Dear Readers,

It's that time of the year when everyone brushes off the cobwebs of the long 11 months to gather them in a corner of retrospection. We are searching out planners and diaries to create to-do lists, write down resolutions, and set goals, all while peering back at 2023 before we bid farewell.

In the grand narrative of the year, one acronym echoed across the globe, shaping industries and transforming the way we work: AI. And has it made my work easier? Certainly! It's no longer only about working hard but working smart. I sought the assistance of AI to write about Drupal, and interestingly, it offered me a story on Drupal in a very old-fashioned way.

"Once upon a time in the world of web development, an ambitious individual namely Dries Buytaert ventured into the creation of Drupal. Later, Dries along with a community of passionate individuals came together under the banner of open-source technology and their journey transformed Drupal into a powerful platform that empowered countless businesses and organizations to build and manage their online presence with ease."

Our world has expanded and contracted, all within the grasp of our fingertips. A robust online presence has become indispensable for the growth of any venture, and Drupal has emerged as a stalwart, now embodied in its latest iteration, Drupal 10.2. This update brings enhanced features, fortified security, and many opportunities for developers and users alike.

Milestones are not conquered in isolation; they are a testament to the collective effort. Hence, The DropTimes introduces a new segment dedicated to spotlighting the stories of organizations that embody innovation and unwavering commitment to the open-source community and Drupal. In the inaugural edition of Spotlight, we shine the light on SparkFabrik. Elma John, our sub-editor, combined SparkFabrik's rich history of success, open-source commitment, and vision for the future into a comprehensive feature.

In an exclusive interview by Kazima Abbas, Andrew Berry shares his experiences from Evolve Drupal Toronto, insights into Drupal's unique community spirit, and the story behind his contributions to Lullabot. Kazima also had the opportunity to correspond with Brian Perry, coordinator of API Client Initiative, to gain more insights about the initiative. The DropTimes was fortunate to publish Ignacio Díaz-Roncero Fraile's detailed overview of the Component-Based Design using Single Directory Components (SDC) in Drupal.

Fame often comes with a baggage of criticisms and opinions and it's not unlikely for people to have polarising opinions. Recently, one such demonstration occupied the front page of Hacker News, followed by a revisit by Dries Buytaert to a 16-year-old blog that announced his 16-year-old start-up, Acquia and I was able to capture the essence of that discussion into a recent article.

The program schedule for DrupalCon Portland 2024 has been unveiled, offering a comprehensive overview of the conference's daily activities. The Drupal France and Francophonie association has announced its eleventh DrupalCamp, which is set to take place at the Maison des Associations in Rennes from March 28 to March 30, 2024. Axess hosts a webinar on Drupal 10.2 Features & DrupalCon Lille Highlights on December 19, 2023. Also, look at the list of events that will keep the Drupalers engaged this week.

Meanwhile, after the announcement of Drupal 10.2, Adam Bramley has been appointed as a new co-maintainer in the Drupal Core. Drupal Association published blog posts announcing the addition of Lenny Moskalyk to the Drupal Board and progress updates on the EU Cyber Resiliency Act response.

There are more stories available out there. But the compulsion to limit the selection of stories is forcing us to put a hard break on further exploration—happy Drupaling folks.

To get timely updates, follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

Thank you,

Sincerely

Alka Elizabeth
Sub-Editor, TheDropTimes

The way people use the internet is changing, and they want websites to be faster, more personalized, user-friendly, and secure. The content on a website is crucial for its success. To keep up with the ever-evolving needs of customers, your business requires a web content management system (CMS) that fits the bill. When it comes to content-focused CMS solutions, Drupal for Large Organizations is the perfect fit. 

According to W3Techs, Drupal is the chosen CMS for 2.4% of all websites. It's not just for big enterprises; even small companies find Drupal development services to be a highly useful CMS. 

Authored by: Nadiia Nykolaichuk

We firmly believe that website accessibility is of utmost importance. Which is why we are kicking off a series of articles dedicated to the elements it cannot exist without. Of course, accessibility embraces a myriad of aspects, but we decided to choose some of the most essential ones and dig a little deeper into how each of them works. 

