It's been a long three years, but the Drupal community is getting back together in person for DrupalCon Portland! (Apr 25-Apr 29)

The pandemic robbed us of the first-ever DrupalCon Minneapolis (our "hometown") in 2019, and again in 2020 for what should have been DrupalCon Boston. But finally in 2022, the Drupal community is getting back together in person for the annual DrupalCon North America. 

Although the finer details continue to change each year, the basics remain the same – thousands of Drupal developers, users, site owners, content editors, trainers, and learners all gather for a week of training, summits, keynotes, sessions and socializing. It's one of our favorite activities and we're so glad it is back.

Sponsoring and Supporting Drupal

Electric Citizen continues to be a strong supporter of open-source and Drupal in 2022. We've renewed our commitment as a premier supporting organization, and continued our practice of sponsoring DrupalCon as well.

If you're in Portland this April, find us on the exhibit hall at booth #304!

The Office of Academic Clinical Affairs (OACA) supports clinical research and care for the University of Minnesota.

Their portfolio of services includes overseeing a dozen different institutes, including the Center for Bioethics, Masonic Cancer Center, and the Community Health Care Center. Each of these organizations has its own unique online content and website.

OACA came to Electric Citizen needing help upgrading 9 of their websites to the latest version of Drupal while applying new designs, features and site build.

The final list of sites we worked on includes:

• Office of Academic Clinical Affairs
• Center for Bioethics
• Center for Global Health and Social Responsibility
• Clinical and Translations Science Institute
• Community-University Health Care Center
• Institute for Health Informatics
• M Simulation
• Masonic Cancer Center
• Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain

DrupalCon North America is an annual tradition, where thousands of people come together in a great American city for a week-long conference of learning, networking and socializing.

Things are different this year, for obvious reasons. But DrupalCon lives on in DrupalCon Global! This is the first-ever virtual edition of DrupalCon. Running from July 14-17, 2020, this online-only conference is open to anyone and everyone, worldwide. If you haven’t done so, consider registering today!

Happy birthday! Drupal 9 was officially released on June 3rd, 2020 and is available to start using today.

But what does this mean for the thousands of websites currently using Drupal 8 (and earlier)? Do you have to upgrade? Will your existing Drupal site no longer be supported? What is new and how different is it from the Drupal we know?

Let’s take a look at these questions, review the upgrade process and highlight what’s new or changed with the latest version of this popular open-source CMS.

After over a decade of our team traveling to other cities, the annual DrupalCon North America is coming to our hometown! 

I've been attending DrupalCons each year, starting with DrupalCon Chicago in 2011. While I've had an incredible time visiting all these other great cities across the US, there's something special about being the host city. And I'm confident you'll love it too.

The Electric Citizen team will be there. Here's some quick details about where we'll be, and some ideas on what you can do while visiting.

Part 3 of the "Mastering Drupal 8 Multilingual" blog series provides site building and front-end tips and techniques to improve the multilingual experience for both editors and end-users.

Previous posts in this series covered planning and budgeting for multilingual, as well as the process for installing the modules needed and the basics of content, configuration and interface translation. If you missed posts one or two, you may want to read those posts before proceeding.

In Mastering Drupal 8 Multilingual: Part 1 of 3, we focused on planning for Drupal 8 multilingual and its impact on a project's timeline and budget.

In Part 2 (below), we cover everything you need to know to have a functioning multilingual site with no custom code. Part 3 of the series covers more advanced techniques for site builders and front-end developers.

The web is constantly growing, evolving and—thankfully—growing more accessible and inclusive.

It is becoming expected that a user can interact with a website solely via keyboard or have the option to browse in their native language. There are many ways to serve the needs of non-native-language users, but one of the more robust is Drupal Multilingual.

Unlike 3rd party translation plugins like Google Translate or browser translation tools, Drupal's suite of core Multilingual tools allows you to write accurate and accessible translated content in the same manner as you write in your default language content. With no limit on the number languages, settings for right-to-left content, and the ability to translate any and all of your content, Drupal 8 can create a true multi-language experience like never before.

There is, however, a bit of planning and work involved.

Hopefully, this blog series will help smooth the path to truly inclusive content by highlighting some project management, design, site building, and development gotchas, as well as providing some tips and tricks to make the multilingual experience better for everyone. Part one will help you decide if you need multilingual as well as provide some tips on how to plan and budget for it.

The 9th annual TC Drupal Camp (“TCDC”) took place earlier this month (June 6-8th), and I was once again “on the scene” for this great regional conference.

Around 200 people convened in downtown Minneapolis in June for great sessions, keynote, training, networking and socializing during a beautiful and sunny week in Minnesota.

As one of the core volunteer organizers, I got to work alongside some great community members and really get a close up view of all that took place. So for those who missed it, let’s recap the conference!

Drupal 7 was officially released in 2011, making it quite old in web years, though it still powers hundreds of thousands of websites worldwide.

Drupal 8 was released in 2015, but the path to upgrading has never been an easy one for Drupal websites (prior to 8). So our recommendation for most Drupal 7 site owners has been to wait– wait until you have the time, budget and other resources needed to do a full redesign and migration to Drupal 8.

But Drupal 7 isn’t going to last forever.

It’s official end of life has already been decided–November, 2021. A full ten years after its original release, Drupal 7 will no longer be officially supported. What this means is no more security patches or bug fixes.

It won’t just stop working, but without official support, Drupal 7 sites will become vulnerable to crashes, hacks and other vulnerabilities. There are private companies who will continue to support Drupal 7 sites after 2021 in exchange for a support contract. But officially, it will be unsupported and after 10 years of service, most sites could benefit greatly from a more modern CMS.

But when is the best time to upgrade? What will it take? What are potential problems, or gains? And why should you continue using Drupal in the future? Let’s break down these questions one by one.