If you've been around for a while you may be aware that Drupal 7 was much more accessible to the casual tinkerer than newer versions of Drupal. You'd regularly see Drupal 7 sites built by people who sometimes refer to themselves as "Site Builders" - a term which describes people who are comfortable building sites with Drupal, but may be less comfortable creating custom modules and themes.
The dropoff in Site Builders' participation since Drupal 7 is due in no small part to Drupal's decision to adopt modern development practices such as object-oriented programming, building on top of the Symfony framework, and utilizing a package manager. These are all good things! But we, as a community, are ready to welcome the casual Site Builder back with our latest developments.
ashrafabed Tue, 03/04/2025DrupalCon is a flagship event for everyone in the Drupal community, and developers are a huge part of the action. With DrupalCon Atlanta 2025 just around the corner, let’s take a look at what’s in store for these tech-savvy minds — especially the seasoned masters of the craft: senior developers.
There’s plenty to get involved in — contributing to Drupal’s future in code sprints, showing off your knowledge at Drupal Trivia Night, or grabbing cool swag from sponsors. But at the heart of the event? Insightful and thought-provoking sessions!
If you’ve been building Drupal sites for years, you know that learning never stops. Staying ahead means keeping up with the latest innovations, tackling tough challenges, and exchanging ideas with fellow experts. DrupalCon 2025 is your chance to do exactly that — hear from top Drupal minds, ask the hard questions, and dive into discussions that push your skills further. Here’s a handpicked selection designed to challenge, inspire, and get you excited as a senior developer for 24-27 March.
“The future of Drupal core in the age of Drupal CMS” — by Gábor Hojtsy
Drupal CMS has been making waves, offering a fresh, flexible approach to building with Drupal. With Drupal CMS 1.0 officially released and work on version 2.0 already in motion, big questions are emerging about the future of Drupal core.
Will Drupal 12 simply be Drupal CMS? Well… yes and no. But what does that really mean? How will Drupal continue to support essential use cases like headless architectures, social, and e-commerce? And what about developers and other personas not directly in Drupal CMS’s focus — what changes can they expect?
When there are many questions, listen to the tech-savvy person behind many of Drupal’s innovations. Gábor Hojtsy, Drupal core committer and initiative coordinator, knows the answers. He always brings fresh perspectives and shares insights you might not have heard before.
Attend his session for a deep dive into the role of Drupal CMS in the entire ecosystem and the technical evolution of Drupal core. You’ll understand how this should impact long-term development strategies and how to adapt to the changing landscape.
“The Future of Drupal Theming: AI, Experience Builder, and Beyond” — by Mike Herchel
Drupal’s theming layer has evolved significantly in recent years, with new Twig filters, theme generation tools, and Single Directory Components making front-end development smoother than ever. But the biggest changes are still ahead.
With the introduction of Experience Builder and modern AI-driven tools, theming in Drupal is about to take a giant leap forward. How will these innovations reshape the way you build and style Drupal sites?
Immerse yourself in all the details at this session with Mike Herchel (mherchel), Drupal core committer, and the creator of the Olivero front-end theme. You’ll get a practical look at what’s coming in the next era of Drupal theming. Mike will share how to develop components for Experience Builder, where AI fits into your frontend process, and what should (and shouldn’t) be a component. Plus, you’ll pick up best practices to avoid unnecessary code bloat and ensure your work stands the test of time.
As a senior developer, you’re certainly already familiar with the quirks, strengths, and challenges of Drupal theming. This knowledge should be very helpful for getting the most out of the session.
“Leveraging GitLab CI for contributions” — by Deepak Mishra and Ankit Pathak
Having a smooth and efficient development workflow can make all the difference. Automation is key to keeping things running smoothly. Here is where GitLab CI/CD comes in — a Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery system built into GitLab. It automates the process of testing, building, and deploying your code.
The session by Deepak Mishra (deepakkm) and Ankit Pathak (ankitv18) will show you how to harness the power of GitLab CI/CD. You’ll explore how to set up a GitLab CI pipeline, run automated quality assurance checks, manage deployments, and handle merge requests.
Say goodbye to repetitive manual tasks and deployment headaches and embrace better collaboration with other developers. With practical tips from this session, you’ll level up your workflow, making your development process faster, smoother, and more reliable.
The session will focus on using GitLab CI/CD for contributions to drupal.org, so Deepak and Ankit will demonstrate the best practices in this area. However, the knowledge you obtain will be helpful in your client projects, too.
