Dear Readers, 

Imagine a bustling workshop filled with developers, designers, and enthusiasts collaborating to build something extraordinary. This is the scene as Drupal 11 emerges, packed with features designed to make web development more intuitive and efficient.

"In recent years, we've seen an uptick in innovation in Drupal. Drupal 11 continues this trend with many new and exciting features."

notes Dries Buytaert, Founder and Lead of Drupal.

He emphasises that Drupal 11 is designed to empower ambitious site builders to create exceptional websites and accelerate Drupal's innovation. With this release, Drupal has become more intuitive, powerful, and flexible, ensuring it remains a leader in web development and digital experience creation.

Key among these innovations are Recipes and Single-Directory Components (SDCs). Recipes act like pre-assembled kits, allowing developers to add features to their websites with ease. Meanwhile, SDCs gather all necessary code for each component into one tidy package, simplifying the workflow.

Drupal 11 boasts superior performance, running up to 50% faster on PHP 8.3 compared to its predecessors. This improvement ensures swift page loading and an overall enhanced user experience. Accessibility remains a key focus, with Drupal continuing to support over 100 languages, ensuring inclusivity and usability for a global audience. This new release is the product of a vibrant community effort, with 1,858 individuals from 590 organizations contributing their expertise and passion. It’s a shining example of what can be achieved when people come together with a common goal: to push the boundaries of what’s possible with Drupal.

But the excitement doesn’t end with Drupal 11. The community is already buzzing about the upcoming Drupal Starshot project. Starshot aims to make Drupal more accessible than ever, especially for newcomers. By integrating user-friendly tools like the Project Browser and automatic updates, Starshot promises a smooth journey from installation to launching a fully functional website. With 148 days left for the year, the community is eagerly anticipating the arrival of the initial version of Starshot.

These developments are more than just updates; they’re part of an ongoing story of innovation and collaboration. With Drupal 11 and the forthcoming Starshot project, the Drupal community is not just keeping pace with the future—they're shaping it.

Moving on to stand-out stories of the past week.

The most important and currently happening update from the Drupal Community is the announcement of candidates for Drupal Association Board Elections. This year's election will fill one at-large board seat, with candidates Albert Hughes, Will Huggins, Alejandro Moreno, Janna Malikova, Kevin Quillen, Matthew Saunders, and Dominique De Cooman vying for the position. Voting will open on 15 August, requiring active Drupal Association memberships by 14 August to participate. The election results will be ratified between 6-13 September, with the new board member announced at DrupalCon Barcelona.

Last week, Daniel Cothran, in a conversation with Kazima Abbas, sub-editor of The DropTimes, shared his journey into web development and the creation of Views CSV Source. He explained how this module not only simplifies the data presentation process but also improves the efficiency and performance of Drupal sites, making it especially valuable for projects requiring reliable and streamlined data handling. Read the full article here.

In an email conversation, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jürgen Haas, Co-Founder of LakeDrops, and the creative mind behind the ECA module. During our discussion, Jürgen delved into the development of the ECA (Event, Condition, Action) module, which he designed to modernize workflow automation within Drupal. He shared the story behind the ECA module's inception, its development path, and its potential integration with future Drupal core updates, emphasizing its value in enhancing the user experience through intuitive tools.

The second part of the Thoughts on Starshot feature revealed widespread excitement within the Drupal community, highlighting the potential of the Starshot initiative to transform the Drupal platform. With contributions from seasoned community members like Kristen Pol, Murray Woodman, Nicolas Loye, Martin Anderson-Clutz, and Tim Hestenes Lehnen, the consensus is clear: Drupal Starshot promises to streamline the user experience, foster greater collaboration, and lower the barriers to entry, making Drupal more accessible to a wider audience.

DrupalCamp Ottawa 2024, held on August 2, brought together web development enthusiasts of all skill levels for a day of learning and networking centered around the Drupal platform. Highlighting key speakers like Martin Anderson-Clutz, the event emphasized community, inclusivity, and the latest advancements in Drupal, ensuring a successful and collaborative experience for all attendees. Read here.

The Pacific Northwest Drupal Summit is set to return for its 10th event, taking place from October 11 to 13, 2024, in Seattle, Washington. Since 2009, this summit has been a key regional event for Drupal professionals in the Pacific Northwest.

The Acquia 2024 Digital Freedom Tour will make its next stop in New York City on October 24, 2024. The event aims to advance a safer, more inclusive, and accessible digital world. It will bring together prominent digital leaders who will share their expertise in creating impactful digital experiences.

