In addition to the general festive vibe, December was a particularly exciting month for the Drupal community thanks to DrupalCon Singapore and the release of Drupal 11.1. Here is our overview of the top articles and news from December; we hope you enjoy revisiting them!
Drupal 11.1.0 is now available
It only makes sense to kick off this month’s list with Gábor Hojtsy’s announcement of the release of Drupal 11.1.0 and an overview of what’s new in this feature release.
In addition to the improvements of the Recipe system, version 11.1.0 also brings support for hooks written as classes, a new icon management API, a new views entity reference filter, render caching for forms, full support for PHP 8.4 and more.
Drupal 11.1 will serve as the basis for version 1.0 of the new Drupal CMS which is getting released on 15 January, Drupal’s 24th birthday.
State of Drupal presentation (December 2024)
Next we need to highlight Dries’ State of Drupal keynote from DrupalCon Singapore. This time the so-called Driesnote focused on the upcoming Drupal CMS and the progress made since DrupalCon Barcelona in September of 2024.
Dries reiterates on the main vision of Drupal CMS – setting the standard for no-code website building. The key feature of Drupal CMS will be the different Recipes that will facilitate and speed up website creation with Drupal.
His article also showcases some of these recipes, e.g. AI support, Search, and Experience Builder. He concludes with some other updates on the progress of the Starshot initiative as a whole and more information on Drupal CMS release parties on 15 January.
Read Dries’ latest State of Drupal presentation
Inside Drupal CMS
Another article about Drupal CMS that we wanted to include comes from Michael Anello / ultimike of DrupalEasy who takes a look under the hood of Drupal CMS.
As we saw in the Driesnote recapped above, Recipes will be the key ingredient of version 1.0, and so Mike’s article also focuses on them. Even the installer allows site builders to apply up to 6 recipes during site installation.
Besides the specifics of Recipes, Mike also discusses what version 1.0 of Drupal CMS will be lacking – namely, the Experience Builder which will come in later versions and will truly enable no-code site building.
Read more about what’s inside Drupal CMS
No, not "Claro", but "Klaro" (Cookie & Consent Management)
Moving on, we have another article from ultimike, in which he breaks down the Drupal Klaro Cookie & Consent Management module that is used for privacy functionality in Drupal CMS.
As Mike highlights, the module is designed to help websites comply with privacy regulations such as GDPR.
Its three objectives are: not passing on users’ data to third parties without consent; not tracking without consent; and not making any changes to the browser without consent.
The main section of the article is dedicated to a detailed guide for both the installation and the basic configuration of the Klaro module.
Shaping the Future of Search in Drupal CMS: Interview with Search Track Leads
Next up, we have an interview with the Search Track leads for Drupal CMS, Christoph Breidert and Artem Dmitriiev of 1xINTERNET. The most notable progress updates they highlight are the merging of the Search Recipe into Drupal CMS and the development of the new Facets Recipe to expand basic search capabilities.
Apart from that, the interview features a lot of great, on-point questions. Christoph and Artem talk about the patches that had to be made to Drupal Core to enable this functionality for Drupal CMS, as well as other key obstacles encountered by the Search Track, and many other interesting topics.
Read more about the Drupal CMS Search Track
Unleashing the power of Metatag custom tags
We continue with an article from Naveen Valecha of Morpht who takes a deep dive into the new Metatag Custom Tags submodule, part of the Metatag 2.1.0 release. This new submodule eases some of the major challenges of metadata management by providing the ability to define and manage custom metatags directly from the UI.
Naveen’s article covers the main features of Metatag Custom Tags and the main benefits its flexibility provides. He also includes a special section on what the submodule means for websites hosted on the GovCMS distribution, as well as a step-by-step getting started guide.
Read more about Metatag Custom Tags
Build Layouts with Bootstrap and Layout Builder in Drupal
In the next article, Ivan Zugec of WebWash shows how to use the Layout Builder together with Bootstrap to build layouts in Drupal. The first section covers setting up a Radix theme and compiling Bootstrap with Node.js. The second section then focuses on installing Bootstrap Layout Builder, including the configuration as well as the Bootstrap Styles modules.
With everything installed and configured, the next step is creating basic page layout, followed by a section dedicated to Radix components. In the final section, Ivan shows how to create Bootstrap Grid by using Views. As usual, he also includes a full video guide.
Read more about using Bootstrap with Layout Builder in Drupal
Drupal 11 is Here! What you Need to Know about New Development Features
Rounding off our list for December, we have an overview of the key new features of Drupal 11 written by Seth Hill of Aten Design. The first two things he highlights are the new admin menu and some useful CKEditor 5 optimizations.
After that comes the big one – Recipes; they offer a lot of flexibility since they enable much faster setups without turning into a dependency, either for something very broad or for a specific piece of functionality.
The final two features that Seth’s article covers are stable versions of the Single Directory Components module and of the Workspaces module.
Posted by Tim on 10 Jan 2025 in Drupal
