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Mar 19 2024
Mar 19

Like every month, we prepared an overview of the top Drupal news & articles from the previous month. We hope you enjoy our selection for February 2024!

What’s new on Drupal.org - Q2 to Q4 2023

Let’s start with Alex Moreno’s overview of all the major things happening in Drupal between Q2 and Q4 of 2023, who kicks it off with DrupalConEurope 2023 in Lille, France together with Dries’s keynote (Driesnote) from the DrupalCon.

Next, Alex mentions the MVP organisation and MVP individual of the month before moving on to specific areas and initiatives such as Project Browser, Automatic Updates, Supply chain security and Security Audit.

Other key initiatives and priorities for Drupal last year and currently include the GitLab acceleration initiative, GitLab CI, the coming Drupal 7 end of life, Contribution Health Dashboards, and more.

Read more about what’s new on drupal.org between Q2 and Q4 2023

Contribution Health Dashboards: A Conversation with Alex Moreno

Next on our February selection is an interview with Alex Moreno by The Drop TimesAlka Elizabeth, in which Alex further breaks down and discusses the just mentioned Contribution Health Dashboards. As he highlights, these new dashboards will help uncover barriers to contribution and remedy the issues found this way.

Alex first talks about his beginnings with technology and his journey with Drupal which led to his current role as Drupal Innovation Coordinator at the Drupal Association. Then he talks in depth about the conception and development of the Contribution Health Dashboards, focusing on the technical challenges the team faced during development, as well as potential future possibilities of this new resource.

Read more about Contribution Health Dashboards

Next-Drupal 2.0: Making a Good Thing Even Better

We continue with the announcement of the release of the Next.js & Drupal integration, Next-Drupal 2.0, from Chapter Three’s John Faber. The main new feature of and the major reason for this release is the recent introduction of App Router to Next.js, which makes the already fast rendering even faster.

On top of the performance improvements with App Router, Next-Drupal 2.0 also boasts a streamlined developer experience, with the old Preview Mode getting replaced by a new feature called Draft Mode, which allows small changes to be made without having to do a full site rebuild for each one.

Read more about Next-Drupal 2.0

How Drupal Can Deliver Scalability and Flexibility for the Public Sector

Moving on with this month’s overview, we have an article from Pantheon’s Josh Koenig about the scalability and flexibility benefits of Drupal for public sector digital experiences. Straight away Josh highlights the main challenges of public sector websites, e.g. high-level security and accessibility, and points to Drupal as the ideal solution for these as well as for the fast evolving expectations people have from digital experiences.

According to Josh, one of Drupal’s core strengths is its composable nature, which allows organizations to build a more robust technology stack that better responds to their needs. Moreover, this composability also transforms work dynamics and streamlines architectural governance.

Read more about the benefits of Drupal for the public sector

Why you should care about using settings.local.php

Next up, this blog post by Michael Anello / ultimike of DrupalEasy breaks down why it’s so important for Drupal developers to make use of a settings.local.php when setting up their development environments. 

Namely, it allows developers to configure their local development environment in such a way that it fits the particular project they’re working on.

As Mike points out, the set up is quick and easy, with just two simple steps, and it’s wise to take care of it in the initial stages of setting up a new website.

Read more about using settings.local.php

Crafting A Winning Content Strategy for Your Drupal Site

In the next article from February, Greg O’Toole of Acquia takes a deep dive into creating a successful content strategy for a Drupal website on the Acquia Developer Portal blog.

He starts off with the basics of a robust content strategy, breaking down the essential elements of understanding your target audience and setting your goals accordingly, making use of the S.M.A.R.T. approach.

The rest of Greg’s guide is specific to Drupal, emphasizing its optimized SEO and accessibility capabilities, as well as its vast ecosystem of helpful modules, and resources for gauging the performance of your content strategy.

Read more about crafting a winning content strategy with Drupal

Drupal means innovation: Introducing the innovation hub

For the third time on this month’s list, we’re featuring Alex Moreno of the Drupal Association. In this post, he introduces the Drupal Innovation hub, which has three main goals: exploring innovation, providing inspiration and ideas, and contributing to the progress of the Drupal project.

While Drupal’s status of mature software makes it seem “boring” to newcomers and younger developers, Alex points out that “boring” actually means stable, proven, and reliable, with plenty of room for innovation thanks to this stability, combining the best of both worlds.

Read more about the Innovation hub

Satoshi Nakamoto's Drupal adventure

We’re concluding this month’s selection with a fun post by Dries about Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious figure behind the creation of Bitcoin, actually choosing Drupal as the CMS of choice for the relaunch of the Bitcoin website. This information comes from the private email conversations of Martti Malmi, an early contributor to the Bitcoin project, which he recently shared publicly.

Read more about Satoshi Nakamoto's Drupal adventure

Lightbulb lit up with a brain inside and ideas/connections coming out of it like tiny lights

If you enjoyed this recap, follow us on X and stay tuned so you don’t miss any new articles or podcast episodes.

Feb 20 2024
Feb 20

Agiledrop is highlighting active Drupal community members and interesting projects through a series of interviews. In this one, we spoke with Henk Beld, Solutions Architect at the web hosting company amazee.io of which Agiledrop is also a proud partner. He shared his journey of discovering Drupal and its vibrant community, as well as some important thoughts on the best path forward for the Drupal project.

1. Please tell us a little about yourself. How do you participate in the Drupal community, and what do you do professionally?

I have worked with Drupal since 2009 and helped organize DrupalJam in the Netherlands for two years. I have always promoted using Drupal and open source software throughout my career. As of the 1st of January this year, I am a Dutch Drupal Association board member. I currently work as a Solutions Architect at amazee.io, solving our customers' more complex hosting needs.

