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April brought us a lot of great Drupal articles, so it was a bit of a challenge choosing our favorites this month. We hope you enjoy (re)visiting them!
Exploring a marketplace for Drupal site templates
In his State of Drupal keynote presentation from the recent DrupalCon Atlanta, Drupal founder & project lead Dries Buytaert announced Drupal Site Templates and a potential marketplace for these templates. In this first article that we’re including from April, Dries takes a further look into the idea of a site template marketplace for Drupal.
Specifically, the main question Dries considers is whether to also support commercial site templates or keep the marketplace exclusive only to open source site templates. One of the main draws of commercial site templates is a steady revenue stream, which will very much be necessary to ensure the sustained quality of the site templates available on the marketplace.
Read more about creating a marketplace for Drupal site templates
Kristen Pol Wins the 2025 Aaron Winborn Award
We continue with the announcement of the 2025 winner of the annual Aaron Winborn Award, intended to recognize community members who embody kindness, integrity, and a strong commitment to the Drupal community.
This year the well-deserved winner is Kristen Pol, co-founder of QuantCDN and long-time prolific Drupal community member, often helping others and involving herself in key Drupal initiatives such as the Drupal 8 Multilingual Initiative, major version contrib porting efforts, and the new Drupal CMS.
Read more about the winner of the 2025 Aaron Winborn Award
Real Drupal Site Dependency Testing – A Strategic Approach
Another important article from April was written by Jürgen Haas of LakeDrops, who presents their efficient, proactive approach to dependency testing in Drupal. It aims to resolve the cascade of issues that arise from an infrequent focus on comprehensive dependency testing, where this essential testing is limited to only core and major module updates.
This testing framework created by LakeDrops includes regular dependency checks, security & patch prioritization, sandbox build & deployment, full deployment simulation, and comprehensive testing through E2E Cypress tests as well as backstop visual regression tests. It also supports the implementation of Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD), making it fast and responsive.
Read more about proactive Drupal dependency testing
The new IXP program: Ushering in needed fresh Drupal talent with bona fide incentives for employers
In the next article, Michael Anello / ultimike of DrupalEasy announces and breaks down the new Drupal IXP program, which allows organizations to be rewarded with contribution credits for hiring & successfully onboarding new, inexperienced (IXP) Drupal developers.
The key goal of the IXP program is to establish a talent pipeline for the future of Drupal. Any organization which hires an IXP Drupal developer for a minimum of 160 hours of paid work with at least 10 hours of mentorship will earn 250 contribution credits.
Mike’s article goes into more detail about the process and requirements of the IXP program, as well as what kinds of tasks these new Drupal developers will be best suited for.
Read more about the new IXP program
Drupal Image Optimization, Part 1: Modules for Better Visual Presentation
Moving on, we have an article about Drupal image optimization from Nadiia Nykolaichuk of ImageX, this one presenting a number of useful modules for enhancing visual presentation in Drupal.
Nadiia groups the modules in two main categories: cropping & focus; and effects & processing. In addition, she highlights two other modules that provide specific visual enhancements: the SVG Image module and the Basic Watermark module.
Besides visual enhancement of images, the modules covered in this article also help streamline the workflows of content managers as well as automate many of the enhancements.
Read more about useful Drupal modules for visual enhancement
From Drupal Console to Drupal Decoupled: Contributing to Making Drupal Community Stronger
Next up, we have an article from Jesus Manuel Olivas, co-founder & CEO of Octahedroid and one of the creators of Drupal Console, who revisits the history and evolution of Drupal Console, and how it has led to the creation of Drupal Decoupled.
The need for Drupal Console alongside Drush arose with the move from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8, since Drupal 8 embraced Symfony components which Drush did not yet support at the time. Despite some initial backlash, Drupal Console has reached over 15 million downloads.
The recent release of Drupal CMS has highlighted the need for more user-friendly, low-code approaches to building websites and managing content. Octahedroid’s Drupal Decoupled introduces a headless approach that facilitates API-driven development while also remaining intuitive and powerful for non-technical users.
Read more about the history of Drupal Console & Drupal Decoupled
Drupal is delivering innovation beyond major versions
We continue our overview for April with an article from Matt Glaman who shares an interesting observation about Dries Buytaert’s State of Drupal keynote presentation from the recent DrupalCon Atlanta. Namely, while he did focus a lot on Drupal CMS and its future developments, there was practically no news about future versions of Drupal 11, or of Drupal 12.
Matt welcomes this new approach to innovation in the Drupal community, one that’s not constrained by new (major) version releases. He points to the product strategy for Drupal CMS as the catalyst for this important shift, since it has expanded the focus of the innovation beyond just Drupal Core.
Read more about how Drupal delivers innovation now
Let’s Get Loud: Using LinkedIn to Amplify Drupal
Lastly, we have an interesting article for The Drop Times from Mike Gifford of CivicActions who wrote about the importance of using social media in marketing and promoting Drupal. Specifically, he highlights LinkedIn as the platform frequented by the most decision makers, and as such the best place to spread the word about achievements and innovations in Drupal.
Besides promoting and engaging with Drupal content, Mike suggests thinking beyond your organization, using tags wisely, sharing your own work and experiences as well as wins from other community members, and of course following key accounts such as Dries and the Drupal Association.
