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With only a few critical issues left in the Drupal 8 queue and D8 being surprisingly usable, many developers already use it in small projects to play with the technology and to challenge themselves.
I have to admit, I am no exception - the embracement of many PHP technologies and (finally!) the jump to the OOP paradigm makes me want to stop writing right now and code some more.

Which projects qualify for Drupal 8 today?

I would wait a few months before creating bigger D8 projects for my clients. The community has to play some catching up first and port modules, themes and write documentation. On top of that, apart from all the OOP technologies we love, there have been some new drupalisms introduced and not documented yet - this combined with the lack of contributed module solutions makes D8 development much more time consuming for paid projects in comparison to D7.

Small projects however are very doable.

First however, it may be necessary to upgrade the server, as D8 introduces relatively high PHP and SQL requirements. See the official requirements page.

Letting users create content without having to register (or going through any other annoying process) is becoming an important customer engagement strategy.

When you allow anonymous users to create content on your website, you want this content to go through a moderation process before it becomes publicly available. To implement this in Drupal, the anonymous user has to be given permission to create content and the content type needs to be unpublished by default.

The problem with Drupal 7 and Drupal 8 is that as soon as the anonymous user saves new content, they loose access rights to it and get redirected to an 'Access denied' page which is not very user friendly.

In addition to the above, you may want the anonymous user to be able to edit or even delete their own content in case they find an error right after submitting it. Users often find typos or other kinds of mistakes right after content submission.

Gbyte created the Session Node Access module to tackle exactly these issues. The module allows administrators to grant certain user roles (not only anonymous users) specific permissions to content they created. These permissions last only as long as the browsing session lasts; after that, the regular permissions apply again. This way it is possible to allow guests or users of a certain role to keep access to their content, even if it is pending for approval.

Now Session Node Access has been ported to Drupal 8 - thank you to Gaël Gosset for doing the initial porting.

Right now this module works only with nodes, we may implement it for other entities in case of demand.

Once is a Drupal library - available on npm - that ensures your JavaScript only runs once when working on any item.

Host Matt Kleve assembles a crack team of Lullabot experts from various company departments to share their hands-on experiences and insights into how innovative technology influences and enhances our field.

We discuss integrating AI into coding, design, and tasks like writing emails and RFP responses, along with the broader implications for the future of web development.

Join us as we navigate the complexities, challenges, and vast potential of Generative AI in shaping our world.

It's been three looong years since the Drupal community gathered in Seattle (and two and a half since Amsterdam). DrupalCon Portland is the reunion we've been waiting for, and we can't wait to get there and share.

Virtual events are nice for keeping tabs on what your peers are doing, but nothing beats the large scale casual exchange of ideas at an event like DrupalCon. We recommend using the event to reconnect to the high level developments in various Drupal initiatives and using sessions and smaller conversations to go deep on the topics most directly impactful to your work.

To that end, we'll have the Centarro booth 404/406 setup to chat about all things Drupal Commerce! If you're planning, building, or operating a Drupal Commerce site, we'd love for you to come tell us about it. The impact our modules have on individuals, families, and companies all over the world gives meaning to our work that transcends the mere writing of a module or theme.

We released Commerce Core 2.25 on June 30th, 2021. This release kicks off a new schedule that focuses on feature releases once a quarter with bug fix / minor patch releases in the intervening months, giving us time to focus on our other modules as well. Our efforts for this release centered around store administration improvements, Layout Builder integration, and general performance and stability improvements. We also reviewed our code to ensure we had solutions or a roadmap for changes required by Brexit and the EU July 2021 eCommerce VAT package.

Store administration improvements

As with the 2.24 release, our work with multiple large merchants continued to drive store administration improvements throughout the 2.25 development cycle. This release packs in features related to payment administration, coupon administration, and promotion configuration in addition to quality of life improvements in one of our main dependencies, State Machine.

New payment entry options

Until this release, store administrators wanting to enter a new payment for an order could only do so using stored payment methods previously created by the customer. Several years ago, Drupal Commerce contributor Brad Jones kicked off development of a major feature patch to add support for the creation of new payment methods in the order management interface. This is particularly helpful for customer service representatives placing orders for customers who do not have accounts or stored payment methods on their sites yet.

When you're theming a Drupal Commerce site, you shouldn't forget to style the emails your store sends. The primary use case is the checkout completion email that includes the customer's receipt, but there may be others depending on your feature set and customizations (e.g. dunning emails for recurring subscriptions).

Commerce Core provides a basic, table based template that you'll want to either replace or at least ensure is styled by your theme to reflect your branding. (Find it in the order module's templates directory, commerce-order-receipt.html.twig.) However, without adding the capacity to properly send HTML email from your site, it's going to look like a jumbled mess in your customer's inbox.

We've long recommended Swift Mailer for formatting and sending HTML emails from Drupal Commerce. Symfony announced the project's deprecation late last year, recommending folks switch to using the 3 year old Symfony Mailer instead after they brought it up to full feature parity with the Swift Mailer library.

Fortunately, there's a module for that!

It's been three years since DrupalCon Amsterdam, the last time we were able to bring our American and European teams together at a DrupalCon. In remote work years, that's practically an eternity, so we're stoked to be back together again during DrupalCon Prague. 🤘🏼

This time around we decided to "focus on us" after a busy summer of client project launches coordinated around vacation schedules. Instead of staffing a booth, we'll be hosting a weeklong Drupal Commerce maintenance sprint focused on various Commerce Core, Commerce Kickstart, and Centarro certified project issues.

Feel free to reach out if you'd like to join us physically or remotely. If you have a patch ready for review already in one of the related queues, tag it with KickstartPrague2022 and we'll do our best to take a look!