Help Us Spread the Word About MidCamp 2025!

MidCamp 2025 is coming to Chicago this May, and we need your help to make it the most vibrant event yet!

With Dries Buytaert, the founder of Drupal, joining us, MidCamp is the perfect place for web developers, agencies, and students to connect, learn, and grow.

We’re launching a campaign to bring new attendees to the table, and we’re focusing on outreach to web dev clubs, groups, agencies, and students across the Midwest.

Here’s how you can help:

• Download and share our flyer with your networks. (Get it here)
• Invite your network to learn about MidCamp and explore our website.
• Spread the word during February and March 2025.

Let’s bring new energy to MidCamp by making sure everyone knows about this amazing opportunity!

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Email Template

Subject: Discover the Power of Scalable Web Development at MidCamp 2025!

Hi [Name],

I hope this email finds you well! I’m reaching out to share an incredible opportunity for web developers, agencies, and students to connect, learn, and grow at MidCamp 2025, taking place May 20–22 at DePaul University’s Student Center in Chicago.

What is Drupal?

Drupal is a powerful, open-source content management system used by millions of websites worldwide. From personal blogs to major corporations and government sites, Drupal’s scalability and flexibility make it a top choice for web development.

What is MidCamp? 

MidCamp (short for Midwest Drupal Camp) is an annual event that brings together developers, designers, and Drupal enthusiasts to share knowledge, build connections, and contribute to the Drupal community. It’s a space to learn new skills, discover best practices, and collaborate with peers.

This year’s event will feature Dries Buytaert, the founder of Drupal, and promises to be an unforgettable experience packed with collaboration, creativity, and inspiration.

Don’t miss out on the action! Buy your ticket today and join us in Chicago: Get Your Ticket Here.

Here’s how you can help us spread the word:

• Share this flyer with your network: Download the flyer.
• Invite your colleagues, friends, and classmates to learn more at MidCamp.org.
• Encourage them to join us in Chicago!

Your support in sharing this event will help us attract fresh perspectives and build a stronger, more connected Drupal community.

Thank you for helping make MidCamp 2025 a success! Let us know if you have any questions or need more information.

Stay Connected

Don’t miss any updates about MidCamp! Follow us on social media for the latest news and announcements: LinkedIn, Bluesky, Mastodon, and Twitter.

Plus, sign up for our newsletter to stay informed about upcoming sessions, speakers, and more: Sign Up Here.

Best regards, 
[Your Name]

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Feel free to customize this template to align with your specific goals and priorities. Let us know if you need further assistance or additional resources to make your case!

It's time to vote for the official DrupalCon Atlanta 2025 t-shirt! Thank you so much to everyone who entered the DrupalCon Atlanta 2025 t-shirt design contest! We've narrowed it down to the top three designs. Now, we're asking the Drupal community to help us by voting for their favorite design.

The winner who receives the most votes will have their design on the official DrupalCon Atlanta 2025 t-shirt AND win a ticket to DrupalCon! Voting ends on 28 January.

Design #1

Design #2

Design #3

Submit your vote!

I'm often asked, Will AI agents replace digital marketers and site builders?. The answer is yes, at least for certain kinds of tasks.

To explore this idea, I prototyped two AI agents to automate marketing tasks on my personal website. They update meta descriptions to improve SEO and optimize tags to improve content discovery.

Watching the AI agents in action is incredible. In the video below, you'll see them effortlessly navigate my Drupal site — logging in, finding posts, and editing content. It's a glimpse into how AI could transform the role of digital marketers.

The experiment

I built two AI agents to help optimize my blog posts. Here is how they work together:

• Agent 1: Content analysis: This agent finds a blog post, reviews its content, and suggests improved summaries and tags to enhance SEO and increase discoverability.
• Agent 2: Applying updates: After manual approval, this agent logs into the site and updates the summary and tags suggested by the first agent.

All of this could be done in one step, or with a single agent, but keeping a 'human-in-the-loop' is good for quality assurance.