New in Drupal 10.2

The second feature release of Drupal 10 improves content modeling, block management, menu and taxonomy organization, and permission administration. New options to sanitize file names make it possible to clean up the names of uploaded files, and media item revisions now have a dedicated user interface.

Easier content management

10.2 improves the user experience for managing several types of content:

• Field types for new fields are visually listed instead of a simple select list. Settings for fields are now all included on one form.
• Menu items and taxonomy terms have a dedicated option to add a child item, which makes item placement easier.
• Media items now have a dedicated user interface to review and manage older revisions.
• CKEditor's language selector can now be configured to only show languages supported on the site.

More flexible block placement

A user interface has been added to show or hide each block based on the HTTP response status, so that specific blocks can be added or removed when the page is not found (404) or access is denied (403).

New built-in file name sanitization options

The functionality of one of the most popular contributed modules is now included in core! Replace whitespace in file names, transliterate text, convert to lowercase, and more.

Faster permission management

The permissions page now comes with a filter on the top to make it easy to find the permission you planned to adjust.

Performance improvements

Drupal 10.2 includes numerous performance improvements for content rendering and HTTP responses, as well as improved caching APIs.

Works on the latest PHP

PHP 8.3 was released three weeks ago, and Drupal 10.2 is already compatible with it.

Modern language feature: PHP attributes

Drupal core has started adopting PHP attributes, a modern PHP language feature, to provide better developer experience for plugin annotations. Contributed and custom code can begin adopting this improved API for their plugins, and Block and Action plugins can all be converted to the new API.

Built-in project news updates

To help keep you up to date with project news, the Announcements Feed module became stable and is now installed by default with the standard profile.

Developer experience improvements

Drupal 10.2 comes with a number of developer experience improvements:

• A PerformanceTestBase was added to support automated testing of performance metrics with support to send OpenTelemetry traces to an open telemetry endpoint.
• A new DeprecationHelper::backwardsCompatibleCall() method is available that helps write Drupal extensions that are compatible with multiple major versions at once.
• PHP Fibers support was added to BigPipe and the Renderer, which allows Drupal to potentially run different code while it's waiting for an asynchronous operation to return.
• Configuration validation was expanded to better support strict testing and make configuration form validation easier to implement.
• Symfony's autowiring support was adopted for services, based on PHP 8 attributes, making service creation easier.
• The HTML utility classes and filter system was updated to produce HTML5 syntax instead of XHTML.

Core team updates

Drupal is built by an open source community of collaborators across geographies and organizations. Maintainers assess the work of the community and decide when it's ready to commit to Drupal core. After a period as a provisional committer, Dave Long (at Full Fat Things) was promoted to a full release manager. Kristiaan Van den Eynde (at Factorial) and Adam Bramley (at PreviousNext) have also become core subsystem maintainers. Thanks for stepping up!

Want to get involved?

If you are looking to make the leap from Drupal user to Drupal contributor, or you want to share resources with your team as part of their professional development, there are many opportunities to deepen your Drupal skill set and give back to the community. Check out the Drupal contributor guide, or join us at DrupalCon Portland and attend sessions, network, and enjoy mentorship for your first contributions.

Government and public sector websites, powered by Drupal, play a vital role, serving as the virtual hub for a multitude of functions. These Drupal-based sites are not just informative platforms; they function as the digital town square—connecting people, facilitating business transactions, providing updates, and showcasing key attractions.

The responsibility of selecting the right content management system (CMS) falls on government officials. This decision comes with a low margin for error and high stakes. Government websites, designed with Drupal by a proficient Drupal development company, must fulfill numerous criteria, including being secure, scalable, engaging, and more. 

Drupal Commerce is a user-friendly system developed from tens of thousands of modules. It allows you to build a customized e-commerce store that meets all customer requirements. The framework source code is available to each customer, further simplifying use. 
Drupal 7 software was used to create Drupal Commerce. The developers have added essential features, including product management, a convenient shopping cart, fast checkout, and fulfillment. Also, this commerce platform has a built-in content management system, which some of the world's famous companies use. Let's explore the capabilities with our Drupal Commerce tutorial designed for beginners.

