When Drupal CMS launched, we built a guide to help users get started—but now we’re facing a big question: how does it relate to the existing Drupal User Guide? Should we keep them separate or merge them into a single, streamlined resource? In this post, Joe breaks down the challenges, and explores what’s next.

For Drupalists in the nonprofit sector, the Nonprofit Summit on Monday, 24 March is a must. We also invite all DrupalCon Atlanta attendees to register for the Nonprofit Summit, which promises a highly informative agenda. This is more than just another conference track—it’s an opportunity to connect with mission-driven professionals, sharpen your Drupal skills, and gain insights into how open-source technology can empower your organization. 

Nonprofits and open source share core values—collaboration, transparency, and community-driven innovation. In an era where the nonprofit sector faces increasing challenges, it’s important to remember that Drupal isn’t just a technology choice; it’s a commitment to an ecosystem that aligns with your mission. Attending the summit will reinvigorate your appreciation for the open-source community and provide a refreshing sense of camaraderie when the sector needs it most.

DrupalCon Atlanta 2025 Nonprofit Summit Agenda

09:00-09:15: Welcome 

Stephen Musgrave: Welcome and overview

09:15-11:30: Fireside Chats

• 9:15am: Cristina Chumillas and Pamela Barone: The Future of Drupal CMS
• 10:15am: Emma Horrel: User Experience in Drupal CMS
• 11:15: Tim Lehnen: Drupal for Nonprofits: nuances to bring back to your org 

11:30-11:45: Break

11:45-12:45: Breakout Sessions (Concurrent Roundtable Discussions)

• Improving the user experience on nonprofit websites
• Aspects and features of Drupal that make it the best choice for nonprofits
• When headless might make sense for your nonprofit
• How to have a conversation with technical and non-technical stakeholders 
• Accessibility & inclusive design

12:45-13:45: Lunch

A time for relaxing and networking if you feel like it.

13:45-14:45: Breakout Sessions (Concurrent Roundtable Discussions)

• Getting the most out of Drupal for nonprofit websites
• Harnessing AI for your nonprofit website
• Using Drupal at your membership organization.
• Simplifying content management for nonprofit teams
• Keeping up with advancements in technology on a nonprofit budget

14:45-15:00: Break

15:00-16:00: Recipes

Tim Lehnen: Recipes for nonprofit Drupal CMS users and Q&A

16:00-17:00pm: Optional Networking

Wrap up conversations, meet new colleagues, and explore partnership opportunities.

Here’s a glimpse of the activities and topics covered.

Drupal CMS

The morning is dedicated to Drupal CMS. We will explore how the Starshot initiative launched the first release of Drupal CMS and what the future holds. We will discuss the user experience for nonprofit users and what Drupal CMS means for nonprofit adopters. This portion of the day will be interactive and include plenty of time for discussion. 

Tim Lehnen from the Drupal Association will close out the section by summarizing the big picture Drupal CMS adventure and connecting the open source framework to nonprofit value systems and providing talking points to bring back to nonprofit orgs in support of Drupal. One of the biggest hurdles to adopting Drupal is securing leadership buy-in. The Nonprofit Summit will equip you with the tools to make the case for Drupal with confidence. 

A Lineup of Engaging Breakout Sessions

A diverse set of breakout sessions will ensure you can focus on the topics most relevant to your organization’s needs. Expect discussions on nonprofit-specific challenges, case studies from organizations that have successfully implemented Drupal, and hands-on workshops where you can troubleshoot real-world problems. 

Network with Like-Minded Changemakers

The nonprofit world thrives on collaboration, and there’s no better place to build connections than at the Nonprofit Summit. You’ll meet others who share your passion for social good and open-source technology. You’ll find a community of people eager to share experiences, offer advice, and even explore potential partnerships. Nonprofits are stronger when we work together, and the summit is a perfect chance to forge new relationships.

Join Us in Atlanta!

