Automation has simplified almost everything today and Drupal development is no exception. Drupal developers can now leverage the power of automation to create websites effortlessly and take Drupal development services to a whole new sphere. With automation, it is possible to perform a majority of operations such as managing modules, users, and generating code with a single command. Imagine the extent of productivity boost you’ll accomplish as a Drupal developer if you automate some processes. Besides, companies now prefer to hire Drupal developers with the power of automation in their arsenal.

Given that, if you aspire to get hired by a top-notch Drupal development company, you should begin experimenting with the following tools.

Today, Drupal follows a rapid upgrade process. There was just a two and a half years gap between the release of Drupal 10 in December 2022 and Drupal 9 in June 2020. Whereas, past Drupal versions were released with a gap of around four to five years between them. The need for frequent Drupal migration has left a majority of users grumbling and asking why the CMS releases new versions so rapidly. After all, the migration process is usually complicated, and availing of Drupal migration services involves the expenditure of money and time. 

If you are also tormented by the same question, this blog will act as a beacon and help you get acquainted with the answer. 

In the world of content management systems (CMS), Drupal has long been recognized as a powerful and flexible platform for building websites. Drupal 7, released in 2011, has been a popular choice for many businesses due to its robust features and extensive community support.

The Drupal Association is pleased to announce that Julia Kranzthor (she/her) has joined the team as our new Director of Philanthropy as of July 2023! We are thrilled to bring Julia’s talent and experience in the Drupal Community to the team. 

Julia enjoys connecting changemakers with resources to achieve community-centric philanthropy. With eight years of experience in the nonprofit sector, Julia seeks to undo the damage done by systemic inequity. Her most recent roles as Sr. Development Director at Healthy Futures of Texas and the Texas Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, focused on improving adolescent health and using storytelling to accurately portray challenges from the perspective of lived experience. Previously, she worked at the Workers Defense Project, building power for working families.

Prioritizing technology infrastructure to do her job, Julia is a self proclaimed nerd. She has built multiple open source CRMs and loves collecting, analyzing, and tracking data. After graduating from San Diego State University, she received an MBA from St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas. Julia still lives in Austin with her Great Dane Rex and housecat/demon Mildred Louise. Originally from the Bay Area in California, Julia can be found watching the Sharks during the hockey season!

I am thrilled to be part of the Drupal Association. As a long time open source supporter it means so much to me to join the community at Drupal and work to advance the values and goals that make it so special.

Welcome to the Drupal Association team, Julia!

The day began like any other, but a wave of realisation hit whilst listing day-to-day tasks for the last time. Last Monday, through this very newsletter, Thomas bid adieu to TheDropTimes, speaking about moving to a high-profile government job. I am taking leave with my farewell letter this Monday—in academic pursuit. 

Time to reminisce.

At 16, I got permission to open an Instagram account. I was eager to use the platform where I would have the opportunity to connect with people worldwide. But surprisingly, that was not the case. 

Totally unrelated, I joined TheDropTimes a few years later with no specific intention to ‘connect with people all over the world.’ Surprisingly, I did. TheDropTimes (TDT) provided such a space for me.

There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.

~ Frank Herbert

A bittersweet feeling. Flowers wither, seasons change, and reality turns into a memory for us. There is a lot I will take away from working at TDT. Yes, I have been paid for my work, but that is not what I am referring to. 

TDT documents the Drupal Community like a never-fading testimony, writing down about the Drupal world. It takes dedication and passion. By practising community themselves, TheDropTimes is patient and constantly teaching and learning. From all that I had known before TheDropTimes, I was able to put into action while working with them, and with that, I also take away what I have learned here to my next chapter in life.

So with that, let me, for the last time, take you through the stories we covered last week. 

We ran an interview with  Alejandro Moreno López (Alex Moreno), the newly appointed Drupal Innovation Coordinator at the Drupal Association. Read the short interview, ‘I Wanted to Be Close To Drupal and The Community,’ here. Another discussion we published last week was with the organisers of DrupalCamp Asheville. Read ‘Creating a Relaxed Learning Environment’. 

When coming to resources, no feat is small. Read the news about Christophe Jossart reviving The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Planet Drupal - 2023 Edition.

