Top Drupal blog posts from August 2023
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.
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 <img> 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
That’s it for August’s recap. Tune in next month when we’ll be sharing our selection for September.