Once again, welcome to the Drupal Advent Calendar. It’s Day 15, and today Dan Lemon (dan2k3k4) is here to tell us about the GraphQL module.

The GraphQL module for Drupal is a game-changer in the world of web development. With its smooth integration into the Drupal ecosystem, this module opens up new possibilities for building decoupled websites with efficiency and flexibility.

At its core, the GraphQL module is designed to provide a query language for your API, enabling you to request only the data you need. This approach contrasts with traditional REST APIs, offering a more efficient and…

Tags

• GraphQL

The year is coming to a close and activity is already ramping down as we approach the Christmas festivities, so this month my PitchBurgh update will cover November and December.

But, before I jump into those updates, and as we are reaching important milestones and PitchBurgh is proving its value to Drupal and the community, let me highlight the importance of the companies that have made PitchBurgh possible, without whom anything of this would have been possible. Those companies are:

• Acquia
• 1xInternet
• Skilld
• Palantir
• Digital Polygon
• Zoocha
• ImageX

As I mentioned, PitchBurgh projects are crossing some important milestones, reaching their midpoint projects, and some are even getting to the end of the projects themselves. Let’s cover some important of the past weeks:

Access Policy

Kristiaan’s work on Access Policy API got merged https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal/issues/3376843

This was a relatively complex project, not just because of the technical side, but also because of what it did imply in terms of communication and coordination with the different people involved, and the fact that it needed approval from the core team to get this work committed into Core.

The big concern with this PitchBurgh project, as well as the JSON API one, was having the investment and all the work done, and preventing the work from getting stuck waiting for approvals and merges for months.

So, seeing how this project is the first to cross the line and get merged to core, is not just a relief, but proof that we can get complex things done as a community. It just takes a little bit of organization and communication between all parties involved, in this case the Drupal Association was the one ensuring that this communication and updates were happening often.

This project was finally committed on 17 November 2023 and will be in Drupal 10.3. You can watch a video/demo of the project here. We are now working to ensure that Drupal core itself also implements the new API by the time 10.3 is released.

JSON API

JSON api has completed their work as well

You can watch their video here:

https://www.previousnext.com.au/blog/pitchburgh-diaries-decoupled-layout-builder-sprint-3-4

Decoupled Layout Builder

Decoupled LB reached project mid point, so right now the work is being reviewed before the funds get released for this part of the project.

You can read all the updates and the rest of the information of the project on their Drupal.org issue:  https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal/issues/3375422  

You can also read the project wrap up here.

Drupal API

It has been an eventful month for the Drupal API Client. 

Reaching a big milestone for the project, we’ve published a 0.1.0 release on npm which represents our Vertical Slice POC. Now that we have a small sample of the client out in the real world, we’ve created an issue for soliciting feedback from the community. Any feedback small or large would be extremely helpful for the project. We’ve also been spreading the word through an ‘Update on the Drupal API Client’ blog post and a session at New England Drupal Camp.

We are also happy to announce that coby.sher and pratik_kamble have joined the project as maintainers. They both played a critical role in making our POC a reality and we’re excited to have their leadership going forward.

As we gather feedback, we’ll continue work on the JSON:API Client 1.0 release meta issue. We could still use contributors. If you’d like to participate, join us in the #api-client channel in Drupal Slack.

Gutenberg in Drupal

Gutenberg project is progressing well. After the different conversations and alignments with the team in Automattic, there is a date for the workshop and a provisional agenda. Here is a sneak peak at said agenda:

• In depth go-through of how we built Drupal Gutenberg
• The Wordpress build scripts
• Handling permissions within Gutenberg
• Short term structured data with JSON field
• Possible long term structured Gutenberg
• Gutenberg for single field editing
• Collaborative editing

Across each of our progress we've paid out a total of 38,037.75 for milestones achieved, with 2 projects already finished, one that has crossed midpoint, and the rest advancing at a good pace.