2. When did you first come across Drupal? What convinced you to stay, the software or the community, and why?

I came across Drupal in 2009 while working at a DIY product wholesaler with 300+ stores. Back then, they had Sitecore, but that needed to be updated, and after evaluating many CMS systems, I chose Drupal. We had a small team with a limited budget, and Drupal was the CMS that checked most of the boxes and had a wide variety of available modules.

We built all the new sites with available modules with limited to no customization. Ultimately, there was a corporate website and intranet, and every store had its own landing page with custom information. In the last year I worked with that company, we started publishing products and working towards e-commerce. I’m happy to say that they still use Drupal.

Overall, I liked Drupal, and because of that, I went to many DrupalCons and other meetups and made many friends in the community.

3. What impact has Drupal made on you? Is there a particular moment, e.g. from a Drupal event, which has really stuck with you?

Drupal has greatly impacted my life, and I get to work and have fun with amazing people working on great projects at notable global companies. I’ve been to places worldwide that I would not have seen without Drupal. It all started with DrupalCon Copenhagen, but it really kicked off at DrupalCon Prague in 2013, where I applied at Acquia, ending up in the enterprise world of Drupal.

4. How have you seen Drupal evolve over the years? What do you think the future holds for Drupal?

I have been out of the developer side of things for quite a while. Still, Drupal has evolved massively over the years in a good way, especially from version 8 up with the adoption of the Symfony Framework, Mobile & Multilingual, and API first.

The headless trend will progress, but integration of emerging technologies will also be necessary. I recently came across Sylius, an interesting open source e-commerce framework built on Symfony where both Drupal and Sylius could serve a headless frontend.

5. Why is Drupal such a great platform for enterprise?

Drupal stands out as an exceptional platform for large enterprises due to its comprehensive range of features tailored to meet complex needs. Its multilingual and multisite capabilities are indispensable for organizations operating across multiple countries, enabling seamless support for various languages. 

Its modular and highly customizable architecture offers unparalleled flexibility to tailor the site according to specific enterprise requirements. Also, the Drupal API-first approach facilitates smooth integration with various third-party applications and enterprise systems, including CRM, ERP, and marketing tools, streamlining operations and enhancing functionality.

Regarding scalability and performance, Drupal is designed to effortlessly manage high-traffic environments and large data volumes, ensuring enterprise websites remain efficient and scalable. 

The introduction of cache tagging in later versions further enhances performance by allowing targeted cache flushing for specific content updates. Security is another cornerstone of Drupal, featuring robust security measures backed by a dedicated security team and a community-focused approach to address vulnerabilities promptly.

6. What are the projects and initiatives within Drupal that you are most excited about and would like to highlight or promote?

While my current role has evolved beyond hands-on development, my engagement with the industry allows me to stay informed about key trends. One notable trend is the growing emphasis on decoupled Drupal architectures. Drupal is just great as a robust content management backend, offering comprehensive out-of-the-box features that perfectly fit as a backend for frontend technologies like React and Angular. This synergy enables developers to create dynamic, user-centric web experiences.

Another critical area of focus is the migration and upgrade path for existing Drupal sites, especially those still on Drupal 7. The availability of sophisticated tools and streamlined processes for migrating to newer versions of Drupal, such as 8, 9, and 10, is a game changer. Tools like that take care of a smoother transition for site owners and reinforce their commitment to Drupal by offering a clear, manageable pathway to leverage the latest technological advancements without the need to switch to alternative content management systems.

But as also highlighted at DrupalCon Lille, investing in Marketing initiatives will be very important! For instance, I see enterprises switching to Adobe Experience Manager more and more. I think Drupal should look more at collaborating with other open source projects, where possible, to strengthen its position in the broader tech landscape.

7. Beyond Drupal, what are you excited about this year? Either a new technology or a personal endeavor.

I’m looking forward to seeing what the year brings from a work perspective! With the massive focus on AI/LLM in 2023 and all the tools, I am curious about what will filter out in 2024. I see many more prominent companies starting to look into using AI/LLM in their company. One of those is also data sovereignty. I see companies are really prioritizing how to keep their data secure.

I recently attended and volunteered at State of Open Con in London. I saw the impact of open source around the globe on AI development, for example, and also heard about the challenges around legislation and open source. I really recommend listening to the event’s informative keynote, “The Open Society and its Enemies” by Professor Neil Lawrence.

On the personal side, I am close to finishing the long renovation project of our house and barn, intending to have an excellent workspace and all the energy requirements running on solar panels. I had a five-year plan, and it looks like I can just make it :)

Feb 14 2024
Feb 14

We’re back with our monthly overview of the top Drupal blog posts! Here are our favorites from January.

Introducing: the bounty program

First up, we have an announcement from the Drupal Association’s Alex Moreno about the introduction of a credit bounty program intended to maximize the impact of contributions from members of the Drupal community.

He lists 4 critical issues that will be included in the pilot version of the program and which maintainers need the most help with. For these issues, the reward will be 5 times the regular amount.

As Alex states, if the initial phase of the bounty program is impactful enough, the plan is to tweak and expand it going forward; he invites everyone to reach out to him with any questions and/or suggestions.

Read more about the credit bounty program

How to set up a local development environment (LDE) for Drupal

Moving on with our selection for this month, we have a guide showing how to set up a local development environment (LDE) for Drupal from David Rodríguez Vicente on his blog The Russian Lullaby. He first explains what an LDE is and what readers will accomplish by going through his guide, then proceeds with the software requirements.

The first thing to do is to set up a lightweight local environment for PHP, and then a heavyweight local environment based on software containers with DDEV. Finally, you need to set up an IDE for Drupal development, which includes VSCode, XDebug and PHP Codesniffer.