Anoop Singh, Tech Lead at Valuebound, announced on LinkedIn the upcoming release of the FlexiStyle Bootstrap SCSS theme on Drupal.org. This follows the success of the original FlexiStyle Bootstrap theme and promises even greater customization and flexibility for Drupal projects.

Additionally, amazee.io has released Lagoon V2.20, a significant update to its open-source application delivery platform. This release includes enhancements in user management, security, and onboarding efficiency designed to better support business needs.

Backdrop CMS 1.28.0 has been released, bringing significant enhancements to the platform, including new options for configuration storage. Laryn Kragt Bakker, Senior Developer at Aten Design Group, detailed the update, which allows users to choose between storing their configuration data in the file system or the database.

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
Alka Elizabeth
Sub-editor, The DropTimes.

The Drupal Association’s individual membership program has always played a crucial role in supporting the Drupal community and ensuring the ongoing success of the Drupal project. The program was initially set up as a transactional vehicle: aside from the badge and voting rights, members received access to discounts from Drupal services providers.

The individual membership program stayed on autopilot during the turmoil of the Covid pandemic as we made the difficult decision to cancel DrupalCon North America 2020. During this time, our members and other Drupal community supporters donated unprecedented unrestricted funds using the hashtag #DrupalCares.

I joined the Drupal Association about two years ago as the Development & Membership Manager. My role split my time between Drupal Certified partners and the individual membership program, however it was clear from the beginning that the individual membership program would need a lot more attention.

The membership program underwent significant transformation from 2019 through May 2023, overcoming challenges and celebrating successes along the way. Initially, we faced a decline in numbers, but through consistent effort and unprecedented generosity, we've made remarkable strides. Today, we proudly recognize 1,747 members, with 70% of them providing recurring support.

Ripple Makers: Celebrating Changemakers in our Community 

The individual membership program rebranded as Ripple Makers in 2024. With this new name, the Drupal Association increases focus on communication, transparency, and engagement within the community. The ‘new’ program encourages sustaining donors to make monthly recurring gifts, which provide a reliable source of funding. This financial support allows the Drupal Association to plan for the future, support essential projects, and foster a dynamic and responsive community​.

Membership Programs, Sustainable Giving, and Nonprofits 

Why does a nonprofit organization such as the Drupal Association need a sustaining giving program? This program is vital for the sustainability and growth of the Drupal Association, and the benefit it brings to the community. It provides a stable foundation of support, ensuring that we can continue to innovate and grow. In addition, unrestricted giving in particular allows nonprofits to allocate resources where they are needed most, supporting the overall health of the Drupal project. Importantly. It also opens up direct lines of communication with the community.

Positive Impact on the Drupal Community

The Drupal community thrives because of several factors: open source collaboration, supportive environment, diverse participation, commitment to quality, and others. In my opinion, a supportive environment is the most important one.

By becoming a Ripple Maker, you directly support a vibrant and inclusive community of people who care for the Drupal project. Your contributions empower us to foster a sustainable ecosystem for Drupal by harnessing the collective generosity and commitment to the future of Drupal. Learn more about the program and join the wave on our sign up page.

Thank you for your ongoing support and dedication. Let's make the next chapter of our sustainable giving program the best one yet!

In this digital world, it is absolutely necessary to stay up-to-date with the latest upgrades and trends. Drupal 11 is here, bringing you better security, performance, and user experience. As a pioneer in 360 Drupal services, LN Webworks is excited to help you upgrade 

In this blog, we will navigate more about the intricacies of Drupal 11’s core attributes, the benefits of embracing the latest update, and how LN Webworks stands as your steadfast Drupal Certification Migration Partner for a successful migration.

The European Accessibility Act (EAA) aims to enhance the accessibility of products and services for people with disabilities and the elderly throughout the EU. With less than a year remaining to meet compliance requirements, both the public and private sectors must act now.

The Cypress front-end testing infrastructure clean-up landed on Monday, so this week we’ve already been seeing increased velocity! Last week, we landed the initial implementation of the primary menu, this week it was improved by Harumi “hooroomoo” Jang:

XB’s primary menu now closes after dropping a dragged component onto the canvas. Issue #3458617, image by Harumi.

We saw a huge leap forward this week, thanks to Ben “bnjmnm” Mullins! He’s taking an unchanged PHP-based form definition and is rendering it using React and TSX! :O
Why? To prove we can render existing (core/contrib/custom) Field Widgets, because a goal for XB is to keep existing functionality working. Here’s what that looks like:

A React+TSX-rendered Drupal form to edit the props of the selected component. Incredibly ugly, because no CSS/JS is loaded yet, but mostly because the original Drupal form also is incredibly ugly — you’re seeing part of TwoTerribleTextAreasWidget (written by me to get us started)! Expect significant improvements in the coming weeks.

