On today’s show we are talking about Single Directory Components in Drupal, How they differ from Web Components, and what are their benefits with guest Mateu Bosch & Mike Herchel. We’ll also cover Component Libraries: Theme Server as our module of the week.

For show notes visit: www.talkingDrupal.com/416

• What are Single Directory Components?
• Where did the idea of adding Single Directory Components to Drupal come from?
• Where does support for this stand in Drupal Core? Fully supported? Still need a contrib module?
• How do they differ from Web Components? (Mike will take this one)
• How does Single Directory Components make Drupal Theme development easier?
• What is the point of creating a schema for an SDC?
• Can modules or themes override SDCs? How?
• Can SDC be integrated into component library systems like Storybook? How?
• Any other helpful contrib modules that enhance SDCs?
• Does this at all help a headless?
• How can someone get involved or help contribute to Single Directory Components?

Single Directory Components https://www.drupal.org/project/sdc JSON Schema https://json-schema.org/ SDC Display https://www.drupal.org/project/sdc_display SDC Styleguide https://www.drupal.org/project/sdc_styleguide Cl Devel https://www.drupal.org/project/cl_devel CL Server https://www.drupal.org/project/cl_server CL Generator https://www.drupal.org/project/cl_generator SDC Documentation https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal/issues/3345922 Mike’s blog https://herchel.com/ SDC Slack Channel (Components channel in Drupal Slack) #components https://drupal.slack.com/archives/C4EDNHFGS Drupal Board Elections https://www.drupal.org/association/board/elections

Mike Herchel - herchel.com @mikeherchel Mateu Bosch - mateuaguilo.com

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Andy Blum - andy-blum.com - andy_blum

with Martin Anderson-Clutz - @mandclu

Component Libraries: Theme Server

This module lets you use component libraries, like Storybook, in your Drupal project, without Twig.js!

"Standing united in times of need" is a phrase that is very close to my heart, as I have experienced the profound impact it can have on individuals and communities alike. During the devastating flood that hit our state, Kerala, India, in 2018, I faced numerous challenges while trying to make my way home. The situation was dire, and I was initially overwhelmed.

However, what unfolded that day was a testament to the strength of community bonds. I couldn't believe the number of people who came forward to help. Strangers became friends, and together, we navigated the treacherous waters and challenging circumstances. Being part of such a compassionate and resilient community that pulls together in times of crisis was heartwarming.

This experience reaffirmed my faith in the power of unity and inspired me to contribute to the recovery efforts. It showed me that, even in the face of adversity, when people stand united, they can overcome the most daunting challenges.

Just as I witnessed the incredible strength of unity during that challenging flood in 2018, I have also seen the Drupal community embody the same spirit of togetherness. In the world of technology and open-source software, the Drupal community stands out as a shining example of how individuals from diverse backgrounds come together to support one another. Whether collaborating on projects, sharing knowledge, or assisting fellow members, the Drupal community mirrors the idea that "standing united in times of need" is a powerful force for positive change.

Now, let me provide readers with an overview of the stories from last week.

Last week, The DropTimes compiled 12 resources to assist beginners eager to embark on their Drupal journey, offering a valuable starting point for exploring Drupal. In a significant development, The DropTimes has been designated as the official media partner for DrupalCon Lille 2023, underlining our commitment to disseminating the excitement and spirit of DrupalCon to Drupal enthusiasts worldwide, irrespective of our ability to attend in person. This week brings forth six major events for Drupal enthusiasts to anticipate. The Backdrop CMS community is preparing for a highly anticipated virtual event scheduled for September 22 - 23, promising to reshape web development and our approach to web content.

In their article for TDT, Martin Giessing and Mad Norgaard introduce the transformative Transform API for Drupal 10, which facilitates the seamless delivery of JSON content across various screen sizes and devices, enhancing the capabilities of decoupled websites. Last week, the Drupal Association Elections for 2023 started. Mark your calendars for September 27, when Pipelyft, in collaboration with amazee.io, will be hosting a webinar offering valuable insights into automated multi-tenant deployments, flexible billing options, and the pivotal role played by amazee.io in transforming Pipelyft's SaaS venture.

Drunomics' blog post introduces the effortless integration of Drupal with OhDear, creating a robust website health monitoring solution. Meanwhile, software developer and Drupal expert Oliver Davies shares insights on optimizing Drupal projects for smoother upgrades. Additionally, Krisha Web sheds light on the advantages and best practices of outsourcing Drupal development. Unleashed Technologies explores migration options in response to the impending end-of-life (EOL) scenario for Drupal 7, emphasizing the significant implications for website owners and developers.