This was achieved with just 120 lines of Python code and a few hours of trial and error. As the video demonstrates, the code is approachable for developers with basic programming skills.

The secret ingredient is the browser_use framework, which acts as a bridge between various LLMs and Playwright, a framework for browser automation and testing.

The magic and the reality check

What makes this exciting is the agent's ability to problem-solve. It's almost human-like.

Watching the AI agents operate my site, I noticed they often face the same UX challenges as humans. It likely means that the more we simplify a CMS like Drupal for human users, the more accessible it becomes for AI agents. I find this link between human and AI usability both striking and thought-provoking.

In the first part of the video, the agent was tasked with finding my DrupalCon Lille 2023 keynote. When scrolling through the blog section failed, it adapted by using Google search instead.

In the second part of the video, it navigated Drupal's more complex UI elements, like auto-complete taxonomy fields, though it required one trial-and-error attempt.

The results are incredible, but not flawless. I ran the agents multiple times, and while they performed well most of the time, they aren't reliable enough for production use. However, this field is evolving quickly, and agents like this could become highly reliable within a year or two.

Native agents versus explorer agents

In my mind, agents can be categorized as "explorer agents" or "native agents". I haven't seen these terms used before, so here is how I define them:

• Explorer agents: These agents operate across multiple websites. For example, an agent might use Google to search for a product, compare prices on different sites, and order the cheapest option.
• Native agents: These agents work within a specific site, directly integrating with the CMS to leverage its APIs and built-in features.

The browser_use framework, in my view, is best suited for explorer agents. While it can be applied to a single website, as shown in my demo, it's not the most efficient approach.

Native agents that directly interact with the CMS's APIs should be more effective. Rather than imitating human behavior to "search" for content, the agent could retrieve it directly through a single API call. It could then programmatically propose changes within a CMS-supported content editing workflow, complete with role-based permissions and moderation states

I can also imagine a future where native agents and explorer agents work together (hybrid agents), combining the strengths of both approaches to unlock even greater opportunities.

Next steps

A next step for me is to build a similar solution using Drupal's AI agent capabilities. Drupal's native AI agents should make finding and updating content more efficiently.

Of course, other digital marketing use cases might benefit from explorer agents. I'd be happy to explore these possibilities as well. Let me know if you have ideas.

Conclusions

Building an AI assistant to handle digital marketing tasks is no longer science fiction. It's clear that, soon, AI agents will be working alongside digital marketers and site builders.

These tools are advancing rapidly and are surprisingly easy to create, even though they're not yet perfect. Their potential disruption is both exciting and hard to fully understand.

As Drupal, we need to stay ahead by asking questions like: are we fully imagining the disruption AI could bring? The future is ours to shape, but we need to rise to the challenge.

Drupal CMS offers a powerful launchpad for building new websites. By streamlining the setup process, it reduces decision fatigue and simplifies the path to a functional site. However, it’s important to understand what Drupal CMS is—and what it isn’t.

Drupal CMS is built on Drupal core, but it’s not a separate version of Drupal that you can “upgrade” or “switch” to. Think of it as a set of pre-configured tools and best practices designed to save time and effort. While you could replicate the same website using Drupal core alone, Drupal CMS eliminates many of the manual steps, providing a quicker route to success.

But what about organizations already using Drupal? How can they tap into the innovation baked into Drupal CMS?
Here are five ways to make the most of Drupal CMS—even if your organization already has a Drupal website.
 

1. Train Your Team

Drupal CMS is an excellent resource for onboarding new team members if your company is already using Drupal. It offers an intuitive way to start building a site from scratch, so that staff have a playground or sandbox for learning Drupal. It fosters the training process and allows for experimentation with new modules and recipes, before tackling more complex projects with custom themes, extensive configurations, and numerous modules. This approach helps your new staff build confidence and skills in a controlled environment.

