Today we are talking about AI, New Drupal Features, and the future of AI in Drupal with guest Jamie Abrahams. We'll also cover Orchestration as our module of the week.
For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/527
TopicsJamie Abrahams - freelygive.io yautja_cetanu
HostsNic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Maya Schaeffer - evolvingweb.com mayalena
MOTW CorrespondentMartin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu
The upcoming Drupal core security release window has been rescheduled from November 19, 2025 to November 12, 2025. As normal, the window will occur between 1600 UTC and 2200 UTC.
This schedule change is due to DrupalCons Vienna and Nara overlapping the October and November core security windows. We do not schedule core security windows during DrupalCons so that site owners and agencies can attend these conferences without having to worry about their sites or clients.
December is also not typically used for core security releases due to the quick sequencing of the Drupal core minor releases and the end-of-year holidays. This would mean a period of four months where we could not provide any regularly scheduled security update.
The schedule change is not due to any highly critical issue that would require special release procedures.
As a reminder, a Drupal core security window does not necessarily mean a Drupal security release will occur, only that one is possible.
Dries Buytaert has made a clear and timely case: orchestration is no longer a supporting layer in software architecture. It is becoming the hub where business logic resides, workflows are developed, and decisions are executed. This shift elevates orchestration tools from optional utilities to essential infrastructure. For those involved in building and maintaining digital platforms, this is not just a new idea. It is a new foundation.
The impact on existing platforms, including Drupal, is significant. As orchestration becomes the layer where integration, automation, and intelligence reside, every platform must reconsider its position within a broader network of systems. Drupal is well-suited to operate as a content and data hub; however, it must evolve to function as part of a distributed ecosystem, rather than assuming a central or controlling role. This requires architectural flexibility and a willingness to adapt.
What matters now is how the community responds. The orchestration layer is becoming the connective tissue of digital operations. That demands shared standards, openness, and collaboration. If this is where modern software systems come together, then the values behind it will shape how inclusive, resilient, and extensible those systems can be. Dries has shown where things are heading. The responsibility to build in that direction belongs to all of us.
Before we close, I'd like to extend a quick invitation. On Wednesday, November 5, we're holding our monthly TDT Townhall, an open planning meeting where we share progress, shape priorities, and listen to the community. If you're aligned with our mission to expand Drupal’s reach and want to contribute ideas around content, outreach, or technology, we’d love to have you on board. It’s a one-hour session, fully open, and you’re welcome to listen or bring something to the table. Join us on Google Meet: https://meet.google.com/vrw-naam-ire
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, Bluesky, and Facebook. You can also join us on Drupal Slack at #thedroptimes.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Alka Elizabeth,
Sub-editor, The DropTimes.
The public sector is overflowing with knowledge – from reports to evaluations. The challenge has long been to find this information in the sea of PDFs. Ramsalt Lab has been central to the development of Kudos – a national knowledge portal. By implementing groundbreaking AI-based document analysis, we have helped turn a chaotic document base into a goldmine of searchable insight.
The public sector produces enormous amounts of knowledge – reports, studies, evaluations and analyses. But where does all this knowledge go? Too often it ends up in digital drawers, hard to find and impossible to search.
This is the problem Kudos (Knowledge Documents in the Public Sector) solves.
Ramsalt have been a key technical partner in the development of this groundbreaking service for Directorate for Public Administration and Financial Management (DFØ). Our developer, Thomas Andre Karlsen, has been a key member of the team that built the technical engine that powers Kudos.
Ramsalt Lab is a digitalization partner with Directorate for Administration and Financial Management The contract has a value of up to 150 million NOK over a 10-year period and Kudos is one of several projects Ramsalt is doing for the directorate.
Kudos is a joint search solution that brings together knowledge and management documents from ministries, directorates and government agencies in one place. The service, which is a collaboration between DFØ and the National Library, aims to streamline the entire knowledge process – from production to sharing and reuse.
Building a portal for tens of thousands of documents (at the time of writing, over 40 000!) is a big task in itself. But the real challenge lies not only in the volume.It is in the metadata.
Many of the documents that are retrieved (often via "scraping" of various public websites) lack basic information:
A document without good metadata is almost as bad as a lost document. This is where the magic – and Ramsalt’s contribution – comes in.
To solve the metadata tangle, Ramsalt's developer Thomas Andre Karlsen has been central to building an advancedAI-based document analysis tool inthe heart of Kudos.
This tool is not just a simple tagging function. Here's how it works:
The result is that documents that were previously black boxes suddenly become data-rich, perfectly indexed, and extremely easy to find for users. This saves countless hours of manual work and dramatically improves the quality of the entire database.
Ramsalt's contributions don't stop there. The team has also experimented with implementing aLLM search engine, RAG pipeline.
This allows users to "talk" to the database. Instead of just searching for a word, one can ask a question like:"What is the criticism of the Health Platform?"
The system will then find the most relevant documents in the Kudos database, read them, and then generate a fact-based answer for the user, complete with source references. This is a completely new way to extract precise information from a massive knowledge base.
Like the newspaper Media 24 has pointed out, Kudos is a gold mine for anyone who needs to know what the state knows.
Public employees can easily find relevant knowledge from other organizations and avoid ordering reports that already exist. Researchers gain access to a huge dataset for their analyses. Journalists can use the service to uncover connections and dig into public administration.
At Ramsalt, we pride ourselves on delivering technology that has real societal value. The Kudos project is a prime example of how we use our expertise in Drupal, data mining, and artificial intelligence to build robust and intelligent solutions for the public sector.
Does your business have large amounts of data that are difficult to utilize? Do you need help structuring, enriching and making your information accessible? Contact us at Ramsalt for a chat about how we can use AI and smart search solutions to transform your data into valuable knowledge.
Back at the end of 2024, Tag1 added performance testing to Drupal CMS 1.0 prior to its release. We then did a comparison between Drupal CMS and WordPress in which we dug into out-of-the-box performance between the two, and Drupal CMS came out pretty well. Now Drupal CMS is preparing for its 2.0 release, including a new theme, Mercury, and Drupal Canvas enabled by default. In preparation for this release we updated our performance tests, and wrote a new one for Drupal CMS’s new site template, Byte.
Drupal core’s performance tests allow PHPUnit assertions to be made for both back and front end performance metrics, including the number and size of CSS and JavaScript files, as well as the number of database queries and cache operations. Between these metrics, we get a high level overview of how a site performs. Additionally, timings from tests, which can vary based on external factors and aren’t precise enough to assert against exact values within a PHPUnit test, are sent to an Open Telemetry Grafana/Tempo dashboard. Gander is used to test Drupal Core, Drupal CMS and site templates, contributed modules such as the popular redirect module, and real sites via Drupal Test Traits integration, such as london.gov.uk
We added performance testing while Drupal CMS 2.0 was in alpha and Drupal Canvas was in release candidate, and that helped uncover a few issues.
Drupal CMS’s new Mercury theme is based on Tailwind CSS, which allows for a lot of customization without having to write new CSS. While this should allow Drupal CMS theming to be very flexible, it does involve serving quite a lot of CSS out of the box.
When testing the Byte site template, we wrote a performance test that covers one of the more common front end performance problems that sites face.
Drupal’s CSS and JavaScript aggregation combines smaller files into minified larger files, to reduce HTTP requests and filesize. This is an effective strategy for most Drupal libraries and components, which often include many small CSS and JavaScript files attached to specific page elements, and which may only appear on specific pages or for users with certain permissions, etc. Serving these files on demand reduces unused CSS and JS when those elements aren’t there.
