Drupal Association blog: Drupal launches Drupal 11, the latest version of the Open Source CMS

PORTLAND, Ore., 1 August 2024Drupal, the most powerful open source content management system for everyone from Fortune 500 enterprise companies to mission-driven nonprofits and entrepreneurial small businesses, is launching the latest upgrade to its popular software.

Drupal 11 continues enhancing the strengths of the platform. It makes structured content, workflows, and content governance more flexible and easier for ambitious builders.

Drupal 11 is designed to empower ambitious site builders to build exceptional websites and to accelerate Drupal's innovation,” says Dries Buytaert, Founder and Project Lead of Drupal.  “With Drupal 11, we've made Drupal more intuitive, powerful, and flexible, ensuring it continues to lead in web development and digital experience creation."

This latest version of Drupal brings together code and design for a refreshed CMS navigation experience, with an updated toolbar and a collapsible left-hand menu, all designed to ensure a seamless development experience.

With new Recipes functionality, you can add new features to your website instantly by applying a set of predefined configuration. A recipe can provide anything that can be configured in Drupal, from a simple content type to a full suite of features. You can create your own recipes to share or reuse, or apply recipes created by other Drupal users. Recipes are experimental in this release but already usable and expected to be stable in 11.1.

Single-Directory Components simplify front-end development by consolidating all necessary code into a single directory, making components self-contained and effortlessly reusable.

Drupal’s high performance means it runs fast by default with swift page loading, and Drupal 11 is even faster than previous versions, running up to 50% faster on PHP 8.3. 

Accessible for every user

Drupal’s core strengths include its accessibility, security, multilingual capabilities, and flexible features. 

Thousands of developers worldwide contribute their expertise to ensure that Drupal is continuously pioneering the industry in these strengths. Supported by a global community of domain experts, it offers multilingual support with over 100 languages. 

Drupal 11 improves upon these core strengths with various features suitable for developing simple websites or complex web applications. 

Accessibility is a key strength of Drupal,” says Tim Doyle, CEO of the Drupal Association. “The Open Web is for everyone, and our continual focus on accessibility, multilingual capabilities, and flexibility is intended to ensure that Drupal is a beacon of inclusiveness in an online world where many try to build walls and barriers to entry.”

With more features coming soon

Automatic Updates and Project Browser are two key features slated for a future release of Drupal 11 and are currently under development as contributed modules. 

Drupal’s open source innovation keeps pressing ahead with the release of Drupal 11, including milestone features like Automatic Updates and Project Browser. These features will be key to the success of the new Drupal Starshot project, which will see Drupal become even easier to use for anyone wanting to unleash the power of the world’s leading enterprise CMS.” - Owen Lansbury, Drupal Association Board Chair

Automatic Updates module will apply patch-level updates to Drupal core in a separate, sandboxed copy of your site to keep you up and running without any interruptions. It can detect and report problems at every stage of the update process, so you don't have to discover them after an update is live. It automatically detects database updates and helps you run them during the process.

Project Browser will make it easy for site builders to extend the functionality, look and feel of Drupal. It provides a search interface in the Extend section of the Admin UI to find contributed modules and themes and research their capabilities. Once an extension is selected, instructions are provided on installing it on your site, all without leaving your website. 

Next steps

To start using Drupal 11, visit the Drupal 11 landing page. If you have questions about upgrading to Drupal 11, check out the FAQ page. 

To get help onboarding to Drupal 11 or creating a digital experience from the ground up, connect with one of our Drupal Certified Partners located around the world.

About Drupal and the Drupal Association

Drupal is the open source content management software trusted by millions of people and organizations worldwide. It’s supported by a network of over 10k professionals and over 100 Drupal Certified Partners. The Drupal Association is a nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating Drupal innovation and supporting the growth of the open source community. This work delivers value to businesses, the digital community, and users of Drupal, in alignment with Drupal’s commitment to the Open Web.

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