drupal

Drupal is now 24 years old! The launch of Drupal CMS 1.0, a revolutionary product aimed at disrupting the world of Content Management Systems, took place on January 15, adding an extra layer of excitement to Drupal's birthday celebrations. At The Drop Times, we were on our toes from the very beginning of the new year, ensuring that all developments surrounding the launch were closely covered and delivered promptly to the global Drupal community. And we did it!

The Drop Times created a dedicated Drupal CMS Launch-themed landing page, consolidating all the news and events related to the launch. We successfully tracked and listed details of 57 launch parties taking place across different parts of the world. The Drop Times became the go-to source for all developments related to the Drupal CMS Launch. Encouraged by the overwhelming response to our coverage, we plan to offer similar focused coverage for other significant events within the Drupal community. 

10 days shy of the Drupal CMS launch, we had another significant moment when the legacy Drupal 7 had its official end of life after serving the community for 14 long years. Those websites still in Drupal 7 now have six options left. 

1. Migrate to a modern Drupal version, probably Drupal 11, which offers easier upgrades to future versions and find replacements for the custom modules they have developed. 
2. Rebuild the site entirely using the newly launched Drupal CMS or, at a significant cost, use Drupal Core and build it from scratch. 
3. Opt for never-ending Long Term Support (LTS) offered by HeroDevs or periodic support offered by Pantheon-Tag1 Consulting combined, etc. 
4. Upgrade to Backdrop CMS, a D7 fork that has since developed into a full-fledged CMS offering, and continue with the time-tested legacy architectural framework.
5. Move away from Drupal fold and build their site using some other technology. 
6. Do nothing and be exposed to vulnerabilities, praying for security by obscurity. 

As a considerable interest group is rallying behind one or many of these options, we plan to offer stories related to migrations and upgrades as the situation warrants. This includes a dedicated landing page for BackDrop CMS-related stories soon. 

Reflecting on the Drupal CMS launch, the event infused a wave of fresh energy into the community. The Official Drupal Launch Party live stream attracted a record number of attendees, the largest gathering other than the virtual DrupalCon during the COVID lockdown. Participants joined from all continents except Antarctica. At The Drop Times, we are committed to sustaining this newfound enthusiasm throughout the year.

Let's have a look at the important stories from the past week.

Drupal Community

• Building the Digital City: Why the Middle Ground is the Future of Web Development

Discover Drupal

• Feeds Module Achieves Stable Release, Transforming Data Imports in Drupal
• AI Upgrade: A Promising Drupal Module Seeking Collaborators
• Drupal CMS Launches, Offering Marketers a No-Code Platform for Digital Experiences

Organization News

• Backdrop CMS Recognizes Drupal 7 End of Life, Announces Next Steps
• Pronovix Introduces Modules to Modernize Drupal’s Username Security in the AI Era
• Fresh Frontend for Drupical: Celebrating the Power of Drupal CMS

Events

• Drupal Events this Week: Jan 20 - Jan 26, 2025
• Shoot for the Stars: Drupal CMS 1.0.0 Officially Launched
• Drupal CMS Launch: Highlights of Enthusiastic Reactions From Organizers
• Celebrating the Launch of Drupal CMS: Global Reactions (Part 2)
• DrupalCon Vienna 2025: Volunteer as a Program Track Chair
• amazee.io Webinar on Enterprise Migrations: Strategies and Best Practices
• Entries Open for DrupalSouth Splash Awards 2025
• A11y Talks: Introducing the SUC Score for Measuring App Accessibility
• Make DrupalCon Atlanta 2025 Accessible with Livestream & Keynote Sponsorship

Thank you for your unwavering support for The Drop Times. Let us build a sustainable model for tackling the maker-taker problem by highlighting the real makers across the spectrum. 

Sincerely,
Thomas Alias K, 
Sub Editor, TDT. 