The nonprofit sector is constantly evolving, and technology plays a crucial role in helping organizations achieve their goals. Whether you’re looking to refine your Drupal expertise, advocate for open-source solutions, or simply find inspiration among your peers, the Nonprofit Summit at DrupalCon Atlanta is the place to be. Mark your calendar, pack your bags, and get ready to be part of a movement that empowers nonprofits through technology.

Register here: https://events.drupal.org/atlanta2025

DrupalCamp England returns! The Drupal community came together in Cambridge for a weekend. Inspiring keynotes, AI innovations and new connections proved the community is stronger than ever.

Many online course creators wonder how to effectively manage sales and automatically grant access to educational content. With Drupal and the available modules, we can build a fully functional online store that handles payments and automatically assigns users to purchased courses. We encourage you to read the article or watch an episode of “Nowoczesny Drupal” series (the video is in Polish).

Fibers is a new feature in PHP 8.1 that brings lightweight and controlled concurrency to PHP.

PHP 8.1 Fibers introduce efficient, non-blocking execution, making Drupal faster and more responsive. Instead of waiting for sequential HTTP requests, Fibers run them simultaneously, reducing load times and enhancing user experience. This optimization is particularly useful when working with multiple cURL-based API calls or external data fetching.

Drupal Use

Real-Time Use Case of PHP Fibers in Drupal

Since Drupal is single-threaded, we can't run true asynchronous tasks like in Node.js. However, PHP Fibers can help optimize performance by allowing tasks to be executed without blocking the main script.

Experience Builder (XB) most prominent UI piece is its preview canvas, where multiple viewport widths are visible next to each other. The preview canvas is meant for placing components, modifying their inputs and moving them around. For that reason, you cannot interact with the contents of each component. What if you do want to try that?

That’s where the new Preview functionality comes in that was built by Jesse Baker, Dave “longwave” Long and Harumi “hooroomoo” Jang, which removes UI chrome and allows the content author to focus on their creation:

With the UI chrome removed, interacting with the individual components in this mode makes sense:

Then there’s the small matter of being able to actually save what you created 😅 Five weeks ago, we introduced basic auto-saving, but that was not persistent. Auto-saving is similar to a browser remembering what you entered in a form for a while, but not forever. Both are needed for a good UX.

So Ted “tedbow” Bowman, Dave, Travis Carden, Lee “larowlan” Rowlands, Felix “f.mazeikis” Mazeikis and I introduced server-side support for actually saving the cool XB component trees that you could already build, preview and auto-save. Next up: updating the UI to actually use it 🤓

Not one, but two new entity types

Two weeks ago, the UI gained the ability to save “sections”, without those actually being saved: the client leapt ahead of the server. That’s still the case, but the server is catching up: “sections” are the user-facing term for what the new Pattern config entity type will store (added by Felix and I). HTTP API support is still missing though, so the UI doesn’t quite work yet.

XB is intended to become a visual page builder for structured and unstructured content alike. Of course, Drupal is heavily biased to structured content, and consequently has some UX aspects that increase the mental load on the Content Creator unnecessarily for simple, one-off unstructured content — typically called landing pages.
After a lengthy discussion — in an issue that will land next week 😇 — we settled on an approach. To achieve the envisioned UX for unstructured content, Matt “mglaman” Glaman, Ted and I introduced a new xb_page content entity type, with only a handful of base fields:

• title (required)
• description  — for meta tags
• components — for XB component tree
• path — for path alias/URL
• status — for published vs not
• finally, for basic bookkeeping: created and changed
• bonus: if the Metatag module is installed, a metatags field

Adding more fields to it is expressly disallowed — for that, use core’s existing node content entity type. This is intentionally simple, stripped down to the absolute essentials, and must be kept that way. No screenshot yet, because only the basic server-side pieces are done; expect progress in future blog posts!

Missed a prior week? See all posts tagged Experience Builder.

Goal: make it possible to follow high-level progress by reading ~5 minutes/week. I hope this empowers more people to contribute when their unique skills can best be put to use!

