drupal

XHGui Lands in DDEV v1.24.4

Thanks to sponsorship from the TYPO3 Community Budget Ideas, DDEV now includes XHGui support for its XHProf profiling. This brings a much-improved experience with a consistent, browser-based interface.

DDEV has had XHProf profiling for some time, and many in the community have loved it, but it had a few flaws; the list of profiling runs was ugly and uncoordinated, and the list was lost on ddev restart.

However, the longstanding XHGui project was out there for years, and it made much more sense.

With XHGui, you can now track performance bottlenecks with a clean interface, persistent data, and detailed breakdowns of CPU and memory usage.

How to Use XHGui for Profiling

In DDEV v1.24.4+ you can switch to the XHGui profiling mode (permanently) with

Start profiling with

Visit a few pages in your app to collect profiling data, then

In general, click one of the GET or POST links and follow it in to explore detailed CPU and memory usage breakdowns.

If you have questions, join us in one of the DDEV support venues, especially Discord and we'll work it through with you.

The DDEV Docs on XHProf have some good starters, but your suggestions are welcome!

XHGui Demonstration Screencast

Here's a quick demonstration of using XHGui with a TYPO3 site in DDEV.

Thanks to TYPO3, glensc, and tyler36

Serious thanks are due to:

• The TYPO3 Organization for funding this feature integration.
• Elan Ruusamäe (glensc) for years of maintaining the XHGui project (and extreme responsiveness as we worked on this).
• DDEV community member tyler36, who created the original DDEV add-on and helped it incubate and mature over years and supported its inclusion in DDEV core.

Support

Try it out today and let us know how it goes — your feedback helps shape the future of DDEV! Join us in the DDEV support venues if you want to talk about XHGui and profiling.

At DrupalCon Portland 2025, the Drupal Community Working Group announced Kristen Pol as this year’s recipient of the Aaron Winborn Award. Named after long-time contributor Aaron Winborn, this award recognizes someone who embodies kindness, integrity, and an above and beyond commitment to the Drupal community.

About Kristen Pol

Kristen has been a huge part of the Drupal community for years, making an impact through her work in accessibility, knowledge sharing, mentorship, and community support. She’s the track lead for the Experience Builder demo design system and helps shape how people will interact with the DrupalCMS project.

Kristen has a long history of being a proactive contributor in the community. She took on big challenges as one of the Drupal 8 Multilingual Initiative leaders, and more recently as a lead in major version contrib porting efforts (organizing data tracking and porting events) as well as in Drupal CMS (as lead of the demo design system).

If you’ve been to a Drupal event, chances are you’ve seen Kristen, either on a stage or in a hallway, always helping someone. And she does it with a level of professionalism that sets the bar for all of us. She authored the Drupal 7 multilingual book, which has helped countless people navigate one of the trickier aspects of Drupal site building.

The CWG reached out to all nominees, shared the community nominations, and thanked them for their contributions to the community.

About the Aaron Winborn Award

Named in honor of Aaron Winborn, a dedicated Drupal contributor who lost his battle with ALS in 2015, this award recognizes someone who, like Aaron, has made a lasting impact on the community.

Previous winners include Cathy Theys, Gabór Hojtsy, Nikki Stevens, Kevin Thull, Leslie Glynn, Baddý Breidert, AmyJune Hineline, Angie Byron, Randy Fay, and Mike Anello. The CWG Conflict Resolution Team and past winners select the recipient based on nominations from the community. 

Nominations for next year’s Aaron Winborn Award will open in early 2026. Until then, let’s take a moment to celebrate Kristen Pol and everything she does for Drupal.

Congratulations, Kristen!

A year ago, Dries Buytaert set his sights on the stars — quite literally. Announcing the Starshot Initiative at DrupalCon Portland 2024, he likened the project to the historic Apollo 11 Moonshot, leaving the audience both awestruck and inspired.

Drupal 7 EOL Has Passed, But Many Sites Remain

It has been over two months since Drupal 7 reached end-of-life (EOL) on 5 January 2025. Official support and security updates have ceased, yet thousands of organizations, businesses, and government agencies continue to rely on Drupal 7 to power critical websites.

For many, the transition to a newer platform has been delayed due to budget constraints, resource limitations, or the complexity of migrating custom-built Drupal 7 applications. With no further security updates, the urgency to find a solution is growing.

The Current Landscape for Drupal 7 Sites

The end of official Drupal 7 support means:

• No more security patches – Any future vulnerabilities discovered will not be addressed by the Drupal Security Team.
• Compliance challenges – Organizations subject to HIPAA, PCI-DSS, FedRAMP, and other regulatory frameworks may struggle to maintain compliance.
• Third-party module risks – All contributed modules depended on by Drupal 7 sites are also no longer supported, increasing the potential for security gaps.

What Are the Options for Drupal 7 Users?

Organizations still running Drupal 7 have a few paths forward:

1. Migrate to a New Platform

Migrating to Drupal 10 is the ideal long-term solution. However, for many organizations, this is a complex and time-intensive process that cannot happen overnight.