Today we are talking about AI Autonomy, How it could help Drupal Development, and AI in the future with guest Jay Callicott. We’ll also cover AI Agents as our module of the week.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/485

• What got you interested in this topic
• What is meant by AI Autonomy
• You suggested in your blog post in the Drop Times that developers will manage AI can you elaborate
• AI coming for our jobs
• Drupal X
• Do decoupled sites have an advantage
• Is the future going to be all prompts
• Skill decay
• What would you say to a CEO thinking about replacing developers with AI

• Drupal is Great! Its Perception Might Not Be.
• The AI-Driven Developer: From Assistance to Autonomy in Drupal Development
• DrupalX
• Ethics of AI

Jay Callicott - drupalninja99

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Scott Weston - scott-weston

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

• Brief description:
  • Have you ever wanted to leverage AI-powered tools to get information about or change the configuration of your website? There’s a module for that
• Module name/project name:
  • AI Agents
• Brief history
  • How old: created in Aug 2024 by Marcus Johansson (marcus_johansson) of FreelyGive
  • Versions available: 1.0.1 which supports Drupal 10.3 and 11
• Maintainership
  • Actively maintained: that release was in the past week, and was part of the significant effort to get stable releases of the AI modules that are included in Drupal CMS
  • Security coverage
  • Documentation included within the module’s codebase
  • Number of open issues: 30 open issues, 7 of which are bugs against the current branch
• Usage stats:
  • 119 sites but I suspect that number will increase rapidly once people start using Drupal CMS
• Module features and usage
  • In AI terminology, an agent is a system able to interact with its environment, collect data, and use the data to perform self-determined tasks
  • The AI Agents module is a framework to provide agents that can perform a variety of functions in your Drupal website
  • It depends on the AI module that we had Jamie Abrahams on the podcast to talk about back in episode #468
  • The module includes plugins that provide three agents, namely:
  • A Field Type Agent that can create or edit fields using the Field API, or answer questions about the fields your site has defined
  • A Content Type agent that can create, edit, or answer questions about node types
  • Taxonomy Agent that can do the same for your site’s vocabularies
  • Anyone who saw the Driesnote AI demos from DrupalCon Barcelona or Singapore will have seen agents in action, in that example through interaction in a chatbot
  • Technically, the plugins are UI agnostic, however. So theoretically you could trigger an agent in other ways. But today, AI Agents power the AI chatbot that you can use in the AI recipe that is included in the recently released Drupal CMS 1.0
  • The AI Agents module also includes some submodules. An experimental form integration submodule adds UI elements to the interfaces for managing fields, content types, and vocabularies, an explorer submodule provides debugging tools, and an experimental Extra submodule provides agents for working with webforms and views. I have also seen a demo of some work underway to provide an ECA agent, so you may soon be able to get your Drupal site to build out ECA models based on the business logic you describe to it

At Mountain Camp 2025, we believe in climbing higher by bringing together the brightest minds in Drupal, open source, and digital innovation. We are pleased to present an exceptional lineup of four keynote speakers who are set to share their expertise, ignite meaningful conversations, and foster growth within the open source community.

Olga Baranova

Session: Public Money, Public Code: The Legal Journey of Open Source in Switzerland

Olga Baranova, a seasoned figure in Swiss politics and political campaigning, co-founded CH++ over four years ago. Through her leadership, CH++ has been pivotal in transforming Switzerland’s digital policies, advocating for a more open, secure, and citizen-centred digital landscape. In her keynote, Olga will explore the synergy between open source initiatives and institutional politics in Switzerland. Attendees will gain insights into the development of Switzerland’s first federal-level open source law and the intricate challenges faced within the political and legal frameworks governing open data and open source software.

