This week I built a LocalGov Drupal dashboard, so we can better keep track of all our projects.

Whenever a new major version of Drupal is released, we update Drupal's GitLab CI testing templates to automatically update the versions being tested. Here's an outline of our plan:

Where we are now

Drupal 11 was released on August 6th. You can learn more about it on the Drupal 11 landing page.

This means that we are in the middle of a transition period where many sites and modules will want to be in Drupal 11, whereas some others might still want to stay in Drupal 10.

From a GitLab CI point of view, testing for both Drupal 10 and 11 simultaneously has been available for months, providing module maintainers with a great tool to test their code before Drupal 11 was launched.

This was available by setting one variable in the .gitlab-ci.yml like this:

Many maintainers have leveraged this already and we can see many modules already claiming full Drupal 11 support within days of the release. To be more specific, as of August 20th, 2870 projects have no compatibility errors anymore, and 1720 have made Drupal 11 compatible releases.

Where we want to be

We are preparing to update the default testing configuration for the GitLab CI templates, but we want to make sure to continue to support maintainers who still need to test against Drupal 10 and 11. We've outlined the changes we'll be making and the timeline below.

As of today:

• Current version (default) is Drupal 10
• Next major version is Drupal 11
• Previous major version is Drupal 9

When we do the shift, this will change to:

• Current version (default) is Drupal 11
• Next major version will be Drupal 12 (when development starts) - see note below.
• Previous major version is Drupal 10

For modules that were testing Drupal 10 and Drupal 11 simultaneously, the change will be as easy as this:

Instead of opting in to test the next major, all you need to do is opt into the previous major.

Note: Drupal 12 development branch does not exist yet. Enabling this version might not do anything until this branch is created.

Steps

We are actively working on making the above switch in this issue: Update templates so 11.0 is the default/current branch.

We are going to be taking the following steps in the coming days / weeks.

Step 1: Make all modules start testing against Drupal 11

We will set the default value for OPT_IN_TEST_NEXT_MAJOR to 1 temporarily, and release version 1.5.6 of the templates. This will automatically become the default for all Contrib.

Modules that have not yet tested their code against Drupal 11 will now see "Next Major" test jobs in their pipelines, in addition to the "current" Drupal 10 variant. These new jobs have allow_failure: true, so the overall result of the pipelines should not change. This should show a good sense of where the module is at in relation to Drupal 11. Maintainers can still override the variable to be 0 if they don't want this behavior.

The expected date for this change is: August 26th, 2024 (next Monday)

Step 2: Roll out the shift and make it available for Contrib

When the issue Update templates so 11.0 is the default/current branch and all its dependencies all sorted, we will deploy the changes and create a new release 1.6.0. This will be available to Contrib projects using "gitlab ref" main or 1.x-latest

The expected date for this change is: September 5th, 2024 (2 weeks from now)

Step 3: Make the shift default for all Contrib

Then we will make this new release be the default for all contrib projects automatically.

However, we have provided several alternatives for modules that don't want to do the shift at this point. Any of the following can be used:

• You can pin the version of the templates for your module to 1.5.6. This is the latest version released before the switch. Learn more about pinning the templates version in this page. Note that this means you will not get any updates to the templates for new features or bug fixes, until you un-pin the release.
• You can set OPT_IN_TEST_PREVIOUS_MAJOR to 1 and OPT_IN_TEST_CURRENT to 0 to continue testing Drupal 10 and not Drupal 11.
• You can configure your own variants as described on this page.
• You can tweak the key variables used when creating variants so they have the versions that you desire. Check the above link for that information.

For those wanting to do the shift, you will not need to do anything at all.

The expected date for this change is: September 12th, 2024 (3 weeks from now)

After the shift is made

Onwards and upwards, that means that Drupal 11 is the default version to be tested for all new issues, merge requests, and pipelines for all contrib projects, allowing us to keep the Drupal ecosystem up to date and relevant.

There are some issues that are not blockers for this change, but are related, so we encourage you to see the issue list before reporting anything new, but otherwise create a new issue if you discover a problem and don't find it in the queue.