Read more about setting up a LDE for Drupal

Spotlight on Symfony in Drupal

Next up, we have a four part series of articles about using Symfony in Drupal by Blake Hall of Drupalize.Me. Part one focuses on the HttpKernel Component, a key Symfony component for coordinating the request/response cycle in Drupal. Part two is then dedicated to Symfony’s event dispatcher.

In part three, Blake takes a look at Symfony’s Routing component and how it can be enhanced with Drupal. In the fourth and final post, he focuses on utility components, i.e. other Symfony components which provide useful functionality, such as Console, Yaml, Polyfill, Serializer, etc.

Read part one about Symfony in Drupal

Planning Your Drupal 7 Migration: The to-do list you can't do without

Fourth on this month’s list, this article from Stella Power of Annertech provides 6 key tips to ensure a smooth and successful migration from Drupal 7 to Drupal 10. The first step is conducting a comprehensive content audit, followed by an assessment of your current Drupal 7 website and choosing the migration approach which is the best fit for you.

Step four demands evaluating the suitability of your existing modules and finding alternatives for unsuitable ones. The next crucial step is planning for your data migration. The sixth and final step then involves thorough testing and other post-migration activities such as SEO optimization.

Read more about planning a Drupal 7 migration

Why you need to start upgrading from Drupal 7 now

This next post comes from Oliver Davies who also wrote about upgrading from Drupal 7 to a more modern version of the platform. Even though the Drupal 7 end of life is almost a year away (the final extension lasts until January 2025), Oliver emphasizes the need to start planning the migration now rather than waiting.

More than 330,000 websites are still on Drupal 7, and upgrading requires a lot of time and effort, particularly due to the abundance of custom modules and themes, many of which may be contributed by community members and potentially outdated since the priority has been functionality for newer Drupal versions.

Read more about the need to upgrade from Drupal 7

Symfony Messenger

We continue with another series of articles related to Symfony and Drupal, this time coming from PreviousNext’s Daniel Phin and focusing on Symfony Messenger. Part one covers the features of Symfony Messenger; part two focuses on message and message handlers, as well as how Messenger compares to Drupal’s @QueueWorker.

Part three of the series covers the Consume command and prioritized messages. Part four then covers automatic message scheduling and how Symfony Scheduler can replace Drupal’s hook_cron. In part five, Daniel shows how to add real-time processing to QueueWorker plugins. 

Part six shows how to integrate Messenger with Symfony Mailer. Part seven focuses on displaying notifications of processed Messages. Finally, part eight takes a look at the future of Symfony Messenger in Drupal.

Read part 1 of Symfony Messenger in Drupal

How Much Does it Cost to Migrate from Drupal 7 to 10

Nearing the end of our selection from January, we have another article about upgrading from Drupal 7, this one written by Promet Source’s Sonal Bendle and focusing specifically on the costs of migrating from Drupal 7 to the current latest version, Drupal 10.

Sonal’s article starts off with a breakdown of what a Drupal migration is and the different elements that it requires. As she points out, the factors concerning design and/or themes are particularly important to keep in mind when planning the migration.

A key section of the article is dedicated to an overview of the essential migration scope, complete with both a pre-migration assessment table as well as a D7 to D10 content migration cost estimation table.

Read more about the costs of upgrading from D7 to D10

A Selfish Exercise in Selfless Commitment: Conversation with Michael Anello

For the final piece on this month’s selection, we have an interview with Michael Anello / ultimike, by Alka Elizabeth of The DropTimes, in which he shares his journey of Drupal contribution and mentoring. As he states in this interview, teaching others has been a bit of a selfish exercise for him, since it made him learn things much more in depth.

Michael also speaks more generally about his introduction to and experience with Drupal, as well as some of the contributions that he is most proud of. He finishes by reflecting on the biggest challenges of the past year and looking ahead to what this year will bring.

Read more about Michael Anello and his Drupal journey

Single bird flying through cloudy sky

That’s it for this month’s selection of articles. Stay tuned for more Drupal-related news and interviews coming soon to our blog!

Jan 23 2024
Jan 23

Happy New Year, everyone! Even with the hectic festive season, the final month of 2023 brought us a ton of fantastic Drupal-related content. Check out our top picks from December below!

Planning a Better "Hello, World" for Drupal

This time we’re kicking off our monthly selection with an article from Joe Shindelar of Drupalize.Me which highlights the need for a lower barrier of entry for newcomers to the project, namely with the introduction of a streamlined “Hello world” guide for new developers, along the lines of React’s Quick Start, for example.

Joe’s suggestion is perfectly in line with the overall mission of Drupalize.Me: providing quality learning resources for users of the Drupal platform. He also includes his current working draft of a proposed Drupal Module Developer Guide and invites other community members to share their suggestions and ideas with him.

Read more about the need for a better “Hello world” guide for Drupal

Drupal 10.2 is now available

Next up, we have an announcement of the Drupal 10.2 minor release by Gábor Hojtsy. Since the new approach to Drupal releases, major versions became compatibility releases while minor versions are now reserved for new features – and the same holds true for Drupal 10.2.

This minor release of Drupal brings new features such as easier content management, more flexible block placements, built-in file name sanitization options, faster permission management and other performance improvements, as well as developer experience optimizations. In addition, Drupal 10.2 is already compatible with the recently released PHP 8.3, with Drupal Core also starting to adopt the new PHP attributes.

Read more about Drupal 10.2

Using DrupalPod for core and contrib development

For the third article from December, we have Michael Anello (ultimike) from DrupalEasy showing how to use DrupalPod, a browser extension and GitPod configuration, for core and contrib Drupal development. One of its main benefits is that it allows developers to easily spin up a personal development environment in their browser without the need to pre-install anything else.