“Creating Composer aware modules with Drupal core’s new Package Manager module” — by Ted Bowman
Have you heard about Package Manager — a new experimental module in Drupal core that provides an API for interacting with Composer? It’s the key tool behind such innovative solutions as Project Browser and Automatic Updates, running Composer behind the scenes and allowing users to rely on the admin dashboard.
If you are curious about its work or want to build a module that performs Composer operations or integrates with Project Browser or Automatic Updates, here is a can’t-miss session. Who better to guide you through this than Ted Bowman (tedbow), Drupal core committer and the maker of Automatic Updates?
Using the example modules that rely on the Package Manager API, Ted will demonstrate the steps to implementing various features:
You’ll also learn how to build user-friendly interfaces for Composer operations, customize Composer tasks with the Package Manager’s event system, retrieve detailed package information, and much more.
“Mixing the Schema.org Blueprints module into a Drupal Recipe to bake a sweet content model” — by Jacob Rockowitz
Structured data helps search engines better understand the content of a web page, leading to richer search results. Schema.org markup is a reliable way to achieve this goal. Want to be equipped with the best tools and practices for using it? Then read on.
In this DrupalCon session, you’ll get a look at two exciting, innovative solutions for building and managing structured content:
This session will show you how to combine the power of both. You’ll see a demo of how to build structured content types, as well as hierarchical content and organization charts.
“Collecting Data in Drupal When Internet is Unstable: Browser Local Storage and Service Workers” — by Nia Kathoni and Daniel Cothran
Drupal Recipes deserve a dedicated session in your schedule. They have really revolutionized how feature sets are added to websites. You can now pre-package the necessary modules and configurations in flexible ways, without being locked into the constraints of a specific distribution. Recipes can be applied, mixed, matched, and updated to meet the evolving needs of your website.
Introduced as experimental in Drupal 10.3, the Recipes APIs laid the foundation for Drupal CMS. Since then, the team has been refining the code base and gathering valuable feedback. DrupalCon Atlanta 2025 is the perfect opportunity to hear exclusive insights from the team.
If you are curious about one of Drupal Recipes, join Jim Birch (thejimbirch), the architect behind this solution. In his session, Jim will update you on the progress of the phase 2 roadmap of the Drupal Recipes Initiative. He will also delve into important topics such as config actions, default content, config checkpoints, and the process of creating recipes. Plus, he’ll explore idempotency — ensuring configurations remain reliable and consistent, no matter how many times they are applied.
Or maybe you’re ready to roll up your sleeves and help shape the next chapter? This session has a strong contribution focus, bringing together maintainers and contributors. You’ll learn how you can get involved with the Drupal Recipes Initiative.
“Supply Chain Security in Drupal and Composer” — by Christopher Gervais, Tim Hestenes Lehnen, and Neil Drumm
There can never be too much talk about security — especially when it comes to securing software supply chains. A software supply chain ensures that all the necessary software elements (like libraries, modules, or tools) are in place and function properly together.
Join this DrupalCon Atlanta 2025 session to discover more about supply chains and how to protect them from unauthorized access. You’ll be introduced to the nature of supply chain attacks and understand Drupal’s vulnerability to such threats. You will also gain insight into how Composer, along with services like packagist.org and Private Packagist, fits into the supply chain, and the crucial role PHP dependencies play in securing your project.
Next, the session will cover the Automatic Updates Initiative, one of the Drupal Association’s most impactful efforts to ensure websites stay up to date and secure. You’ll also be introduced to essential tools for bolstering security, including:
The session will be led by Christopher Gervais (ergonlogic), Tim Hestenes Lehnen (hestenet), and Neil Drumm (drumm). They are renowned Drupal experts and active contributors to the Drupal Security Team, Automatic Updates, Drupal core, and more. This makes them perfectly suited to guide you through supply chain security.
Driesnote by Dries Buytaert
The central keynote at DrupalCon, Driesnote, is always something to look forward to. If there’s anyone at the event who hasn’t yet heard of Dries Buytaert, it certainly won’t be you. As a senior developer, you know Dries will keep you up to date with Drupal’s latest developments, and you will never want to miss his presentation.
Your experience has already shown you how quickly technology evolves, and Driesnote is the perfect opportunity to see Drupal’s momentum in action. Dries will share what’s next for the platform, including what’s in store for developers like you. This talk will give you a clear view of where Drupal is headed — whether it’s new features, tools, or improvements in how the platform works. Furthermore, based on past Driesnotes, even the most seasoned developers might find themselves completely amazed by the demos Dries has in store.