For more detail, join the #experience-builder Slack channel. Check out the pinned items at the top!

Redux-integrated field widgets progress

The component instance inputs form may need to have additional CSS and JS loaded. This was implemented months ago, and quite elegantly even: using Attach-Css, Attach-Js and Attach-Settings response headers. While elegant, this doesn’t actually scale, because there can be a lot of those to attach, especially when CSS and/or JS aggregation are turned off. So Ben “bnjmnm” Mullins, Alex “effulgentsia” Bronstein, Travis and I moved these from response headers into the response body. Not all elegance is also technically viable!

On that subject: I bet this part of XB will be perceived as magic. 🪄 Magic is a barrier to evolution and contribution. So Ben, Lauri “lauriii” Timmanee, Bálint “balintbrews” Kléri, Dave, Alex, Lee, Pierre “pdureau” Dureau, Brian Perry and I all collaborated to document both “technical components” that enable this:

• the Semi-Coupled theme engine: docs/semi-coupled-theme-engine.md
• the Redux-integrated field widgets: docs/redux-integrated-field-widgets.md

There’s still lots of work to be done in both components to bring Redux integration to all of core’s field widgets (that last doc makes that very explicit). Having docs in place that explain how it works today is crucial to get to that point!

Grab bag

• Another one of many steps towards making XB Component Source-agnostic: Dave, Lauri and I updated the internal HTTP API to get the list of available XB components to inform the client of each component’s Component Source.
• Harumi and Ben broke up our organically grown xb-general.cy.js end-to-end (E2E) Cypress test into feature-specific tests — making our E2E tests more maintainable and easier to evolve.
• Nine weeks ago, XB added Tugboat integration to simplify testing of MRs. In #3475652, James “q0rban” Sansbury, Kristen Pol and Alex made sure that Tugboat-powered previews also have the Starshot Demo Design System pre-installed, making testing XB on Tugboat more enjoyable.

Week 28 was November 18–November 24, 2024.

When selecting a hosting provider for your Drupal or WordPress site, it’s tempting to choose the cheapest option available. After all, it looks like a cost-effective solution up front. But in reality, budget hosting can introduce hidden costs that could affect your website’s performance, security, and long-term stability.

To back up a little and provide context for non-technical website decision makers, let’s answer the question: What role does web hosting play? Web hosting is essentially the service that stores your website’s files and makes them accessible on the internet. The quality of hosting affects everything from site speed to uptime and security.

Having hosted websites since 2003 and worked with providers ranging from budget hosts like DreamHost to cloud services like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, and DigitalOcean, I’ve seen how these choices impact organizations. I am going to break down why specialized hosting providers are often the smarter choice.

Why Budget Hosting Can Cost More in the Long Run

Unless your organization has a dedicated Development or DevOps team, relying on a single developer or IT professional to manage your site hosted on a platform like AWS or DigitalOcean can be risky. This developer needs to handle everything: server maintenance, security patches, and performance optimization. If that person leaves, your site could be left vulnerable, and finding a replacement with the same expertise can be challenging—and expensive.

Specialized hosting reduces reliance on individual expertise and ensures greater stability. On the other hand, specialized hosting providers like Pantheon, Acquia, Kinsta, and Platform.sh handle server management for you. This means you won’t need a developer to manage critical tasks like software updates or security patches.

