Salsa Digital: Kristen Pol at DrupalCon Atlanta 2025: A summary

Image removed.The main focus of Kristen Pol’s session at DrupalCon Atlanta 2025 was showcasing how Starshot’s Experience Builder helps Drupal teams effectively integrate design systems and Single Directory Components (SDCs). The session demonstrated practical techniques and best practices to simplify Drupal page building and ensure design consistency and flexibility.   Launch your design system into hyperdrive with Starshot’s Experience Builder: a summary. Kristen introduced Starshot’s Experience Builder as a powerful, intuitive tool designed to empower non-technical users to easily create and manage Drupal website layouts through a drag-and-drop interface.

Salsa Digital: Richard's DrupalSouth talk on feature recipes

Image removed.The main focus of Richard Gaunt’s session at DrupalSouth Melbourne 2025 was simplifying Drupal site building using Feature Recipes. His talk explored how recipes provide a lightweight, composable alternative to traditional site profiles, enabling developers to build scalable, modular configurations that streamline both setup and ongoing site maintenance. Ready, set, Drupal: simplifying development with feature recipes In this session, Richard Gaunt, technical lead at Salsa Digital, introduced feature recipes as a powerful way to streamline Drupal development. Unlike traditional install profiles, recipes offer a modular, one-time application of configuration, themes and modules using simple YAML files.

The Drop Times: Sustainability, the Drupal Way

Dear Readers,

Sustainability in tech often gets mentioned, rarely applied. Drupal is one of the few CMS ecosystems where it’s actually being worked into the foundation, not just as a value, but as a practice. There’s a public sustainability guide that encourages developers to write efficient code, avoid unnecessary features, and think twice about hosting choices. It's not flashy stuff—it’s small decisions that, over time, reduce environmental impact.

At DrupalCon Vienna 2025, that same thinking is being applied to the event itself. Organisers have opted for a plant-forward menu, less printed material, and a more minimal approach to swag. Nothing radical—just decisions that cut down waste without making a big show of it. Public transport is promoted, and the venue was chosen with sustainability in mind. It’s a practical shift, not a marketing stunt.

Where Drupal stands out isn’t in big claims, but in how openly it documents its process. Whether it's project pages, contributor conversations, or performance frameworks like Gander that account for server load, the effort is public and collaborative. That transparency makes it easier for others—inside or outside Drupal—to pick up and build on what’s already there.

This matters because sustainability in web development can’t be solved by one team or one platform. But it can be influenced. Drupal’s approach says: here's what we’re trying, here’s what’s working, and here’s where we still have work to do. If you’re part of this community, it’s something to keep pushing. If you’re not, maybe it’s something to learn from.

INTERVIEWS

DISCOVER DRUPAL

EVENTS

ORGANIZATION NEWS

We acknowledge that there are more stories to share. However, due to selection constraints, we must pause further exploration for now.

To get timely updates, follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. You can also join us on Drupal Slack at #thedroptimes.

Thank you, 
Sincerely 
KAZIMA ABBAS
Sub-editor, The DropTimes.

Talking Drupal: Talking Drupal #504 - The Marketplace

In this episode of Talking Drupal, we dive into the intricacies of the Drupal marketplace initiative with our guest, Tiffany Farriss, CEO and co-owner of Palantir.net and long-time board member of the Drupal Association. We explore the goals and challenges of creating a trusted Drupal marketplace, discuss how site templates can lower the barrier to entry for new users, and examine the importance of maintaining community trust and the sustainability of Drupal. This episode also includes a spotlight on the Views CSV Source module and an in-depth discussion on community feedback, the potential value and business models for site templates, and the steps needed to make a go/no-go decision on the marketplace by the upcoming Vienna event.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/504

Topics
  • Meet Our Guest: Tiffany Farriss
  • Module of the Week: Views CSV Source
  • Deep Dive into Views CSV Source
  • Introduction to the Drupal Marketplace
  • Goals and Challenges of the Marketplace Working Group
  • Community Feedback and Sustainability
  • Monetization and Fairness in the Marketplace
  • Risk Mitigation and Future Plans
  • Exploring the Impact of Releases and Usage
  • Challenges and Successes of the Drupal Marketplace
  • Defining the MVP for the Drupal Marketplace
  • Addressing Community Concerns and Governance
  • Engaging the Community and Next Steps
  • Final Thoughts and Contact Information
Resources

Marketplace initiative

Guests

Tiffany Farriss - palantir.net farriss

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Norah Medlin - tekNorah

MOTW Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

  • Brief description:
    • Have you ever wanted to present data within your Drupal website that comes from a CSV flat file, without having to import that data to your Drupal database? There’s a module for that.
  • Module name/project name:
  • Brief history
    • How old: created in March 2024 by Daniel Cothran (andileco) of JSI, though I met Danieal at Midcamp earlier this week and he was emphatic that his colleague and co-maintainer Nia Kathoni (nikathone) deserves significant credit
    • Versions available: 1.0.11, which works with Drupal 8.8, 9, 10, and 11
  • Maintainership
    • Actively maintained, latest release was last month
    • Security coverage
    • Test coverage
    • Documentation - a robust README
    • Number of open issues: 4 open issues, none of which are bugs
  • Usage stats:
    • 56 sites
  • Module features and usage
    • With Views CSV Source installed, you can create a view that uses a CSV as a source instead of the Drupal site’s data. You can point to a file within your site’s filesystem, or it can be a remotely hosted CSV. If the file requires authentication for access, it is also possible to include encoded credentials in a header.
    • Now you can use CSV Fields to specify the columns you want to pull into the view, and you can use the “group by” to specify datasets to represent, for example to plot as lines in a chart
    • You can also create filters, either a CSV Field that acts a standard text filter, or a CSV Field Options filter that creates a dropdown of all the unique values in a specified column
    • Your assembled data can be shown in tables or charts, and can also be manipulated using standard view configuration, or using contributed modules like Views Simple Math Field
    • The module also comes with sort and a contextual filter plugins
    • It was impressed by a demo of Views CSV Source in a lightning talk at Midcamp yesterday, so I thought it would be fun to talk about today

The Drop Times: Why Drupal’s Greatest Strength Might Be Its Biggest Marketing Challenge

Alex Moreno López reflects on Drupal’s identity crisis — a platform capable of doing nearly everything, but known for doing nothing in particular. In this provocative opinion piece, he argues that it’s time the community steps outside the bubble, unites its voice, and tells the world exactly why Drupal matters.

mandclu: The Drupal Event Platform: a new stage of evolution

The Drupal Event Platform: a new stage of evolution Image removed.

Earlier this year I made the difficult decision to step down as Events Recipe track lead in the Starshot initiative. Having successfully delivered the requirements for a 1.0 release of Drupal CMS, I decided my skills and expertise could have more impact elsewhere.

I loved the opportunity to collaborate with so many of the best minds in the Drupal community. But there was important work needed on a different initiative, the Drupal Event Platform.

mandclu May 25, 2025 - 1:01pm

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Salsa Digital: DrupalSouth 2025 — session review

Image removed.Overview I had the pleasure of attending DrupalSouth 2025 , as a presenter, volunteer ( Splash Award Judge) and participant. Having attended a few DrupalSouth events over the past few years I had some benchmarks for comparison. The venue was fantastic, the presentations I attended were excellent and the vibe of community and sharing really really evident. I personally rate it as the best DrupalSouth I have attended.  The following expands on my thoughts and summary of key sessions I attended. The venue The choice of ACMI ( Australian Centre for the Moving Image ) to host the venue was an inspired choice.
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