The Spanish Drupal Community is gearing up for the Biggest Meeting Point in Seville this September and Drupal Camp Pune 2023 has initiated their Call For Sponsors. 

amazee.io was recognised with AWS DevOps Software Competency this week. Mark Conroy, a prominent web developer, unveiled a live design preview for LocalGov Drupal Microsites. Conroy emphasises enhancing the user experience by enabling designers and developers to preview design modifications instantly. Mike Herschel also puts out a demonstration of Drupal 10’s New Twig Filters. 

If you plan to attend DrupalCon Lille and think you missed the Early Bird Rate, I hope you come across this newsletter. This is your final chance to do so. Register Now for DrupalCon Lille 2023 Early Bird Rate.

Learn stunning Drupal 9 & 10 Theming through a remote workshop by Drupalize.Me. And, of course, Drupal and Pizza go hand-in-hand; Taipei Meetup to Discuss Drupal’s New Features over Pizza.

Decoupled Days 2023, a highly anticipated conference for architects, developers, and business people in the realm of headless CMS architectures, is set to kick off on August 16th. That’s it for this week.

For the Last Time, Sincerely,
 

Alethia Rose Braganza
Sub Editor, The Drop Times

After 20 years of swinging a gavel as a licensed auctioneer, Jacqui Young bravely picked up her laptop and filled out the application for Drupal Career Online so she could transform her lifestyle and pursue a passion. This began her official bid to become a full-on contributing member of the Drupal Community, which she had become acquainted with, and intrigued by, for several years as she accompanied her partner to Drupal events. 

Tagging along to various Camps and Cons, Jacqui became drawn to the mobile lifestyle that a career in web development has to offer. She also felt connected to the community, explaining “I really love the Drupal Community; it is generous, kind and intelligent.” Her technical background helped fuel her aspirations as well, having mastered some fairly complicated auction software and acing a few computer science courses that built her background in coding, the command line and Git. She looked into Drupal Career Online, made sure she had the prerequisites, applied and was accepted to the Fall 2018 session. 

From there, Jacqui’s outlook, abilities and attitude drove her along a relatively condensed path to her current position as Evolution & Support Engineer at Interpersonal Frequency, a Drupal agency that prides itself on building easy-to-use digital experiences that empower public organizations and the citizens they serve.Working for Interpersonal Frequency is the first and only time she has worked for someone other than herself. “ It’s kind of fun, she explains.  “It’s fun to have access to other smart people.” 

Her journey and rapid success is not typical, but then again, Jacqui is not ordinary either. She is fearless in taking on new things, knows how to communicate, and does it all with an amazing attitude. She also leverages every skill and experience she has, and can’t hide her sincere passion for Drupal and all that is good about the community. “I look at Drupal as getting paid to solve a puzzle,” she beams. “It’s important to be positive. “I think attitude is everything,” she continues. 

Shortly after she graduated from Drupal Career Online, she gave a presentation at DrupalCamp Atlanta, and made such an impression that she was approached immediately after with an offer of an internship, which she jumped on. She spent six months performing nothing but site audits, which gave her a great foundation for more technical tasks. She had planned to work as a developer for a few years, and then potentially move into managing people and projects. But for now, she is still really enjoying and focusing on becoming a better developer. 

Composer is a favorite tool of Jacqui’s as she loves to build micro-sites, and is now also going more into decoupled architecture as the agency’s new direction. Even with all of her skill and experience built on her technical skills, Jacqui is convinced that much of her success, and most developers’ success, is because of their soft skills.  “Communication is number one” she explains. And continues, “Listen well and repeat back.” She also adds building relationships and using patience as main ingredients in performing any role successfully in tech. 

She continues to enjoy and draw a lot of value from Drupal events. “You learn as much in the hallway, bars and parties as you do in presentations,” she muses. Her DrupalCon Pittsburgh experience included some technical conversations, some great sessions, especially enjoying Owen Bush’s talk on how to contribute. She was even inspired by fellow alumni and members of the DrupalEasy Learning Community who gathered for a semi-official lunch; becoming encouraged to suggest hiring junior developers as a way to build a strong dev team. 

