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.

For many of us in the U.S., the GDPR is still a mystery. Although it had been in the works for a long while, it seemed to appear out of nowhere, cause a sudden rush of panic as the deadline to comply arrived, and then disappear without a trace.

At first blush, it seems like the kind of thing we could ignore. That’s Europe’s law, and not America’s. But a closer look suggested it would apply to any site doing business with Europeans, even if it was simply receiving site visitors from Europe. Here at Electric Citizen, that seemed to be a fairly small part of our client base, but something we took seriously nevertheless.

Electric Citizen is heading to DrupalCon Seattle next week! We're pleased to sponsor again this year, and send several members of the team to represent.

Look for us in the exhibit hall in booth #209, where we'll be sharing some cool EC swag, and looking to make new friends and connections in the Drupal community. This year we'll have some awesome knit hats, handmade in Minnesota, as well as some other goodies.

Keep an eye out for Citizen Dan, Citizen Tim, Citizen Aundrea (DrupalCon newbie!) and Citizen Adam, as we make our way through another DrupalCon.

The 2019 edition of MidCamp is over, but our team left Chicago with a lot of great advice, fresh perspectives, new connections and good vibes.

In what is now the 6th year of its existence, this annual spring conference heralds the coming of spring and the national DrupalCon in April.

We're in the deep of winter in Minneapolis, but thinking about spring and the upcoming conferences we'll be attending. Or at least later this winter.

Here's a short list of what we've got scheduled so far, and where we could meet up. Hope to see you out there!

Twin Cities Drupal Camp 2018 just happened and Electric Citizen were able to present no less than four sessions on subjects ranging from Drupal search, configuration management, local development environments and dealing with emerging tech.

DrupalCon Nashville is in the history books and it was a doozy. The whole team was able to attend a stellar week of learning, sharing our hard-earned knowledge, and networking–interspersed with plenty of fun social events.

Seasoned Drupalers know that DrupalCon is a lot more than a tech conference. It is the community event of the year; a place to meet old friends and new, a celebration, and a barometer of the health of the Drupal platform itself–something we are collectively invested in. Attendees converged from far and wide to be part of it, to contribute, to engage, to learn and share, and to support our chosen technology.

As attendees, sponsors and presenters, Electric Citizen was fully in the mix this year. Read more in this blog post, or on our Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook channels.