Top Drupal blog posts from February 2024
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 Times’ Alka 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
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