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mark.ie: LocalGov Drupal Microsites Demo Module launched
Contributing to LocalGov Microsites and demoing it to others is harder than it should be, due to the lack of a demo content. But no longer ...
Contributing to LocalGov Microsites and demoing it to others is harder than it should be, due to the lack of a demo content. But no longer ...
DDEV v1.25.3 is out, with:
ddev start and ddev stop; the separate ~/.ddev/bin/docker-compose binary is no longer neededddev start, ddev stop, and ddev restart → See belownodejs_version is preserved in .ddev/config.yaml, and you can install several Node.js versions with n install <version> inside the web containerSee the release announcement and the release notes↗.
ddev start in v1.25.3 runs post-healthcheck tasks concurrently (thanks to @jonesrussell), and a fixed bug in the web server startup script removes a ~10-second delay from ddev stop. In our benchmarks, ddev start from a stopped state is about 28% faster on macOS and 21% faster on Linux.
Don't take our word for it — a new script lets you benchmark the difference on your own machine:
bash scripts/compare-start-perf.sh v1.25.2 v1.25.3
See scripts/compare-start-perf.sh↗ and the demonstration GIFs in the release announcement.
Organizations sponsoring at $100/month or more now receive additional partner perks. Become a sponsor↗ or contact us to learn more.
$100/month+ Partners get
A run of short screencasts landed on the blog this month, mostly using TYPO3 as the example project:
ddev share → Exposing a local TYPO3 project on a public URL, including the base URL config quirk and the pre-share/post-share hooks that fix it.git worktree with TYPO3 → How multiple git worktree checkouts interact with DDEV's per-directory naming, and how to fix TYPO3's absolute base URL so every worktree works out of the box.trustedHostsPattern fix and two ways to share the result.ddev xdebug on, and step through PHP code in PhpStorm.The Usage Stats page replaces our old static usage-stats blog post with live charts pulled directly from Amplitude at build time. It's now the up-to-date place to see DDEV adoption and usage trends.
Knecht.works Beta Testers Wanted: Dashboard for Agencies — The team at knecht.works is building a dashboard for agencies managing many DDEV projects. It automates tasks like security updates by booting projects with full database environments and generating pull requests with previews. They're looking for beta testers. Read the announcement↗ and see the LinkedIn post (German)↗ on why Dependabot can't update a CMS.
How a Broken Installer Reload Led to Two Patches — Michael Staatz debugged a TYPO3 installer issue, uncovered a SQLite PRAGMA ordering quirk, and ended up submitting patches to both TYPO3 Core and DDEV. A nice story about how one bug report can improve two projects. Read it↗
drush, composer, and friends without the ddev prefix — automatically detecting whether you're in a DDEV project and falling back to host execution when you're not. Read on mandclu.com↗The DDEV Foundation Board is meeting quarterly, with formal governance and growing board authority as key strategies for the Foundation.
The board members are there to represent you and the project. If you have insights, thoughts, or direction about where DDEV should go, please contact them. If you see possibilities for them at your community events, invite them!
DDEV has a new Privacy Policy, part of the Foundation's ongoing work on formal governance.
The next DDEV advisory group meeting, open to everybody, is September 2, 2026 at 8:00 AM US Mountain / 10:00 AM US Eastern / 16:00 CEST. Add to Google Calendar • See the agenda. We love to hear from our community!
Sponsorship dipped slightly this month, people on vacation! — thank you to everyone who has contributed!
June 2026: ~$10,075/month (84% of goal)
July 2026: ~$9,931/month (82.8% of goal).
If DDEV has helped your team, consider sponsoring. → Become a sponsor↗
Contact us to discuss sponsorship options that work for your organization.
Compiled and edited with assistance from Claude Code.
read moreThis article is cross-posted with permission from Dries Buytaert's blog.
The Drupal Association is entering a new chapter. Tim Doyle is stepping down as CEO, and the Board has appointed Tiffany Farriss as interim CEO.
I am grateful to Tim for his leadership and his impact on the Association. He built a strong leadership team that helped guide Drupal through an ambitious period of innovation. That team is well positioned to continue supporting Drupal and its community.
Tiffany brings continuity and deep expertise to the Drupal Association. She has contributed to Drupal for many years and served on the Drupal Association Board for more than a decade, including on its Finance Committee. She helped organize DrupalCon and built and ran a successful agency in the Drupal ecosystem. She understands our project, the Association's finances, and the realities our partners, contributors, and users face.
I have worked with Tiffany for many years. She is thoughtful, deeply committed to Drupal, and unafraid of hard questions. Although her title is interim CEO, she has the full authority and confidence of the Board, as well as my full support.
We expect Tiffany to serve for six to twelve months. During that time, she will focus on strengthening the Association's financial and operational foundation and preparing it for long-term leadership. Later in that period, the Board plans to launch a search for the next permanent CEO.
Tiffany is stepping into the role at an important moment for Drupal.
Over the past few years, our community has done some of its most ambitious work. Contributors have continued to modernize Drupal Core. We launched Drupal CMS to make Drupal easier to adopt, introduced Drupal Canvas to rethink how people build, and rapidly advanced Drupal AI to change how people create and manage content.
We have also taken important steps toward marketing Drupal with the seriousness it deserves, so more organizations understand why it remains one of the most powerful and trusted platforms for building serious websites and applications.
This progress was made possible by our contributors and the organizations that invest in Drupal every day. The Drupal Association's role is to support that work and help turn it into wider adoption, a stronger ecosystem, and more opportunity for Drupal businesses.
The Drupal Association operates much of the infrastructure the project depends on, from Drupal.org and our collaboration tools to the services that help keep Drupal secure.
Drupal's infrastructure alone costs roughly $3 million each year. Today, it is funded through DrupalCon revenue, partnerships, sponsorships, donations, donated services, and volunteer contributions. That model has supported Drupal for many years, but it is not durable enough for the scale of the work ahead.
This is a challenge shared by open-source stewards everywhere. The software may be free to download, but the infrastructure and stewardship that make it dependable are not free to provide.
