In this episode, John Picozzi and Jason Pamental explore the connections fostered by using Drupal across different geographies, the evolution of conferences, and how design systems are being utilized at Chewy. We also delve into the application of AI in e-commerce and coding, and discuss the practicalities of maintaining governance in large organizations. Join us for an engaging discussion filled with personal anecdotes, professional insights, and future prospects.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/503

John Picozzi is the Solutions Architect at EPAM Systems, where he helps organizations implement scalable and sustainable digital solutions—most often using Drupal. With over a decade of experience in web development, John has become a trusted voice in the Drupal community for his commitment to open source, user-centered design, and thoughtful architecture. John is a contributor to Drupal and an active member of the community as the organizer of the Drupal Providence Meetup and New England Drupal Camp. He’s also well known as a co-host of the Talking Drupal podcast, a weekly show focused on all things Drupal, where he interviews community members and shares insights on development, strategy, and community engagement. Outside of podcasting and coding, John frequently speaks at DrupalCamps and conferences across the U.S., offering sessions that span technical deep dives to community and career development topics. You can find more about his work and speaking engagements at picozzi.com, or follow him on Drupal.org

Jason Pamental is a designer, strategist, and technologist specializing in typography, variable fonts, and digital design systems. He is currently Principal Designer at Chewy, where he leads their design system efforts and helps guide their mobile app architecture and strategy. With over 30 years of experience, Jason has worked with organizations such as Adobe, ESPN, Fidelity, and the State of Rhode Island to shape impactful digital experiences. He’s a globally recognized expert in web typography and the author of Responsive Typography. His work has helped define how variable fonts are used on the web today. Jason is a frequent speaker at conferences like Beyond Tellerrand, An Event Apart, and SmashingConf, and he shares his knowledge through writing, teaching, and open source contributions. His articles, presentations, and resources can be found at rwt.io — short for Responsive Web Typography — and many of his talks, videos, and associated resources are available on https://noti.st/jpamental An active supporter of the open web and the Drupal community, Jason is committed to bridging the gap between design and development. Outside of work, he enjoys riding bikes, making espresso, spending time with his family in Rhode Island, and following Leo and Henry around Turner Reservoir, posting photos on Instagram.

John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi

Jason Pamental - rwt.io.

Dear Readers,

The Drupal community has long understood the web as shared infrastructure. It is not only a tool for publishing or development, but a space where people collaborate, contribute, and take collective responsibility for digital progress. Transparency, open participation, and shared ownership are central to how Drupal has evolved and how its community continues to grow.

The recent endorsement of the United Nations Open Source Principles by the Drupal Association reflects a broader shift in how global institutions approach digital governance. The UN’s focus on openness by default, secure and inclusive design, and sustainability aligns closely with the Drupal community’s long-standing practices. This moment highlights the increasing visibility of open source values at an international level and validates the work that communities like Drupal have been doing for decades.

For Drupal contributors, this is not a change in direction but a reinforcement of what has already proven to work. It affirms that building digital infrastructure in the public interest requires more than code. It requires a commitment to open processes, active engagement, and a shared sense of ownership over the tools and spaces we create together.

INTERVIEWS

• Helping New Drupal Developers Cross the Gap Between Learning and Real-World Contribution
• Sowing Opportunity, Reaping Innovation: George DeMet on the Power of Inclusive Drupal Development

DISCOVER DRUPAL

• Drupal Association 2025 Board Election: Nominations Open 19 May
• Drupal Association Opens Survey on Site Templates Marketplace Governance
• New Drupal Pretty Printer Streamlines Automated Code Formatting

EVENTS

• MidCamp 2025 in Focus: Inside the Drupal Event Built by and for the Community
• DrupalCamp Ruhr 2025 Set for 12–13 September in Essen, Germany
• European Drupal Working Group to Be Introduced at Drupaljam 2025
• DrupalCon Vienna 2025 Opens Volunteer Registration for On-Site Roles
• Call for Session Proposals Opens for LocalGov Drupal Camp 2025
• DrupalCon Nara 2025 Opens Call for Session Proposals Ahead of November Event

ORGANISATION NEWS

• How Kanopi Rebuilt the Hamilton Education Site for Better Access and Engagement
• Fabien Potencier Named CTO of Platform.sh, Succeeding Co-Founder Damien Tournoud
• OSU Open Source Lab Secures One-Year Lifeline, Shifts Focus to Long-Term Sustainability

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.

