Top Drupal blog posts from December 2023
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.
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.
Now’s the time to plan your migration to Drupal 10
Fourth on this month’s list is an article from Four Kitchens’ Laura 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
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!