Our commitment to Drupal's infrastructure and community will not change. Supporting them well requires a stronger Drupal Association, and that may mean exploring new approaches. We will weigh the options carefully, guided by what is best for Drupal and the people who depend on it.
This work will not be easy, but our ambition is clear: make the Association more sustainable, help Drupal innovate faster, strengthen how we bring it to market, and better support Certified Partners.
As this work takes shape, we will be transparent about what we are learning, the choices we are considering, and what they could mean for the Association and the community.
Tiffany understands what makes Drupal special and what the community values most. She also has the experience and mandate to shape what comes next.
Every new chapter depends on people willing to step forward. I am thankful to Tim for all he has done, to the Association's staff for their dedication, and to Tiffany for taking this on. With their commitment, I am confident in Drupal's direction and excited about the work ahead.
This article is cross-posted with permission from Dries Buytaert's blog.
The Drupal Association is entering a new chapter. Tim Doyle is stepping down as CEO, and the Board has appointed Tiffany Farriss as interim CEO.
I am grateful to Tim for his leadership and his impact on the Association. He built a strong leadership team that helped guide Drupal through an ambitious period of innovation. That team is well positioned to continue supporting Drupal and its community.
Tiffany brings continuity and deep expertise to the Drupal Association. She has contributed to Drupal for many years and served on the Drupal Association Board for more than a decade, including on its Finance Committee. She helped organize DrupalCon and built and ran a successful agency in the Drupal ecosystem. She understands our project, the Association's finances, and the realities our partners, contributors, and users face.
I have worked with Tiffany for many years. She is thoughtful, deeply committed to Drupal, and unafraid of hard questions. Although her title is interim CEO, she has the full authority and confidence of the Board, as well as my full support.
We expect Tiffany to serve for six to twelve months. During that time, she will focus on strengthening the Association's financial and operational foundation and preparing it for long-term leadership. Later in that period, the Board plans to launch a search for the next permanent CEO.
Tiffany is stepping into the role at an important moment for Drupal.
Over the past few years, our community has done some of its most ambitious work. Contributors have continued to modernize Drupal Core. We launched Drupal CMS to make Drupal easier to adopt, introduced Drupal Canvas to rethink how people build, and rapidly advanced Drupal AI to change how people create and manage content.
We have also taken important steps toward marketing Drupal with the seriousness it deserves, so more organizations understand why it remains one of the most powerful and trusted platforms for building serious websites and applications.
This progress was made possible by our contributors and the organizations that invest in Drupal every day. The Drupal Association's role is to support that work and help turn it into wider adoption, a stronger ecosystem, and more opportunity for Drupal businesses.
The Drupal Association operates much of the infrastructure the project depends on, from Drupal.org and our collaboration tools to the services that help keep Drupal secure.
Drupal's infrastructure alone costs roughly $3 million each year. Today, it is funded through DrupalCon revenue, partnerships, sponsorships, donations, donated services, and volunteer contributions. That model has supported Drupal for many years, but it is not durable enough for the scale of the work ahead.
This is a challenge shared by open-source stewards everywhere. The software may be free to download, but the infrastructure and stewardship that make it dependable are not free to provide.
Our commitment to Drupal's infrastructure and community will not change. Supporting them well requires a stronger Drupal Association, and that may mean exploring new approaches. We will weigh the options carefully, guided by what is best for Drupal and the people who depend on it.
This work will not be easy, but our ambition is clear: make the Association more sustainable, help Drupal innovate faster, strengthen how we bring it to market, and better support Certified Partners.
As this work takes shape, we will be transparent about what we are learning, the choices we are considering, and what they could mean for the Association and the community.
Tiffany understands what makes Drupal special and what the community values most. She also has the experience and mandate to shape what comes next.
Every new chapter depends on people willing to step forward. I am thankful to Tim for all he has done, to the Association's staff for their dedication, and to Tiffany for taking this on. With their commitment, I am confident in Drupal's direction and excited about the work ahead.
The Drupal Association is entering a new chapter. Tim Doyle is stepping down as CEO, and the Board has appointed Tiffany Farriss as interim CEO.
I am grateful to Tim for his leadership and his impact on the Association. He built a strong leadership team that helped guide Drupal through an ambitious period of innovation. That team is well positioned to continue supporting Drupal and its community.
Tiffany brings continuity and deep expertise to the Drupal Association. She has contributed to Drupal for many years and served on the Drupal Association Board for more than a decade, including on its Finance Committee. She helped organize DrupalCon and built and ran a successful agency in the Drupal ecosystem. She understands our project, the Association's finances, and the realities our partners, contributors, and users face.
I have worked with Tiffany for many years. She is thoughtful, deeply committed to Drupal, and unafraid of hard questions. Although her title is interim CEO, she has the full authority and confidence of the Board, as well as my full support.
We expect Tiffany to serve for six to twelve months. During that time, she will focus on strengthening the Association's financial and operational foundation and preparing it for long-term leadership. Later in that period, the Board plans to launch a search for the next permanent CEO.
Tiffany is stepping into the role at an important moment for Drupal.
Over the past few years, our community has done some of its most ambitious work. Contributors have continued to modernize Drupal Core. We launched Drupal CMS to make Drupal easier to adopt, introduced Drupal Canvas to rethink how people build, and rapidly advanced Drupal AI to change how people create and manage content.
We have also taken important steps toward marketing Drupal with the seriousness it deserves, so more organizations understand why it remains one of the most powerful and trusted platforms for building serious websites and applications.
This progress was made possible by our contributors and the organizations that invest in Drupal every day. The Drupal Association's role is to support that work and help turn it into wider adoption, a stronger ecosystem, and more opportunity for Drupal businesses.
The Drupal Association operates much of the infrastructure the project depends on, from Drupal.org and our collaboration tools to the services that help keep Drupal secure.
Drupal's infrastructure alone costs roughly $3 million each year. Today, it is funded through DrupalCon revenue, partnerships, sponsorships, donations, donated services, and volunteer contributions. That model has supported Drupal for many years, but it is not durable enough for the scale of the work ahead.