Notably, Pantheon and ImageX Media have collaborated to offer a free Drupal migration Ebook, while Udemy has introduced an extensive new course tailored for Spanish-speaking learners. In a related vein, Digital Polygon's blog delves into website architecture and content management, highlighting the critical importance of agility and adaptability. Jacob Rockowitz's blog post introduces a groundbreaking solution designed for ambitious site builders by introducing the Schema.org Blueprint module.

Furthermore, Alex Moreno shared his insights about the future of Drupal and its potential for innovation in his blog post on Drupal Association blog. Promet Source is set to provide a free Drupal Course at DrupalGovCon, contributing to the Drupal community's ongoing growth and education.

Stay tuned for more updates, interviews, and informative articles in the upcoming editions of TheDropTimes. Feel free to contact us with any suggestions, contributions, or feedback. Thank you for being a part of our community!

That is all for the week.

Sincerely,
Elma John
Sub-Editor, TheDropTimes

Paragraphs is one of the most phenomenal Drupal modules for site builders like us. Today, it has emerged as a new way of creating and handling content. By leveraging the power of the module, we can effortlessly prepare functional elements known as paragraphs and use them to create incredible subpages. The Drupal Paragraphs module is available for Drupal 7,8,9, and 10. If we delve into the reasons behind the buzz the module is creating, its capability to grant more editing freedom to the end users tops the list. They can choose any number of paragraphs from the paragraph types available depending on their preferences. 

Besides, the Drupal Paragraphs module also renders them with a range of options for layout, designs, and grouping of content in alignment with their requirements. Sounds phenomenal, doesn’t it? 

Now, let’s dig into the various types of Drupal Paragraphs available and their usage.

On our directory theme BizReview showing listings and their reviews, we need a rating mechanism so users can leave their votes on comments and the parent listings will calculate average ratings.

read more

Ambitious site-builders can indulge themselves with Drupal. It is, in fact, the perfect no-code environment when you can't program but still want to build more complex calculators. In this blog, I will show, using an example, how I achieved this.

What version of Drupal is your site running on? Usage statistics of Drupal Core say that some still use Drupal 6 and 7. There are even websites that are still working on Drupal 5. Using old versions, you deprive yourself of the new features of the admin panel and community-supported modules, themes, and profiles. Your customers are left without a modern user experience and cannot be sure your website is secure. Support for these versions is over. Ahead is only the migration to Drupal 10, the latest version released on December 14, 2022.

What has changed in the new version of Drupal?

The updated version of Drupal 10 offers users an extensive list of valuable updates compared to the previous ones:

The vision

Dries has lined up what’s next for Drupal’s roadmap. Drupal is for ambitious site builders. At this point everyone should know or should have heard his vision.

Rephrasing Dries words, Drupal “[…] has become much bigger than a CMS alone”. But what does “bigger” really mean? Is it a tool to build apps? Could it become an AI toolset? Could it be much more?

For those who don’t know me, I have been involved in Drupal for nearly two decades (pretty much my whole professional career), in roles that span from Software Engineer, Technical Lead, Technical Architect, Solutions Architect, Developer relations, and more recently, Program Manager of the Innovation Program in the Drupal Association (DA).

I was hired by the DA to spearhead an effort to accelerate innovation and grow contribution to Drupal. In my first few months, I've been [reading/learning/listening], gathering my thoughts about the problems we need to solve as a community, and to start building that “supportive environment, […] allowing time for ideas to flourish'' (Dries, keynote 2023). In other words, I’m trying to find with the rest of my colleagues and community, what “bigger” means, and find how we can plant 1000 seeds and let them bloom. 

This is the first part of a series of blog posts where I would like to share my ideas and learnings about the challenges we face, and the opportunities we have to grow as a project and as a community.

Technology, innovation, and the future

Drupal innovation. Drupalcon Pittsburgh echoes are still resonating strongly in my ears. If you were not lucky enough to attend, I will give you a quick one word summary: INNOVATION. From Dries' keynote to the different sessions, to the conversations around coffee breaks and meals… and even weeks after DrupalCon, people are talking about this topic. Innovation was showing a clear presence all over the place.

We left Pittsburgh with some powerful new ideas from the community to explore. But are we doing enough outside of our community to capture the attention and inspire new talent to join Drupal? 