A high-level comparison of some of the most-widely used Bootstrap framework-focused base themes, including feedback from some of their maintainers.

With more than 150 Bootstrap compatible Drupal 10 contributed themes on Drupal.org, selecting the best Bootstrap-powered base theme for you, your development team, and your project can sometimes come down to a superficial popularity contest. The lack of a clear comparison between the most widely-used and/or most well-known options is frustrating.

Rather than attempting the futile task of comparing all 150+ themes, based on my experience and conversations, I have selected the six (of what I consider to be) leading Bootstrap 5 compatible base themes for this task.

As someone who is not a dedicated front-end or theme developer, but is somewhat comfortable with the Bootstrap framework, I've used several of the options included in this comparison. This very site uses the Bootstrap base theme, our DrupalEasy Academy curriculum site and the Drupal Career Online theming lessons uses Bootstrap Barrio, and our Single Directory Component workshop utilizes Radix.

Despite my experience with several of the Bootstrap 5-powered base themes, I still didn't have a clear understanding of which one I should use or recommend based on different projects and teams. Gaining clarity in this area is the goal of this blog post.

In addition to my own experiences and research, I also contacted the most active maintainer(s) of each base theme and asked each to provide some feedback about their projects.

The base themes I decided to compare in this blog post were based on previous experiences, usage numbers on drupal.org and comments on a social media post about this topic that I posted in early April, 2025.

*Note: It is not lost on me the potential confusion between the three base themes with "Bootstrap" in their name! 

*Commits on current release branch in 2025

From the data above, it is clear to see that Bootstrap has (by far) the most usage, half have had a release in the last six months (November 2024 - April 2025,) with the other half having no commits on the listed branch in 2025 yet.

Front-end tools

One of the first things I do when evaluating a base theme is to take a look at how they handle CSS compiling. Generally, this falls into one of three categories:

• no built-in support (meaning the base theme is primarily designed for CSS, not Sass)
• Sass files provided along with CSS compilation tools (usually in the form of a package.json file)
• Sass files provided, but un-opinionated about compiling CSS (meaning it is up the developer)

Note: a developer or team's front-end tool chain can take many different forms, so this section is mostly geared towards folks not comfortable setting up their own toolchain.

For our contenders, here's what I found:

• Artisan: recommended subtheme includes Sass files and package.json featuring Laravel Mix.
• Bootstrap: provides both a CSS-only subtheme and a Sass-based subtheme that includes a package.json featuring Gulp.
• Bootstrap 5: recommended subtheme includes Sass files and a package.json file.
• Bootstrap Barrio: provides both a CSS-only subtheme and a Sass-based subtheme that includes a package.json featuring Gulp.
• Radix: recommended subtheme includes Sass files and package.json featuring Laravel Mix and BiomeJS
• UI Suite Bootstrap: recommended subtheme includes Sass files

Single directory components

With the Drupal community's love affair with single directory components (SDCs) not looking to wane anytime soon, it is becoming more-and-more common for base themes to include a useful set of components that can be utilized.

Ideally, (IMHO) SDCs should be entirely self-contained, not relying on libraries or Sass source files that don't reside in the SDC. Unfortunately, this is not always possible, but it is something that I definitely consider when doing my evaluation. Here's how our contenders incorporate SDCs:

• Artisan: includes components both in base theme and recommended subtheme
• Bootstrap: includes components in base theme
• Bootstrap 5: no components included
• Bootstrap Barrio: includes components in base theme
• Radix: includes components in base theme
• UI Suite Bootstrap: includes components in base theme

Drupal's Appearance theme settings

I honestly didn't consider this aspect until one of the base theme maintainers I interviewed mentioned it. Some base themes expose a lot of configuration options through Drupal's Appearance admin UI settings pages and some do not. Different theme developers might have different preferences - often those newer to theme development (or those for whom it is not a full-time job) prefer more configuration options exposed in the Drupal admin UI.