2. Adopt Best Practices

Drupal CMS comes with a set of recommended recipes. Let’s take Accessibility Tools as an example. This tool adds a content accessibility checker to your website. You can apply this recipe to a new site, or look at the configuration it adds and implement best practices on your existing Drupal sites. It’s a simple way to improve your accessibility without needing to reinvent the wheel.

3. Foster Collaboration 

If your organization manages multiple Drupal installations with different codebases, recipes can help standardize and share features. Recipes are pre-configured components tailored to specific website needs, such as forms or landing pages. They’re easy to customize, making them ideal for sharing across teams while accommodating unique site requirements.

4. Create a Roadmap for Your Custom Drupal Install

For organizations already using a custom Drupal installation across multiple sites, Drupal CMS can serve as a source of inspiration. Its recipes and default modules provide a reference point for updates and improvements, helping you refine your own Drupal ecosystem.

5. Streamline Microsites and Landing Pages

Drupal CMS is a great solution for quick-turnaround projects, such as event microsites or campaign landing pages. By using Drupal CMS for these single-use cases, you benefit from consistency across your web properties. Tools, techniques, and modules already in use on your main website can be easily applied, saving time and ensuring consistency.

Looking Ahead: Experience Builder and Beyond

One of the most exciting innovations on the horizon is the Experience Builder—a no-code solution under active development. While not included in the initial release of Drupal CMS, Experience Builder will soon empower content creators, marketers, and even designers to take charge of creating and styling marketing content without heavy reliance on developers. This rapid innovation, driven by Drupal CMS’s ambitious timeline, will be included in Drupal core and benefit all Drupal users.

Find out more about Drupal CMS

• Product Availability: Drupal CMS launched on January 15, 2025. Documentation and a link to the one-click trial experience are available at drupal.org/drupal-cms.
• Read my post reviewing the key features of Drupal CMS that content managers and marketers need to pay attention to: Why Content Editors and Marketers Will Love Drupal CMS.

Drupal is now 24 years old! The launch of Drupal CMS 1.0, a revolutionary product aimed at disrupting the world of Content Management Systems, took place on January 15, adding an extra layer of excitement to Drupal's birthday celebrations. At The Drop Times, we were on our toes from the very beginning of the new year, ensuring that all developments surrounding the launch were closely covered and delivered promptly to the global Drupal community. And we did it!

The Drop Times created a dedicated Drupal CMS Launch-themed landing page, consolidating all the news and events related to the launch. We successfully tracked and listed details of 57 launch parties taking place across different parts of the world. The Drop Times became the go-to source for all developments related to the Drupal CMS Launch. Encouraged by the overwhelming response to our coverage, we plan to offer similar focused coverage for other significant events within the Drupal community. 

10 days shy of the Drupal CMS launch, we had another significant moment when the legacy Drupal 7 had its official end of life after serving the community for 14 long years. Those websites still in Drupal 7 now have six options left. 

1. Migrate to a modern Drupal version, probably Drupal 11, which offers easier upgrades to future versions and find replacements for the custom modules they have developed. 
2. Rebuild the site entirely using the newly launched Drupal CMS or, at a significant cost, use Drupal Core and build it from scratch. 
3. Opt for never-ending Long Term Support (LTS) offered by HeroDevs or periodic support offered by Pantheon-Tag1 Consulting combined, etc. 
4. Upgrade to Backdrop CMS, a D7 fork that has since developed into a full-fledged CMS offering, and continue with the time-tested legacy architectural framework.
5. Move away from Drupal fold and build their site using some other technology. 
6. Do nothing and be exposed to vulnerabilities, praying for security by obscurity. 

As a considerable interest group is rallying behind one or many of these options, we plan to offer stories related to migrations and upgrades as the situation warrants. This includes a dedicated landing page for BackDrop CMS-related stories soon. 

Reflecting on the Drupal CMS launch, the event infused a wave of fresh energy into the community. The Official Drupal Launch Party live stream attracted a record number of attendees, the largest gathering other than the virtual DrupalCon during the COVID lockdown. Participants joined from all continents except Antarctica. At The Drop Times, we are committed to sustaining this newfound enthusiasm throughout the year.