Cristina Chumillas

Session: Drupal CMS now and beyond

Cristina Chumillas, Lead Engineer at Lullabot and Drupal CMS UX Lead, is a driving force in the Drupal community. Her extensive involvement in community organizing and managing Drupal’s front-end frameworks makes her a prominent voice in the tech sphere. Cristina will present an in-depth analysis of Drupal CMS’s evolution since its 1.0 launch in January. Her session will cover the current roadmap, ongoing developments, future plans, and the pivotal role of community collaboration and research in shaping Drupal’s strategic direction.

Lauri Timmanee

Session: Update on the Experience Builder Initiative

With over a decade of experience in open source product development, Lauri Timmanee serves as the Product Lead for the Experience Builder initiative and as a Product Manager in Acquia’s Drupal Acceleration Team. Lauri’s keynote will provide the latest updates on the Experience Builder initiative, highlighting how it empowers site builders and content creators with no-code tools for theming and building Drupal websites. He will discuss the challenges being addressed, outline the project’s roadmap, and invite attendees to participate in shaping this transformative initiative.

Vera Herzmann

Session: Neurodiversity: An Underrated Superpower in Business

Vera Herzmann, a renowned systemic organization development consultant, brings over eight years of experience in guiding companies through transformation and innovation processes. With a rich background in Neurosensitivity and Neuromanagement, Vera is a passionate advocate for embracing neurodiversity in the workplace. Her session will shed light on the unique strengths that neurodiverse individuals bring to the tech industry, such as hyper-focus, pattern recognition, empathy, intuition, and creativity. Vera will argue for the strategic advantage of fostering a neurodiverse workforce, demonstrating how it can lead to enhanced innovation, problem-solving, and business resilience.

Mountain Camp 2025 promises an enriching lineup of sessions tailored to various interests and professional needs. Whether you’re curious about open source policy, want the latest Drupal CMS updates, aim to learn more about product innovation, or hope to create an inclusive workplace, our keynote speakers have you covered. Secure your spot at Switzerland’s leading digital and open source conference—register now.

AI (Artificial Intelligence) is a groundbreaking technology revolutionizing industries such as Content Management Systems (CMSs). Even though it has been more than 10 years, AI tools and their applications are continuously evolving.

Related Blog: Step-By-Step Guide To Migrating From Drupal 7 To Backdrop CMS

The Drupal AI module offers a framework that makes it easy to integrate Artificial Intelligence on any Drupal site with the help of AI. The main purpose of the AI Module is to provide a suite of modules and an API foundation for creating images, text content, content analysis, etc. 

Creating queues using the core queue classes in Drupal is fairly straightforward. You just need a mechanism of adding data to the queue and a worker to process that data.

As the data you add to the queue is serialised you can add pretty much any data you want to the queue, so the only limitation is rebuilding the data once you pull it out of the queue.

There are some situations where the core Drupal queue system needs to be altered in some way. You might want to separate the data into different tables, or have a different logic for creating or storing the queue items, or even integrate with a third party queue system for manage the queues.

Whilst all of these examples are possible, they require a certain amount of understanding of the queue API and need additional services and settings to get working.

In this article we will look at how to create a custom queue, along with the queue factory needed to integrate that queue with Drupal. We will also look at some settings needed to swap out certain queues for you custom queue implementations. All of the code seen in this article is available in our Drupal Queue Examples repository on GitHub, specifically the queue_custom_example module.

First, let's look at what is requires for a queue to work in Drupal.

Create A Custom Queue With The QueueInterface Interface

The interface \Drupal\Core\Queue\QueueInterface is used to build the framework of the queue, which is used to manage the queue items. Your queue object must have the following methods. 

Drupal CMS: Making the easy stuff easy

In the past couple days I've gotten two different questions regarding building functionality out in WordPress. This seems a bit...weird with timing, given that Drupal CMS just launched three days ago!

Authored by 

Contact forms are an integral part of any modern website, especially for businesses that want customers to contact them quickly or send detailed questions. In this article, I’ll show you step-by-step how to prepare a business-specific inquiry form in Drupal. I invite you to read the article or watch a video of the “Nowoczesny Drupal” series.