• Artisan: Many configuration options including colors, fonts and column widths. Many configurations utilize CSS variables.
• Bootstrap: Some configuration options including Color module and Bootswatch integration.
• Bootstrap 5: Few configuration options.
• Bootstrap Barrio: Many configuration options including Bootstrap grid classes.
• Radix: Very few configuration options.
• UI Suite Bootstrap: Very few configuration options.

Documentation

For base themes, I find that a little bit of documentation goes a long way. I don't expect base theme contributors to document every single possible use case, but I do hope that enough documentation exists for a developer to understand the theme's pros and cons and provide enough step-by-step instructions to demonstrate (with examples) best practices when building out a subtheme.

• Artisan: Limited to project page and project README file.
• Bootstrap: Drupal.org doc pages
• Bootstrap 5: Limited to project page and project README file.
• Bootstrap Barrio: Many links from project page, but not all are up-to-date
• Radix: Dedicated documentation site
• UI Suite Bootstrap: Limited to project page and project README file.

What do the maintainers say?

About half-way through my research for this blog post, I realized that without direct experience with all of them (which I do not have,) it would be best if I gave each project's maintainers a chance to provide some feedback.

I contacted the most active maintainer(s) for each project (based on number of commits over the past six months) and asked them the same three questions:

1. What are the advantages of (your base theme) over other modern Drupal Bootstrap-based base themes?
2. What are the disadvantages?
3. Is your base theme designed for a particular level of front-end developer (beginner, intermediate, advanced?)

I considered asking an additional question about how well positioned each base theme is for integration with Experience Builder, but I decided against it as we're still at least 5 months away from its initial release and didn't think it was an entirely fair question.

I received responses from maintainers of Bootstrap, Bootstrap Barrio, Radix, and UI Suite Bootstrap, and have included summaries of each of their responses here.

Artisan

Unfortunately, the maintainer didn't respond to my message.

Bootstrap and Bootstrap Barrio

Alberto Siles (hatuhay on drupal.org) is one of the maintainers of both Bootstrap and Bootstrap Barrio. He mentioned that he took over maintenance of Bootstrap after it was abandoned - originally only to provide updates to it, "but now it depends on the community if they embrace the new code or not." He will continue to maintain both base themes (wow!) and improvements to each will depend on feedback (and help) he receives in each issue queue.

About Bootstrap Barrio's advantages, he wrote, "Long term stability, proven code, but mostly, the theme is designed in a way that makes it easy to upgrade in both Bootstrap and Drupal major versions seamlessly. Now, the code is constantly updated for both Drupal and Bootstrap enhancements, this is also a modern theme in every aspect."

He also mentioned that Bootstrap Barrio is designed for developers of all skill levels, as it is the "subtheme that discriminates. The basic subtheme will let you work with predefined color pallets, Google fonts and other backend configuration and some css, while the Sass version will setup, in minutes, a custom compiled version of Bootstrap."

Bootstrap 5

Vladimir Roudakov (vladimiraus on drupal.org) replied, "Janna (jannakha on drupal.org) and I created the Bootstrap 4 and consequently Bootstrap 5 themes as simple, non-prescriptive, and very flexible Bootstrap themes. At the time, 2020-2021, there were no lightweight Bootstrap-based themes, and the original Bootstrap theme was heavily outdated."

He also mentioned that this base theme is geared towards intermediate-level developers and requires "minor tweaking for Sass setup."

Radix

Sohail Lajevardi (doxigo on drupal.org) said that some of Radix's advantages include being one of the first Drupal base themes to include SDCs, the use of modern front-end tools (including Laravel Mix and BiomeJS), its own command-line utility, very good documentation (including YouTube videos), and an effort to minimize Drupal-isms.

Interestingly, he also mentioned that, "I always considered Radix to be a theme and not a configuration vehicle, so we do everything where it needs to be, in the theme. No configuration mix up." I found this an especially interesting contrast to several of the other contenders, notably Bootstrap Barrio and Artisan, both of which utilize a good number of configuration options in Drupal's Appearance settings.