However, when a large CSS or JavaScript file is included on every page (or most pages), that file can be duplicated between different asset aggregates, meaning the same visitor downloads it over and over again if they visit multiple different pages with slightly different combinations of libraries. Our test shows over 2mb of CSS being downloaded across six pages, each page has around 350kb of CSS individually.
We filed an a issue and (Merge Request) MR against the Mercury theme to exclude the main.min.css file from minification (because it’s already minified, avoiding wasted CPU and memory trying to minify and already minified file) and aggregation, so that only a single copy is downloaded per visitor. This issue has already been committed and the improvement should be visible in the performance test for Byte once there’s a new release.
While we were looking for the source of those large CSS files in Chromium devtools, we also noticed some chained HTTP requests for both fonts and JavaScript files and opened issues to document both. When the browser has to first parse a CSS or JavaScript file before loading fonts or another file, this requires at least two round trips from the browser before the chained request can be served, which can significantly affect page loading performance.
Byte also includes a webform newsletter signup on the front page. We noticed that the Webform module attaches a details library to every page showing a webform , whether the webform will render a details element or not. Because the details library depends on jQuery, this adds around 100kb of JavaScript for anonymous users that otherwise might not be needed. This discovery is an example of how adding performance tests for Drupal CMS can test not only Drupal CMS itself, but also many of Drupal’s most popular contributed modules, finding performance issues that can affect many sites in the wild.
Our original Drupal CMS 1.0 tests cover both anonymous and authenticated visitors. For Drupal CMS 2.0 we noticed that authenticated visitor page requests required many more database queries and cache operations than Drupal CMS 1.0. We tracked this down to the Canvas module which sets max_age: 0 when rendering its ComponentTreeItemList field in some circumstances, disabling the dynamic page cache for any requests that render Canvas’ page entity type. We also noticed that the tree rendering itself is quite expensive although this may become less of an issue once render caching is fixed.
These were the only backend performance issues we noticed, so assuming they’re fixed prior release, back end performance should be broadly similar between Drupal CMS 1.0 and 2.0.
These findings show how important it is to validate performance before releasing code to production, so that unexpected regressions in application or browser performance can be caught and fixed before reaching site visitors. At the time of writing, several of the issues we opened already had MRs attached or had already been committed by the Drupal CMS team. Drupal’s Gander testing framework, originally developed by Tag1, provides an ideal mechanism to add continual testing with repeatable results to any kind of Drupal project.
Keep Your Drupal Sites Fast and Reliable
Performance testing isn’t just a step in development, it’s the foundation of a seamless user experience. Tag1 helps engineering, product, and marketing teams ensure that sites are fast, stable, and ready to scale. Using performance monitoring solutions like Gander, we make performance enterprise-ready so your sites stay smooth, secure, and always available.
Lear more about website performance management and let us know how we can help!
This summary will cover three weeks instead of the bi-weekly progress report, and it will be a little bit different. Since we were very busy with the Driesnote for DrupalCon, the release of AI and AI Agents 1.2.0 (yay!), we were mostly focusing on stability fixes.
DrupalCon Vienna also happened and personally for me also PHP Longhorn in Austin. DrupalCon gave us an opportunity to meet in person, regroup and plan ahead for the 2.0 release. So we will cover that as well in the progress reports.
For me personally it was a crazy event compared to other DrupalCon’s I have been to. Many people to talk to, and many people I wanted to talk to, but never got the time to do it.
We did prepare the demo for the DriesNote and it's one of the demos that I personally actually have been the most comfortable with sharing. Some of the demos that get recorded are on the level of something we strive for, rather than what is there now., The actual output of the Canvas AI for the examples in the DriesNote was actually over 50% on the reliability where you could almost just use it, and most of the rest created a version that just needed minor tweaking. This is based on a fairly strict criteria on who components should be placed, images should be picked and copies should be written.
Aidan Foster from Foster Interactive, who was one of the main contributors to the demo, did a follow up LinkedIn Post that you should not miss.
And if you do not believe me - you can run the demo yourself.
Well it has been out for some while, but we wanted to introduce it with the DriesNote. The idea is that the AI Context or Context Control Center (name TBD) is the central point for any context your Drupal site will need. Both for AI or via MCP.
Right now it's focusing heavily on agents, but in the future it would also be usable in Automators, translations or anything that needs to have a stricter control on how to generate via AI. This project has been driven by Salsa Digital in general and Ahmed Jabar in particular, who spent weekends to have it ready before the DriesNote. A huge thanks to them!
Try it out and help out in: https://www.drupal.org/project/ai_context
In 1.2.0 we have added a prompt library. The initial implementation was AI Content Suggestions, but right before the release we also added an implementation into the AI Translate submodule.
This means that the translation prompts are now being managed via the prompt library and can be reused in the future for other translation tasks that could be added into for instance AI CKEditor or AI Automators.
One of the things I wanted to demo in Vienna included showing off some kind of new agent and how you could use that agent together with MCP and agent-to-agent communication. Webform was a clear candidate for it. The demo included being able to create webforms from free text or even ugly hand drawn sketches, and then via MCP connect to a VAPI agent and have that agent be able to call someone and have an AI agent survey the webform over voice and then save the submission.
We ended up deciding to put the agent in a module, even if it's still very rough around the edges. You can find it at https://www.drupal.org/project/ai_webform_agent. Nick Opris is putting a lot of effort in moving it into the Tool API and making it more stable.
After testing different providers, we came to the conclusion that there are providers that do not allow the combination of using Tools/Function Calling and asking for a structured output.
Because of that we have added a flag where the providers can update their status to tell that they are able to do this.
For AI Agents we will then be able to figure out if this is possible or not, and add a feature where we can run another call on the finished loop, to structure the output.
A lot of the time was put into planning a way forward to the 2.0.0 release. Some things are already decided or were decided in Vienna.
This includes:
Be sure to keep an eye out here or on LinkedIn to stay up to date with the latest developments. Visit the AI Initiative home page for ways to connect, events and webinars.
This summary will cover three weeks instead of the bi-weekly progress report, and it will be a little bit different. Since we were very busy with the Driesnote for DrupalCon, the release of AI and AI Agents 1.2.0 (yay!), we were mostly focusing on stability fixes.
DrupalCon Vienna also happened and personally for me also PHP Longhorn in Austin. DrupalCon gave us an opportunity to meet in person, regroup and plan ahead for the 2.0 release. So we will cover that as well in the progress reports.
For me personally it was a crazy event compared to other DrupalCon’s I have been to. Many people to talk to, and many people I wanted to talk to, but never got the time to do it.
We did prepare the demo for the DriesNote and it's one of the demos that I personally actually have been the most comfortable with sharing. Some of the demos that get recorded are on the level of something we strive for, rather than what is there now., The actual output of the Canvas AI for the examples in the DriesNote was actually over 50% on the reliability where you could almost just use it, and most of the rest created a version that just needed minor tweaking. This is based on a fairly strict criteria on who components should be placed, images should be picked and copies should be written.
Aidan Foster from Foster Interactive, who was one of the main contributors to the demo, did a follow up LinkedIn Post that you should not miss.
And if you do not believe me - you can run the demo yourself.
Well it has been out for some while, but we wanted to introduce it with the DriesNote. The idea is that the AI Context or Context Control Center (name TBD) is the central point for any context your Drupal site will need. Both for AI or via MCP.