Key Features of Specialized Hosting Providers

Specialized hosting providers offer features that budget and cloud hosts often don’t, including:

• Staging environments: Budget hosts typically lack staging environments, crucial for testing changes before going live. Without this, you’d need to set up a separate server for testing—an additional hassle and expense. Specialized hosts provide built-in environments where you can test updates with ease.
• Automated backups: Budget hosts often don’t include automated backups by default. With specialized providers, backups are built-in and accessible to developers, making it easier to restore your site or troubleshoot issues.
• Security and updates: Providers like Pantheon and Platform.sh handle server-level security updates automatically. This eliminates the need for a dedicated team or developer to manage these critical aspects.
• Standardized developer access: Specialized hosts follow best practices for Drupal and WordPress hosting. This includes version control systems like Git, ensuring seamless collaboration and reducing onboarding time for new developers.
• Access control for non-technical users: Many specialized hosts provide tools that allow less technical people to manage developer access to servers, reducing dependency on specific team members.
• Website speed: Specialized hosts optimize server configurations for Drupal and WordPress out of the box, ensuring faster load times and better performance without requiring manual tuning. This not only improves user experience but also boosts SEO, helping your site gain better visibility in search engines.

The Bigger Picture: Saving Time and Reducing Risk

If your organization works with multiple developers or plans to expand, specialized hosting provides a safety net. Developers spend less time managing servers and more time focusing on what matters—improving your website. By minimizing time spent on server issues, specialized hosting reduces the risk of downtime, security breaches, or costly mistakes.

While budget hosting may seem cost-effective initially, it can lead to higher costs in the long run. Opting for a specialized Drupal or WordPress hosting provider ensures your website remains secure, scalable, and manageable—saving you time, money, and headaches down the road. Investing in a specialized provider today protects your site’s future and eliminates reliance on a single developer for server management.

Are you interested in moving your website to a specialized host and don’t know where to start? Let’s talk.

 

If you've been around for a while you may be aware that Drupal 7 was much more accessible to the casual tinkerer than newer versions of Drupal. You'd regularly see Drupal 7 sites built by people who sometimes refer to themselves as "Site Builders" - a term which describes people who are comfortable building sites with Drupal, but may be less comfortable creating custom modules and themes.

The dropoff in Site Builders' participation since Drupal 7 is due in no small part to Drupal's decision to adopt modern development practices such as object-oriented programming, building on top of the Symfony framework, and utilizing a package manager. These are all good things! But we, as a community, are ready to welcome the casual Site Builder back with our latest developments.

DrupalCon is a flagship event for everyone in the Drupal community, and developers are a huge part of the action. With DrupalCon Atlanta 2025 just around the corner, let’s take a look at what’s in store for these tech-savvy minds — especially the seasoned masters of the craft: senior developers.

There’s plenty to get involved in — contributing to Drupal’s future in code sprints, showing off your knowledge at Drupal Trivia Night, or grabbing cool swag from sponsors. But at the heart of the event? Insightful and thought-provoking sessions! 

If you’ve been building Drupal sites for years, you know that learning never stops. Staying ahead means keeping up with the latest innovations, tackling tough challenges, and exchanging ideas with fellow experts. DrupalCon 2025 is your chance to do exactly that — hear from top Drupal minds, ask the hard questions, and dive into discussions that push your skills further. Here’s a handpicked selection designed to challenge, inspire, and get you excited as a senior developer for 24-27 March.

Top sessions for senior developers at DrupalCon Atlanta 2025

“The future of Drupal core in the age of Drupal CMS” — by Gábor Hojtsy

Drupal CMS has been making waves, offering a fresh, flexible approach to building with Drupal. With Drupal CMS 1.0 officially released and work on version 2.0 already in motion, big questions are emerging about the future of Drupal core.

Will Drupal 12 simply be Drupal CMS? Well… yes and no. But what does that really mean? How will Drupal continue to support essential use cases like headless architectures, social, and e-commerce? And what about developers and other personas not directly in Drupal CMS’s focus — what changes can they expect?

When there are many questions, listen to the tech-savvy person behind many of Drupal’s innovations. Gábor Hojtsy, Drupal core committer and initiative coordinator, knows the answers. He always brings fresh perspectives and shares insights you might not have heard before.

Attend his session for a deep dive into the role of Drupal CMS in the entire ecosystem and the technical evolution of Drupal core. You’ll understand how this should impact long-term development strategies and how to adapt to the changing landscape.