You’ll understand how the latest changes might impact your projects moving forward and how you can make the most of them. It’s a fantastic opportunity to stay ahead of the curve and connect with the Drupal community.
Make sure to grab your ticket to the biggest Drupal gathering, where these and plenty of other great sessions are waiting for you. After enjoying this adventure, you’ll leave Atlanta with fresh techniques, smart solutions, and a stronger bond with fellow Drupal enthusiasts — fueling your work long after the event ends.
Happy March!
DDEV v1.24.3 was released earlier than planned for two major reasons: the new generic web server type allows Node.js and other interesting possibilities, and an upcoming Docker engine release was going to be incompatible with current Mutagen version. We encourage you all to upgrade because of this upcoming incompatibility, thanks!
Open-Source For The Win: See the details about how a future incompatibility with the Docker engine was pre-emptively caught and fixed, Open Source for the Win!
Web-based DDEV Add-on Registry is now live! Try it out at https://addons.ddev.com and check out the introduction blog.
TYPO3 Community Budget Ideas: Please vote!: We applied for the Q2 approval process to fund a great feature for DDEV, supporting mDNS as a domain-name resolution technique. If you're a member of the TYPO3 Association, you should have received an email to vote on this. We'd appreciate your vote!
Platform.sh has transferred domain names to DDEV: Thanks again to Platform.sh for their ongoing support. As a part of the process in change of their support, they have transferred control of the ddev.com and ddev.site domain names to the DDEV Foundation.
DDEV Notes and News
Funding DDEV to allow both maintainers to work full-time on DDEV: We need your help and your organization's help! Let me know if you need help getting this into your budget! Our key financial goal is to fully fund @stasadev so he can work exclusively on DDEV. We've slipped back in recent months. We need about $3700/month in increased pledges from organizations and individuals. See Full information about supporting DDEV. We’re happy to invoice you, happy to do a call discussing this, and would love it if you’d include DDEV in your budgeting process for this year or next. (Our current status: We receive about $6000/month, have been spending about $7000/month. Bank balance is about $9,000, up from $6,000 last month (progress!).)
THANKS to all of you who are supporting DDEV’s path to sustainability and who have gotten your organizations to do so.
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Happy March from Randy Fay, DDEV Project Lead. It's a delight to collaborate with you!
Those of us in the UK had a great opportunity this last weekend to get together at the new DrupalCamp England event, held at Cambridge University. Protecting my work-life balance means I don't usually get to many in-person events, but I made it to this one. It was lovely to finally put some names to faces and build better understanding together. So thank you to the organisers and sponsors who put on a great day! A couple of us from our Coventry team went along, read on as I reflect on my own experience...
I was impressed that Baddý Sonja Breidert was doing the opening session - especially when we got to share her birthday cake! She demonstrated some fun use of an AI chatbot within a Drupal site; which looked like the kind of thing our clients could use to help visitors find what information they want. Rather than interacting with websites in the traditional point-and-click manner, browsing around pages to hunt down details, we need to watch out for how users are increasingly expecting to use the internet. Younger people aren't just typing keywords into a Google search and then gathering information like a researcher might. Instead, they're increasingly using voice or chat-based experiences, expecting the information to be brought to them, often via summaries from an AI. Including this in a Drupal website keeps users engaged directly, controlling the feel of interacting with a brand, and without surrendering the journey to external agencies.
Jamie Abrahams talking on 'Why Drupal AI might take over the world'
Jamie Abrahams gave a talk a bit later about combining AI 'agents' to complete all sorts of tasks. This combined the theory of this design pattern with some clear practical examples, to leverage LLMs' strengths in a controlled and understandable way. He also announced a new service for using AI with Drupal which would manage AI configuration (including API keys), to allow site builders to use it much more easily. At the moment they have to do hard work just to be able to ask AI to then do less complex tasks! My favourite part of the day followed immediately after when I joined my former colleague James Silver in conversation with Jamie's colleague Andrew Belcher out in the lobby. Andrew took us through a much deeper look at vector search and how these agents can be orchestrated together (as a 'swarm') within the Drupal UI, without writing any code! I challenged him on how this still needs the skills of a developer - as it requires architecting a solution, breaking work down into parts, etc - even if no code has to be written. I suppose coders and architects could be different personas; the term 'developer' might just describe the overlap. Now I wonder: could we treat each more helpfully, according to their strengths and interests?