Let's have a look at the important stories from the past week.

Drupal Community

• Building the Digital City: Why the Middle Ground is the Future of Web Development

Discover Drupal

• Feeds Module Achieves Stable Release, Transforming Data Imports in Drupal
• AI Upgrade: A Promising Drupal Module Seeking Collaborators
• Drupal CMS Launches, Offering Marketers a No-Code Platform for Digital Experiences

Organization News

• Backdrop CMS Recognizes Drupal 7 End of Life, Announces Next Steps
• Pronovix Introduces Modules to Modernize Drupal’s Username Security in the AI Era
• Fresh Frontend for Drupical: Celebrating the Power of Drupal CMS

Events

• Drupal Events this Week: Jan 20 - Jan 26, 2025
• Shoot for the Stars: Drupal CMS 1.0.0 Officially Launched
• Drupal CMS Launch: Highlights of Enthusiastic Reactions From Organizers
• Celebrating the Launch of Drupal CMS: Global Reactions (Part 2)
• DrupalCon Vienna 2025: Volunteer as a Program Track Chair
• amazee.io Webinar on Enterprise Migrations: Strategies and Best Practices
• Entries Open for DrupalSouth Splash Awards 2025
• A11y Talks: Introducing the SUC Score for Measuring App Accessibility
• Make DrupalCon Atlanta 2025 Accessible with Livestream & Keynote Sponsorship

Thank you for your unwavering support for The Drop Times. Let us build a sustainable model for tackling the maker-taker problem by highlighting the real makers across the spectrum. 

Sincerely,
Thomas Alias K, 
Sub Editor, TDT. 

Today we are talking about AI Autonomy, How it could help Drupal Development, and AI in the future with guest Jay Callicott. We’ll also cover AI Agents as our module of the week.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/485

• What got you interested in this topic
• What is meant by AI Autonomy
• You suggested in your blog post in the Drop Times that developers will manage AI can you elaborate
• AI coming for our jobs
• Drupal X
• Do decoupled sites have an advantage
• Is the future going to be all prompts
• Skill decay
• What would you say to a CEO thinking about replacing developers with AI

• Drupal is Great! Its Perception Might Not Be.
• The AI-Driven Developer: From Assistance to Autonomy in Drupal Development
• DrupalX
• Ethics of AI

Jay Callicott - drupalninja99

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Scott Weston - scott-weston

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

• Brief description:
  • Have you ever wanted to leverage AI-powered tools to get information about or change the configuration of your website? There’s a module for that
• Module name/project name:
  • AI Agents
• Brief history
  • How old: created in Aug 2024 by Marcus Johansson (marcus_johansson) of FreelyGive
  • Versions available: 1.0.1 which supports Drupal 10.3 and 11
• Maintainership
  • Actively maintained: that release was in the past week, and was part of the significant effort to get stable releases of the AI modules that are included in Drupal CMS
  • Security coverage
  • Documentation included within the module’s codebase
  • Number of open issues: 30 open issues, 7 of which are bugs against the current branch
• Usage stats:
  • 119 sites but I suspect that number will increase rapidly once people start using Drupal CMS
• Module features and usage
  • In AI terminology, an agent is a system able to interact with its environment, collect data, and use the data to perform self-determined tasks
  • The AI Agents module is a framework to provide agents that can perform a variety of functions in your Drupal website
  • It depends on the AI module that we had Jamie Abrahams on the podcast to talk about back in episode #468
  • The module includes plugins that provide three agents, namely:
  • A Field Type Agent that can create or edit fields using the Field API, or answer questions about the fields your site has defined
  • A Content Type agent that can create, edit, or answer questions about node types
  • Taxonomy Agent that can do the same for your site’s vocabularies
  • Anyone who saw the Driesnote AI demos from DrupalCon Barcelona or Singapore will have seen agents in action, in that example through interaction in a chatbot
  • Technically, the plugins are UI agnostic, however. So theoretically you could trigger an agent in other ways. But today, AI Agents power the AI chatbot that you can use in the AI recipe that is included in the recently released Drupal CMS 1.0
  • The AI Agents module also includes some submodules. An experimental form integration submodule adds UI elements to the interfaces for managing fields, content types, and vocabularies, an explorer submodule provides debugging tools, and an experimental Extra submodule provides agents for working with webforms and views. I have also seen a demo of some work underway to provide an ECA agent, so you may soon be able to get your Drupal site to build out ECA models based on the business logic you describe to it