This is a challenge shared by open-source stewards everywhere. The software may be free to download, but the infrastructure and stewardship that make it dependable are not free to provide.
Our commitment to Drupal's infrastructure and community will not change. Supporting them well requires a stronger Drupal Association, and that may mean exploring new approaches. We will weigh the options carefully, guided by what is best for Drupal and the people who depend on it.
This work will not be easy, but our ambition is clear: make the Association more sustainable, help Drupal innovate faster, strengthen how we bring it to market, and better support Certified Partners.
As this work takes shape, we will be transparent about what we are learning, the choices we are considering, and what they could mean for the Association and the community.
Tiffany understands what makes Drupal special and what the community values most. She also has the experience and mandate to shape what comes next.
Every new chapter depends on people willing to step forward. I am thankful to Tim for all he has done, to the Association's staff for their dedication, and to Tiffany for taking this on. With their commitment, I am confident in Drupal's direction and excited about the work ahead.
read moreOur CEO, Tim Doyle, has stepped down from his role. We are grateful to Tim for his leadership and impact on our organization. Tim has built a strong leadership team that is positioned to continue the mission and vision that he and the Board share for Drupal.
As part of this process, the Board has been working to identify Tim’s successor. We anticipate that the important work and mission of our organization will continue under new leadership, building on the strategy and plans we led during Tim’s time with Drupal.
Likewise, the Board has been working with the senior team to ensure that interim leadership will be in place to facilitate a smooth transition.
We are grateful to Tim for all of his contributions as the leader of Drupal, and we look forward to his continued success in his future endeavors.
The Drupal Association board has appointed Tiffany Farriss as the Interim CEO, who brings more than a decade of experience as a Drupal Association board member, to guide the organization and community through this transition period.
Our CEO, Tim Doyle, has stepped down from his role. We are grateful to Tim for his leadership and impact on our organization. Tim has built a strong leadership team that is positioned to continue the mission and vision that he and the Board share for Drupal.
As part of this process, the Board has been working to identify Tim’s successor. We anticipate that the important work and mission of our organization will continue under new leadership, building on the strategy and plans we led during Tim’s time with Drupal.
Likewise, the Board has been working with the senior team to ensure that interim leadership will be in place to facilitate a smooth transition.
We are grateful to Tim for all of his contributions as the leader of Drupal, and we look forward to his continued success in his future endeavors.
The Drupal Association board has appointed Tiffany Farriss as the Interim CEO, who brings more than a decade of experience as a Drupal Association board member, to guide the organization and community through this transition period.
The Layout Builder module doesn't sufficiently sanitize block labels in certain scenarios, which can lead to a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability.
This is mitigated by the fact that both the attacker and the targeted user need to be using the Layout Builder editing interface.
Install the latest version:
Drupal 11
Drupal 10
Drupal core 11.2 and above integrate the HTMX JavaScript library.
Drupal core's XSS filter does not sufficiently sanitize certain HTMX attributes, which can lead to a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability.
The vulnerability is mitigated by the fact an attacker must be able to insert HTML with specific attributes.
Install the latest version:
Drupal 11
Drupal 10
The Image module allows you to define and configure image fields.
The module doesn't sufficiently check access to image style derivatives when those files are served via a file stream other than private://.
This vulnerability is mitigated by the fact that Drupal must be configured to use a contributed (non-core) file scheme to serve private derived images.
Information disclosure issues like this one are not generally given security advisories (as described in PSA-2023-07-12)). This fix is provided as a hardening. Contributed modules implementing custom stream wrappers may need to add similar hardenings.
Install the latest version:
Drupal 11
Drupal 10
Checkout is fragile. Every extra step between "I want this" and "order placed" is an opportunity for a shopper to abandon their cart entirely. And one of the most common moments of hesitation happens when a buyer realizes they added the wrong item to their cart. Maybe it was the wrong format or the wrong bundle. Or, maybe the wrong billing cycle for a donation or subscription.
The fix is simple. Navigate back to the product page, add the correct item, and remove the old one from the cart. But this friction, however small, can cost conversions.
The Commerce Product Alternative module for Drupal Commerce solves this by letting shoppers swap a product variation directly in their cart. One click. No detours.
Shoppers change their minds. Someone adds a hardcover book to their cart, then realizes they want the bundle that also includes the digital download. A new member selects a one-time membership fee, then notices the auto-renewal option is more cost-effective. A donor commits to a single gift, then considers whether a recurring contribution would be better.
In each of these cases, the shopper has already committed to buying something. They're in the cart. They're ready.
Why force them to start over?
Read more read moreToday we are talking about Aaron Winborn, The award named after him, and what winning is like with guests George DeMet & April Sides. We'll also cover Summit as our module of the week.
For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/561
TopicsApril Sides - weekbeforenext George DeMet - palantir.net gdemet
HostsNic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Ashraf Abed - drupito.com ashrafabed
MOTW CorrespondentMartin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu
In 2018 we released Commerce ifthenpay, the module that brought Multibanco references to Drupal Commerce. Seven years later, we are publishing version 3.0.0: the module's biggest evolution since then, with dynamic Multibanco references generated by the ifthenpay API, MB WAY payment retries and full support for Drupal 10 and 11.
A Multibanco reference has 9 digits, and the classic local generation algorithm reserves only 4 of them for the order number. It works perfectly up to order 9999. Beyond that, the number has to be compressed to fit, and this is where mathematics turns against the store.
Version 2.x mitigated the problem by spreading order numbers across 9000 possible combinations. It sounds like a lot, but the birthday paradox is relentless: around 112 simultaneously open references are enough for a 50% chance that two different orders share exactly the same reference. In a busy store, that means payments that can be matched to the wrong order, or never reconciled at all. Worst of all, the problem is invisible: everything seems to work, until the day a customer pays and their order stays "unpaid".
Version 3.0.0 introduces a new mode on the Multibanco gateway: instead of computing the reference locally, the module requests it from the ifthenpay REST API, using the account's MB Key. The differences are structural:
The local mode remains available for backwards compatibility, and open references generated the old way keep reconciling after the switch: stores migrate with no downtime window.
