drupal

Welcome back to the ninth day of Drupal Advent Calendar, and behind today’s door we find the Media track of Drupal Starshot. Media Management is an area where Drupal has traditionally not been strong compared to other content management systems, yet it has a lot of very powerful features that Drupal CMS will hopefully refine to make it one of the best media management platforms on the web.

In the Track Leads keynote at DrupalCon Barcelona, Tony Barker, the Track Lead for Media Management in Drupal CMS, outlined how he is building the track to help marketers tell their story and connect with…

Tags

• media
• media management
• Drupal Starshot

Endorsed by Dries Buytaert in his keynote at DrupalCon Singapore, the Search Track is driving improvements in how users navigate and interact with content. Read the full interview with the Search Track Leads as they share their achievements, challenges, and future plans.

• Read more about Show a mix of future and past events
• Add new comment

Another automation we did for Programming Librarian, a site for librarians to plan educational programs, involved events. They wanted to always feature 3 events on the home page, and the most important events were in the future.

Today we are looking at another aspect of Drupal Starshot that may not generate a lot of excitement, but will make it a lot easier for the average marketer or Drupal site builder to make their site perform well and be easy to find.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has often been treated as something of a dark art. Any number of self-proclaimed masters of this art will promise to take your site to new levels, their ability to deliver varies greatly.

Drupal CMS aims to provide ready-to-use tools to help improve search engine performance, and “SEO Tools” is one of the “goals” offered during the…

Tags

• SEO
• search engine optimization
• Drupal Starshot

Your organization may use Drupal as a CMS, application framework, site builder, or all of the above. Within the context of this article about new features in the latest version, I'd like you to think about Drupal as a system.

It provides some standard pieces—things like content types, users and roles, taxonomies—and standard ways of connecting them to one another. But out of the box, it's sort of a jumble of pieces, and requires putting those pieces together for it to be meaningful.

A lot of the features that you'll see in Drupal 11.0 are developer-focused, and mostly benefit people who are building or maintaining sites, and your end users won't necessarily notice anything different. But there are some new features that can impact content administrators.

Content Admin

There's a new admin menu available using the Navigation module, which was brought into Drupal core as an experimental module. It's been a long time coming, and I think it's wonderful. It works well with the default Claro admin theme, and makes working in Drupal admin UI feel more modern and friendly. If you've used the Gin admin theme, the new menu will feel familiar, because it shares many of the same ideas.

There are some cool things in CKEditor 5 like markdown shortcuts similar to those we’re used to in Slack and Google Docs. For example, if you start typing something like 1-period-space, those tools automatically start creating a numbered list for you. It also supports other shortcuts like asterisks for bold, underscores for italics, or number-signs for heading levels. I prefer keyboard shortcuts wherever possible, and this makes working within CKEditor significantly faster. 

Recipes

Recipes are a way of packaging up configurations and settings that deliver a certain kind of functionality. In Drupal 11 core, there are recipes for things like the basic page content type, document media type, and editorial workflow. These are site features that previously were created during site installation using the Standard profile, which then became a permanent part of your project.

Recipes are applied rather than installed, so they don't end up becoming a dependency of your site, and therefore, you don't get locked in. You can remove modules or update configuration without changing the original recipe. And if the recipe changes, it doesn't change your site unless you reapply it.

Unlike configuration management, recipes aren't all-or-nothing – meaning you can make a recipe for broad, general functionality or something super specific. Because recipes are so flexible and don't create dependencies to themselves, they can be easily combined and shared, or adapted to fit your own needs.

For site owners, recipes will be really useful because it will make adding new features considerably faster because you can apply one or more recipes, rather than having to build everything up yourself. Because recipes are easily shareable, you'll also be able to find recipes created by others. In fact there's already a “Recipes Cookbook” on drupal.org with various site starters and functionality-specific recipes.

At Aten, our Drupal developers will be able to use recipes to quickly recreate commonly-needed features that our projects require. For example: installing Aten's Mercury Editor module, standing up our default Single Directory Components, configuring our QA service and module, or setting up search functionality. And they'll allow us to share our work with others in a way that doesn't bind them to all the parts of our standard processes.

Single Directory Components

Speaking of Single Directory Components, that module is now stable in Drupal 11.

Here we're using the term component as a piece of a web page that's modular and needs to be reusable. These are generic building blocks of pages that will appear throughout your site such as an accordion, call to action, banners, and slideshows.

Single Directory Components (SDC) are a way of organizing the files needed to display a single component (the Twig template, CSS, and JavaScript) into a folder. If you follow the naming conventions, Drupal will automatically generate a library to combine all of these for you. When you add an SDC to a page, Drupal will load the CSS and JavaScript for the components automatically.