Right now it's focusing heavily on agents, but in the future it would also be usable in Automators, translations or anything that needs to have a stricter control on how to generate via AI. This project has been driven by Salsa Digital in general and Ahmed Jabar in particular, who spent weekends to have it ready before the DriesNote. A huge thanks to them!
Try it out and help out in: https://www.drupal.org/project/ai_context
In 1.2.0 we have added a prompt library. The initial implementation was AI Content Suggestions, but right before the release we also added an implementation into the AI Translate submodule.
This means that the translation prompts are now being managed via the prompt library and can be reused in the future for other translation tasks that could be added into for instance AI CKEditor or AI Automators.
One of the things I wanted to demo in Vienna included showing off some kind of new agent and how you could use that agent together with MCP and agent-to-agent communication. Webform was a clear candidate for it. The demo included being able to create webforms from free text or even ugly hand drawn sketches, and then via MCP connect to a VAPI agent and have that agent be able to call someone and have an AI agent survey the webform over voice and then save the submission.
We ended up deciding to put the agent in a module, even if it's still very rough around the edges. You can find it at https://www.drupal.org/project/ai_webform_agent. Nick Opris is putting a lot of effort in moving it into the Tool API and making it more stable.
After testing different providers, we came to the conclusion that there are providers that do not allow the combination of using Tools/Function Calling and asking for a structured output.
Because of that we have added a flag where the providers can update their status to tell that they are able to do this.
For AI Agents we will then be able to figure out if this is possible or not, and add a feature where we can run another call on the finished loop, to structure the output.
A lot of the time was put into planning a way forward to the 2.0.0 release. Some things are already decided or were decided in Vienna.
This includes:
Be sure to keep an eye out here or on LinkedIn to stay up to date with the latest developments. Visit the AI Initiative home page for ways to connect, events and webinars.
It’s well known that a seemingly overwhelming task often becomes easier if divided into smaller chunks or steps. This rule is equally applicable to Drupal admin workflows! Especially when working with content-rich websites, lengthy forms with numerous fields can often feel daunting.
read more
October brought another batch of intriguing contrib releases and experiments. Some lean into authoring polish, others into security and ops, and a few are just plain fun. Here’s our quick take on the ones we’re spinning up in sandboxes next.
read moreBelgrade 3.0.0 is the most significant update to our Drupal Commerce theme since its initial release. Modified based on the needs of clients and the functionality we have implemented for real-world eCommerce implementations again and again, it goes beyond just a normal theme.
Rather than being a rigid starter kit, Belgrade is now firmly centered around Drupal Commerce Kickstart, showcasing best practices and the full capabilities of the platform. You can use it as an example when designing and building your own Drupal Commerce themes.
We brought a more contemporary design to user authentication pages that matches patterns consistently used across client projects. The login, registration, and password reset forms now feature a centered, card-based layout with:
The whole experience can be toggled.
Implementing cleaner login forms is a normal step for more Drupal Commerce sites to help them look fresh and modern. Belgrade 3.0.0 makes this step much easier.
Read more read moreArtificial intelligence continues to reshape content management systems, and Drupal is embracing this transformation through the Drupal AI initiative.
The video above demonstrates how to use AI Automators in Drupal CMS to automate content generation, transcribe audio files, and streamline editorial workflows.
This guide covers AI Automators within the Drupal AI module suite. Learn to set up basic and chained automators, transcribe audio, integrate AI into CKEditor, and auto-generate social media posts.
read moreAt DrupalCon Vienna, we opened the opt-in period for module maintainers to volunteer their modules to be migrated to GitLab issues. You can opt yours in at #3409678: Opt-in GitLab issues.
That means that we will have some projects with issues on Drupal.org and some other projects with their issues on GitLab during this transition period. Due to this, some things will change in our current systems.
The issue cockpit on each project's page will go away. The current issue cockpit that will see in projects reads data from our internal issues, but as projects transition to GitLab issues this block no longer makes sense. We will replace this for a simple "Issues" link that will take you to the right issue queue, whether it is GitLab or Drupal.org.
Parent and related issues will now be connected via a full URL. It used to be connected via entity reference fields, pointing at internal issues. Now that we have two systems for this, these will be links, that once rendered will bring the metadata information, like title and issue status, as we did with internal issues. We will be able to link both Drupal.org and GitLab issues into these new fields, and the old entity reference fields will go away.
We ask project maintainers to help us at the Drupal Association iterate and improve on this process as we migrate more and more projects. We know that change can take time to be adopted, and we are really excited to help project maintainers move their issues into GitLab.
There are almost 200 projects with more than 1000 issues, and around 2000 projects with more than 100.
Drupal "core" has more than 115K issues.
The roadmap will be (in each iteration, we will address feedback, fix bugs...):
We are very excited about this transition, and we truly think it will be an improvement to the contribution experience. We are also thankful to the community for helping us with this.
At DrupalCon Vienna, we opened the opt-in period for module maintainers to volunteer their modules to be migrated to GitLab issues. You can opt yours in at #3409678: Opt-in GitLab issues.
That means that we will have some projects with issues on Drupal.org and some other projects with their issues on GitLab during this transition period. Due to this, some things will change in our current systems.
The issue cockpit on each project's page will go away. The current issue cockpit that will see in projects reads data from our internal issues, but as projects transition to GitLab issues this block no longer makes sense. We will replace this for a simple "Issues" link that will take you to the right issue queue, whether it is GitLab or Drupal.org.
Parent and related issues will now be connected via a full URL. It used to be connected via entity reference fields, pointing at internal issues. Now that we have two systems for this, these will be links, that once rendered will bring the metadata information, like title and issue status, as we did with internal issues. We will be able to link both Drupal.org and GitLab issues into these new fields, and the old entity reference fields will go away.
We ask project maintainers to help us at the Drupal Association iterate and improve on this process as we migrate more and more projects. We know that change can take time to be adopted, and we are really excited to help project maintainers move their issues into GitLab.
There are almost 200 projects with more than 1000 issues, and around 2000 projects with more than 100.
Drupal "core" has more than 115K issues.
The roadmap will be (in each iteration, we will address feedback, fix bugs...):
We are very excited about this transition, and we truly think it will be an improvement to the contribution experience. We are also thankful to the community for helping us with this.
The Drupal Association has received €201,000 from the Sovereign Tech Fund to enhance Drupal's GitLab infrastructure, with a focus on security, testing efficiency, and design tools. This funding will enable critical improvements including completing the migration of Drupal's security issue management system to GitLab, optimizing CI/CD testing across thousands of repositories, and implementing new tools for UX and design contributors.
This continues the Sovereign Tech Fund’s support of Drupal. In 2023, the Sovereign Tech Fund funded major work to support the move from Drupal.org's homebuilt contribution tools to the GitLab platform.
The self-hosted GitLab instance at git.drupalcode.org is maintained by the Drupal Association and used by contributors all over the globe. In 2024, there were 7,276 unique individuals using git.drupalcode.org to contribute to 69,204 issues. These contributors represent an international community of users who support critical Drupal installations serving the public.
The additional funding will enable the Drupal Association to further enhance our use of GitLab in the following key areas:
The work commissioned by the Sovereign Tech Fund will not only enable us to advance strategically, driving meaningful progress and making a positive impact within the Drupal community but also strengthen the open source platform for users everywhere.