When we wrote about version 2.x, MB WAY was "future development". Version 3.0.0 closes the loop: besides push payments at checkout, customers can re-send the payment request from their order history without going through checkout again, and the store team can trigger a push directly from the backoffice. Fewer orders abandoned because a push expired on someone's phone.
Version 3.0.0 supports Drupal 10 and Drupal 11, and Commerce 2.x and 3.x. The module now runs continuous integration on drupal.org, with more than 50 automated tests validating every change on both Drupal versions, and stable releases are covered by the community's security advisory policy.
If your store runs version 2.x, we recommend upgrading: the 2.x branch is no longer supported and does not include the protections against reference collisions.
composer require 'drupal/commerce_ifthenpay:^3.0'
Bloomidea develops and maintains Commerce ifthenpay and has been building Drupal Commerce stores for the Portuguese market for more than a decade: Multibanco, MB WAY, cards, Stripe and PayPal, with ERP and logistics integrations. Talk to us about your project.
Your Drupal site is on a current version, gets security updates, and technically works - yet editing is painful and every small change waits in a developer queue. The platform is rarely the problem.
Fourteen common implementation mistakes that make a Drupal site feel broken - with symptoms, diagnosis, and fixes for each. Most cost a fraction of a rebuild to put right.
read moreWhen approaching AI, I've done so warily. Maybe it was because I was a skeptic, but my first endeavors were not glowing success stories. My first real attempt to kick the tires ended with me kicking AI to the curb and doing some regex and search/replace to finish what it started. I chalk it up to a mix of model maturity and, let's be honest, my own ill-directed uses.
But more recently I've been finding wins. I find AI very useful for writing test cases for test-driven development (TDD). It's also really good at troubleshooting. It takes a bug report, follows the code paths, and writes a failing test that reproduces the bug. When you solve the problem, you can be sure you have solved it. And more importantly, that it was even a problem in the first place.
It was at this point, I realized that AI might be able to help me with my Drupal Core maintainer duties. For those that don’t know, I maintain an insane number of contrib modules and am a core subsystem maintainer in 3 areas, namely migrate, image, and authentication/authorization. The last area of auth/authZ is in desperate need of modernization.
The planning issue requirements and roadmap are all open. The community design review hasn't started yet, so now is a good time to take a look: [Plan] YAML-Based Pluggable Authentication Flow
The first part of the problem for auth/authZ is that there aren't any core components in the core issue queue for the sub system. I have to look in a few module queues and the base system to find relevant issues. I filed this issue to establish a dedicated auth/authZ component in the Drupal core queue.
To help me get my mind around the space, I had AI query all 1,200 issues in the module-based issue queues. Then it spun out from there to find referenced issues. I leveraged a local file cache of d.o issues so I didn’t have to hit the drupal.org API repeatedly as I was tweaking the discovery.
This demonstrates the first lesson I’ve learned with AI. It is really good at doing directed research and planning. But you need to give it guard rails. I had to tell it to add a cache. I had to tweak the issue filters. I had to think about what I wanted. AI wouldn’t think for me. But at the end, I had several hundred issues downloaded locally.
Then came the next step. I asked AI to create a mind map using mermaid.live. With over 1,000 issues, I didn’t want something that was too unmanageable. I picked a couple issues that seemed key to me and asked AI to give me a mind map with issues directly related to authentication (excluding authorization for the moment). That shrank things down to just a few hundred. But the large picture of categorized issues in a mind map started to tell a story.
The mind map story led me back to the planning phase again. This time I used BMAD, an AI methodology specifically structured to guide planning a task using AI. I fed it the pain points and asked it to look at some reference PHP and non-PHP authentication frameworks. It researched Laravel, Symfony, Drupal and Keycloak. At this point I had enough data to request it to write some pros/cons and possible pseudo implementations.
Somewhere in this whole process DrupalCon Chicago happened. Then a few weeks later MidCamp in Chicago happened. This gave me ready access to real people to bounce ideas off. They asked some really great questions. I fed these questions back into AI and refined the design even further.
Then more recently, I had the opportunity to speak at a Drupal meetup on Zoom. I took all the data I’d gathered, the mind maps, the design artifacts generated by BMAD and created a nice slideshow presentation. But the source data was from research provided by AI. The attendees at the meetup had even more feedback. I fed this feedback back into AI and now have a pretty defensible architecture for a new authentication system in Drupal core — the YAML-Based Pluggable Authentication Flow outlined in the planning issue. Broken down into phases with dependencies identified between phases of work.
We haven’t built the new system. No code has been written. But AI helped architect everything. I don’t think a human could parse that many hundreds of drupal.org issues, create a mind map, and build a new architecture without massive amounts of effort. AI is great at holding lots of nuggets of data in memory all at once. It is optimally designed to help with just such a task as I went through.
Time will tell if the architecture co-developed by AI proves useful. I do know it has helped with the “blank sheet of paper” -syndrome. The feeling where you know you need to do something but don’t know where to start. You just sit there staring at the blank sheet of paper hoping for inspiration. Even if we entirely threw out the new architecture, we have something to start.
For those interested in the artifacts from this discovery, you can visit https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal/issues/3593328.
read morephpstan-drupal 2.1.0 is out. The theme of this release: rules and behaviors that proved themselves as opt-ins are now the defaults. If you run `composer update` and see new errors, that is the release working as intended — everything below includes the configuration to opt back out.
These rules shipped as opt-ins over the 2.0 cycle. They have had time to bake, and they catch real bugs, so they no longer require configuration:
read moreJoin us THURSDAY, July 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 at https://nten.org/drupal/notes!
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.
Join us THURSDAY, July 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 at https://nten.org/drupal/notes!
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.
Getting each audience to the right section is only half the job. The harder part is making the experience feel personal and routing every visitor to the right form without a maze of options.
Part 2 of this Drupal guide covers user journeys, smart Webform contact routing, and pragmatic content personalization for multiple audiences.
read moreOne website, three completely different visitors. The hardest part of a multi-audience site is not building it - it is making sure each group finds its path without tripping over everyone else's.