“The Future of Drupal Theming: AI, Experience Builder, and Beyond” — by Mike Herchel

Drupal’s theming layer has evolved significantly in recent years, with new Twig filters, theme generation tools, and Single Directory Components making front-end development smoother than ever. But the biggest changes are still ahead.

With the introduction of Experience Builder and modern AI-driven tools, theming in Drupal is about to take a giant leap forward. How will these innovations reshape the way you build and style Drupal sites?

Immerse yourself in all the details at this session with Mike Herchel (mherchel), Drupal core committer, and the creator of the Olivero front-end theme. You’ll get a practical look at what’s coming in the next era of Drupal theming. Mike will share how to develop components for Experience Builder, where AI fits into your frontend process, and what should (and shouldn’t) be a component. Plus, you’ll pick up best practices to avoid unnecessary code bloat and ensure your work stands the test of time.

As a senior developer, you’re certainly already familiar with the quirks, strengths, and challenges of Drupal theming. This knowledge should be very helpful for getting the most out of the session. 

“Leveraging GitLab CI for contributions” — by Deepak Mishra and Ankit Pathak

Having a smooth and efficient development workflow can make all the difference. Automation is key to keeping things running smoothly. Here is where GitLab CI/CD comes in — a Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery system built into GitLab. It automates the process of testing, building, and deploying your code.

The session by Deepak Mishra (deepakkm) and Ankit Pathak (ankitv18) will show you how to harness the power of GitLab CI/CD. You’ll explore how to set up a GitLab CI pipeline, run automated quality assurance checks, manage deployments, and handle merge requests.

Say goodbye to repetitive manual tasks and deployment headaches and embrace better collaboration with other developers. With practical tips from this session, you’ll level up your workflow, making your development process faster, smoother, and more reliable.

The session will focus on using GitLab CI/CD for contributions to drupal.org, so Deepak and Ankit will demonstrate the best practices in this area. However, the knowledge you obtain will be helpful in your client projects, too.

“Creating Composer aware modules with Drupal core’s new Package Manager module” — by Ted Bowman

Have you heard about Package Manager — a new experimental module in Drupal core that provides an API for interacting with Composer? It’s the key tool behind such innovative solutions as Project Browser and Automatic Updates, running Composer behind the scenes and allowing users to rely on the admin dashboard.

If you are curious about its work or want to build a module that performs Composer operations or integrates with Project Browser or Automatic Updates, here is a can’t-miss session. Who better to guide you through this than Ted Bowman (tedbow), Drupal core committer and the maker of Automatic Updates?

Using the example modules that rely on the Package Manager API, Ted will demonstrate the steps to implementing various features:

• making a simple form for installing modules by project name or URL
• cleaning up unused packages from your codebase
• showing detailed information about Project Browser’s work
• controlling which modules can be installed with Project Browser

You’ll also learn how to build user-friendly interfaces for Composer operations, customize Composer tasks with the Package Manager’s event system, retrieve detailed package information, and much more.

“Mixing the Schema.org Blueprints module into a Drupal Recipe to bake a sweet content model” — by Jacob Rockowitz

Structured data helps search engines better understand the content of a web page, leading to richer search results. Schema.org markup is a reliable way to achieve this goal. Want to be equipped with the best tools and practices for using it? Then read on.

In this DrupalCon session, you’ll get a look at two exciting, innovative solutions for building and managing structured content:

• First, the Schema.org Blueprints module offers a great way to define content using schema.org standards. Jacob Rockowitz (jrockowitz), the speaker of the session, is the creator of the Schema.org Blueprints module, as well as of the famous Webform module.
• But what if you could take that content model and arrange it into a ready-to-use package? That’s where Drupal Recipes come in — a ground-breaking innovation in Drupal for creating pre-configured functionalities and easily adding them to any new or existing Drupal project.

This session will show you how to combine the power of both. You’ll see a demo of how to build structured content types, as well as hierarchical content and organization charts.