When asked what she would share with people just getting into Drupal to support their career, Jacqui suggests “Find what you can give away, and give it away. Contribute to the project, go to meetups and be helpful; and opportunities will present themselves.” She continues, “ It is hard to do, (especially if you have no income) but you still should do it. I really think that’s the way to get in the door.” She believes that by going to local camps and sprints and not just meeting people but giving them help, new developers can learn and make a name for themselves. 

When asked what she’d like to share about her journey to this new career, Jacqui reflects, “It has been a really good career for me. I love open source values and it is good for the world.” She adds, DrupalEasy changed my life, you gave me an amazing launch.” Drupal Career Online, it is clear, was a tool that Jacqui fully leveraged to build a life around her aspirations, and we are proud to have been a part of it. 

The next session of Drupal Career Online begins in a few weeks.  For more information, join us for one of our no-cost Taste of Drupal information sessions. 

The Drupal Event Platform (DEP) committee within the Drupal Event Organizers Working Group (EOWG) is working to reduce the time and resources it takes to create an event website site through the creation of a flexible and customizable website starter kit for event organizers. In this post, we'll update you on our massive 1.0 stable release. Check out our latest demo video too.

In its current form, the Event Platform is a collection of modules:

• event_platform

  • Installs all the submodules, except event_platform_olivero. Provides no code or configuration of its own

• event_platform_details

  • Creates a config_page entity to store details about the event, such as name, year, description, and so on. It also provides two custom blocks that leverage data from the config_page: a CTA block intended for the header, and a copyright block intended for the footer

• event_platform_job_listings

  • Creates a content type for job listings and a view to display them. By design the job listings are associated with sponsors (so this module depends on event_platform_sponsors) and job listings are displayed according to the level of sponsor that posted them

• event_platform_olivero

  • Installs all the other submodules, and places the blocks into the intended regions of the Olivero theme

• event_platform_scheduler

  • Provides a dedicated scheduler interface for drag-and-drop assignment of sessions (and potentially other content types) to rooms and time slots. Filters can be added to help organize sessions based on common audience, category, and so on. This module also provides a tool to quickly bulk generate time slots for scheduling

• event_platform_sessions

  • Creates a content type for sessions and a variety of taxonomy vocabularies and views to help manage them. Also creates Speaker and Session Moderator roles. Using the Registration Role module, the Speaker role is automatically assigned to new registrants. Workbench Email templates use tokens to send out emails whenever sessions are submitted, accepted, or rejected.

• event_platform_speakers

  • Creates a content type for featured speakers and a view to display them

• event_platform_sponsors

  • Creates a content type for sponsors and a view to display them, grouped by sponsor level (platinum, gold, etc)

Heard enough? Want to get started?

An event organizing team can use the Event Platform in at least three different ways:

1. With a fresh install of Drupal, they can install the event_platform_olivero submodule to install all the submodules and place the available blocks in the intended places

2. If using a custom theme, they can install the main module to activate all submodules but not place any blocks

3. If they only want to use some of the capabilities provided by the Event Platform, they can selectively install one or more submodules

Further instructions for getting started, managing sessions, creating schedules, and more are in the Event Platform User Guide.

Future Considerations

• The long term vision for the Event Platform is for it to be a set of recipes, potentially with some associated contrib modules. As an interim step, we are considering using Features to help with maintenance

• Drupal camps and conferences commonly have an ability to flag sessions, and then view these flagged sessions in a “My Schedule” view. A similar capability could be provided as a submodule

• Many camps also have Birds-of-a-Feather or BOF sessions, meant to encourage peer-to-peer discussion. A new submodule could simplify adding these for camps that want to include this type of session

• Eventually Workbench Email may be replaced by the ECA and Easy Email modules, to allow for more sophisticated, custom logic around when and how emails should be sent. This could also include sending an email once a session is scheduled, to ask the session author to confirm they can present at the chosen time

• Commonly camps run over several years (hopefully indefinitely!) but don’t want to rebuild or reset their site every year. The plan is to provide an Event entity, so that each year the camp could create a new entity, effectively resetting the site, while potentially still allowing content from previous years to be accessed

Get involved

• Check for updates on the initiative page.
• Install the project and dive into the issue queue.
• Join #event-organizers on Drupal Slack.
• If your event ends up using the Event Platform, let us know.

The EOWG would like to thank Martin Anderson-Clutz (mandclu) for his incredible commitment to moving this project forward.