Top Drupal blog posts from January 2022
January sure flew by us super fast! Here’s an overview of some of our favorite Drupal-related reads written in January.
Adding Bundle Subclasses to Drupal Core 9.3.0
First up, we have a series of posts by Derek Wright of TEN7, who wrote about their work on having Entity Bundle Classes included in the latest version of Drupal core. In part one, Derek provides some background on entity bundle classes and TEN7’s choice to work on the feature.
The second post in the series is more developer-oriented and detailed, focusing on the inner workings and benefits of entity bundle classes, and drawing from specific examples of a TEN7 project where it’s been most useful to them.
In the third and final part, Derek describes the process of getting the feature included in Drupal core using a GitLab merge request rather than patches, with some helpful additional tips and observations on contributing.
Nominations are now open for the 2022 Aaron Winborn Award
Another important post last month came from Jordana Fung of the Community Working Group, who announced the opening of nominations for this year’s Aaron Winborn Award.
Each year, a member of the Drupal community is recognized for their display of dedication to the Drupal project and its community, and is rewarded with a scholarship and a travel stipend to attend the North American DrupalCon.
Nominations are open until Friday, March 25th, so, if there’s a particular member of the community who you think really deserves recognition for their great work, go ahead and go nominate them!
Read more about the 2022 Aaron Winborn Award nomination
Dedicated entity bundle classes in Drupal 9.3
Let’s continue with another post discussing entity bundle classes, this one written by Danny Sipos / Web Omelette. He adopts a more technical perspective, with the first part of the post showing some specifics of the changes that bundle classes bring, most notably a more object-oriented programming approach and much easier templating work.
In the second part of his post, Danny takes a look at how to create bundle classes, highlighting 2 key components of defining a bundle specific entity class: first, creating the class to extend the main entity class; and second, defining the class on the entity bundle that it’s applied to.
Read more about dedicated entity bundle classes
Planning Your Drupal 7 to Drupal 9 Migration
With the end-of-life date for Drupal 7 planned for November, this year we’re likely to see a lot of content related to migrating away from D7 to newer versions of Drupal.
This post by Le'Rhone Walker of Bounteous, for example, tackles planning a Drupal 7 to Drupal 9 migration. He points out some of the most compelling features of the latest versions of Drupal, such as its API-first approach and its commitment to continuous innovation.
Le’Rhone also includes helpful tips for getting started with the migration, specifics of upgrading to Drupal 9 and, finally, some upcoming plans and priorities for Drupal.
Read more about planning a D7 to D9 migration
Enhance Your Drupal Website's Authoring Experience
Moving on, we have another series, this one coming from Clayton Dewey of DevCollaborative writing about how to optimize the authoring experience of a Drupal website. The first of the two posts in the series focuses on the contributed theme Gin as a potentially useful improvement to the already streamlined Claro admin theme.
Clayton’s second post goes more into the nitty gritty, breaking down different techniques for decluttering the user interface of a Drupal website. Some of the methods he looks at are removing unneeded elements from the UI, uninstalling the Comments module, limiting allowed text formats, and fine tuning and fixing Drupal’s permissions.
Part 6: Good Drupal Leadership: What miscellaneous skills does an organization's Drupal leadership need?
We continue with the sixth and final part of Jacob Rockowitz’s excellent series of articles on good Drupal leadership. In this one, he explores the essential Drupal-specific skills that leaders need to succeed with Drupal while also helping the Drupal project itself succeed.
A key skill is the ability to wear two hats at the same time, thinking of both what’s best for the company and what’s also beneficial to Drupal and its community. Of course, you also need to lead by example, through frequent recognition and encouragement, which actually contributes to both aims of Drupal growth and success.
Read part 6 of Good Drupal Leadership
Acquia retrospective 2021
Next up is Dries Buytaert’s annual Acquia retrospective. He starts off the 2021 edition with some numbers and most notable clients (namely, J. Crew, Fannie Mae and Bayer), as well as their involvement in important diversity and inclusion initiatives, such as education opportunities for Black History Month and more.
They also continued focusing on their product vision, releasing their upgraded cloud platform Acquia Cloud Next in Q1 and acquiring the DAM & PIM company Widen in Q3. Some of the highlights were definitely also the recognitions that the Acquia Digital Experience Platform received from Gartner, Forrester and IDC. On top of everything, Acquia also became a founding member of the PHP Foundation, staying true to their commitment to open source.
Read the 2021 Acquia retrospective
The True Cost of Staying with Drupal 7
The final post from January that we’d like to include comes from Timothy Prestianni of Unleashed Technologies. It is another post concerning the looming end of life of Drupal 7, but with a unique, more practical focus on the actual costs of wanting to stay on this outdated version of Drupal.
Timothy takes a brief look at the evolution of the Drupal CMS and what end of life means for D7, then some history of the popularity of different Drupal versions, before comparing the costs of staying on Drupal 7 versus upgrading to a more recent version. The key takeaway, though, is that future updates will be much easier and significantly less costly once you move off D7.
Read more about the true cost of staying on Drupal 7
This concludes our recap of January’s Drupal posts. We hope you enjoyed revisiting them with us!