Part 1 of this Drupal guide covers audience research, hybrid navigation strategy, and how to structure content with taxonomy, menus, and Views.
read moreToday we are talking about Content, syndication, and Synchronization between Drupal Sites with guest Thiemo Müller. We'll also cover Drupal core 11.4 as our module of the week.
For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/560
TopicsThiemo Müller - content-sync.io thiemo
HostsNic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Ashraf Abed - drupito.com ashrafabed
MOTW CorrespondentMartin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu
This is the second and final part of a two-part guide to building a component-based corporate website with Drupal Paragraphs. Turn the bare components from part 1 into a flexible, production-grade library with color variants, responsive layouts, spacing controls, conditional fields, and admin UX.
Add style variants with CSS custom properties and Paragraphs behavior plugins, build mobile-first responsive layouts, give editors margin and padding controls, and polish the admin experience with Gin, conditional fields, and smart defaults.
read moreRecent Drupal news fits inside a wider question Dries Buytaert raised in his blog post, License-only versus Stewarded Open Source: what turns code that is merely available into infrastructure people can depend on? The distinction is useful because this week’s updates are not only about individual announcements. They show the work that sits behind dependable open source: governance, maintenance, security response, shared knowledge, and long-term care.
The 2026 Drupal Association at-large board election brings that work into the governance layer. One community-elected seat on the association’s board is now moving through its election cycle, giving individual members a direct role in how Drupal’s institutional support is represented. In a project where technical decisions and community structures constantly shape each other, governance is not a background process. It is part of how shared infrastructure is kept accountable.
The same distinction between availability and dependability appears in the ten contributed-project security advisories published on 8 July 2026. Four were rated Critical. Three direct site owners to uninstall unsupported projects, while the fourth addresses SQL injection in Location Selector. Unsupported projects may still exist in repositories and production sites, but that does not make them safe to keep using.
For site teams, the response is practical rather than abstract. Affected modules need to be identified, fixed releases need to be applied where available, and unsupported projects without advisory-listed fixes need to be removed. This is the maintenance layer of open source that rarely attracts attention until something breaks.
ECA crossing 20,000 reported Drupal site installations shows the same issue from the maintainer side. The Event-Condition-Action module allows site builders to model workflows through events, conditions, and actions instead of relying on custom glue code. Adoption at that scale is not just a usage milestone; it changes the weight of future commits, API decisions, and compatibility promises.
In a written response to The DropTimes, project co-founder Jürgen Haas said the milestone changes how he thinks about maintenance responsibility. That is the cost of relevance in practical form. Once a module becomes part of thousands of working sites, its maintainers are no longer only improving a tool. They are helping support a piece of shared infrastructure.
The week’s event deadlines extend the same theme into community programming. Pacific Northwest Drupal Summit 2026 is accepting proposals ahead of its October event in Vancouver, British Columbia, while DrupalCamp Italy 2026 has extended its Call for Papers to 31 July 2026 for its one-day camp in Bologna. Event programmes are another support structure for the ecosystem because they turn project work, lessons, failures, and experiments into knowledge others can use.
Taken together, these updates make a selected but coherent brief. They are not the whole week in Drupal, and they are not a ranking of every important story. They are a thread through the work that keeps open source dependable after the code is released: electing representatives, closing security gaps, maintaining widely used modules, and making room for contributors to share what they are learning.
Readers can follow The DropTimes on LinkedIn, Twitter, Bluesky, and Facebook, or join the publication’s Drupal Slack channel at #thedroptimes.
(Allen Jason, junior sub-editor at The DropTimes, writes and curates this week’s Editor’s Pick.)
read moreThis is part 1 of a two-part guide to building a component-based corporate website with Drupal Paragraphs. By the end of the series you'll have a library of 10-12 universal paragraph types with style variants, responsive layouts, and editor-friendly spacing controls.
Plan a reusable component library, set up the Paragraphs module, and build Hero, Text + Image, and Feature Grid paragraph types with Twig templates and CSS.
read moreAt DrupalCon Rotterdam 2026, AI takes its place at the heart of how modern Drupal platforms are built, integrated, and scaled. The Development, AI & Agentic Architecture track puts that front and centre—focusing on complex architectures, automation, and intelligent systems in real-world environments.
This is not about hype. It’s about what’s already changing.
AI is moving from experimentation to everyday use—powering intelligent search, automating workflows, enabling personalization, and supporting content creation. It’s reshaping how digital teams operate and how platforms deliver value.
But with that power comes responsibility.
In the Drupal ecosystem, AI is being approached with a clear focus on privacy, transparency, accountability, security, resilience, and human control. This is where the conversation gets real—and where Drupal stands out.
At DrupalCon, the key question isn’t just what AI can do. It’s how to use it effectively in complex, production-ready environments.
Teams are actively exploring:
These are not theoretical challenges—they’re critical decisions shaping the next generation of digital platforms.
Drupal provides a unique foundation for making AI practical.
Here, AI is not explored in isolation, It’s applied within structured content models, complex workflows, deep integrations, and strong governance frameworks—all backed by open-source principles.
For attendees, this makes AI more than a trend. It becomes a tangible, actionable part of modern Drupal delivery.
DrupalCon Rotterdam 2026 is where AI moves from idea to implementation.
If you want to understand how intelligent systems are being applied in real Drupal projects—and how to use them responsibly and effectively—this is where the conversation happens.
- Article by Daniela Moreira.
Continue the conversation at DrupalCon Rotterdam 2026, where the Development, AI & Agentic Architecture track explores the technologies, strategies, and decisions shaping open digital ecosystems.
👉 Register for DrupalCon Rotterdam 2026
Step debugging is one of the first things every developer should master in any language or environment, and it's my opinion that it's just as fundamental as version control. With DDEV, getting Xdebug working with PhpStorm takes less than five minutes and no php.ini fiddling. This screencast shows the whole thing on a TYPO3 project, start to finish.
ddev xdebug onddev xdebug onThat's it. No manual php.ini changes, no fussing with host.docker.internal, no separate Xdebug install.