He did mention a disadvantage being "Not easy to understand all the tools and bells of the theme for a newcomer." But he did reiterate Radix's documentation being a solution for this - especially for those new to it. 

UI Suite Bootstrap

This base theme is a bit of an outlier, as it is very closely tied to the UI Suite project. I don't have a good handle on how likely it would be for a team to decide to use this base theme if they aren't UI Suite module users as well.

Florent Torregrosa (grimreaper on drupal.org) stressed that this project is a "production ready, design-system-oriented-first theme." He went on to say that together with UI Suite, the base theme provides "tools to allow site builders to configure how they want the design system artifacts (components, styles, Icons, CSS variables, etc.) to fit their business needs. And so we have nothing hardcoded for specific content types or other content entities, bundles, or fields."

Michael Fanini (g4mbini on drupal.org) added that it "packages in one place all Bootstrap specification & designs artifacts (components, style utilities, icons, forms, …) with modern tools from core (SDC, Icon API)" and together with other UI Suite modules provides a no/low-code method for Site-builders to connect Drupal fields to Bootstrap components.

In fact, as I've learned more and more about the UI Suite eco-system of projects, the more it is evident that one of its primary goals is to make it as "design-system-oriented" as possible, as well as prioritize no/low code field-to-component mapping. Much of this means that rather than the Drupal developers providing the Drupal-y templates to the non-Drupal-y front-end developers, it is the front-end developers who provide the components to the Drupal developers to wire to Drupal entities, bundles, and fields. The UI Suite ecosystem maintainers refer to this concept as "inverting the workflow."

As for disadvantages, he notes that its current dependencies on other UI Suite ecosystem modules is less-than-ideal, but as each of the dependencies are at different stages of being added to Drupal core, this is likely a short-term issue. 

Conclusions?

Ugh - I figured I'd have to write this section, even though I knew it would not be possible to have a single "I recommend using base theme X" statement. Instead, here's my one-line opinion for each:

• Artisan: With so many configuration options, this might be the best option for beginners or lower-budget sites. It is, however, not used by very many sites (yet?) and the documentation could be better.
• Bootstrap: Nothing compelling over any of the other contenders.
• Bootstrap 5: Less prescriptive than Bootstrap Barrio - could be a solid choice for more intermediate-level theme developers.
• Bootstrap Barrio: A comfortable and solid choice for me, despite a few annoyances (probably due to the fact that I currently use this project the most.) But, moving forward, I'd like to see this base theme leading the way into a no-Sass future. (One that utilizes PostCSS instead, perhaps?)
• Radix: I'm a sucker for good documentation and do appreciate the opinionated nature of Radix minimizing the configuration options. I like the fact that it is SDC-forward and will definitely consider using this for my next custom theme project.
• UI Suite Bootstrap: A very compelling option for those projects that are design-system first. The close ties to the UI Suite of modules could complicate things though. Finally, it's installation requires a few more manual steps than the other contenders. 

AI was used in the authoring of this blog post for the social media share image.

The United Nations Digital Technology Network has recently adopted a new set of Open Source Principles to promote collaboration and drive open source adoption within the UN and around the world. These principles position open source as the default approach for digital projects, encourage contributions back to the ecosystem, foster inclusion and community building, and much more.

The Drupal Association is proud to endorse these principles. As the non-profit organization that supports the Drupal project, already the standard technology platform for the United Nations’ web presence, we wholeheartedly believe that these principles will advance both digital sovereignty and the long-term sustainability of the open source ecosystem.

The UN Open Source Principles

• Open by default: Making Open Source the standard approach for projects
• Contribute back: Encouraging active participation in the Open Source ecosystem
• Secure by design: Making security a priority in all software projects
• Foster inclusive participation and community building: Enabling and facilitating diverse and inclusive contributions
• Design for reusability: Designing projects to be interoperable across various platforms and ecosystems
• Provide documentation: Providing thorough documentation for end-users, integrators and developers
• RISE (recognize, incentivize, support and empower): Empowering individuals and communities to actively participate
• Sustain and scale: Supporting the development of solutions that meet the evolving needs of the UN system and beyond.