“Collecting Data in Drupal When Internet is Unstable: Browser Local Storage and Service Workers” — by Nia Kathoni and Daniel Cothran

Drupal Recipes deserve a dedicated session in your schedule. They have really revolutionized how feature sets are added to websites. You can now pre-package the necessary modules and configurations in flexible ways, without being locked into the constraints of a specific distribution. Recipes can be applied, mixed, matched, and updated to meet the evolving needs of your website.

Introduced as experimental in Drupal 10.3, the Recipes APIs laid the foundation for Drupal CMS. Since then, the team has been refining the code base and gathering valuable feedback. DrupalCon Atlanta 2025 is the perfect opportunity to hear exclusive insights from the team.

If you are curious about one of Drupal Recipes, join Jim Birch (thejimbirch), the architect behind this solution. In his session, Jim will update you on the progress of the phase 2 roadmap of the Drupal Recipes Initiative. He will also delve into important topics such as config actions, default content, config checkpoints, and the process of creating recipes. Plus, he’ll explore idempotency — ensuring configurations remain reliable and consistent, no matter how many times they are applied.

Or maybe you’re ready to roll up your sleeves and help shape the next chapter? This session has a strong contribution focus, bringing together maintainers and contributors. You’ll learn how you can get involved with the Drupal Recipes Initiative.

“Supply Chain Security in Drupal and Composer” — by Christopher Gervais, Tim Hestenes Lehnen, and Neil Drumm

There can never be too much talk about security — especially when it comes to securing software supply chains. A software supply chain ensures that all the necessary software elements (like libraries, modules, or tools) are in place and function properly together. 

Join this DrupalCon Atlanta 2025 session to discover more about supply chains and how to protect them from unauthorized access. You’ll be introduced to the nature of supply chain attacks and understand Drupal’s vulnerability to such threats. You will also gain insight into how Composer, along with services like packagist.org and Private Packagist, fits into the supply chain, and the crucial role PHP dependencies play in securing your project.

Next, the session will cover the Automatic Updates Initiative, one of the Drupal Association’s most impactful efforts to ensure websites stay up to date and secure. You’ll also be introduced to essential tools for bolstering security, including:

• the Update Framework (TUF), which ensures that packages are safe and have not been tampered with before download
• the PHP-TUF Composer Integration Plugin, which adds an extra layer of security by verifying modules, themes, and profiles downloaded from drupal.org
• the Rugged TUF Server, which safeguards signing keys and supports the drupal.org packaging pipeline

The session will be led by Christopher Gervais (ergonlogic), Tim Hestenes Lehnen (hestenet), and Neil Drumm (drumm). They are renowned Drupal experts and active contributors to the Drupal Security Team, Automatic Updates, Drupal core, and more. This makes them perfectly suited to guide you through supply chain security.

Driesnote by Dries Buytaert

The central keynote at DrupalCon, Driesnote, is always something to look forward to. If there’s anyone at the event who hasn’t yet heard of Dries Buytaert, it certainly won’t be you. As a senior developer, you know Dries will keep you up to date with Drupal’s latest developments, and you will never want to miss his presentation.

Your experience has already shown you how quickly technology evolves, and Driesnote is the perfect opportunity to see Drupal’s momentum in action. Dries will share what’s next for the platform, including what’s in store for developers like you. This talk will give you a clear view of where Drupal is headed — whether it’s new features, tools, or improvements in how the platform works. Furthermore, based on past Driesnotes, even the most seasoned developers might find themselves completely amazed by the demos Dries has in store.

You’ll understand how the latest changes might impact your projects moving forward and how you can make the most of them. It’s a fantastic opportunity to stay ahead of the curve and connect with the Drupal community.

Final thoughts

Make sure to grab your ticket to the biggest Drupal gathering, where these and plenty of other great sessions are waiting for you. After enjoying this adventure, you’ll leave Atlanta with fresh techniques, smart solutions, and a stronger bond with fellow Drupal enthusiasts — fueling your work long after the event ends.