This screencast uses PhpStorm, but the same setup works identically with VS Code, on Linux, and on Windows with WSL2. If you're setting up a new machine, see:
ddev utility xdebug-diagnose --interactive command can help with port conflict and related setup problems. Try it out!Xdebug is created and maintained by Derick Rethans. He's been maintaining it for 20+ years. Send money to the Xdebug project!. The DDEV Foundation supports it as an upstream project, you can too.
If you have questions, reach out in any of the support channels.
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This article was edited and refined with assistance from Claude Code.
read moreThis is the fifth post in our GitLab issue migration series. So far we’ve covered the immediate changes, the new workflow for migrated projects, how to use it, and what the migration looks like from a contributor’s perspective. This post is about which projects we’re migrating next, and why.
We are now migrating projects maintained by Ripple Makers, the individual members of the Drupal Association. If you’re a Ripple Maker who maintains one or more contrib projects, this is our thank you for your membership.
Migrating issues to GitLab, and running GitLab itself, has a real cost. There is engineering time for the migration tooling, upgrades for git.drupalcode.org, and ongoing work on the integrations that keep contribution credit, issue forks, and the rest of the Drupal.org glue working smoothly.
That cost is covered by the people and organizations who fund the Drupal Association: Ripple Makers and Drupal Certified Partners. As we schedule migration batches, we are prioritizing projects maintained by members and projects supported by Drupal Certified Partners.
To be clear: every project will eventually be migrated. Membership doesn’t change whether your project moves; it changes when. Prioritizing members is a small way to say thank you to the people whose contributions make the infrastructure itself possible.
If you’d like your projects prioritized, and, more importantly, if you’d like to support the infrastructure that the whole Drupal ecosystem runs on, this is a good moment:
Membership funds don’t just pay for GitLab. They keep Drupal.org, project packaging, GitLab CI, automatic updates infrastructure, and more running for everyone, members and non-members alike.
Found a bug in the migration itself or in the integration between Drupal.org and GitLab? Please file it in the Drupal.org customizations issue queue.
Have a question, or want to share feedback on the new workflow? Join the #gitlab-issues-feedback channel on the Drupal community Slack.
We’re continuing to iterate on this transition based on what we hear from maintainers and contributors in migrated projects. Your feedback now shapes the experience for the rest of contrib later.
Related blog posts in this series:
Related issues
By the Drupal AI Initiative
Following our announcement last week introducing Inside AI and Outside AI, we are excited to share how we are scaling our leadership and organizational structure to support these two parallel workstreams.
What started as an ambitious vision originally founded by Jamie Abrahams from FreelyGive quickly gained community-wide momentum. In June 2025, our founding partners – 1xINTERNET, Acquia, Dropsolid, FreelyGive, and Salsa Digital – came together to establish the official Drupal AI Initiative, providing a cohesive strategy, baseline funding, and dedicated staff. Since then, the initiative has grown rapidly to encompass over 30 partner organizations, with many of their team members stepping directly into key leadership and execution roles.
To support our rapid growth and ensure effective daily coordination, we are evolving our structure into a more robust, three-tier governance model comprising a Drupal AI Board, a Drupal AI Leadership Team, and our existing community of AI Partners.
The purpose of the Drupal AI Leadership Team is to coordinate day-to-day project execution, align technical and cross-functional work streams, and ensure all initiative activities successfully deliver on our strategic goals.
At the center of this governance evolution, this team formalizes leadership roles that have organically emerged and evolved over the past year. Rather than introducing a brand-new operational layer, this structure officially empowers the individual contributors who have already been actively driving the initiative's day-to-day work.
By having dedicated, individual leads taking ownership of specific subject-matter areas, we ensure that every key aspect of the initiative has focused guidance. This structure also provides a natural avenue for our partner organizations to showcase their technical talent and gain visibility within the ecosystem, while placing experienced contributors in charge of critical technical and horizontal areas.
The Leadership Team's execution is divided into two distinct, cooperative disciplines:
This division ensures that technical teams can focus on delivering robust functionality, while cross-functional leads act as an internal agency to validate, test, document, and promote those features before they reach users.
In an upcoming post, we will share more details about the leadership team structure, introduce our current domain leads, and outline vacant positions.
Our founding partners, who previously made up the initiative's core steering group, are transitioning to become the members of the Drupal AI Board.
The Board serves as the strategic and supporting foundation for the Leadership Team, establishing a strong, predictable operational environment. Rather than individual developers having to balance ecosystem coordination, funding allocations, and administrative hurdles alongside daily coding, the Board takes on these responsibilities.
Composed of our founding partner companies, the Board is responsible for setting the high-level strategy, defining the general initiative direction, and prioritizing our long-term roadmap. In addition to guiding this overarching strategy, the Board provides baseline initiative funding and staff, manages overall ecosystem alignment, and secures ongoing partner resource commitments. This structural backing ensures a stable operational runway, allowing the Board to focus on defining leadership functions, appointing execution leads, and securing the necessary resource allocations so developers can focus strictly on build and delivery.
For the developers, builders, and content creators actively contributing to the initiative, the day-to-day experience will feel familiar, but with clearer support structures.
Our established sprinting procedures remain completely unchanged. The community and partner teams will continue to collaborate on their scheduled sprints.
However, we are introducing two key improvements:
This structural evolution ensures that everything built by both Inside AI and Outside AI integrates seamlessly with the broader Drupal AI roadmap and aligns directly with our collective short term and long-term goals.
As we step into this new phase of growth, we are looking for dedicated partners and brilliant minds to help execute our goals.
The Drupal AI Initiative is made possible by the generous funding, resources, and technical contributions of our partner network. We are incredibly grateful to these companies for driving the future of open-source AI:
You can view the full list and status of our contributing sponsors on the official Drupal AI Partners directory.