In June 2023, the Drupal Association adopted its own Open Web Manifesto, which guides both our non-profit operations and the Drupal open source project. The manifesto is grounded in five core principles and three essential requirements.

The principles are that the open web: 

1. is built on freedom: No permission is required to learn, build, or innovate. Anyone, anywhere, can contribute to its growth.
2. is defined by decentralization: No single person or entity controls the open web.
3. thrives on inclusion: Everyone, regardless of background, identity, ability, wealth, or status has a place on the open web as a user, creator, architect, or innovator.
4. requires participation: It is a shared resource and a shared responsibility, sustained through collective effort.
5. exists for empowerment: It is driven by humanity’s pursuit of knowledge, connection, and progress, and is strengthened by each individual’s right to choice, privacy, and security.

The requirements are that the open web must: 

1. protect — not exploit — personal data and public discourse
2. enable the next generation of innovators and entrepreneurs to compete
3. be resilient to a changing world and not controlled by a select few. 

We believe the alignment between the Drupal Association’s Open Web Manifesto and the United Nations’s Open Source Principles is both strong and significant. As open source continues to power digital transformation globally, we look forward to a future where individuals, organizations, and governments invest in our digital public spaces with the same care and commitment as our physical ones.

There’s something for everyone at MidCamp 2025 - Book your training

MidCamp is just around the corner! Join us May 20–22 for three days of connection, collaboration, and innovation.

In addition to our full program, we have lots of awesome add on training options available for just $10.  All training sessions will take place Tuesday 2-5pm with two continuing on the Wednesday afternoon, it’s not to late to add to your ticket.Check out our extensive training opportunities

Using the Drupal AI Module 

Training Lead by: Chris Weber Software Engineer, Nerdery & Justin Keiser, Drupal Web Programmer, Academy of Model Aeronautics

AI is everywhere... including Drupal! The advances for site builders using AI are pretty amazing! This course will provide a solid overview of what's available right now in both Drupal 11 and DrupalCMS and where the AI module is going.

This will be a hands-on course (if you want to try for yourself) for both Drupal 11 and Drupal CMS. No AI experience necessary, however you will need a paid account with OpenAI (or another API provider) - we're starting from scratch!

Introduction to Agile and Git Workflows for Web Developers

Training Lead by: April Sides, Principal Software Engineer, Red Hat

Note this training will be 2 parts continuing on Wednesday at 1pm

Developing websites within a team is a very different experience than building a site alone or with one or two other developers.

This hands-on training aims to build surface-level understanding of Agile and Gitflow, two common web development workflows for teams, from a developer’s perspective. You’ll learn about tips and tools to get you started, as well as resources for deeper exploration.

Drupal CMS Preview

Training Lead by: Michael Anello, Drupal Trainer & Developer, DrupalEasy

Note this training will be 2 parts continuing on Wednesday at 1pm

Drupal CMS has the potential to reset the perception of Drupal and is arguably one of the most important projects undertaken by the Drupal community. Helping folks get a better understanding of Drupal CMS will help participants have a positive first impression, lead to informed word-of-mouth and help perceptions, and in turn increase adoption. The course will provide a hearty introduction to some of Drupal CMS' main functionality with highly hands-on demonstrations and exercises.

Franken Theme - Reverse engineering contributed themes

Training Lead by: Bernardo Martinez, Front-End Developer, Vaultes

Drupal has a large ecosystem of contributed and core themes. A lot of pieces can be reused and repurposed on custom themes. However, awareness about said themes and their quality of life improvements can at times be missed. Learning from different projects, this training will walk you through some scenarios and why those snippets, hooks, and modules, could come in handy.

Drupal Decoupled 

Training Lead by: Jesus Manuel Olivas CEO & Co-Founder, Octahedroid

Discover how the Drupal Decoupled project leverages modern frontend frameworks and GraphQL APIs to transform traditional Drupal setups into Decouple implementations.

This session will show you how you can use Drupal as an API-driven CMS to build digital experiences, offering practical insights into decoupled architectures.

Secure your place on a training

Stay in the Loop

Join the MidCamp Slack and some hang out with the community online. We will be making announcements there from time to time. Join us on our socials too (linked in the footer), we’re also on Bluesky and Mastodon.