We are grateful to the Sovereign Tech Fund for this collaboration. This funding reflects their continued dedication to open source and their confidence in the Drupal Association and the community's ability to innovate and ensure the future of web development.
The Drupal Association has received €201,000 from the Sovereign Tech Fund to enhance Drupal's GitLab infrastructure, with a focus on security, testing efficiency, and design tools. This funding will enable critical improvements including completing the migration of Drupal's security issue management system to GitLab, optimizing CI/CD testing across thousands of repositories, and implementing new tools for UX and design contributors.
This continues the Sovereign Tech Fund’s support of Drupal. In 2023, the Sovereign Tech Fund funded major work to support the move from Drupal.org's homebuilt contribution tools to the GitLab platform.
The self-hosted GitLab instance at git.drupalcode.org is maintained by the Drupal Association and used by contributors all over the globe. In 2024, there were 7,276 unique individuals using git.drupalcode.org to contribute to 69,204 issues. These contributors represent an international community of users who support critical Drupal installations serving the public.
The additional funding will enable the Drupal Association to further enhance our use of GitLab in the following key areas:
The work commissioned by the Sovereign Tech Fund will not only enable us to advance strategically, driving meaningful progress and making a positive impact within the Drupal community but also strengthen the open source platform for users everywhere.
We are grateful to the Sovereign Tech Fund for this collaboration. This funding reflects their continued dedication to open source and their confidence in the Drupal Association and the community's ability to innovate and ensure the future of web development.
“Whenever I look at these demo videos,
I often completely forget we’re looking at Drupal.
You know, it looks so different and so much better.”
Catch up on all the excitement from DrupalCon Europe 2025 in Vienna! Annertech shares highlights from the global gathering, including cutting-edge tech talks, community networking, and the fun of the Drupal event.
read moreLast summer, I was building a small automation in n8n when I came across Activepieces. Both tools promise the same thing: connect your applications, automate your workflows, and host it yourself. But when I clicked through to Activepieces' GitHub repo, I noticed it's released under the MIT license. Truly Open Source, not just source-available like n8n.
As I dug deeper into these tools, I kept noticing something else: they're powerful and mature, yet almost non-existent in enterprise environments. Developers love them. Small teams rely on them. But large organizations are paying hefty premiums for proprietary integration platforms (iPaaS) or wiring integrations manually.
That gap crystallized something I'd been seeing across different contexts: business logic is moving out of individual applications and into the orchestration layer.
Today, most organizations run on dozens of disconnected tools. A product launch means logging into Mailchimp for email campaigns, Salesforce for lead tracking, Google Analytics for performance monitoring, Drupal for content publishing, Slack for team coordination, and a spreadsheet to keep everything synchronized. We copy data between systems, paste it into different formats, and manually trigger each step. In other words, most organizations are still doing orchestration by hand.
With orchestration tools maturing, this won't stay manual forever. That led me to an investment thesis that I call the Orchestration Shift: the tools we use to connect systems are becoming as important as the systems themselves.
This shift could change how we think about enterprise software architecture. For the last decade, we've talked about the "marketing technology stack" or "martech stack": collections of tools connected through rigid, point-to-point integrations. Orchestration changes this fundamentally. Instead of each tool integrating directly with others, an orchestration layer coordinates how they work together: the "martech stack" becomes a "martech network".
I believe that in the next five to ten years, orchestration platforms like Activepieces are likely to become critical infrastructure in many organizations. If that happens, this shift needs Open Source infrastructure. Not only proprietary SaaS platforms or source-available licenses with commercial restrictions, but truly open infrastructure.
The world benefits when critical infrastructure has strong Open Source alternatives. Linux gave us an alternative to proprietary operating systems. MySQL and PostgreSQL gave us alternatives to Oracle. And of course, Drupal and WordPress gave us alternatives to dozens of proprietary CMSes. When a layer becomes this foundational, Open Source options keep the entire ecosystem healthy and innovative.
That is why Activepieces stood out: it is Open Source and positioned for an important market shift.
So I reached out to Ash Samhouri, their co-founder and CEO, to learn more about their vision. After a Zoom call, I came away impressed by both the mission and the momentum. When I got the opportunity to invest, I took it.
A couple months later, n8n raised over $240 million at a $2.5 billion valuation, validation that the orchestration market was maturing rapidly.
I invested not just money, but also time and effort. Over the summer, I worked with Jürgen Haas to create a Drupal integration for Activepieces and the orchestration module for Drupal. Both shipped the week before DrupalCon Vienna, where I demonstrated them in my opening keynote.
Consider what this means for platforms like Drupal, which I have led for more than two decades. Drupal has thousands of contributed modules that integrate with external services. But if orchestration tools begin offering those same integrations in a way that is easier and more powerful to use, we have to ask how Drupal's role should evolve.
Drupal could move from being the central hub that manages integrations to becoming a key node within this larger orchestration network. As I mentioned earlier, this represents the shift from "marketing stack" to "marketing network".
In this model, Drupal continues managing and publishing content while also acting as a connected participant in such a network. Events in Drupal can trigger workflows across other systems, and orchestration tools can trigger actions back in Drupal. This bidirectional connection makes both more powerful. Drupal gains capabilities without adding complexity to its core, while orchestration platforms gain access to rich content, structured data, publishing workflows, and more.
Drupal can also learn architecturally from these orchestration platforms. Tools like n8n and Activepieces use a simple but powerful pattern: every operation has defined inputs and outputs that can be chained together to build workflows. Drupal could adopt this same approach, making it easier to build internal automations and positioning Drupal as an even more natural participant in orchestration networks.
We have seen similar shifts before. TCP/IP did not make telephones irrelevant; it changed where the intelligence lived. Phones became endpoints in a network defined by the protocol connecting them. Orchestration may follow a similar path, becoming the layer that coordinates how business systems work together.
Today, orchestration platforms handle workflow automation: when X happens, do Y. Form submissions create CRM entries, send email notifications, post Slack updates. I demonstrated this pattern in my DrupalCon Vienna keynote, showing how predefined workflows eliminate manual work and custom integration code.
But orchestration is evolving toward something more powerful: digital workers. These AI-driven agents will understand context, make decisions, and execute complex tasks across platforms. A digital worker could interpret a goal like "Launch the European campaign for our product launch", analyze what needs to happen, build the workflows, coordinate across your martech network, execute them, and report results.
Tools like Activepieces and protocols like the Model Context Protocol are laying the groundwork for this future. We're moving from automation (executing predefined steps) to autonomy (understanding intent and figuring out how to achieve it). The future will likely require both: deterministic workflows for reliability and consistency, combined with AI-driven decision-making for flexibility and intelligence.
This shift makes the orchestration layer even more critical. It's not just connecting systems anymore; it's where business intelligence and decision-making will live.
When I first clicked through to Activepieces' GitHub repo last summer, I was looking for a tool to automate a workflow. What I found was something bigger: a glimpse of how business software architecture is fundamentally changing. I've been thinking about it since.
To me, the question isn't whether orchestration will become critical infrastructure. It's whether that infrastructure will be open and built collaboratively. That is a future worth investing in, both with capital and with code.
read moreA client of mine requested the feature in their existing webform (on a Drupal10 website) to be able to generate an PDF print-out of the user’s input upon their every submission, and attach the generated PDF to the with the e-mail trigger by the webform’s handler.