Mike’s article covers all the typical FAQs and steps, from getting started and launching your personal development environment, to the types of cases and users that DrupalPod is ideal for, and more. He concludes with a few next steps for the project.

Read more about DrupalPod

Now’s the time to plan your migration to Drupal 10

Fourth on this month’s list is an article from Four KitchensLaura Johnson about how to successfully upgrade to Drupal 10 from Drupal 7 which is nearing its final end-of-life extension next January. So, after 5th January 2025, any websites still on Drupal 7 will no longer get feature updates, bug fixes or security releases from the community.

On the other hand, moving to the modern Drupal 10 will bring many advantages, in addition to regular new feature releases and security coverage, of course. Some of the main ones are improved website speed & SEO, improved security with reduced maintenance costs, and an optimized content editing experience.

Read more about upgrading from Drupal 7 to Drupal 10

Managing Software Updates for Hundreds of Websites

We continue with an article by David Burns of Lullabot about Renovate, a tool that can automate your Drupal updates and thus help you to very efficiently manage software updates for all your websites.

David starts off by explaining why automating updates is so beneficial, with the key advantage of the amount of time saved as opposed to doing these updates manually. As he states: “Having Renovate (properly configured) is like having an extra developer on your team.”

He also breaks down the tool and its setup in a bit more detail, as well as two other similar options that have not worked as well for Lullabot. Finally, he shares their preferences and configuration for Renovate.

Read more about automating Drupal updates with Renovate

Drupal 10 Single Directory Components + Storybook

Another interesting article from December that we wanted to feature comes from freelance Drupal developer Albert Skibinski who wrote about integrating Drupal 10 single directory components (SDC) with Storybook, a front-end workshop for UI development. This article is a follow-up to one from 2019, when Drupal 8 was the current version and SDC had not yet been a thing in Drupal.

Single Directory Components have been available since Drupal 10.1 as an experimental module and can be integrated with Storybook by using Vite as a builder. Albert’s article covers the entire process, from setting up Storybook with Vite, to the Twig setup, the configurations for both Vite and Storybook, and to finally creating a component.

Read more about integrating Drupal 10 SDC with Storybook

Driven by Community; Not by VC Funds: Andrew Berry on What Differentiates Drupal from SaaS Offerings

Moving on, we have an interview with Lullabot’s Director of Technology Andrew Berry, from Kazima Abbas of The Drop Times. In the interview, Andrew recalls his first experience with Drupal and how it was Drupal’s open-source nature that drew him in, as that forces it to constantly compete with itself, in contrast with proprietary SaaS platforms with vendor lock-in.

Andrew also talks about Evolve Drupal and last year’s event in Toronto, his own contributions to the Drupal project, and shares some of Lullabot’s work and success stories. He closes with his thoughts on the current state of Drupal and in which directions the platforms will evolve.

Read the full interview with Andrew Berry

The new old: Jamstack and MACH's journey towards traditional CMS concepts

We conclude our selection for December with a great article from Dries about the Jamstack and how it has evolved since its original inception alongside other important web architecture trends.

As Dries highlights, one of the most notable trends in Jamstack’s evolution is how it has begun to embrace more traditional CMS features, with the leading Jamstack platform Netlify now moving towards the term “composable web platform".

Another related concept that the article covers is MACH architecture and how it, too, could benefit from traditional CMS features. We really like Dries’s conclusion to all this: while initially, the paths of these different web architecture approaches seemed to diverge, they are now starting to converge.

Read more about the evolution of Jamstack & MACH

Four skyscrapers converging in the sky

We hope you enjoyed revisiting our top picks from last month. We have a lot more content on Drupal, leadership and more coming out soon – stay tuned!

Dec 11 2023
Dec 11

We’re back with our monthly selection of our favorite Drupal articles & most important Drupal-related news. We hope you enjoy the November edition!

Beyond Code: Drupal’s Community, Impact, and Possibilities

For the first article from November, we have a great piece by Tiffany Farriss of Palantir about Drupal being more than just code and it goes hand in hand with community, since the code itself is a direct expression of the open-source values that Drupal has been built and has thrived on.

Tiffany’s article draws an interesting comparison between Drupal and the Ship of Theseus, since Drupal has changed so much since its inception over 20 years ago, yet its essence still remains the same. Finally, it challenges some outdated tenets of the Drupal community, such as emphasizing the need to get off the Drupal island, and closes by highlighting the importance of Drupal’s Open Web Manifesto.

Read more about Drupal’s community, impact & possibilities

On a 1-10, How Important is Your Drupal Website?

The next article comes from Danita Bowman of Promet Source and focuses on the risks of outdated legacy technologies such as Drupal 7, while contrasting that with the enhanced capabilities of newer versions and making a strong case for upgrading to Drupal 10, as well as exploring the reasons for such a large number of sites still running on the outdated Drupal 7.

Some of the major issues Danita’s article exposes are the viability of legacy technology and the fast approaching end of life for Drupal 7, meaning no security coverage or new features, except by custom request, as well as diminished Drupal 7 support from the community of contributors.

Read more about how Drupal 7 compares to the latest versions

CKEditor 5 Empowers Creativity: What's New in Drupal 10

Moving on, this article from Tony Hutson of cti digital also talks about the benefits of Drupal 10, but focuses particularly on the features of the new CKEditor 5 that comes out of the box in Drupal 10, and how these improve the experience of content editors working with Drupal. 

The features that Tony highlights are streamlined drag and drop; better link and table management; optimized handling of images and fonts; as well as a number of other useful extensions, plus the suite of CKEditor 5 premium features, including the Productivity Pack premium bundle. 

Read more about CKEditor 5 in Drupal 10

Love thy CMS!

