It’s time for another of our monthly recaps of Drupal news and blog posts! Here are our top picks from June.
Drupal 10.3 is now available
Let’s start with an obvious one – Gábor Hojtsy’s announcement of the release of Drupal 10.3, coming out on June 20th. This final release of Drupal 10 brings new features such as the new experimental Navigation module, a stable Workspaces module and stable Single Directory Components, streamlined content organization, and more. In addition to the new features, Gábor’s post also includes the important updates to the Core maintainer team.
Read more about the Drupal 10.3 release
A New Age of Drupal: Drupal CMS
The next article comes from Scott Weston of Bounteous, who breaks down Dries Buytaert’s DrupalCon announcement of Drupal Starshot and the reasons why a new direction for the platform is very much needed.
According to Scott, if Drupal kept focusing too much on developers, it would risk becoming a niche CMS with a much smaller footprint, since it would not appeal to marketers and less tech-savvy users.
The new Drupal CMS will address these core issues particularly by greatly simplifying the getting started experience, beginning with an easier install. It will also include the top contrib modules, the best features of Drupal Paragraphs and the new Experience Builder.
Read more about the Drupal CMS
DrupalCollab: Drupal Community in the Largest 500 Cities in the World
We continue with an entry from The Drop Times’ analysis of how the Drupal community is spread across the world, posted by their founder and lead Anoop John. Their analysis is done through LinkedIn and covers 81 cities with over a million inhabitants and over 500 people on LinkedIn whose profile mentions Drupal.
The aim of this initiative is to expand Drupal globally, and encouraging local volunteers willing to organize events and engage local user groups will be key to that. The 81 cities analyzed will be the first ones that DrupalCollab will focus its attention on.
Does a Next-Drupal Site Improve the ROI of Your Web Platform?
Next up, we have an article from John Faber of Chapter Three who explores how much a website based on Next-Drupal can improve a firm’s ROI, something that’s increasingly important in the digital landscape.
As John points out, one of the main benefits of Next-Drupal are the cost savings which enable bigger budgets for other business needs. The decoupling of the front and back end also allows for greater scalability of the platform.
He also shares an example of an upgrade of a Drupal 7 site to Drupal 10 with Next-Drupal, resulting in a reduction of hosting costs by 65%.
Read more about how Next-Drupal improves ROI
Drupal “Recipes” Have Officially Landed in Drupal 10.3
The fifth article on this month’s overview focuses on the biggest new feature of the Drupal 10.3 release – Drupal Recipes. Its author, Velir’s Kevin Quillen, showcases the power and efficiency of Recipes, with a fully configured Drupal 10.3 website that is aligned with the Recipe’s specification ready in just a few minutes.
Recipes are indeed a much needed feature for a truly composable Drupal which is much faster and user friendly than past solutions, and will also be a key component of the upcoming Drupal Starshot. You can already try out Drupal 10.3 and discover more about what Recipes bring to the table.
Learn more about Drupal Recipes
DDEV, You're Still the One!
Moving on, we have an article from Chris Wells of Redfin Solutions who shares their experience with why DDEV remains the best platform for Drupal development environments.
Chris recalls how they had to transition from DrupalVM due to its poor scalability and ended up choosing DDEV as the replacement due to features such as infrastructure-as-code, easy updates, great community support, and more.
In the final section of the article, he notes the benefits this decision has brought for Redfin Solutions, highlighting primarily the huge time saving aspects and the reduction in overhead from having to maintain a golden image.
Announcing the Drupal Starshot leadership team
Another important piece of news from June is Dries Buytaert’s announcement of the Drupal Starshot leadership team, with him as the Product Lead and Acquia’s Tim Plunkett as the Technical Lead.
The User Experience Lead is Cristina Chumillas of Lullabot; Technocrat’s Pamela Barone is the Product Owner and Acquia’s Gábor Hojtsy is the Contribution Coordinator. In addition to these roles, a Starshot Council advisory board will also be formed.
Of course, there are also a lot of opportunities for the community to get involved, such as helping on key initiatives like Project Browser and Automatic Updates.
Read more about the Drupal Starshot leadership
Will Drupal Starshot Help Drupal Compete?
Lastly, we have another article on Drupal Starshot, this one written by Lullabot’s Seth Brown. He too highlights the poor first impression of the Core Drupal platform as the main reason for the need for a project such as Starshot.
In practical terms, the new Drupal CMS that will be the key part of the Starshot project will function more as a product rather than a development framework, or rather, as a more traditional digital experience platform.
Seth also emphasizes the importance of a strong product vision led by a strong steward, as well as streamlined marketing of the new Drupal CMS, for the success of Drupal Starshot.
Posted by Tim on 12 Jul 2024 in Drupal