This will ensure they have a copy of the user’s input as the ground truth to be referenced in the future, and the signature in the webform can be shared via the email as a part of the PDF, because by default the webform only allows you to attach the link of signature’s PNG image, which means (if you want any user who receive the email to be able to download the signature without a Drupal authenticated account) you will have to expose via a public link.
read moreTLDR: Watch it build a page from a prompt → Online Demo → Download on drupal.org
So, we've been working on Drupal's content UX for over 10 years now, trying to make page building accessible to non-technical users. We've made a lot of progress, but honestly, something always felt like it was missing. The tools were getting more powerful, but making Drupal "easy" was still kind of a stretch. Your clients and their users will agree.
Then we started experimenting with AI.
I've been testing a bunch of other site builders: Webflow, Elementor, Divi, and about 10 others to see what they're doing with AI. Here's what I discovered: they're all bolting AI features on existing tools like an afterthought. They're treating AI as a feature, not a foundation. We took the opposite approach with DXPR. Instead of adding AI to a traditional editor, we built the entire experience around AI-first principles. The difference is striking, and I'd love to show you exactly how this fundamentally changes the way you build pages in Drupal.
Real-time unedited video
Rather than just adding AI as a feature checkbox, we tried to think about how it could actually change the workflow. Here are the main things we've built:
You can describe a page in plain text and get a working layout. It's not perfect every time, but it's a pretty good starting point and saves a lot of manual setup. It's better than other AI writing tools.
Instead of switching to another tool, you can generate images right in the builder. It's integrated into the workflow, which seems to help with iteration speed.
You can point the AI at a competitor page and have it screen-scrape the page and reproduce it with DXPR elements matching your theme. It sounds naughty but we know humans copy too, and AI does it better. For inspiration of course.
The goal was to create a workflow where these features actually work together rather than feeling like separate tools. We're trying to let the AI handle repetitive stuff so users can focus on the creative decisions.
I've put together some demo videos that walk through how this actually works in practice. There are two versions: one with my narration and one with AI voiceover and edit.
These are pretty unfiltered demos. You'll see what works well and where we're still working out the kinks. I think it's important to show the real experience, especially since this is still in beta.
I know Drupal isn't usually the first platform people think of when they want visual page building. We've always been strong on the backend, but the UI complexity has been a challenge.
What's interesting about this AI integration is that it might actually leverage Drupal's strengths in a new way. We've got this solid, flexible backend that other platforms can't match. And now we're able to put a much more accessible interface on top of it.
Our AI performance is surprisingly fast too: page generation takes seconds, content rewrites happen in real-time. After years of building the foundation, it feels like things are finally clicking.
We even shipped a Rust / WASM HTML optimizer in DXPR Builder that runs in your browser and shaves a whopping 15% off of the token count of HTML we put into the AI, resulting in lower AI latency and better use of AI context capacity.
We're calling this a beta because we really want to hear from the community before we lock in the final release. What works for you? What feels off? Where do you see gaps or opportunities?
The team has put in a ton of work to get here, and I'm pretty excited about where we are. Your real-world testing is going to help us figure out what we got right and what still needs work.
If you can download DXPR Builder 2.8.0 from Drupal.org and test it out, that would be incredibly helpful. It's completely free including 10,000 words AI gen + 10 images per month in free AI credits. We've set up a FAQ and feedback page for questions and suggestions. Seriously, any input, positive or negative, helps us make this better.
And if you know anyone who might be interested in this kind of thing, feel free to share. We're trying to get this in front of people who might actually use it.
After working on this for so long, it's pretty cool to finally see how AI and Drupal can work together for content editors. Thanks for letting me share this with you all!
Download the DXPR Builder AI Beta and let us know what you think.
Explore how Drupal Canvas AI Agents transform simple prompts into fully functional web pages, enhancing automation, speed, and creative control.
This blog has been re-posted and edited with permission from Dries Buytaert's blog.
In my DrupalCon Vienna keynote, I talk about how Drupal is adapting to an AI-driven web through AI-enabled visual editing, site templates, autonomous agents, and workflow orchestration.
The web is changing fast. AI now writes content, builds web pages, and answers questions directly, often bypassing websites entirely.
People often wonder what this means for Drupal, so at DrupalCon Vienna, I tackled this head-on. My message was simple: AI is the storm, but it's also the way through it. Instead of fighting AI, we're leaning into it.
My keynote focused on how Drupal is evolving across four product areas. We're making it easier to get started with Site Templates, enabling visual site building through Drupal Canvas, accelerating development with AI assistance, and exploring complex workflows with new orchestration tools.
If you missed the keynote, you can watch the video below, or download my slides (62 MB).
Vienna felt like a turning point. People could see the pieces coming together. Drupal is finding its footing in the AI era, leading in AI innovation, and ready to help shape what comes next for the web.
One of the most important ways to grow Drupal is to make it easier and faster to build new sites. We began that work with Recipes, a way to quickly add common features to a site. Recipes help people go from idea to a website in hours instead of days.
At DrupalCon Vienna, I talked about the next step in that journey: our first Site Template. Site Templates build on Recipes and also include a complete design with layouts, visual style, and sample content. The result is that you can go from a new Drupal install to a fully working website in minutes. It will be the easiest way yet to get started with Drupal.
Next, we plan to introduce more Site Templates and launch a Site Template Marketplace where anyone can discover, share, and build on templates for different use cases.
At DrupalCon Vienna, the energy around Drupal Canvas was infectious. Some even called it "CanvasCon". Drupal Canvas sessions were often standing room only, just like the Drupal AI sessions.
I first showed an early version of Drupal Canvas at DrupalCon Barcelona in September 2024, when we launched Drupal's Starshot initiative. The progress we've made in just one year is remarkable. My keynote showed parts of Drupal Canvas in action, but for a deeper dive, I recommend watching this breakout session.
Version 1.0 of Drupal Canvas is scheduled for November 2025. Starting in January 2026, it will become the default page builder in Drupal CMS 2.0. After more than 15 months of development and countless contributors working to make Drupal easier for everyone, it's hard to believe we're almost there. This marks the beginning of a new chapter for how people create with Drupal.
What excites me most is what this solves. For years, building pages in Drupal required technical expertise. Drupal Canvas gives end-users a visual page builder that is both more powerful and easy to use. Plus, it supports React, which means front-end developers can contribute using skills they already have.
Every content management system faces defining moments. For Drupal, one came with the release of Drupal 8. We rebuilt Drupal from the ground up, adopting modern design patterns and improving configuration management, versioning, workflows, and more.
The transition was hard, but here is the surprising part: ten years later those decisions gave Drupal an unexpected advantage in today's AI-driven web. The architecture we created is exactly what AI systems need today. When AI modifies content, you need version control to roll back mistakes. When it builds pages, you need structured data, permissions, and workflows. Drupal already has those capabilities.
For years, Drupal prioritized flexibility and robustness while other platforms focused on ease of use. What once felt like extra complexity now makes perfect sense. Drupal has quietly become one of the most AI-ready platforms available.
As I said in my keynote: "Some days AI terrifies me. An hour later it excites me. By the evening, I'm tired of hearing about it.". Still, we can't ignore AI.
I first introduced AI as part of Starshot. Five months ago, it became its own dedicated track with the launch of the Drupal AI initiative. Since then, twenty two agencies have backed it with funding and contributors, together contributing over one million dollars. This is the largest fundraising effort in Drupal's history.
The initiative is already producing impressive results. At DrupalCon Vienna, we released Drupal AI version 1.2, a major step forward for the initiative.
