«Me And The Operators» is a rock music band from Lucerne, Switzerland. Their old website was based on Drupal 7. Because of several conceptual changes, this site has been completely rebuilt (and therefore not using Backdrop's upgrade path for D7 sites).
The design was created around the existing logo, using some web fonts from the Adobe Type Library, and inspired by a couple of existing websites dedicated to Southern Rock Music. The concert section features switchable banners for "cancelled" and "postponed" concerts, due to the Covid-19 lockdown in Spring 2020.
The theme was created from scratch using the UIkit CSS framework, which also controls the concert archive with image galleries (example here)
As a long-time user of Drupal, I started with Drupal 8 way back when it was in Beta, but I terribly failed creating even small sites. Drupal 8.6 was the first version that was stable and mature enough (at least from my sitebuilder's perspective), but it still lacked several key functions from Drupal 7, especially the ability to export configuration as reusable Features. All my «featurized» D8 sites simply crashed... while I felt an increasing pressure to find a long-term solution for 50+ existing customer websites on D7.
The longer I was looking for an alternative (I checked a lot of Drupal alternatives, including Craft CMS, Wagtail CMS, October CMS, Squarespace), the more I saw the benefits of the Drupal 7 Features module, Views (database queries by configuration), contextual content, view modes or also multisite when creating websites on a regular basis for similar customer needs.
Backdrop CMS was chosen because it supports exactly those scenarios: I might never develop another event calendar again from scratch, because the one on meandtheoperators.ch can be exported and adapted to different needs. The exportable configuration will serve as a base for any other calendar requirement in the future. Backdrop's configuration management takes the Drupal 7 Feature module to a new level, and is clearly better suited to my needs than the one in Drupal 9.
Backdrop CMS might not be the coolest CMS for creating ambitious digital experiences, but it's a powerful workhorse for small agencies who are seeking ways to productize their services.