Because SDCs are essentially self-contained, it's fairly easy to reuse them across different projects and entity types—things like Paragraphs or custom block types.

SDCs make the implementation of component libraries or design systems much easier because you can change Drupal's output to match whatever structure is needed.  Aten makes heavy use of Single Directory Components for projects using Mercury Editor, our drag-and-drop content authoring experience that allows editors to preview content changes in real time. 

Workspaces

The Workspaces module is stable in Drupal 11. Workspaces allow you to create multiple copies of your live site and within these copies, you can work on changes like content edits or structural changes, and then deploy those changes to the live workspace.

It can allow you to do things like test out menu changes, completely reorganize a section of your site; or maybe you have seasonal content that all needs to go live at the same time. You could work on those within a new workspace (or in multiple workspaces). And then when those changes are ready to go live, they all happen at once.

Currently, we can do that with individual pages using content moderation and workflow, but it's always been hard to work on a big set of changes over time and preview them. 

I've experimented with Workspaces in the past and with this stable release. Although I think it's a fantastic idea, because it's a different way of handling content changes, it may be incompatible with your content model or modules you're using.

If you're already doing anything with content moderation, layouts, or translations, Workspaces is going to add a new layer of complexity. It may require a lot of training and continued support before content administrators are comfortable with a new workflow. 

Time to upgrade

Now that I’ve laid out all of the new features of Drupal 11, it’s time to determine when and how to best upgrade your Drupal site. Get in touch with us for upgrade help.
 

• Read more about Remind customers of abandoned carts
• Add new comment

Sometimes a simple reminder can spur a sale. If you have repeat customers that log into your commerce site, you may be able to remind them if they did not complete a checkout.

We are excited to introduce an initiative that not only reflects Drupal Mountain Camp's commitment to diversity, but also actively encourages the participation of underrepresented voices to promote inclusivity and diversity in the Drupal community. Open source communities were founded on the principle that diversity and varied perspectives strengthen the entire ecosystem. We are committed to providing opportunities for individuals from underrepresented groups to attend this year's event, share their experiences, and contribute to the thriving Drupal community.

What are Diversity Inclusion Funds?

Diversity and Inclusion funds offer complimentary tickets and financial support to facilitate individuals to participate in the Drupal Mountain Camp.

How to Apply:

Eligibility Criteria:

To qualify, applicants should be a member of one of the following communities and are experiencing financial/economic hardship:

• Ability
• Age
• Ethnicity
• Gender
• Gender identity
• Race
• Religion
• Sexual orientation
• Socio-economic status/class
• Learning differences
• Family composition

Application Process:

Prospective applicants can request diversity tickets by filling out an application form found on the Drupal Mountain Camp website. The application requires basic information and a concise statement explaining the potential benefits of receiving the funds. The organizing committee will assess applications, considering eligibility criteria and the availability of funds. The application deadline for the Diversity and Inclusion Fund is January 31st.

How to Sponsor Diversity Tickets:

Sponsoring diversity tickets is an opportunity for organizations and individuals to actively contribute to a more inclusive Drupal community. By sponsoring a diversity ticket and inclusion funds, you become a part of the bridge, enabling someone to participate who might otherwise face barriers.

Sponsorship as an Organization:

Drupal Mountain Camp offers sponsorship opportunities for Diversity & Inclusion sponsors to contribute to free diversity tickets and funds aimed at encouraging diverse participation at the event. Sponsors will receive recognition during the event, showcasing their commitment to diversity and inclusion. Any remaining funds will be allocated towards the seamless organization of the event. Please check out the Sponsorship page for more details and contact information.

Sponsorship as an Individual:

Drupal Mountain Camp extends the opportunity for individual sponsorship of Diversity tickets. You can buy one or more "Sponsor a Diversity Ticket" on the eventfrog.ch website. Your contribution will directly support the provision of complimentary tickets to foster diversity within the community.

Join us on this exciting journey, building bridges that strengthen the Drupal community, we invite you to join us in making Drupal Mountain Camp 2025 an unforgettable celebration of unity in diversity. Together, let's create an environment where everyone feels not only welcome but integral to the shared narrative of our community.

Today we are looking at one of the central elements of Starshot, but also one of the easiest to overlook.

Drupal CMS will come preinstalled with a set of base modules and themes, as the basis on which other recipes will be built. The base theme track is responsible for this. Not only does this provide essential functionality to make a new Drupal site much more usable, it also provides an important baseline for the other tracks to build upon.

Some of the functionality either already implemented, or planned past Drupal CMS 1.0, is listed below.

Pathauto is now installed by default. This is a small…

Tags

• Base Recipe
• Drupal Starshot