It’s a rare occasion not to include an article from the Schema.org Blueprints modules maintainer Jacob Rockowitz in our monthly overview. In this one, he talks about learning to love your CMS, an idea that’s often been discussed in the Drupal community over the years in different settings.

An internal discussion at Jacob’s organization about the concept of loving one’s CMS was also the basis for his session demoing how Schema.org can help streamline Drupal’s content authoring experience, with the more appealing and poetic adjustment of “Love thy CMS!”.

Read more about loving thy CMS

A brief history of Drupal 7 and overview of end-of-life options

Since the Drupal 7 end of life is fast approaching (the final extension will end in just over a year), there has been a lot of important content lately related to the D7 EOL and what site owners’ options are. 

This great article from Kristen Pol of QuantCDN not only provides an overview of the end-of-life options, but also takes a look at the history of Drupal 7 since its release in January 2011 and how the fundamental reworking of the CMS with Drupal 8 impacted the community and led to the creation of Backdrop CMS.

Read more about the history of Drupal 7 & its EOL

Elevated Marketing Strategies with Drupal

Next up, we have an article about how Drupal empowers marketers, written by Kyla Tucker of Acro Commerce. The main benefits for marketers are streamlined back-end management, Drupal’s customizability, mobile-optimized design, top-notch SEO & analytics capabilities, and other useful UX features such as strong multilingual support.

To businesses that successfully leverage Drupal for their marketing strategies, the benefits are also plentiful; Drupal is cost-effective, prioritizes security, and has a number of other advantages stemming from its open-source nature that have transformed it into something more than a mere content management system.

Read more about using Drupal in your marketing strategy

The Pitchburgh Diaries - decoupled Layout Builder Sprint 5 & 6

We continue with an article by Lee Rowlands of PreviousNext who provides an update on the latest progress done on their Pitchburgh project, a React-based decoupled Layout Builder. 

This article breaks down the work of the final two out of six sprints that were part of the Pitchburgh budget, with the first four focusing on feature development and sprints 5 and 6 on instantiating the Layout Editor in an actual Drupal website.

Lee covers the key highlights from these two final sprints, and concludes by announcing that the PreviousNext team plan to continue working on this project beyond what was covered through Pitchburgh and already have a backlog of new desirable features.

Read more about decoupled Layout Builder Sprint 5 & 6

Drupal 10 will be supported until the release of Drupal 12 in mid-late 2026

Last on our Drupal news overview for this month is a blog post from Gábor Hojtsy announcing the Drupal release schedule from now up until the release of Drupal 12 in 2026. 

Following this new release schedule, a new major version will be released every two years, with two years of active support and an additional two years of maintenance and security coverage (e.g. for Drupal 10, this means support will end in 2026 with the release of Drupal 12).

Read more about Drupal’s future release schedule

People releasing lit lanterns into the air at night as part of some kind of festival and/or tradition

With that we conclude our November selection of top Drupal blog posts. We hope you enjoyed this month’s edition!

Nov 28 2023
Nov 28

Agiledrop is highlighting active Drupal community members and interesting projects through a series of interviews. This time we had a great conversation with Chapter Three’s managing partner John Faber about Next-Drupal, the need to change Drupal’s messaging in order to attract more people to the project, and what the future holds for Drupal. We hope you enjoy reading!

1. Please tell us a little about yourself and Chapter Three. How do you participate in the Drupal community and what do you do professionally?

My name is John Faber, and I'm the managing partner of Chapter Three. I've been in the internet business in San Francisco since about 1991 when I started an internet service provider. This was pre-everything. We sold bandwidth in San Francisco during the cowboy days of the internet, which was just so fun and it really was part of why I am still in internet because there was a lot of freedom in what we were doing. 

I sold that in 2000 and we had an economic turndown in 2000 as well, a pretty bad one here in the Bay Area where the whole internet kind of collapsed. And I had sold the company and so I wasn't doing internet stuff in terms of access, but I was looking for other stuff to do. And that is how I came across Drupal.

It was something like Drupal 3.9, really early in the days of Drupal. My drupal.org user ID is 5402. So I have a four-digit D.O account number, going back to how far back I started with all of this. And with Drupal, there was the business opportunity here for me to do website management, and I didn’t have to do all of the website work. It was really the beginning of database-driven websites. 

So I started a little business doing that; I really learned a lot about Drupal but wanted more. And so I ultimately ended up getting a job with a company called af83, out of France, and helping them here in the Bay Area establish themselves a little bit within the Drupal community. a883 then became Commerce Guys. So, I ended up working with Commerce Guys for a little while. And they had a larger vision for Commerce Guys that they were working on.

And I was here in the Bay Area doing that work for them. And then they launched Platform.sh. But in that time, I ended up getting a job at Chapter Three because the owners of Chapter Three were moving to Pantheon and they needed new people to operate the company.

That's where Stephanie and I came in. About 13 years ago we started running Chapter Three together in the same fashion that it always had been run, which was sort of as a well-known boutique Drupal strategy, design, development, training organization. And we have been doing that now side by side for 13 years.

And I guess some of the special sauce in what I do professionally – I am the top of the company with Stephanie, but one of the things that we do as managers is we work side by side with our employees on projects. We're in the trenches with our employees every single day. And that's a little bit different than some other top level management people. We find that doing that shows our employees that we are in it with them.

And the average employee tenure at Chapter Three is about 8,5 years. So we're doing something right at the company. But that's primarily about myself. I live in Lafayette, California, I have an 18 year old son who's in college, and we're still cranking away at Chapter Three every single day.

2. Of course we need to talk about Next-Drupal, the Next.js/Drupal integration by Chapter Three. Can you tell us more about how that came to be and how it’s progressing?