I’ve been part of the Drupal community for nearly twenty years, contributing as a former Drupal Association Board member, founder and Chair of Drupal Colorado, organizer of DrupalCamp Colorado, speaker, mentor, volunteer, and advocate. Professionally, I work at the intersection of technology, strategy, and community. Today I’m AI Ambassador at amazee.io, where I help organizations explore responsible open source AI and contribute to the Drupal AI Strategic Initiative. Before that, I spent nearly a decade at Pfizer leading enterprise digital platforms, global web strategy, and AI initiatives. Beyond my professional work, I’m a passionate advocate for neuroinclusion, accessibility, and universal design. As someone who is autistic, has ADHD, and dyslexia, I believe our strongest communities are the ones that welcome different perspectives and different ways of thinking. Whether I’m organizing an event, mentoring a new contributor, speaking at a conference, or serving on a nonprofit board, my goal is always the same: leave Drupal stronger than I found it and help create opportunities for the next generation of contributors. If you’d like to learn more about my background and contributions, you’ll find additional details on my Drupal.org profile.
For me, Drupal started as software, but it evolved into community.
If Drupal disappeared tomorrow, I’d still have some of my closest friends, mentors, and confidants because of the relationships this project has created. That’s how I know community is the most enduring thing we’ve built together.
Building community isn’t just about attracting new people. It’s about creating an environment where they feel welcome, where they can learn, contribute, grow into leadership, and eventually help the next generation do the same.
Over the past twenty years, I’ve tried to contribute to that in whatever way I could: organizing DrupalCamp Colorado, helping found the Event Organizers Working Group, serving on the Drupal Association Board, mentoring first-time speakers, advocating for neuroinclusion, contributing to the Drupal AI Initiative, and simply making time for people who are looking for a place to belong.
Strong communities don’t happen by accident. They require stewardship, empathy, and a willingness to invest in people for the long term. When we build systems that help people succeed, we don’t just strengthen the community, we strengthen Drupal itself.
Advocating for Drupal means helping people see not only what Drupal is today, but what it can become.
Sometimes that means introducing someone to Drupal for the first time. Sometimes it means helping an organization adopt Drupal or contribute back to the project. Increasingly, it means representing Drupal in conversations far beyond our own community.
Over the past year, I’ve had the opportunity to speak about Drupal and open source in places where Drupal hasn’t traditionally had a voice, including AI conferences, international open source events, and United Nations Open Source Week. Those conversations reinforced something I’ve believed for a long time: Drupal has an important story to tell, but we need to be telling it more often and to more audiences.
Advocacy also means being honest. It means celebrating what makes Drupal exceptional while also recognizing that we face real challenges. The technology landscape is changing rapidly. Open source is evolving. Communities have new expectations. If we want Drupal to thrive for the next twenty years, we need to be willing to innovate while remaining true to the values that have always defined us: openness, collaboration, inclusion, and community.
For me, advocating for Drupal means showing up, listening carefully, building bridges, and helping ensure that Drupal continues to be a project the world looks to as a leader in open source.
I’m running because I believe Drupal is at one of the most important moments in its history.
We’re navigating enormous opportunities through AI, changing expectations around open source, and an increasingly challenging economic environment. At the same time, many members of our community are asking an important question: “Is anyone listening?”
I believe they deserve to be heard.
The Drupal Association exists to serve the project and its community. That means more than delivering programs and organizing events. It means listening carefully, communicating transparently, and ensuring that contributors feel they have a meaningful voice in the future of Drupal.
Over the past year I’ve worked to help move Drupal forward through the Drupal AI Initiative, advocacy, training, mentoring, and community building. Those experiences have reinforced something I’ve believed for a long time: our greatest strength isn’t our technology alone. It’s the people who choose to invest their time, talent, and trust in this project.
If elected, I’ll work to strengthen that trust by helping build a Drupal Association that is financially resilient, forward-looking, and deeply connected to the community it serves. I want contributors to know that their voices matter, that their concerns are heard, and that together we’re building a stronger future for Drupal.
That’s why I’m running.
I bring a combination of experience that I believe is particularly valuable for the Drupal Association at this point in its history.
I’ve served on the Drupal Association Board before, chaired its Governance Committee, and helped shape governance changes that continue to guide the organization today. Beyond Drupal, I’ve spent nearly two decades serving on nonprofit boards and understand both the strategic responsibilities and fiduciary duties that effective governance requires.
I’m also deeply engaged in Drupal’s future. Through the Drupal AI Strategic Initiative, my work as AI Ambassador at amazee.io, community training, speaking, and mentoring, I’ve been helping contributors understand and adopt new technologies while staying true to Drupal’s values of openness, transparency, and collaboration.
At the same time, I remain connected to the grassroots community. I’ve helped lead DrupalCamp Colorado for nineteen years, continue to mentor new contributors and speakers, and believe some of the best ideas for Drupal begin in our local communities.
Finally, I bring experience from outside our ecosystem. After nearly a decade leading enterprise digital platforms and AI initiatives at Pfizer, I understand the challenges and expectations of the organizations that choose Drupal. That perspective helps bridge the needs of enterprise users with the values that make Drupal unique.
Experience and vision matter. But leadership is ultimately measured by showing up, especially when the work is hard. I’ve tried to do that consistently for nearly twenty years: listening, building, mentoring, organizing, and helping leave this community stronger than I found it. If you choose to place your trust in me again, that’s exactly how I’ll serve on the Drupal Association Board.
My favourite Drupal memory goes all the way back to DrupalCon Barcelona in 2007.
I had just joined a Drupal agency, and my connection to the community was still very small. I’d been to a few local meetups when one of the founders asked, “Do you have a passport? Would you like to go to Barcelona?” My answer was an immediate, “Yes!”
There were only about 430 people at that DrupalCon, and for the first time I found myself surrounded by the people whose names I’d been seeing in the issue queues and documentation. I met Dries Buytaert, Moshe Weitzman, Karoly “chx” Negyesi, Morten Birch Heide-Jørgensen (MortenDK), Gábor Hojtsy, Jeff Eaton, Merlin of Chaos, Angie “webchick” Byron, and so many others who were shaping Drupal’s future.
What struck me wasn’t that they were influential. It was that they were approachable. They welcomed questions, shared ideas freely, and treated a newcomer like I belonged there.
