Dries talked about our vision and strategy for Drupal 11 in DrupalCon Portland 2022. The vision Dries laid out was that we want to make Drupal the tool of choice for ambitious site builders on the open web. In order for us to accomplish this goal, we believe that Drupal needs to provide:
New features will be built in the current major version of Drupal. This means that components of this plan will be released gradually in Drupal core minor releases, not in a big bang with Drupal 11.
We have several ongoing initiatives, but we are doubling down our efforts on these three tracks:
Drupal is the most powerful digital experience platform when it is well-configured. We want more people to be able to leverage the power of Drupal. Therefore, our goal is to reduce the time and steps it takes to realize the full potential of Drupal.
We are working on:
Our goal is to make it easier for site builders to meet the requirements of content editors, who are accustomed to using flexible and easy-to-navigate tools. We will also evolve Drupal into the top choice for ambitious site builders and content creators who need advanced layout or landing page building features.
We are working on:
Keeping Drupal 10 sites up-to-date can be labor-intensive and require specialized knowledge to assess security releases and potential regressions caused by updates. Our commitment is to make the upkeep of Drupal and its modules less complex, risk-free, and affordable.
We are working on:
Moreover, we recognize that a significant number of Drupal sites are still on Drupal 7. The upgrade to Drupal 10 can be labor-intensive and requires specialized expertise.
We are working on:
We are excited about the road ahead as we are making Drupal the tool of choice for ambitious site builders on the open web. We invite you to join us on this journey, where your expertise, insights, and contributions are invaluable in shaping the future of Drupal.
Thank you to Gábor Hojtsy, catch, xjm, yoroy, Dries, and effulgentsia for their feedback on this post.
Many websites include an Event section or a dedicated area where they feature information about upcoming events. A well-crafted event listing comprises several key elements. Among them are an event’s name, description, location, schedule or agenda, compelling visuals, registration or ticketing information, and, of course, the event’s date and time.
Background
My organization's backend and frontend teams are starting to use Architecture Decisions Records (ADRs) as part of our decision and documentation process. We were inspired by Lullabot's Andrew Berry's blog post Improving Team Efficiency with Architecture Decision Records. Andrew cited Michael Nygard's article, Documenting Architecture Decisions, as the source of inspiration. Andrew notes that one key goal for ADRs is to provide valuable documentation via the below quote from Micheal's article.
My best anecdotal proof of the immediate value of ADRs is while reviewing Lullabot's public ADRs, I discovered their Use Type Tray to improve editorial UX ADR. The Type Tray module is an excellent solution for improving UI/UX for adding new content. The Schema.org Blueprints module now provides a simple Type Tray integration sub-module that automatically generates the content type groupings and icon assignments. The proof here is that if we, as a team and community members, document and share our thought processes and decisions, others can learn and improve upon them.
Recently, a tech lead on my team expressed a reasonable concern that they wanted to ensure all team members understand the architecture decisions behind the Schema.org Blueprints module, sub-modules, and its demo. Currently, only the Read More
It has been a little over a month since I announced Retrofit. The project provides a compatibility layer to allow legacy Drupal 7 code to run within a Drupal 10 code base. Since Retrofit was first released, I was able to add support for theme functions and PHPTemplate template files so that existing hook_theme declarations work with minimal modifications. Since then, I have been trying to decide on the next milestone for the project. What compatibility support can Retrofit provide to unlock the most benefit to organizations upgrading from Drupal 7? Themes!
If you have an inner hunger for success as an entrepreneur, Search Engine Optimization is indispensable. It is the key to improving your site’s visibility and attracting swarms of organic traffic. Besides, a high SEO ranking gives you an edge over your competitors and enhances your brand reputation. Although there is a plethora of SEO tools available in the market, Drupal SEO is a preferred choice of a majority of organizations.
In case you are struggling with choosing the right SEO tool for your website, this blog will help you get acquainted with the benefits of Drupal SEO and facilitate easy decision-making.
The Drupal Smart Trim module is used by more than 65,000 sites, including over ⅔ on modern Drupal (8+) sites. It has proven to be a valuable tool to improve Drupal's core functionality to trim long text fields in an intelligent manner.
Late in 2022, we released a major update (2.0.0) to the module. Among other improvements, we delivered Drupal 10 compatibility and much improved automated tests. Since then, a 2.1.0 release (completed during the DrupalCon Pittsburgh community contribution day) has brought even more automated tests and functionality.
During DrupalCon Pittsburgh, Mark Casias (markie) and I discussed the future of the Smart Trim module and agreed on a few conceptual ideas that will guide our decisions about the module for the foreseeable future. We decided to share these ideas as a mission statement for the module:
Smart Trim is designed to be a focused, lightweight improvement over Drupal core's current formatter trimming capabilities. The maintainers' focus is stability and ease-of-use. Customizations to the module are encouraged with template overrides and Smart Trim hook implementations.
In short, we don't necessarily want to add more dials and levers to Smart Trim formatter's configuration; rather we are going to focus on stability and ease-of-use while at the same time ensuring that those who want to do more with Smart Trim have the necessary tools at their disposal.
To this end, one of the most significant additions to the 2.1.0 version of the module is that of a smart-trim.html.twig template file. This will allow Drupal developers to have complete control over the output of the module; reducing the need for Smart Trim formatter configuration options. In fact, the current version of the module includes a deprecated configuration setting in the UI that we plan on removing in a future release (other configuration settings that we consider edge cases will also be deprecated in the future.)
Other improvements to the module over the past few months include:
Another decision that Mark and I made regarding the future of the module is that all commits must have test coverage. This makes a huge difference in the stability and quality of releases.
Most significantly, it cannot be overstated how much community effort, with time contributed by more than a few individuals, has resulted in the progress over the past few months. Among them, I'd like to mention Julian Pustkuchen (Anybody) and James Shields (lostcarpark) for the ongoing efforts. James is a recent graduate of DrupalEasy's Professional Module Development course and has been putting his new skills to use in this and other community projects.
The future of the Smart Trim module is bright. Changes implemented since the 2.1.0 release include:
Our current focus in the short term is on fixing bugs and continued improvements of our automated tests. We are excited about the direction the module is going and look forward to our next release.