Next-Drupal was started as a side project during COVID, because our team had wanted to get into React and React-based headless websites and we had built some sites using Gatsby. And we didn't have a great experience with Gatsby because there was no real-time editing and even there were some bugs in it.

And so I told my team, I'm not doing decoupled, I'm not doing React sites unless you can solve this problem for me, which is, I'd like to replace the Twig templating system with a decoupled system of some sort. And what that means is I have to have all the editorial functions that editors have inside Drupal Twig in my decoupled setup.

And I thought that was a tall order, that there's no way they're going to be able to build that. Lo and behold, they built it, and it works. It might not be 100%, but it works pretty darn good. And what I mean by “it works” is it does replace the Twig templating system to some degree. You can do a lot of content editing on a decoupled website using Drupal.

So Chapter Three saw the potential there and decided to fund it, several hundred thousand dollars worth of work. And then we released it to the community to see if we can energize Drupal a little bit.

So we released it, and I talked to Dries about it and showed it to everybody – and it got some buzz, people were into it. And the project is really cranking along now. It gets downloaded 3,100 times a week out of GitHub. There's a ton of people using it. 

When I was in DrupalCon Europe, Next.js and Next-Drupal is where I saw true innovation coming out of the community. But I'm a little biased because that's sort of what I was looking for.

The project's progressing well. The goal now is to have more community contributions. I don't want it just to be Chapter Three building this thing, I want other people to come in and contribute their ideas and their code to this project so that we can make it more of a community effort. 

And I have this weird vision – when we look at inflection points inside Drupal, so, times when something really, really cool came out, and you just go, wow, that's going to change Drupal. There are not many. I sort of go back to Views; when Earl Miles first came out with Views, people were blown away by its potential, it was a game changer and nobody else had it. It was a visual MySQL query builder for content.

People were blown away, and it really changed Drupal, it energized people to do everything with Views. I sort of see Next-Drupal as the same thing. Let's make it like Views. Let's get it into Core. Let's make it part of Drupal. I don't want it just to be a Chapter Three project. 

I want it to be Drupal because we can then compete in the future of this digital world that we're in. So that's my vision, but I don't want to do that alone. I want the community to help me push that and help that be a community effort. So that's where we're at now.

I will say, the lead engineer who was on it now works at Vercel. And so we have a lot of Vercel viewage on this which is great. But what we need and what I'm pushing for right now is community involvement. 

I know there's Next. js people out there using it. And I know there's shops out there using it. Let's all work together to make it the best project inside Drupal, to energize people to come back to the Drupal community and go, yes, this is cool.

3. So, how can we do this? How can we encourage more people to get involved with Drupal and/or contribute to Drupal?

It's a tall order. I think the messaging from the top needs to improve in order to get people to come back to our community. I think there are things in our community that are exciting. But I feel like the messaging needs to change. And that is what I would do to encourage people to come back to the community. 

I would talk about some of the cool, sexy stuff that's going on inside Drupal and talk about what Drupal really is, which is an OG content architecture platform that we can use in a hybrid decoupled or a fully decoupled setup. 

It appears to me that this would be a good direction to bring people back into our community, because I just don't think that PHP and MySQL are really that attractive and you can't really make a compelling story around PHP for young people.

And so we need something else. I'm not seeing that right now. What I do see is communication about things like Project Browser, Automatic Updates, high-end visual layout builders as being the things that will bring people back to our community, and I respectfully disagree with that.

I do think those things are important and should get done. We've been talking about them for years. But I think that we need to figure out a way to energize the message around what Drupal truly is. And that message comes from the top, and that's how you encourage people to come back in.

And the Drupal Association is doing that now. They were at Web Summit. They're going to go to FOSS. They’ve got a new CEO, Tim Doyle, whose job is to change the messaging of Drupal and that's what needs to happen. 

And it needs to be supported from the top down of our community, and we have to have some laser focus on what we are doing as a community and what Drupal is doing as a software package in order to bring people back. And I would say they should focus on JSON:API, GraphQL and all of the sexy stuff that's out there. We're already doing it, but we're not really doing it.

4. How do you see the current state of innovation in Drupal?

There are cool things going on within Drupal, Drupal Core is constantly moving and improving. I love every bit of what they're doing. Unfortunately, the CMO and the decision maker and the marketer don’t understand that type of stuff.

And so I think the state of innovation inside Drupal could use a little kick in the butt. I do think there are things going on, but they're all focused on Twig and PHP and MySQL. And how much longer do we have with PHP, Twig and MySQL, especially in terms of talent?

As I said, when I was in DrupalCon Europe, the space where I saw innovation was inside Next.js. I saw someone starting his own company with a SaaS based version of Drupal running on Next.js. I saw another company create a killer installation profile with an automatic setup.

I saw another shop invest money in the Decoupled Search API. But I just didn't see much really cool stuff just happening in regular old Drupal, except for the cool stuff that's happening in Core, which I would definitely not deprecate. It's very cool. I love it, but why can't we improve the JSON:API output with a filter? People would love it a lot better. 

What's happening now is, people go out, they're like, Drupal is hard, so they leave, then they're like, we want to go decoupled, that might be really cool in Drupal. And then they use it as a decoupled platform and it's really hard. We need to solve the “really hard” somewhere. And I think it's pretty easy to clean up the JSON:API – but I am biased.

5. So, what do you think the future holds for Drupal? 

I think the future for Drupal holds specialization. I think that's where it's going. It's not a general product. It's a specialized product that lives inside very specific verticals like government, education, nonprofit, healthcare.

And I feel as though specialization is the differentiator that's going to be in the future for us when we know we need to get off the islands. We've been on the Drupal Island now for 20 years. We need to expand out. I think the Drupal Association agrees with that and has plans for that.

