Drupal Starshot blog: Out-of-the-box functionality survey results

We recently posted a survey seeking community feedback on what features and contrib modules to include in Drupal CMS out of the box, in order to deliver on the vision of getting from install to launch really fast. We were looking for features and modules that align with the Drupal Starshot strategy and consider the primary persona, which is ambitious marketers.

The survey got 60 submissions, with a wide variety of suggestions. Many of these were already on our radar, and closely align with our existing initiatives and work tracks. But it also raised a lot of new and interesting ideas for the leadership team and track leads to consider. We will also likely be posting new work tracks in the next few weeks based on the results, since there are some great suggestions that are not yet covered.

The following is a summary of the survey results, which we are not treating as a 'vote' for any one feature, but it's a great way to validate our plans and determine what other areas to focus on.

Features

There were 108 different feature suggestions, with many that overlapped. Of those that were suggested in more than one submission, all of these are already covered by an initiative or work track: 

  • Better page building tools: more intuitive layout builder; drag & drop components; ability to easily add lists to pages; theming tools in the UI; live preview (20) [Experience builder]
  • SEO: Meta tags (specifically including content schema and social media sharing); SEO analysis tools (14) [SEO track]
  • Form builder (7) [Contact form track]
  • Perform content management actions in bulk (3) [Content publishing workflows track]
  • Image resizing and cropping tools (3) [Media management track]
  • Responsive images (3) [Media management track]
  • Login with email (3) [Base recipe track]
  • Anti-spam measures (2) [Contact form track]
  • Better for search (2) [Advanced search recipe track]
  • Ability to add sitewide alerts (2) [Base recipe track]

The remaining feature suggestions were suggested once each, but point to specific areas we could focus on.

Content management & workflows

  • Workspaces
  • Content workflows
  • Content scheduling
  • Content cloning
  • Simple content access control
  • Deleted content recovery
  • WYSIWYG editor
  • Content import & export tools
  • Inline entity creation
  • Jobs content recipe
  • Event calendar

Security

  • Two-factor authentication
  • Configurable password policy
  • Security compliance tools

Multilingual

  • Asymmetric translations
  • Capability to display the source content next to the translated content in the node edit form

Media

  • SVG support
  • Bulk media upload
  • Easy linking directly to media files
  • AI alt tag generation

Marketing tools

  • A/B testing for content
  • QR code generation
  • Easy to configure social media links
  • Social sharing capability

General

  • Accessibility checker
  • AI enabled content writing 
  • Admin menu search
  • Infinite scrolling
  • SMTP email support
  • Entity relationship modeling tool
  • Better cookie handling
  • Login with social network accounts

Developer tools

  • Integrated deployments
  • Email rerouting for non-production environments
  • New core theme with configurable CSS variables
  • Advanced aggregation modernization
  • Better exposure of metrics / telemetry

Drupal-specific suggestions

  • Automatic Updates
  • Project Browser
  • Simplified Views UI
  • Ability to define "site settings" without affecting configuration
  • Safe revision pruning
  • Better situational awareness of extensions
  • Easy configuration management system
  • Easier removal of modules and cleaning up of applied recipes
  • Entity hierarchy module in core
  • Referential integrity: https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal/issues/2723323
  • Poster images for video media: https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal/issues/2954834
  • Inline moderation notes for easier collaboration
  • Improved file upload experience/widget
  • Submission against including Twig Tweak module
  • Manual curation tools such as entityqueue

Modules proposed

As with the feature suggestions, some modules were suggested more than once, and are mostly covered by existing streams.

Whether a module will be included will depend on many things, but mainly, it should be required for some functionality that we are planning to deliver. Track leads will propose functionality that will be supported by contrib modules, and then the modules will be assessed for inclusion. We plan to publish further information about module selection and ongoing governance and maintenance as the project progresses.

Based on this, we might create new tracks for WYSIWYG and security, if we don't feel that we can sufficiently cover these as part of the base recipe.

The other modules suggested were:

Link
https://www.drupal.org/about/starshot/blog/out-of-the-box-functionality-survey-…
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