At Mountain Camp 2025, we believe in climbing higher by bringing together the brightest minds in Drupal, open source, and digital innovation. We are pleased to present an exceptional lineup of four keynote speakers who are set to share their expertise, ignite meaningful conversations, and foster growth within the open source community.

Olga Baranova

Session: Public Money, Public Code: The Legal Journey of Open Source in Switzerland

Olga Baranova, a seasoned figure in Swiss politics and political campaigning, co-founded CH++ over four years ago. Through her leadership, CH++ has been pivotal in transforming Switzerland’s digital policies, advocating for a more open, secure, and citizen-centred digital landscape. In her keynote, Olga will explore the synergy between open source initiatives and institutional politics in Switzerland. Attendees will gain insights into the development of Switzerland’s first federal-level open source law and the intricate challenges faced within the political and legal frameworks governing open data and open source software.

Cristina Chumillas

Session: Drupal CMS now and beyond

Cristina Chumillas, Lead Engineer at Lullabot and Drupal CMS UX Lead, is a driving force in the Drupal community. Her extensive involvement in community organizing and managing Drupal’s front-end frameworks makes her a prominent voice in the tech sphere. Cristina will present an in-depth analysis of Drupal CMS’s evolution since its 1.0 launch in January. Her session will cover the current roadmap, ongoing developments, future plans, and the pivotal role of community collaboration and research in shaping Drupal’s strategic direction.

Lauri Timmanee

Session: Update on the Experience Builder Initiative

With over a decade of experience in open source product development, Lauri Timmanee serves as the Product Lead for the Experience Builder initiative and as a Product Manager in Acquia’s Drupal Acceleration Team. Lauri’s keynote will provide the latest updates on the Experience Builder initiative, highlighting how it empowers site builders and content creators with no-code tools for theming and building Drupal websites. He will discuss the challenges being addressed, outline the project’s roadmap, and invite attendees to participate in shaping this transformative initiative.

Vera Herzmann

Session: Neurodiversity: An Underrated Superpower in Business

Vera Herzmann, a renowned systemic organization development consultant, brings over eight years of experience in guiding companies through transformation and innovation processes. With a rich background in Neurosensitivity and Neuromanagement, Vera is a passionate advocate for embracing neurodiversity in the workplace. Her session will shed light on the unique strengths that neurodiverse individuals bring to the tech industry, such as hyper-focus, pattern recognition, empathy, intuition, and creativity. Vera will argue for the strategic advantage of fostering a neurodiverse workforce, demonstrating how it can lead to enhanced innovation, problem-solving, and business resilience.

Mountain Camp 2025 promises an enriching lineup of sessions tailored to various interests and professional needs. Whether you’re curious about open source policy, want the latest Drupal CMS updates, aim to learn more about product innovation, or hope to create an inclusive workplace, our keynote speakers have you covered. Secure your spot at Switzerland’s leading digital and open source conference—register now.

AI (Artificial Intelligence) is a groundbreaking technology revolutionizing industries such as Content Management Systems (CMSs). Even though it has been more than 10 years, AI tools and their applications are continuously evolving.

Related Blog: Step-By-Step Guide To Migrating From Drupal 7 To Backdrop CMS

The Drupal AI module offers a framework that makes it easy to integrate Artificial Intelligence on any Drupal site with the help of AI. The main purpose of the AI Module is to provide a suite of modules and an API foundation for creating images, text content, content analysis, etc.