2. Lock Down and Minimize Risk

Some organizations attempt to reduce attack surfaces by limiting access to their Drupal 7 sites, disabling unnecessary features, or moving behind firewalls. However, this does not eliminate security risks, particularly for sites that remain publicly accessible.

3. Extend Drupal 7 Support with HeroDevs

For organizations that cannot migrate immediately but need continued security updates and compliance assurances, HeroDevs’ Drupal 7 Never-Ending Support (NES) provides an effective solution.

How HeroDevs' Drupal 7 NES Keeps Sites Secure

HeroDevs offers ongoing security updates for Drupal 7, ensuring that critical vulnerabilities are patched—even though official support has ended. With Drupal 7 NES, organizations can:

• Receive security updates for newly discovered vulnerabilities.
• Maintain compliance with security frameworks such as HIPAA and PCI-DSS.
• Avoid rushed migrations and plan transitions on their own timeline.
• Ensure stability without disrupting existing functionality.

Next Steps for Drupal 7 Users

The EOL deadline has passed, and unsupported Drupal 7 sites face growing security and compliance risks. If your organization is still running Drupal 7, it is time to take action.

HeroDevs’ Drupal 7 NES provides a seamless, secure solution while you plan your migration. Don’t leave your site vulnerable—contact us today to learn how we can help.

Effective integration with cloud services can significantly enhance the success of your Drupal-based website. Drupal is a powerful content management system, particularly when it comes to leveraging cloud technology. 
Our Golems team can confidently say that effective and competent integration with cloud services can bring colossal success to your Drupal-based website. This powerful platform has amazing capabilities for interacting with the most popular "clouds."

Now that the lanyards are packed and the Slack threads have cooled off, it's worth asking-what actually mattered at DrupalCon Atlanta?

From a layman's point of view, one of the most practical announcements was the launch of a new desktop installer for Drupal CMS. It quietly lowers the barrier for new users by removing the friction of local setup-something long overdue. The pre-beta of Experience Builder was another key moment, revealing Drupal's low-code future. While still in early shape, it signals a shift toward visual control and editor-friendly workflows. The power of AI Agents was also showcased once more-automating tasks like site building and content migration and hinting at where productivity could be headed.

From CKEditor 5 updates to Recipe-based site building, sessions focused on simplifying what's traditionally been complex. Governance in multi-site operations and documentation initiatives also got thoughtful attention-showing how Drupal is working to scale both technically and organizationally. The conversations weren't just about code; they were about coordination.

Dries Buytaert's keynote (the DriesNote) cut to the core of the issue: power is no longer enough-Drupal has to get easier to use. The message wasn't hand-wavy optimism but grounded in the need for better onboarding, cleaner UX, and broader accessibility. Drupal CMS 2.0 and Experience Builder 1.0 are both expected by DrupalCon Vienna in October 2025, setting a clear timeline for that next step forward.

Add to that the announcement of future DrupalCons-Asia in November 2025 at Nara Japan, and North America in March 2026 at Chicago, US-and it's clear the community is thinking ahead. The roadmap isn't just about features; it's about focus. Now it's on all of us to keep that momentum moving.

Discover Drupal

• A Quick Dive into Driesnote 2025 from DrupalCon Atlanta
• The Ultimate List of Contributed Modules in Drupal CMS by Functionality
• Revision Graph Module Gets Major Upgrade
• Drupal CMS Integrates Tagify Module for Improved Content Management
• Drupal Decoupled Gets a New Landing Page
• Drupal.org Updates Release Labels and Design to Reflect Semantic Versioning

Events

• Kicking Off DrupalCon Atlanta: Insights from the Community (Part 1)
• DrupalCon Atlanta 2025 - Attendee Insights: Part Two
• DrupalCon Atlanta 2025: What Attendees Are Taking Home - Insights from Day 3
• Drupal Events This Week (Mar 31-Apr 6, 2025)

Drupal Community

• The Future of Drupal and the DXP Debate: Diverging Visions from Key Community Voices

Organization News

• Talking Drupal to Record 500th Episode with Community Guests
• Metadrop Releases VLSuite for Low-Code Page Building in Drupal
• Specbee Releases SmartLinker AI Module for Automated Internal Linking in Drupal
• Pantheon Names 2025 Partner Summit Award Winners at DrupalCon Atlanta

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
Kazima Abbas
Sub-editor, The DropTimes.

What “content first” means and why it matters

The Content First approach comes from content strategy and UX design. It means building websites around the content they need to deliver, not around a visual design.

Instead of starting with wireframes or templates, teams begin by identifying what content users need—then create structure, layout, and code that supports it.

This approach helps avoid misalignment between content and design. It also improves usability, because content is what users come for. The design exists to support that content, not to shape it in isolation.

But in practice, applying Content First often gets blocked by basic issues—like accessing and working with the actual content on a live page. That’s where the Content First module comes in.

Where Content First comes from

Content First developed as a response to design-led processes that treated content as filler.

In traditional workflows, designers would build full layouts using placeholder text (like Lorem Ipsum). Content creators would then write copy to fit those templates. This created problems:

• The content didn’t always match the layout
• Messages were shaped by design, not user needs
• Teams had to go through multiple revisions when the content didn’t fit

Content First flips this. The key…