6. Besides Next-Drupal, are there any other contributions from Chapter Three that you are really proud of and would like to highlight?

Well, I love our Next.js contribution. I also love the work that we did in Drupal 8. We really inspired other companies to hire core maintainers. We hired Alex Pott for almost two years to help us get Drupal 8 over the finish line.

And we sort of set a model of paying someone a full salary and let them just work on Core and things get done. So I'm super proud of that because I feel like there are other companies now that are modeling that behavior. I know that Catch is employed, for example, and so I know that there are other people doing it, they see the benefit of that.

We also support 90 projects and have about 7,700 commits on Drupal Core right now. So that's quite large. I'm super proud of all of that work that we've given back. 

And then another one that I'm super proud of is our Apigee Developer Portal project, which is sort of under the covers. A lot of people haven't heard about it, but the Apigee Dev Portal is very cool and it's exposing Drupal to the really big stakeholders in their tech departments and they're seeing the value of it. 

I'm just generally super proud of Chapter Three, the way that our company operates and the fact that our company has been around for almost 17 years and really holds the same ethos and values as when it first started, which is: we're a cool company. We like doing cool stuff. We respect our employees. And I'm super proud of the fact that we've been able to keep that alive for so long.

Oct 23 2023
Oct 23

Last week I gave a talk about onboarding the next generation of Drupal engineers at DrupalCon Europe in Lille. This is one of the top priorities for the Drupal community right now, which was also recently highlighted by the Drupal Association. In this blog post, I’ll recap and break down the main points from my talk, which you can also watch here.

Bostjan Kovac, development director at Agiledrop, at DrupalCon Lille 2023

Credit to Bram Driesen for the photo

Junior Drupal developer – now vs. in the past

Let me start with a bit of my personal background. I’m the development director at Agiledrop, having first come into contact with Drupal some time around 2010 when I was working for a company that was switching from a proprietary CMS to Drupal. I made my drupal.org account in 2012 and made my first contribution in 2016.

Now let me introduce our engineer Admir who joined Agiledrop in July of 2023, went through our highly refined Drupal Onboarding project, and is now already making contributions to Drupal, with currently 22 issue credits on drupal.org, his first one being in September.

If we compare my learning journey with Admir’s, I was:

  • Self-taught
  • Producing low-quality output during my first projects
  • Learning a lot from my mistakes
  • Attending Drupal events to expand my knowledge
  • Only starting to apply best practices after several projects
  • Learning the hard way alongside the work I was doing for a living

In contrast, Admir: 

  • Has a dedicated mentor
  • Is able to learn Drupal specifics & best practices from experienced developers
  • Is able to take time during his daily work to learn & contribute
  • Is versed in & adopting best practices from day one

Just looking at this it is immediately obvious how valuable dedicated mentorship and onboarding can be in launching the next generation of Drupal developers and helping them to quickly get involved with the project and its community.

Problems that PHP & Drupal have today

One of the biggest obstacles to attracting new generations of developers to Drupal is the unfavorable perception of PHP and Drupal. 

PHP is not exactly the hype of today, and many developers consequently fall for the myth of PHP being “dead”, which is further perpetuated due to many old PHP-based projects on poor codebases being kept alive and giving the language a bad reputation.

On top of that, jobs in more “niche” languages such as Rust and Go tend to come with higher salaries, and the problems the code solves there tends to be of higher value. 

This makes these languages more attractive to newer developers, who ignore the steep learning curve and the experience in older, more traditional languages (such as PHP) required to become proficient and provide real business value in those niche languages, where value per developer is also higher in startups and product companies compared to agencies and IT services firms.

With Drupal, the entry to the technology has become harder, and versions 8+ requires more knowledge such as using Composer, OOP, etc. It’s become more geared towards the enterprise and is as such much less suitable for hobby projects. In addition, a lot of new frameworks such as Laravel are providing a great experience for developers.

So, what can Drupal companies do to overcome these obstacles and make Drupal/PHP more attractive to younger generations?

What Drupal shops can do

The key thing for agencies is to commit to promoting Drupal and teaching people how to use it; it’s not enough to just post a job ad for a PHP/Drupal developer. You need to actively look for people who are still exploring their interests and impress them.

Step 1: Find people that can become great developers

  • Mainly look for junior/mid-level developers who are exhibiting talent & are fast learners
  • Organize workshops & local meetups
  • Be active in local universities and other educational institutions

This is something that pretty much all agencies are able to do locally. And, to re-emphasize: prioritize finding newcomers rather than developer rockstars.

Step 2: Inject your required skills and experiences directly into their veins, fast

  • Actively mentor developers & teach them best practices and industry standards
  • Provide adequate help on their first project(s)
  • Teach soft skills alongside hard skills to help developers become more independent
  • As a company, contribute a custom module or take over the maintenance of an existing one to make it easier for developers to start contributing.

All of these are key steps in Agiledrop’s Drupal Onboarding project which we have refined over the years to better suit any type of developer. 

Step 3: Make this a process that runs like clockwork all the time

  • Make workshops, meetups and university presentations regular
  • Block the time of your seniors for reviewing and helping juniors
  • Build & nurture a company culture where everyone is encouraged to help
  • Find effective ways to give praise & reward the team members who help a lot
  • Mentor new mentors

Results

At Agiledrop, we’ve successfully integrated this process into the core of our company culture, and we just keep streamlining it as we learn over the years. Here are some of the top highlights that this dedication has yielded:

  • Over the past seven years, we’ve hired more than a 100 developers
  • At our peak, we had 6 people going through the Onboarding project at the same time
  • Since 2017, we’ve organized 22 external Drupal workshops
  • We started a more advanced PHP Masterclass workshop
  • We’ve hosted and organized several Drupal, PHP, Laravel and other open-source meetups in our offices
  • We were active & present at other events, such as the local JobFair for University students

Conclusion

By employing the three steps outlined above, you’ll greatly minimize the most typical challenges for new developers and provide them a great employee & developer experience from day one. I hope my session and this blog post give you a better idea of how to approach and how to streamline your onboarding process.