PORTLAND, Ore., 22 August 2024—The Drupal Association is pleased to announce Tag1 Consulting as a partner for the Drupal 7 Extended Security Support Provider Program. This initiative aims to support Drupal 7 users by carefully selecting providers to deliver extended security support services beyond the 5 January 2025 end-of-life (EOL) date.

The Drupal 7 Extended Security Support Provider Program allows organizations that cannot migrate from Drupal 7 to newer versions by the EOL date to continue using a version of Drupal 7 that is secure and compliant. This program complements the Association’s Drupal 7 Certified Migration Providers Program, which Tag1 is also a participant in, that helps organizations find the right partner to transition their sites from Drupal 7 to Drupal 11.

Tag1’s Drupal 7 extended support offers proactive security and compatibility updates for D7, backed by their team of top Drupal contributors and security experts who led its creation and evolution. With their support, users can continue running D7 as long as they need.

“We’re very pleased to add Tag1 to our Drupal 7 Extended Security Support Program,” commented Tim Doyle, CEO of the Drupal Association.  “Tag1 brings a wealth of experience with Drupal and the Drupal Community, and we’re happy they’re applying their expertise to Drupal 7 support.” 

As organizations prepare for the transition from Drupal 7, Tag1 Consulting will provide the necessary support to keep their sites secure and operational.

“As one of the oldest and most well-known consulting companies in the Drupal ecosystem, we're proud to offer trusted support for Drupal 7 after its end of life,” said Jeremy Andrews, Tag1’s CEO. “Our team is dedicated to helping organizations keep their sites secure and running smoothly, with the same expertise and care that we've brought to the community for over 20 years.”

More information on Drupal 7 Extended Support from Tag1.

About the Drupal Association

The Drupal Association is a nonprofit organization that fosters and supports the Drupal software project, the community, and its growth. Our mission is to drive innovation and adoption of Drupal as a high-impact digital public good, hand-in-hand with our open source community. Through various initiatives, events, and programs, the Drupal Association helps ensure the ongoing development and success of the Drupal project.

About Tag1 Consulting, Inc.

Tag1 is a global technology consulting firm and recognized leader in the Drupal community. Known for our innovative work with top-tier organizations and our pivotal contributions to the Drupal platform itself, we provide unmatched expertise in key areas such as Drupal architecture, performance, scalability, and security. With over 100 team members across 20+ countries, we are the only organization with experience providing Extended Support for Drupal after End-of-Life, proudly having provided commercial support for Drupal 6 for over six years beyond its EOL. The largest and most well known users of Drupal, with the most demanding security needs have relied on Tag1’s Extended Support including Acquia, Pantheon, Fortive, Symantec, Capegmini, the Drupal Association and Drupal.org.

With the constant evolution of Drupal, particularly with recent versions like Drupal 10 and Drupal 11, automating deployments has become essential to leverage new features and maintain an agile and reliable development cycle. This article will guide you through the coding approaches and techniques to automate the deployment of Drupal sites using CI/CD.

Worried about the future of your Drupal 7 website? With Drupal 7 reaching end-of-life in January 2025, many site owners and developers are facing a tough decision: migrate to a new version of Drupal or to a new platform altogether, or risk running an unsupported site.

The next major Drupal version was just released — laying the foundation for its future. Drupal 11 was recently released on Drupal’s timeline. Unlike previous major versions, where releases needed to accommodate underlying technologies’ end of life like Symfony, Drupal 11 was released because it was the right time to solidify new features and free us […]

The post All About Drupal 11 appeared first on Kanopi Studios.

In this blog post, I'll introduce ten SEO features that every modern CMS should have and show you how easy it is to implement them in Drupal. So, if you have an existing website, you'll easily see what you're missing. And if you're just planning to build a new one, you'll get a ready-made list of features to copy to your web specifications and requirements. I invite you to read the article or watch an episode of the “Nowoczesny Drupal” series (the video is in Polish).