookie policy

Clearly convey your website’s privacy and cookie policies, offering users options to control and manage cookies. If you don’t have one yet, consider using our privacy policy generator.

Conclusion and next steps for Digital Markets Act compliance using Drupal

Getting ready for the Digital Markets Act (DMA) is crucial for businesses operating in the EU/EEA and that depend on gatekeeper platforms and services for audience, data, and revenue. By following the steps outlined in this guide, you can ensure that your Drupal website meets DMA requirements, with a focus on consent management.

Maximize the existing features of the Drupal CMS and website-building platform to strengthen your data privacy strategy. Leverage seamless integration with Cookiebot CMP to enhance your website’s data compliance and show your website visitors you value their privacy. Stay updated on the latest developments in data protection and user privacy by subscribing to our newsletter. 

Frequently Asked Questions