For anyone looking to learn more or having any other questions, you can find me on social media (@boshtian) or reach out to Agiledrop directly for anything specific. I wish you lots of success in all your future Drupal onboarding initiatives!

Sep 06 2023
Sep 06

We’re back with our selection of the top articles related to Drupal and open source from the previous month. We hope you enjoy this month’s recap.

Drupal 7 End of Life Officially Announced for 5 January 2025

We’re starting August’s overview with the official announcement about the Drupal 7 end of life from the Drupal Association; the chosen date is the 5th of January 2025, which is the 14-year anniversary of the original Drupal 7 release.

Site owners, support teams and contractors who are facing an upcoming migration from Drupal 7 are able to visit the Drupal Association’s migration resource center to learn more about the end of life and their options. The resource center will be continuously updated with new resources and information.

Read more about the Drupal 7 EOL

How to Convert Regular Components into Single Directory Components

The next post comes from Dharizza Espinach of Evolving Web who shows how to convert regular Drupal components into single directory components. In the first part of the article, she explains what single directory components are and how they solve the issues with the traditional approach.

The second half of Dharizza’s article then serves as a step-by-step guide to converting regular components to SDC, beginning with a list of the most appropriate tools for the job. She concludes the article with a look at future plans for SDC and a short list of additional learning resources.

Read more about Drupal SDC

Upgrading Drupal 9 to Drupal 10

Moving on, we have a guide on upgrading from Drupal 9 to Drupal 10, coming from Gizra’s Bysa Boro. In order to successfully upgrade to Drupal 10, you need to first make sure to upgrade Drupal Core to the latest version of Drupal 9, CKEditor to version 5, all contributed modules to supported versions, scan and fix custom modules, uninstall obsolete modules and themes, and remove orphaned permissions still assigned to user roles.

Bysa also includes some lessons and tips from the migration process for a client’s website, which prompted him to write the article in the first place in order to help other Drupal users who may be facing similar issues.

Read more about upgrading Drupal 9 to Drupal 10

Modern Methods For Improving Drupal’s Largest Contentful Paint Core Web Vital

Next up, we have an article on Smashing Magazine by Mike Herchel about improving Drupal’s Largest Contentful Paint Core Web Vital by making use of modern techniques such as responsive images.

Mike works on the example of a hero component on the homepage of Drupal’s demo installation of the Umami theme which loads via the background-image property. The first option you have is using an tag instead of a background image. You can also opt to use a modern image format such as WebP; and, thirdly, you can make use of responsive images.

Read more about improving LCP for a Drupal site

New Drupal 10 Module for Decoupled Search Experiences

We continue with an article by Velir’s Kevin Quillen about Views REST Serializer Extra, a new Drupal 10 module which enables decoupled search experiences by enhancing the stock response from a Drupal View. The module allows developers to create different custom search experiences by using JavaScript, which also facilitates the job of content editors in creating search interfaces.

The key change is in the results of the back-end API call, with the new output allowing developers to create dozens of search and/or content listings from just a single Drupal view. The module also includes configuration options that allow changes to be made without any code changes.

Read more about Views REST Serializer Extra

More to Love: Big Site Builder Benefits in Drupal 10.1

One of the most notable changes in modern Drupal releases is in how new features are handled, i.e. they are included in minor releases rather than new major versions. This article from Rod Martin on the Promet Source blog takes a look at the feature improvements for Drupal site builders that came with version 10.1.

These include updates to CKEditor 5; Bulk Operations being removed from the top and Delete no longer being the default option; the ability to add Block Permissions by block type; new development settings for Twig debug mode and caching; and the ability to display Date fields as “time ago”.

Read more about site builder benefits in Drupal 10.1

The Economic Upside of Drupal

Another article we wanted to highlight comes from Scott Massey of Morpht, who wrote about the economic upside of open-source content management systems such as Drupal. This becomes especially relevant during economic downturns; Scott underscores this with stats from the latest Martech Replacement Survey which shows that only 11% of respondents were replacing CMS systems, compared to 41% in 2020.

As he points out, an open-source CMS offers flexibility through having no licensing fees, enabling a high degree of customization, and providing access to a wider talent pool, in contrast to proprietary platforms which often have rising licensing fees, limited customization and vendor lock-in.

Read more about the economic upside of OS

Tips for Effective Drupal Maintenance

For the final article from August, we have a guide to effective Drupal website maintenance by Matt Wetmore of Acquia. Besides an introduction which highlights the importance of maintenance, the article consists of a checklist for Drupal website maintenance, which covers: the Status Report screen; Drupal Cron configuration; user and role audits caching; uptime and performance monitoring; 404 errors and broken images and links; contact forms; content audits and revisions; code and database backups; and Drupal core and module updates.

Read more about Drupal website maintenance

Two different wrenches lying on laptop keyboard and touchpad

That’s it for August’s recap. Tune in next month when we’ll be sharing our selection for September.

About Drupal Sun

Drupal Sun is an Evolving Web project. It allows you to:

  • Do full-text search on all the articles in Drupal Planet (thanks to Apache Solr)
  • Facet based on tags, author, or feed
  • Flip through articles quickly (with j/k or arrow keys) to find what you're interested in
  • View the entire article text inline, or in the context of the site where it was created

See the blog post at Evolving Web

Evolving Web