In my keynote, I also demonstrated three new AI capabilities:
Earlier this year, I wrote about the great digital agency unbundling. As AI automates more technical work, agencies need to evolve their business models and find new ways to create value.
One promising direction is orchestration: building systems and workflows that connect AI agents, content platforms, CRMs, and marketing tools into intelligent, automated workflows. I think of it as DXP 2.0.
Most organizations have complex marketing technology stacks. Connecting all the systems in their stack often requires custom code or repetitive manual tasks. This integration work can be time-consuming and hard to maintain.
Modern orchestration tools solve this by automating how information flows between systems. Instead of writing custom code, you can use no-code tools to define workflows that trigger automatically. When someone fills out a form, the system creates a CRM contact, sends a welcome email, and notifies your team without any manual work.
In my keynote, I showed how ECA and ActivePieces can work together. Jürgen Haas, who created ECA, and I collaborated on this integration. ECA lets you define automations inside Drupal using events, conditions, and actions. ActivePieces is an open source automation platform similar to Zapier or n8n.
This approach allows us to build user experiences that are not only better and smarter, but also positions Drupal to benefit from AI innovation happening across the broader ecosystem. The idea resonated in Vienna. People approached me enthusiastically with related projects and demos, including tools like Flowdrop or Drupal's MCP module.
Between now and DrupalCon Chicago, we're inviting the community to explore and expand on this work. Join us in #orchestration on Drupal Slack, test the new Orchestration module, connect more automation platforms, or help improve ECA. If this direction proves valuable, we'll share what we learned at DrupalCon Chicago.
At DrupalCon Vienna, I felt something shift. Sessions were packed. People were excited about Site Templates and the Marketplace. Drupal Canvas drew huge crowds, and even more agencies signed up to join the Drupal AI initiative. During contribution day, more people than usual showed up looking for ways to help.
That energy in Vienna reflected something bigger. AI is changing how people use the web and how we build for it. It can feel threatening, and it can feel full of possibility, but what became clear in Vienna is that Drupal is well positioned at this inflection point, with both momentum and direction.
What makes this moment special is how the community is responding with focus and collaboration. We are approaching it as a much more coordinated effort, while still leaving room for experimentation.
Vienna showed me that the Drupal community is ready to take this on together. We have navigated uncharted territory before, but this time there is a boldness and unity I have not seen in years. That is the way through the storm. I am proud to be part of it.
I want to extend my gratitude to everyone who contributed to making my presentation and demos a success. A special thank you to Adam G-H, Aidan Foster, ASH Sullivan, Bálint Kléri, Cristina Chumillas, Elliott Mower, Emma Horrell, Gábor Hojtsy, Gurwinder Antal, James Abrahams, Jurgen Haas, Kristen Pol, Lauri Eskola, Marcus Johansson, Martin Anderson-Clutz, Pamela Barone, Tiffany Farriss, Tim Lehnen, and Witze Van der Straeten. Many others contributed indirectly to make this possible. If I've inadvertently omitted anyone, please reach out.
What started as an idea among a couple of people has rapidly expanded into something with global interest. There are now educators teaching Drupal at higher education and universities, which is amazing. It means new people are being introduced to our beloved open source project.
“What if we could open source the teaching materials themselves, and teach others how to teach Drupal?”
A lot has happened since then. People from around the world have been collaborating on the teaching materials created by Hilmar Kári Hallbjörnsson, who is now in his fourth year of teaching Drupal at Reykjavík University. But the idea has grown, it’s become an initiative with the goal of reaching, introducing, and welcoming new Drupal enthusiasts into the community.
Drupal itself is thriving. With Drupal CMS and the AI initiative, the platform has more power and potential than ever before. This enthusiasm is growing both within and beyond the Drupal community. In the context of digital sovereignty, AI, privacy, security, and accessibility, a whole new set of opportunities is emerging for Drupal and open source.
The Drupal Open University Initiative is a community-driven effort focused on bringing Drupal into academic and other (higher) education environments. Our mission is to introduce students and aspiring developers to the power of Drupal, and to help cultivate the next generation of contributors. Through comprehensive, open-source-based courses, we aim to equip students, educators, and guest lecturers with the knowledge and tools needed to engage with Drupal—and the broader open source ecosystem. Together, we're shaping a future where Drupal continues to grow through the energy of new talent and an increasingly vibrant community.
Drupal is so much more than just code, it's a thriving ecosystem powered by one of the most dedicated open source communities in the world. But while that community remains strong, its average age is rising, and many young developers never encounter Drupal at all when starting to build their skills. In recent years, we've made significant progress in lowering the barrier to entry: today, it's even possible to build a Drupal site using AI, without writing a single line of code.
“I thought I heard that we won’t need junior devs now that we have generative AI?”
Within the community, there’s a strong desire to teach, guide, and share knowledge. If we can reach students early in their learning journey and spark their interest in Drupal, we have a unique opportunity to foster the next generation of Drupal developers. And by teaching Drupal, we also introduce them to our vibrant and welcoming community, helping them experience the value of contribution from the very beginning.
I have tried to find everyone actively mentioned on our Drupal.org project or bi-weekly notes, please let me know when you are missing from this list.
André Angelantoni (aangel), Ben Mullins (bnjmnm), Darren oh (darren-oh), Yan Zhang (designfitsu), Hilmar Hallbjörnsson (drupalviking), Esmeralda Tijhoff (esmoves), Fran Wyllie (franwyllie), Gayatri Tandon (gayatritandon), Nico Grienauer (grienauer), Guzman Bellon (guzmanb), Wouter Immerzeel (immoreel), Jean-Paul Vosmeer (jpvos), Karos Abdulqadir, Kwasi Afreh, Lenny Moskalyk (lenny moskalyk), Martin Anderson-Clutz (mandclu), Asim Mehta (metasim), Jordan Thompson (nord102), Rachel Lawson (rachel_norfolk), Salim Lakhani (salimlakhani), Jasper van Schelven (sch11en), Eric Wheeler (sikofitt), Soumya V (soumyavbhat), Norah Medlin (teknorah), Michael Anello (ultimike)
Our first focus is to find, build, open source, and expand the existing Drupal curriculum. This includes everything from introductory courses to fully-fledged academic modules worth 6 ECTS points or more. One of our key goals is to empower Drupal enthusiasts, whether they’re developers or educators, to teach Drupal in a university or high school setting. To do that, we provide resources, templates, and mentorship on both content and delivery.
We explore different angles to make Drupal education relevant across disciplines: from comprehensive Drupal development tracks to specialized topics like AI, headless Drupal with React, or mastering PHP-based web applications using Drupal. In parallel, we’ve also discovered new formats to reach broader audiences, such as Drupal in a Day. Our first official session took place in May at Drupaljam in the Netherlands, gathering valuable feedback. The second is being organized at DrupalCon Vienna with 90+ students attending and a Drupal in a Day for Drupalcon Chicago is in the works.
Theme’s we are working on
Drupal has a long-standing history in the academic world, many universities and schools already use it in their digital infrastructure. So why not teach it, too? We believe Drupal should be among the course options available in IT and digital curricula. Many agencies and Drupal professionals already have connections in educational environments. By leveraging these warm relationships, we can introduce formal Drupal courses in places where there’s already familiarity with the platform.
