Top Drupal blog posts from November 2024

Like every month, we’ve prepared a recap of the top Drupal news and articles from the month before. We hope you enjoy our selection for November!

Governance in the Drupal Ecosystem

First up for this month, we have an overview of the governance in the Drupal ecosystem from Tim Doyle, CEO of the Drupal Association. As he highlights at the very beginning of the article, it is exactly this seasoned governance that allows Drupal to be one of the biggest and longest standing independent open source projects available.

While Dries Buytaert is the founder and project lead of Drupal, he has made it a priority to have its governance model be resilient and decentralized. The technical decision making is covered by a team of Core committers and maintainers, while most other governance aspects are handled by the Drupal Association, with its 12-person Board of Directors being regularly updated.

Navigating the Open Source CMS Landscape: Lessons from the WordPress Challenges

A related article comes from John Tran & Brent Wilker of ImageX Media, who write about the ongoing feud between Automattic and WPEngine which has been disrupting the WordPress community as well as open source at large.

As the article states, this feud is a reminder of the potential clashes between commercial interests and community-driven incentives in open source communities. Fortunately, Drupal’s streamlined governance that the Drupal Association CEO Tim Doyle described in the above article greatly diminishes the risk of something similar happening in Drupal.

The authors suggest people look at the governance model, the contribution mechanisms, the long-term sustainability and the health of the community when considering open source projects.

Twig & PHP Templating in Drupal 11

For the third article from November, we have a guide to Twig and PHP templating in Drupal 11 by GOLEMS GABB. The Twig templating engine was introduced with Drupal 8, originally meant to replace PHPTemplate. However, PHP templating is still being put to good use even in Drupal 11.

A large section of the guide focuses on the differences between PHP and Twig, covering separation of concerns, security, scalability & power, readability & maintainability, and the learning curve. Generally, the article recommends using both in tandem, with Twig taking care of the look and feel, and PHP being responsible for the functionality through hooks and modules.

Open-source innovation: Drupal Recipes and the upcoming Drupal CMS

We continue with an article by 1xINTERNET about the power of Drupal Recipes and the soon to be released Drupal CMS. Introduced in Drupal 10.3, Recipes open up new possibilities for the creation and use of diverse and complex configurations, with one of their main benefits being the collaborative potential that they unlock.

Drupal Recipes are also a core part of the new Drupal CMS which is set to release in January of 2025. Drupal CMS aims to be a user-friendly platform for non-technical users that comes with many advanced out-of-the-box functionality to allow them to create high-level digital experiences.

Low-code + Decoupled Drupal: The Power of Custom Elements 3.0

Next up, Wolfgang Ziegler of drunomics presents the new capabilities of the latest version of the Custom Elements module, a key component for a decoupled Drupal setup. The main new feature of Custom Elements 3.0 is the new Custom Elements UI, which allows front end developers and site builders to customize API output.

One of the biggest benefits of this low-code approach eliminates the communication and coordination overhead of working with REST endpoints, greatly facilitating independent building, testing and iterating without the need to rely on other team mates. This is also in line with the mission of the Drupal Starshot initiative which aims to empower ambitious site builders.

Read more about Custom Elements 3.0

Migrating your Data from D7 to D10: Configuring text formats, editors and user roles

Moving on, we have an article by Mauricio Dinarte of Tag1 Consulting from his series on migrating data from Drupal 7 to Drupal 10. In this particular piece, he focuses on the configuration of text formats and editors, user roles, and user fields.

There are multiple ways to migrate the desired configuration to a Drupal 10 site, i.e. running an automatic migration, applying recipes, and creating configuration manually from the administration interface.

Since automatic migration provides a copy of the configuration and content from the Drupal 7 website, Mauricio’s examples use recipes which enable dropping outdated functionality, leveraging more modern functionality and updating the website’s core architecture.

The End is Near: Drupal 7 Support Ends January 2025. We can Help You Upgrade.

With the long-standing Drupal 7 reaching its end of life in less than a month, D7 site owners need to consider their different options to determine next steps and ensure the longevity of their websites.

This article from Boston Digital’s Tadd Barnes breaks down the three main options. The first one is leaving the site as is, but beginning longer-term planning as soon as possible. The second option is an as-is migration to the latest version of Drupal, Drupal 11.

Finally, the most future-proof approach would be a more complete rebuild/redesign, which allows you to modernize your brand. While this option requires the most time and effort, it’s very much possible to do it in combination with the first two options.

Looking at what's next for Drupal CMS

Lastly, we have an update from Pamela Barone from the Drupal Starshot team on the progress of Drupal CMS and the planned next steps post its initial release. The tracks that are already in progress are Project Browser, Workspaces as content moderation, and Telemetry, for which you can still apply as the lead until December 13.

The new tracks that the Starshot team is still recruiting for are Content import / migration, Tours, Identity management / SSO, Content translation tools, and Front end design system. All of the tracks are aligned with the core mission of the Starshot initiative of providing an intuitive and accessible CMS platform for marketers and content creators.

Posted by Tim on 11 Dec 2024 in Drupal