Before long, even Baddý joined our table chat - she wanted to show off her team's efforts with AI and collaborate on using AI with Drupal. It was ace to see the authentic desire from these community figureheads to work together without egos, and to find myself actively participating in bouncing dreams together of what the internet might look like before long! Why invest in web pages when an AI can provide our content, or even build designs for us? How can we influence the window that people look through to our online presence? Going beyond well-structured content, could we provide structured brand metadata to shape how it is presented by AIs? For me, these conversations were the most valuable part of the day - putting our brains together as a community as we inspire and challenge each other. (Thanks to everyone for letting me chat with you!)
Emma Horrell: All aboard the UX express – how we can all apply user-centred ideas to make a Drupal to be proud of
Thankfully the day wasn't entirely dominated by AI ;-) I learnt plenty from Emma Horrell's session on incorporating UX Design expertise into the way we build with Drupal. It provoked me to thinking how we facilitate individual achievement, and wide collaboration between developers, but it's not so easy to build cross-disciplinary work. Core changes are reviewed by experts in specialist fields but it's not so common to incorporate that elsewhere, and early enough in plans. I'll remember her point that the challenge to think of other users’ experiences is what can make us grow. Gareth Alexander's dive into how Drupal CMS uses Recipes gave me a list to investigate this week (e.g. easy_email_express, Simple Add More and the Recipe generator 👀).
We finished the day off at BrewDog Cambridge over burgers and drinks - meeting plenty more great people (I even got to practise my Portuguese! 💚❤️) and comparing notes on life, the Drupalverse and everything. I look forward to the next DrupalCamp England!
In the evolving landscape of web development, delivering seamless and engaging user experiences is paramount. Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) have emerged as a solution that combines the best of web and mobile applications. Integrating PWAs with Drupal can significantly enhance website performance and user satisfaction.
PWAs are web applications that utilize modern web technologies to offer experiences similar to native mobile apps. They are designed to be reliable, fast, and engaging, providing functionalities such as offline access, push notifications, and home screen installation.
For a comprehensive guide, refer to the Progressive Web App (PWA) module documentation.
In this guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about implementing PWAs in Drupal, from setup to optimization.
As part of our preparation to migrate issues from Drupal.org to GitLab on git.drupalcode.org, we are simplifying the access control for who can grant issue credit.
All maintainers of a project now have permission to grant issue credit. In the past, maintainers needed to have the “Write to VCS” or “Maintain issues” role on their project in order to have permission to assign credit on their issues.
Since issues are moving to GitLab, we will no longer have the “Maintain issues” project role managed by Drupal.
We will also be simplifying credit so that is granted for all “closed” states where maintainers can grant credit, not just “fixed” and “closed (fixed)” issue states. Follow #3427961: Grant credit for all closed issues, not just fixed issues for updates on this change. This provides more options for maintainers, but they are not obligated to credit all closed, not-fixed issues. That is up to each maintainer. We encourage giving credit to issue contributions which have impact.
This change is partly motivated by adapting our credit model to prepare for the GitLab issue migration. GitLab does not have a specific “fixed” state for issues; issues are only open or closed, and can have additional labels that may vary for each project. See #3254602: Using GitLab labels for issues on Drupal projects for more information about labels in the GitLab issue migration.
More broadly, you can expect to see three key work areas in our final phase of the GitLab migration:
For further updates, you can join asynchronous initiative meetings every other week on Wednesdays starting at 19:00 UTC in the #gitlab channel on Drupal Slack.
We're excited to introduce https://addons.ddev.com, a central hub where the community can explore, contribute to, and enhance the collection of DDEV add-ons.
The source code is available and your contributions are encouraged at https://github.com/ddev/addon-registry.
Need to find a specific add-on? Use the search field, and watch results update in real-time as you type.
Click on a column title to organize the entries based on that field. A second click will reverse the sort order, and a third click resets it back.
Add-ons fall into two categories: Official add-ons, which are supported by the DDEV team, and Contrib add-ons, which are supported by the community.
Want to share your thoughts or feedback on an add-on? Scroll to the bottom of an add-on's page and click "Sign in with GitHub". We use giscus to manage comments, making it easy to join the conversation by authorizing your GitHub account. You can also react to other comments or add your own insights.
The DDEV Add-on Registry is a living project, and we're eager to involve the community in its future. If you have suggestions or want to contribute, head over to https://github.com/ddev/addon-registry. We look forward to your feedback and collaboration!
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