That screenshot does not do Ben’s monumental work justice. We’re of course already planning to improve that, starting with … no longer using TwoTerribleTextAreasWidget: #3461422: Evolve component instance edit form to become simpler: generate a Field Widget directly. Expect future screenshots and GIFs to be far more convincing :)

This leap also made it became critically important that the Cypress end-to-end tests (tests/src/Cypress/cypress/e2e/xb-general.cy.js) would actually test both the client and server, with the client actually talking to the server. (Until now, xb-general.cy.js was talking to the mock server!) So, Ben also made that happen. (Long overdue ever since the client and server first got connected … 4 weeks ago.)

Back end

On the back-end side, Ben also improved DX and velocity by removing XB’s dependency on the sdc_test module, which was kinda tricky to install (due to it being a test-only module). This simplifies the onboarding/contribution experience, and makes it easier to try the 0.x branch of the XB module too!

Ted “tedbow” Bowman landed the thorough validation for the component tree list: #3456024: Lift most logic out of ComponentTreeItem::preSave() and into a new validation constraint — yay!

What’s cool is that this one validation constraint is being used to validate both an Experience Builder (XB) field instance on a content entity and the default value of the XB field in config (yes, config schema validation at work!). This means slower progress, but means more reliable foundations, because there’s no separate code paths, no distinct semantics. This is crucial to meet the 14. Configuration management and 1.2 Design system (foundations), 45. Content type template variants and many other product requirements.

In other words: it is an important stepping stone towards both #3446722: Introduce an example set of representative SDC components; transition from “component list” to “component tree” and #3455629: [later phase] [META] 7. Content type templates — aka “default layouts” — affects the tree+props data model

Now that that is in, Ted will begin work next on #3460856: Create validation constraint for ComponentTreeStructure, which is a hard blocker for #3446722.

In progress

So many high-impact MRs having landed this week — I’ve simply omitted the smaller ones that are more housekeeping-esque. In closing, there are also some interesting things in progress:

• Lee “larowlan” Rowlands and I met to dive into his draft/proposal MR on #3454519: [META] Support component types other than SDC. Lee provided context for the 5 different parts that his MR consists of and … I liked the direction each one :) We can’t merge as-is, because A) upstream changed quite a bit since then, B) some things we agreed should change. I’ve summarized our conversation, Lee will be extracting MRs for the different pieces :)
• Jesse “jessebaker” Baker and Lee have been making progress on #3453690: [META] Real-time preview: supporting back-end infrastructure
• #3454257: Allow Experience Builder fields to support Asymmetric and Symmetric translations is on the verge of being finished by Ted
• I revived #3450308: Create an Open API spec for the current mock HTTP requests, because that is growing ever more important

… and some notable new issues:

• Lauri created #3461431: Improve client side error handling, where I suggested to use the technique that we used in Acquia Migrate: Accelerate’s React UI, which worked out very well
• by yours truly: #3461499: Introduce new PropShapeInput config entity type — with strong +1 from Lee :)
• by yours truly: #3461490: Document the current JSON-based data model, and describe in an ADR, but will be impacted by the above, so holding off until that lands
• finally: Gauravvvv created #3462074: Option to change the icon for components on the page hierarchy display — which if we end up doing, would require additions to Single-Directory Components’ metadata

I’m pretty confident next week will be more exciting still (well, has been … because I’m a few weeks behind on writing these posts!)

Week 10 was July 15–21, 2024.

• Drupal
• Acquia
• Experience Builder

• XB's primary menu now closes after dropping a dragged component onto the canvas.
• The first React+TSX-rendered Drupal form!

Twin Cities Drupal Camp 2024 Early Bird Tickets Are Almost Sold Out! 

Now is your last chance to save before regular pricing takes affect. Twin Cities Drupal Camp is coming on September 12-13, 2024, at the University of Minnesota campus in Minneapolis.

Registration includes access to all sessions and events, including the keynote and the unconference. Meals and social events are also part of the deal, free of additional cost. 

This Early Bird rate won’t last forever, so do it now.

Register today! 

This blog has been re-posted and edited with permission from Dries Buytaert's blog.

Today is a big day for Drupal as we officially released Drupal 11!

In recent years, we've seen an uptick in innovation in Drupal. Drupal 11 continues this trend with many new and exciting features. You can see an overview of these improvements in the video below:

Drupal 11 has been out for less than six hours, and updating my personal site was my first order of business this morning. I couldn't wait! Dri.es is now running on Drupal 11.