Keep an eye on this space; we will be releasing more blog posts with hotel and travel options, fun social events, speaker announcements, and more!

I wanted to make a little word play on the process I have observed many people have around updating their Drupal sites. People tend to say they don't have time or budget to have CI pipelines or tests, and instead what they do is they "double check" that everything looks ok in a staging environment. I never do that. Instead I have tests and a CI pipeline. For example. I just checked the builds of https://violinist.io, and it has 457 tests. So I went ahead and asked Chat GPT to help me a bit:

If I checked something twice I double checked. If I checked it 3 times I triple checked. 4 times quadruple checked. What would 457 times be then?

Chat GPT told me no one uses it like that, and that it's “grammatically tortured”. I was repeatedly advised against using it:

If you really wanted a made-up but linguistically inspired version:
"Quadringentoheptapentacontuple-checked" (457-checked)
quadringento = 400
hepta =7
pentaconta = 50 But again this is deep into nerdy satire territory, like something you'd read in a Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett book.

OK, my trusty AI friend. I accept the warning, but being in nerdy satire territory does not sound too bad. So with that introductory explanation of the title out of the way. Let me proceed with helping people increase their Drupal deployment confidence.

My last post about documenting the amount of commits and numbers around automatically updating Drupal projects received a bit of feedback. Most were in the category of surprise or being impressed with the large number. Then I randomly stumbled upon someone discussing the article on LinkedIn.

Emmons Michael Patzer says:

I enjoy his points. would enjoy even more seeing all the project work flow updates he indicates he runs. Lift the hood off some of that magic for the rest of us…

There is an underlying complement there I guess I will take. But the workflows are anything but magic.

Well let's walk through it shall we. First I can list up the checks:

1. composer install 
2. composer validate
3. phpcs
4. phpstan 
5. phpunit 
6. behat
7. site install 
8. site schema
9. clean repo check

In a couple short blog posts I will attempt to recreate this setup in the three major version control providers (GitHub, GitLab and Bitbucket) and let's see how magic it feels then?

The repository will be a simple Drupal site with a couple of contrib modules, and one custom module. The repos can be found here:

https://github.com/eiriksm/drupal-confidence
https://bitbucket.org/eirikmorland/drupal-confidence
https://gitlab.com/eiriksm/drupal-confidence

I'm going to finish this blog with an animated gif, supposedly being a result for the search term "Quadringentoheptapentacontuple"

This is part 1 of a series on having CI pipelines for your Drupal site, and building Drupal Deploy Confidence.

You might find it strange that the first part is about composer install. Or maybe you find it weird to mention at all, since all steps will inherently need to do this at some point. Well in that case I will point out that the goal here is to make sure no one has an excuse to not have a CI pipeline. And guess what? Having a pipeline that runs composer install is infinitely better than having no CI pipeline. You can imagine the feeling going from no checks to this for the first time?

We will get back to having composer install as parts of running tests and linting, but for now let's dwell a bit about what we have here and why. You see, composer as a dependency manager is a tool, and the tool will gladly do what you tell it to do. So if you (or a developer on your team) told it to upgrade all dependencies it would. In many cases that could be totally fine. But this could in fact also bump other requirements like PHP versions or PHP extensions. Awkwardly, a worst case outcome could in fact be that a deployment to the production environment went wrong, for example with a message like:

There are several variations of that, plus other things that could go wrong.

So if you ever experienced that error, there is in fact a very simple solution: Add a pipeline to your project that mirrors your production PHP version, and simply have a test for composer install! Just like this article suggests.

Direct link to pipeline for Bitbucket: https://bitbucket.org/eirikmorland/drupal-confidence/src/part-1/bitbucket-pipelines.yml
Direct link to pipeline for GitLab: https://gitlab.com/eiriksm/drupal-confidence/-/blob/part-1/.gitlab-ci.yml?ref_type=heads
Direct link to pipeline for GitHub: https://github.com/eiriksm/drupal-confidence/blob/part-1/.github/workflows/test.yml

If this article means you went from no pipelines or tests to exactly one: Congratulations! Let's celebrate this with a gif from the times long before the times of composer.