If you want my opinion (and, if you are reading this, this is actually just my thoughts ;-) ), we are at a key moment for Drupal.

Drupal has been in the market for quite a few years. We recently celebrated its 20 year anniversary. Our beloved technology has changed immensely, and thanks to that, Drupal has not just survived, but thrived all these years. Just look at what was around you 20 years ago. The mobile phones, the computers, the cars, or even how we used to build our houses… very little has survived unchanged. In fact, very few technologies have survived since. Drupal, however, has changed, evolved, survived, and thrived.

Drupal is a public good that benefits many people and organisations.

Innovation as I already said was the main topic in this year’s Driesnote, and from what I could hear and read outside of the rooms and on social networks, it was a well-received topic. The keynote was full of hope and made people excited again about Drupal and our future.

Even outside of the keynote, innovation was the trend in many sessions. And, as part of that innovation trend, decoupled was having a clear presence, and it could actually be the key for Drupal. The key, amongst other things, is to attract new developers and young people that we are in need of (more on that in my upcoming articles).

You have probably heard or read the StackOverflow survey. If you haven’t, stop what you are doing and go read it.

If you don’t have the time, I’ll give you a couple of snapshots. Technologies that developers want to use (top and bottom of the list):

I have a few takeaways from some of the decoupled sessions and those surveys. On one hand, yes, Drupal as a technology is just amongst the 0.43% of people who want to try it for the first time (another reason for optimism is that this year’s data is a bit higher). However, the top technologies that developers want to try are things like ReactJS, NextJS, … frameworks that work pretty well alongside Drupal, that even matured years before this trend arrived and has made Drupal extremely well suited for this market. I’ll come back to this at a later time with more details and thoughts.

Drupal's innovation is invisible, unless we can find a way to reach outside our existing community 

Let me give you another snapshot:

The second takeaway is that Drupal is amongst the most dreaded technologies. Yes, that is rough. However, is that because that poll was answered by people who have not tried the technology since maybe Drupal 7 or even Drupal 6 or 5? With so many changes in the developer experience, performance improvements, and so on, if you haven’t tried Drupal even in the last few years, you are likely having the wrong impression about the framework.

My theory, and what other people have shared with me during the days we spent together at DrupalCon Pittsburgh, is exactly that. Those opinions come from developers who have not tried Drupal for some time. But Drupal has changed an enormous deal since.

Yes, quite a lot of things have changed. Some core components of Drupal have become quite modern and exciting, like Symfony components, Object Orientation, Events, … Drupalisms (which were a pain of the past and a constant reason for discussion and beginner friction) have slowly started to fade in favour of Symfony and PHP vocabulary. A more Drupal agnostic, developer friendly framework, which should attract much needed new blood. Or that was the theory…

And the truth is that Drupal nowadays is a powerful, developer friendly, modern framework, full of potential and exciting features and capabilities. But, the young and new developers do not seem to be arriving to Drupal.

Should we maybe make a bigger effort to show how much Drupal has changed, and how powerful and developer friendly it is nowadays? And should we make that clear OUTSIDE of our Drupal communities?

To sum up

I think we can look at those statistics from a different point of view. A point of view which makes me excited and hopeful for the future of Drupal. The most interesting and attractive technologies are precisely those that we have been pushing as a community to support. Headless frameworks like Vue, NextJS or ReactJS. If we do just a little push and make Drupal THE CMS of reference for those frameworks, we can guarantee growth and success for the next phase we are already in, while we start thinking about the next one. While we plant the seeds.

The same goes for the problem of attracting younger generations to Drupal.

This is probably not going to be easy. But similarly, it’s not going to be a hard, insurmountable task. And it may require not just coding contributions but other contributions as well, like marketing or even collaboration with other communities. We have an amazing and exciting technology that goes beyond CMS. Not just Drupal developers should know about this fact.

So, my message today is an optimistic one. Yes, we don’t have the best statistics in our favour right now to stay optimistic about the PRESENT of Drupal. However, we have some exciting numbers to show what needs to be done to stay VERY optimistic about the FUTURE of Drupal. Let’s prepare for that future, and let’s make Drupal the innovative framework that it has always been by ensuring that everyone outside our community knows about it. 

“Spending the time to capture what Drupal is for could energize and empower people to make better decisions when adopting, building and marketing Drupal”.

I’m here to listen to you. What role would you like for the Drupal Association on this? What would you like the community to do? Do you have ideas? Let’s talk: Find me on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Mastodon.