We’re mapping out which schools and universities are already teaching Drupal, and building case studies to inspire others. We’re also exploring how students experience Drupal, and how we can create dedicated spaces for them within our community, on Drupal.org, at camps and cons, or through student programs. Think internship matchmaking, guest lectures, or introductory presentations hosted by local agencies. The goal: make Drupal education visible, accessible, and desirable in the academic world.
Material worked on
Our community has always excelled at sharing advanced knowledge, especially at camps and conferences. But what if we created more space for beginners at those same events? We believe every camp should include beginner-friendly tracks, clearly designed to welcome newcomers, students, and self-taught developers. We can help camps develop and deliver those tracks, including guidance on how to reach the right audience and what topics to cover.
But it doesn’t stop at camps. How do we find newcomers? How do we make them feel welcome and embed them into user groups and local meetups? Local associations and user groups can play a vital role in bridging the gap between schools, agencies, events, and education. With their support, we can make Drupal easier to access, easier to love, and easier to stay involved in.
Material worked on
For Drupal Open University to succeed, it must align with the broader ambitions of the Drupal community, especially those focused on growth and inclusivity. That means working alongside existing initiatives, supporting our project leadership, and coordinating with other community efforts in education, contribution, and outreach.
We’re actively seeking collaboration with key stakeholders: educators, agency leaders, community organizers, and Drupal Association members. The more we align, the faster we can move. This is not just a curriculum, it’s a movement. A shared opportunity to help Drupal grow by helping others learn.
Material worked on
We’re building a roadmap and inviting the community to get involved in shaping it. Together, we’ll define priorities, timelines, and shared goals. This includes expanding our curriculum, scaling Drupal in a Day events, supporting beginner tracks at camps, and building networks of teachers and universities. The initiative thrives on collaboration, and now is the time to align our efforts.
Our next steps:
We’re also preparing a community presentation to share the current state of the initiative, including a Q&A sessions. This is your chance to get involved, ask questions, and help shape the future of Drupal education.
We are not, and do not aim to be, competitors to the many excellent learning environments, whether open or commercial, within or beyond the Drupal community. On the contrary, we want to foster the next generation of Drupal developers, and we believe that the more resources exist once people are hooked on Drupal, the better. We hope to collaborate broadly and combine strengths wherever possible.
Ultimately, we see this initiative as a contribution to the future of Drupal. As Dries Buytaert outlined in his vision for long-term growth, one key obstacle is: “Make Drupal easy to evaluate and adopt.” We believe Drupal Open University is one way to help remove that obstacle, by meeting new learners where they are and welcoming them into our community with open arms.
If you're inspired, already teaching, or simply curious to contribute, we invite you to join us. You can find our project at drupal.org/project/open_university or connect with us via Slack in the #open-university-initiative channel.
Sources
Guest blog post by Angie Forson, Web and Digital Programme Lead, Southwark Council.
The Web and Digital team at Southwark Council, along with our partners at Chicken, is building an AI-powered PDF importer for the LocalGov Drupal Publication Module. Together, we’re unlocking a faster, more accessible, and more collaborative future for publishing.
Manual PDF conversion can take hours – sometimes days. With our importer, it happens in minutes – often under one minute. Multiply that across thousands of PDFs, and the time savings are game-changing.
I’m excited about the impact this product will have — not just for our users, but also in transforming how we design, build, and create content internally. We’re shaping a future where services start with HTML-first thinking.
Evelyn Francourt, User Experience Lead
We upload a PDF to the module, which will then kick-start the importing process in the background.
The result is the HTML representation of the PDF content, which is then saved into a Drupal Publication. We can then review and publish the Publication.
Each import process is logged so that any errors can be reviewed and fixed.
Each PDF goes through a three-step ETL process, called an “import pipeline” in the module:
We can build as many import pipelines as needed, each with its own custom AI prompt. Useful for things like handling different types of PDF content or layout.
Furthermore, the pipeline uses a plugin architecture, where each step can be swapped out. Councils can use different extractors, AI models, or output to different Drupal content types to suit their needs.
This project is a great example of AI working alongside and empowering content creators, and Drupal as a platform supports this really well.
Farez Rahman, Drupal Developer
We’re delivering this project the way we deliver our best work – agile and user-centred by design.
We have adapted our delivery to meet the challenges of innovation design. Our team has had to continuously refine requirements and acceptance criteria to ensure the tool meets real user needs and delivers meaningful outcomes.
Working on this AI product is an incredible experience — each day comes with new challenges, unexpected turns, and fresh opportunities to innovate. The pace of change made the whole process an absolute adrenaline rush.
Giorgi Bujiashvili, Delivery Manager
As Chicken fast-tracks development, we’ve been testing and refining prompts across a wide range of PDFs to prove what’s possible:
We’ve also cracked the pagination challenge. Early versions mirrored PDFs page-by-page, causing awkward breaks mid-paragraph or mid-list. Now the importer processes the entire document at once and, with the right AI prompt, inserts page breaks at logical user-friendly points such as topic changes or new sections.
This project has been co-designed with content designers, developers, and the LocalGov Drupal community.
Together, we’re shaping a scalable, open-source tool that other councils can adopt, adapt, and improve.
Angie Forson, Web and Digital Programme Lead
The AI PDF Importer isn’t just a tool – it’s a step change in accessible, open-source publishing for local government. Following this release, it will be open and shareable with the LocalGov Drupal community for other councils to adopt and iterate.
If you’re interested in supporting or scaling this project, contact Angie Forson – Angie.Forson@southwark.gov.uk. Let’s change the game together.
The Women in Drupal Award sponsored by JAKALA, returned this year to honour and celebrate the outstanding achievements of women making remarkable contributions to the global Drupal community. The award, presented during the prestigious DrupalCon Vienna 2025 opening ceremony, recognises women who have demonstrated exceptional leadership, innovation, and impact within one of the world’s most influential open-source ecosystems.
Created by JAKALA, with the mission of amplifying women’s voices in technology, the Women in Drupal Award highlights three core values that reflect the essence of the Drupal community: Inspire, Connect, and Empower. The award has three categories to celebrate women who embody these principles through their work as developers, designers, mentors, advocates, and community builders.
Every story shared through the Women in Drupal Award reminds us why diversity matters—it changes how we think, build, and collaborate. Supporting this initiative is both a privilege and a responsibility, one that aligns deeply with JAKALA’s purpose of creating meaningful impact through technology.
— Kitt Ralkov, Managing Director, Experience, HR & Marketing at JAKALA
This year’s honourees were recognised for their outstanding contributions to Drupal and the wider tech community:
JAKALA created the Women in Drupal award to ensure that women’s stories and successes in technology are visible and celebrated. With Drupal powering millions of websites worldwide, the community’s ongoing efforts toward gender inclusion reflect a broader movement across open source: making technology more welcoming and equitable for everyone.
You have to get through the impostor syndrome. The community is super welcoming.
said Emma Horrell, one of this year’s recipients.
JAKALA is the official sponsor of the Women in Drupal Award since its inception four years ago. As a long-standing supporter of diversity and inclusion in technology, JAKLA ensured the award could reach a global audience and showcase some of the incredible talent in the Drupal community. Through its commitment to equity and innovation, JAKALA continues to help shape a more inclusive future for open source communities worldwide.
In the end, I mostly wanted to give back to the community.
said Sinduri Guntupalli.
The ceremony has become a highlight of DrupalCon. Beyond the award itself, the wider Women in Drupal initiative fosters mentorship programs, networking opportunities, and global visibility for women working in Drupal and open source.
