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June was a particularly exciting month for Drupal, with DrupalCon Pittsburgh, the release of the feature-rich version 10.1, and other news. Read on for our overview of the top insights and goings-on from June.
State of Drupal presentation (June 2023)
Let’s start with the recap of Dries’s keynote State of Drupal speech from DrupalCon North America 2023. The theme of this edition of the Driesnote was innovation, with the first part focusing on how Drupal has been able to jump S-curves thanks to its strong vision, grassroots innovation, and a nurturing environment which allows ideas to flourish over time.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the keynote was the Pitch-burgh innovation contest, in which 35 project proposals competed for a total of almost $100,000 in funding, which included an unexpected bonus contribution from WordPress’s Matt Mullenweg / Automattic. As always, the full video of the presentation is also available for those who missed it live or just want to revisit it.
Read more about the state of Drupal in June 2023
Drupal 10.1 is now available
Another huge thing last month was the release of Drupal 10.1, which was pretty much the most feature-rich Drupal release ever. This post from Gábor Hojtsy provides an overview of all the new features in 10.1, with some of the biggest ones being the new experimental Single Directory Components module, the addition of Axe accessibility testing in core, and the expansion of the Core committer team.
Other features include improvements to CKEditor, a new UI for Twig template debugging and cache settings, improvements to page performance, streamlined content management and modeling, more flexible block/page management, full support for decoupled navigation, and a new experimental Announcements module in Core.
Drupal 7 support reduced as EOL date shifts
We continue with a post from Cyber-Duck’s Duncan Worrell about the recently announced final extension of the Drupal 7 end of life date and what it will mean for websites running on Drupal 7.
The previous D7 EOL expansion set the end of life date for November of this year, but on June 7 it was announced that the EOL has shifted to January 2025, giving D7 site owners 14 more months to plan and execute the upgrade to Drupal 9+.
However, starting August 1st, official Drupal 7 support will be greatly reduced in scope. This includes potential announcement of non-mass exploitable D7 vulnerabilities before they are fixed; gradual removal of support for certain contributed modules; removal of support for older PHP versions; and removal of Windows support.
Read more about the final D7 EOL extension
DrupalElementStyle: Add styles to drupal-media in CKEditor 5 using only configuration
In the fourth article from June, Harumi Jang of Acquia shows how to add styles and/or attributes to drupal-media in CKEditor 5 through configuration rather than using JavaScript. This is done by using the new DrupalElementStyle plugin via YAML definitions.
Harumi’s article works on the example of adding options for a new attribute data-attribution as ‘in-house’, ‘external’, and ‘none’ in the media toolbar. He takes a detailed look at the different parts of the YAML file and what their specific functions are. Finally, he shows how the newly added attributes function in the toolbar, along with how to customize their display.
Learn how to add custom styling to the media toolbar without JS
Should You Use Web Components in Your Drupal Project?
Moving on with this month’s list, we have an article by Lullabot’s Matt Robison about web components and how to determine whether or not you should use them on your Drupal website.
Matt first clarifies what he means by web components for the specific purposes of the article – custom HTML tags that encapsulate some functionality. Then he breaks down both the benefits and the downsides of using web components before focusing on how to weigh the two against each other by gauging your capabilities and needs to see if web components are a good fit for you.
Read more about web components and using them in Drupal
Composability and Drupal: Going Headless at Scale
Next up, this article coming from Chris Greatens of Bounteous dives into the topic of composability in the context of Drupal. He starts off with a definition of composable architecture and its two key principles which enable its flexibility.
In the next section, Chris takes a look at the history of composability within Drupal and how it has essentially evolved into a composable digital experience platform thanks to its strong headless support and inherently modular approach.
The final section looks at Drupal as part of a broader composable architecture, functioning as a headless CMS with advanced content management capabilities that also empowers developers.
Read more about composability and Drupal
Fixing the Drupal Document Problem With Document OCR
The next article we’d like to highlight this month comes from Minnur Yunusov of Chapter Three who presents Document OCR, a module they’ve recently developed which is able to extract structured data from PDFs and images on a Drupal site by using Optical Character Recognition. It also integrates with OpenAI for additional features during content import such as extracting keywords, creating a taxonomy and providing a summary of the document.
The core of Minnur’s article focuses on the setup and the five main configuration areas of the Document OCR module. These are mapping, processors, transformers, imports, and one-time imports.
Read more about the Document OCR module
The Drupal Open Web Manifesto
We’re concluding our June selection with Dries’s blog post about Drupal’s Open Web Manifesto. Drupal has always been strongly committed to the core values the open web was born from – open access, open standards, and digital inclusion. The manifesto reflects a more formal commitment of Drupal being a steward of the open web.
As Dries points out, Drupal’s strong position in the open-source software sphere gives it a responsibility to use its influence for good and foster a safer, more inclusive web for everyone. The Drupal Open Web Manifesto is a result of the effort of the Drupal Association along with over 150 community members sharing their insights and feedback.
Read more about the Drupal Open Web Manifesto
We hope you enjoyed catching up with last month’s Drupal-related news and insights. See you next month!