I'm particularly excited about two key features in this release, which I believe are transformative and will likely reshape Drupal in the years ahead:

1. Recipes (experimental): This feature allows you to add new features to your website by applying a set of predefined configurations.
2. Single-Directory Components: SDCs simplify front-end development by providing a component-based workflow where all necessary code for each component lives in a single, self-contained directory.

These two new features represent a major shift in how developers and site builders will work with Drupal, setting the stage for even greater improvements in future releases. For example, we'll rely heavily on them in Drupal Starshot.

Drupal 11 is the result of contributions from 1,858 individuals across 590 organizations. These numbers show how strong and healthy Drupal is. Community involvement remains one of Drupal's greatest strengths. Thank you to everyone who contributed to Drupal 11!

PORTLAND, Ore., 1 August 2024—Drupal, the most powerful open source content management system for everyone from Fortune 500 enterprise companies to mission-driven nonprofits and entrepreneurial small businesses, is launching the latest upgrade to its popular software.

Drupal 11 continues enhancing the strengths of the platform. It makes structured content, workflows, and content governance more flexible and easier for ambitious builders.

Drupal 11 is designed to empower ambitious site builders to build exceptional websites and to accelerate Drupal's innovation,” says Dries Buytaert, Founder and Project Lead of Drupal.  “With Drupal 11, we've made Drupal more intuitive, powerful, and flexible, ensuring it continues to lead in web development and digital experience creation."

This latest version of Drupal brings together code and design for a refreshed CMS navigation experience, with an updated toolbar and a collapsible left-hand menu, all designed to ensure a seamless development experience.

With new Recipes functionality, you can add new features to your website instantly by applying a set of predefined configuration. A recipe can provide anything that can be configured in Drupal, from a simple content type to a full suite of features. You can create your own recipes to share or reuse, or apply recipes created by other Drupal users. Recipes are experimental in this release but already usable and expected to be stable in 11.1.

Single-Directory Components simplify front-end development by consolidating all necessary code into a single directory, making components self-contained and effortlessly reusable.

Drupal’s high performance means it runs fast by default with swift page loading, and Drupal 11 is even faster than previous versions, running up to 50% faster on PHP 8.3. 

Accessible for every user

Drupal’s core strengths include its accessibility, security, multilingual capabilities, and flexible features. 

Thousands of developers worldwide contribute their expertise to ensure that Drupal is continuously pioneering the industry in these strengths. Supported by a global community of domain experts, it offers multilingual support with over 100 languages. 

Drupal 11 improves upon these core strengths with various features suitable for developing simple websites or complex web applications. 

Accessibility is a key strength of Drupal,” says Tim Doyle, CEO of the Drupal Association. “The Open Web is for everyone, and our continual focus on accessibility, multilingual capabilities, and flexibility is intended to ensure that Drupal is a beacon of inclusiveness in an online world where many try to build walls and barriers to entry.”

With more features coming soon

Automatic Updates and Project Browser are two key features slated for a future release of Drupal 11 and are currently under development as contributed modules. 

Drupal’s open source innovation keeps pressing ahead with the release of Drupal 11, including milestone features like Automatic Updates and Project Browser. These features will be key to the success of the new Drupal Starshot project, which will see Drupal become even easier to use for anyone wanting to unleash the power of the world’s leading enterprise CMS.” - Owen Lansbury, Drupal Association Board Chair

Automatic Updates module will apply patch-level updates to Drupal core in a separate, sandboxed copy of your site to keep you up and running without any interruptions. It can detect and report problems at every stage of the update process, so you don't have to discover them after an update is live. It automatically detects database updates and helps you run them during the process.

Project Browser will make it easy for site builders to extend the functionality, look and feel of Drupal. It provides a search interface in the Extend section of the Admin UI to find contributed modules and themes and research their capabilities. Once an extension is selected, instructions are provided on installing it on your site, all without leaving your website. 

Next steps

To start using Drupal 11, visit the Drupal 11 landing page. If you have questions about upgrading to Drupal 11, check out the FAQ page. 

To get help onboarding to Drupal 11 or creating a digital experience from the ground up, connect with one of our Drupal Certified Partners located around the world.

About Drupal and the Drupal Association

Drupal is the open source content management software trusted by millions of people and organizations worldwide. It’s supported by a network of over 10k professionals and over 100 Drupal Certified Partners. The Drupal Association is a nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating Drupal innovation and supporting the growth of the open source community. This work delivers value to businesses, the digital community, and users of Drupal, in alignment with Drupal’s commitment to the Open Web.

Here's what I've been working on for my Drupal contributions this week. Thanks to Code Enigma for sponsoring the time to work on these.