Top Drupal blog posts from July 2023
It’s time for our monthly selection of top Drupal news and articles. Check out our team’s favorites from July!
Ensuring a Fair Drupal Contribution Credit System
The first July article we need to highlight is Tim Lehnen’s overview of the latest updates regarding Drupal’s contribution credit system which attempt to minimize the temptation of gaming the system and make the process fairer for actual helpful contributors.
The main changes include the credit checkbox for certain issues no longer being pre-checked, a draft policy on the use of AI, an update to the standards of conduct for the Drupal.org marketplace regarding the abuse of the credit system, and an education-first approach for dealing with individual contributors trying to game the system.
Read more about the updates to the contribution credit system
An updated plan for Drupal 11
The second article comes from Drupal founder Dries Buytaert, who shared the latest updates on the Drupal 11 roadmap, in particular regarding the three key goals highlighted during his recent DrupalCon keynote which will help empower ambitious Drupal site builders to create digital experiences on the Open Web.
This updated plan for Drupal 11 is the result of a recent Core Committer Team meeting, where newly appointed Drupal Product Manager Lauri Eskola then built upon the keynote by Dries, focusing on easier-to-use tools for site builders and content editors, as well as making Drupal easier and more affordable to upgrade and maintain.
Read the updated plan for Drupal 11
Roadmap for Drupal 10.2, 10.3, and beyond
Next up, we have Lauri Eskola further breaking down the roadmap for Drupal 10.2, 10.3 and beyond from the just highlighted post by Dries. The first feature area is improving Drupal proficiency for site builders, which includes features such as Project Browser and Recipes.
The second feature area is aimed at editorial experiences, and includes improvements to the Layout Builder as well as a modernized page building experience making use of structured content.
The third and final area is improving the maintainability, security and affordability of Drupal, and covers the Automatic Updates feature, improvements to module tooling, processes and documentation in order to minimize friction points, as well as resources to make it easier to move away from Drupal 7.
Read more about the roadmap for Drupal 10.2, 10.3 and beyond
Drupal 10: Creating A Notification System Using The Message And ECA Modules
We continue with an article written by Philip Norton on his blog #! Code who shows how to create a notification system in Drupal using the Message and ECA modules.
After installing the required modules (including BPMN.IO and Token), you need to set up a message template with the Message module. Next, you need to create a PHP class for the action plugin that will allow you to connect the event with the message.
Finally, you need to create the ECA workflow for the event and then create the notifications page, including features like read status for notifications, purging notifications and other potential improvements.
Read more about creating a notification system in Drupal 10
DrupalCon Pitch-burgh Updates (07.2023)
In the next article, Drupal Innovation Coordinator Alex Moreno provides an update on the DrupalCon Pitch-Burgh innovation initiative which was held this June at DrupalCon Pittsburgh. He starts with a recap of Pitch-Burgh, which had 35 project submissions with 7 finalists getting funded, with the funders even including WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg.
After that, Alex provides updates on each of the seven initiatives that got funding, which are all aligning on goals, timelines, and deliverables with the Drupal Association, ensuring that goals of the DA are aligned with those of the Drupal community. For more current information on any of the projects, you’re able to join a dedicated Slack channel for each and follow the updates there.
Read more about DrupalCon Pitch-Burgh updates
A Guide to Extending Drupal Views with the Modules Contributed by Our Developers
Moving on, we have an article coming from ImageX which serves as a guide for extending Drupal Views with two modules contributed by their developers, the Lazy Views module and the Views Combine module. The post begins with a quick overview of Views (pun intended) before taking an individual look at each of the two modules.
Lazy Views is based on the same concept as lazy loading and allows you to configure loading the view either by a trigger or upon page load. The Views Combine module, as its name reveals, enables you to combine views based on different entity types into a single output.
Learn more about extending Drupal Views
Can we use concurrency to speed up streamed BigPipe responses in Drupal?
Nearing the end of this month’s list, we have an article written by the prolific Matt Glaman in which he explores the possibility of speeding up Drupal’s response time for streamed BigPipe responses by leveraging the recently introduced PHP feature of having Fibers as a form of lightweight concurrency.
Adding concurrency to ‘sendPlaceholders’ in BigPipe allows the rendering of multiple placeholders simultaneously. Fibers are used for rendering each of the placeholders, with a loop on the Fibers to either start or terminate them when completed. While this is only a small performance improvement for most websites, it could be more significant in cases with dynamic placeholdered content that’s paused/waiting on I/O.
Read more about speeding up streamed BigPipe responses
Innovating within Drupal’s Core Competency
Last on our list for July is a great article by Centarro’s Ryan Szrama on the need to innovate within Drupal’s core competency, which Ryan defines as being along the lines of “content modeling, organization, and distribution”. He elaborates on this, arguing that Drupal can survive lost opportunities to competitors as long as this is not due to its core competency.
One aspect of this will be maintaining Drupal’s unique advantages, and here Ryan mentions headless capabilities and the integration of LLMs into the site building process. The other aspect is evaluating innovation opportunities, where the main priority should be Drupal’s role in enabling and preserving an open web.
Read more about innovating within Drupal’s core competency
This concludes our overview of the top Drupal pieces of content from July. We hope you enjoyed (re)discovering them!