I was intimidated by core contribution but very friendly members of the community came to me
said Jess (xjm).
The Women in Drupal Award is supported by the Drupal Association and leading organisations across the industry. Together, they aim to build a more inclusive, diverse, and forward-looking community, one that reflects the world it serves.
Women in Drupal is a community-driven initiative dedicated to celebrating, supporting, and empowering women in the Drupal ecosystem. Through events, mentorship, and recognition, the program fosters inclusion and encourages greater participation and leadership in open source.
This is the first in a series of blog posts where we have invited organisations from across the Drupal ecosystem to share their experiences and insights on how they are using Drupal AI in their work. If your organisation is innovating with Drupal AI, we would be delighted to feature you in a future post.
Witze Van der Straeten is a Front-End Web Development student at Arteveldehogeschool in Belgium. In this post, he shares how discovering Drupal has completely changed the way he thinks about design, development, and community.
Before my internship, I had actually never heard of Drupal. At school, we learned about other CMSs, but Drupal was only briefly mentioned, we never explored it in depth. During my search for an internship, I connected with the owner of Calibrate, who was immediately enthusiastic and invited me to join the team.
By coincidence, my first week at Calibrate aligned with Drupal Dev Days Leuven. It is a community event full of talks, contributions, and collaboration.
From the moment I walked in, I noticed how welcoming everyone was. People came up to me, asked about my background, and shared their own stories. It was clear that this wasn’t just a CMS, it was a community of people who genuinely care.
Dries Buytaert held a Q&A, and I was impressed by how open and democratic the whole ecosystem felt. There wasn’t a “boss” giving orders — it was a team of people building something together, guided by shared passion.
The evening events were just as memorable: games, group activities, and spontaneous gatherings where 30 people ended up sharing a table full of laughter and ideas.
By the end of the week, I knew — this is where I belong.
Back at my internship, I started with the basics, completing the Acquia training videos and building a small site.
As a front-end developer, I quickly realized I wanted more creative freedom. That’s when a colleague introduced me to Single Directory Components (SDCs). It's a new approach that made the front-end feel more modern and modular. I immediately loved it.
Later, my mentor suggested I explore something even newer: MCP servers. MCP stands for Model Context Protocol, an emerging standard that allows AI tools to communicate with each other.
I found a Figma MCP server, and since I was already familiar with Figma from school, I started experimenting. I connected it with GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio Code, and the first time I saw a Figma component appear in my editor, I knew this could save a lot of time.
At first, I wasn’t sure how to make it work in Drupal and especially with Twig files and SDCs. But the more I tested, the more it made sense. Eventually, I managed to make a designed Figma component appear on a Drupal site in just minutes — something that used to take hours.
I showed it to my team at Calibrate, who found it very interesting, but since it was experimental, we decided to pause the exploration for a while.
A few months later, I had to create a tutorial for a school project on Drupal and AI. Naturally, I knew what I wanted to write about — the Figma-to-Drupal workflow.
My goal was to make something clear and practical, especially for people who had never touched Drupal or MCPs before. I wanted anyone to follow the tutorial and realize how powerful Drupal could be when combined with design tools and AI.
After finishing, I shared the tutorial in the Drupal Slack community, and the response was amazing. People commented, shared ideas, and even added me on LinkedIn to discuss it further.
You can explore Figma-to-Drupal tutorial here.
Two lead developers from UI Suite reached out with great feedback that helped me refine the workflow. Then I received a message from Paul Johnson, who encouraged me to share my story — which is why I’m writing this blog today.
One day, I received a message from Dries Buytaert himself:
Hey Witze, the Figma-to-Drupal idea sounds cool. Do you happen to have a short demo video of it?
I sent him my demo right away. Dries replied that there was still too much manual work involved, and he wondered if we could integrate it with Canvas AI, an AI-powered development tool that’s part of the Drupal ecosystem.
Of course, when Dries asks, you experiment! We started exchanging ideas about how to automate parts of the workflow with Canvas AI, and suddenly I was collaborating with the founder of Drupal himself.
I never expected someone so busy to spend that much time helping a student. That experience showed me once again how exceptional this community is — not just technically, but personally.
By the way you can see how this work is going, it was featured on stage at DrupalCon Vienna presented by Dries himself!
So, thank you, Dries!
Right now, we’re exploring how to make this integration more stable and impactful.
The goal is to simplify the journey from design to Drupal implementation — reducing repetitive steps and empowering front-end developers to work faster and smarter.
It’s still early, and there are bugs to fix, but I truly believe this could become something big. With a strong community like Drupal’s, we can lead the way in how AI transforms web development.
I’m also in touch with Dries about whether this could be mentioned in the DriesNote, which would be an incredible opportunity.
I’m attending DrupalCon Vienna, and I’d love to connect with anyone exploring AI, Figma, or front-end innovation in Drupal.
If you’re curious or want to collaborate, feel free to reach out — I’m always open to new ideas!
Looking back, Drupal has changed more than just how I code — it changed how I think.
I’ve learned that open source isn’t about software alone. It’s about people — listening, sharing, and building something together that’s bigger than any one of us.
Don’t be afraid to get involved. Even if you feel inexperienced, your ideas matter. This community will welcome you, just as it welcomed me.
The International Splash Awards 2025 concluded today during DrupalCon Europe in Vienna, celebrating the world’s most outstanding Drupal projects, agencies, and developers. The annual awards recognize excellence in design, innovation, technical achievement, and community impact across a range of categories.
Now in its third edition, the International Splash Awards attracted a record number of submissions from across the globe. A distinguished jury of independent experts in web design, user experience, open source development, and digital strategy evaluated entries across criteria including concept, execution, emotional appeal, accessibility, performance, and social relevance.
The International Splash Awards serve not only to honor outstanding work but also to inspire collaboration, share best practices, and elevate the broader Drupal ecosystem. Over time, many awardees have contributed back to the community through open source modules, conference talks, training, and mentorship.
Supporting organizations and sponsors played a key role in making this year’s event possible, offering financial, logistical, and promotional support. Their involvement underscores the importance of recognizing digital excellence in open-source technologies.
With the 2025 edition now behind us, the Splash Awards organizers are already planning for 2026 and beyond. As Drupal evolves and the demands on digital platforms grow ever more complex, the Awards intend to broaden their reach, add new categories (e.g. AI, data privacy, sustainability), and deepen their engagement with designers, developers, and clients globally.
Submissions for International Splash Awards 2026 will be announced in a few months, stay in touch and don’t miss an opportunity to participate in this amazing event.
The International Splash Awards is an independent, global awards program that highlights exceptional Drupal-powered websites, applications, and digital solutions. Its mission is to recognize creativity, technical excellence, and social impact within the Drupal and open-source communities.
For more information about categories, submission guidelines, jury members, and past winners, visit https://splashawards.org/.
Join us THURSDAY, October 16 at 1pm ET / 10am PT, for our regularly scheduled call to chat about all things Drupal and nonprofits. (Convert to your local time zone.)
We don't have anything specific on the agenda this month, so we'll have plenty of time to discuss anything that's on our minds at the intersection of Drupal and nonprofits. Got something specific you want to talk about? Feel free to share ahead of time in our collaborative Google document!
All nonprofit Drupal devs and users, regardless of experience level, are always welcome on this call.
This free call is sponsored by NTEN.org and open to everyone.
Information on joining the meeting can be found in our collaborative Google document.