That experience changed the trajectory of my career. It showed me that Drupal wasn’t just exceptional software. It was an exceptional community. Looking back, I think that’s the moment I stopped being someone who used Drupal and started becoming someone who wanted to help build Drupal.
Today, one of my favourite parts of every DrupalCon is welcoming someone who’s attending for the first time. Twenty years ago, the community made room for me. Ever since, I’ve tried to do the same for others.
I'm Helge, 50 years old, originally from northern Norway and now based in Bergen, Norway, married with one child. I've worked with Drupal for over 20 years as a user, developer, and project manager, and hold a degree in philosophy that shapes how I approach problem-solving and community work.
Since 2017 I've organized the PHP Bergen / Drupal Bergen meetups, and since 2024 I've served on the board of Drupal Norway. Outside of Drupal, I enjoy cooking, 3D printing, and open source more broadly.
To me, building community means bringing people together around a shared goal and giving them a reason to keep showing up — including me.
Over the years I've learned that it's really about building real relationships, not just connections of convenience: staying curious about new people, and making sure new faces feel just as welcome as familiar ones. Above all, it's about sharing knowledge. Even though I might not be the best programmer, I've both learned a lot from others and seen others grow through the knowledge we've shared
To me, advocating for Drupal means standing up for open source as a model that benefits everyone, not just those who can afford proprietary alternatives. It means helping keep the internet open — built on shared, transparent code rather than closed platforms controlled by a few.
It also means taking security seriously, since trust in open source depends on the community's commitment to building and maintaining software responsibly. Advocating for Drupal isn't just about promoting a CMS; it's about promoting the values behind it — openness, collaboration, and shared responsibility for the tools we all depend on.
After more than 20 years working with Drupal — as a user, developer, and project manager — I want to take the next step and contribute more directly to the project's future, beyond what I've done locally through meetups and the Drupal Norway board.
I believe Drupal needs to invest more in marketing and clearly communicating its strengths, especially as the CMS landscape becomes more crowded and competitive. I also think the community needs a balanced, thoughtful approach to AI — embracing the opportunities it offers while being deliberate about how it's integrated into the project and its workflows.
Finally, I'm motivated by the need to bring in more junior developers and contributors; Drupal's long-term health depends on building a pipeline of new talent who can carry the project forward. Running for the board is my way of turning two decades of experience into a more active role in shaping where Drupal goes next.
I bring over 20 years of hands-on experience with Drupal, combined with a varied professional background spanning sales, marketing, development, and project management. That combination is exactly why I want to focus on two things I see as key drivers for Drupal's future: marketing Drupal more effectively toward large and public sector organizations, and making Drupal accessible to younger generations of developers and contributors.
Since my time as a student at university, I've been involved in volunteer projects, and I've carried that same commitment into organizing the Bergen meetups and serving on the Drupal Norway board — experience that's taught me how to bring people together around a shared goal. I want to put that experience to work for the Drupal Association, helping the project grow both its institutional reach and its next generation of contributors.
One of my favorite memories is from an early Drupal Bergen meetup, where a group of shop employees showed up completely bewildered — they'd actually meant to go to an escape room and ended up with us instead. Once they were there, they stuck around, and ended up thoroughly impressed by what Drupal can do, even though they were probably about as far from our target audience as you could get.
Hi, I'm Janna. I’m a software engineer based in Australia, and day-to-day I wear a lot of hats—from team lead and developer to accessibility tester on all kinds of projects. I care a lot about open source, which is why you’ll usually find me co-organising local WordPress meetups, running Drupal code sprints, or helping out with DrupalSouth. I'm also out there speaking at various tech events such as AI engineer and DDD conferences; a couple of my recent presentations were “Secure By Design” and “Engineering for the Agentic Web When 50% of Your Traffic is Robots.” I’m contributing to Drupal code, updating documentation, and working on community initiatives every single week. After running for the board back in 2024, I’m excited to step up again to support our global community.
Building community means putting down the microphone and actually doing the work to bring people together. With the disconnect we’re all feeling post-COVID and in the rush toward AI, I believe we desperately need the human factor back. For me, it’s about creating physical spaces where one human being sits down and listens to the concerns of another. Whether that's organising local meetups, running conferences, or setting up monthly sprints, I focus on the logistics that get people into the same room so anyone, regardless of their skill level, feels included, heard, and welcomed.
Advocating for Drupal means earning back popularity among newcomers (student, teachers) and rebuilding the credibility with technical users who have moved on to other systems. Drupal needs to be a practical, go-to tool for small site builders, independent businesses, and universities. Real advocacy also means protecting how Drupal is discovered. In a world driven by LLMs and AI search engines, we have to ensure our documentation is clean, versioned, and accurate so these tools index modern Drupal correctly, rather than providing not so relevant or confusing documentation or outdated examples.
I am running to help the Association to focus back to three critical areas that are vital for Drupal's long-term future:
You should vote for me if you feel that Drupal leadership is turning conservative. I'm hands-on and I don't live on the island. Every single week, I am on the ground contributing to Drupal code, running local meetups, and organising conferences like DrupalSouth. But I also step outside our bubble to actively promote Drupal at other major tech events. Vote for me if you want a progressive, non-conservative voice on the board - someone focused, competitive, and relevant to the wider dev community.
Nothing beats the spark when people discover Drupal for the first time. Whether I’m working with clients, mentoring students, collaborating with fellow presenters, or bouncing ideas off colleagues, I love that exact moment when the lightbulb goes off. Seeing someone realise the sheer potential of what they can build with Drupal is incredibly rewarding, and it’s what keeps me energised to do this work.
I am the volunteer project lead for Drupal Forge and a member of the community health team. I joined the Drupal community in 2005 and have been contributing ever since. Until 2026, I maintained the Drupal platform for Estée Lauder Companies as a senior software engineer at Cognizant. I live in Lakeland, Florida with my wife, three sons, and two cats.
Building community means two things:
We all own every Drupal project. We should continue to prioritize accessibility for people of all abilities in our products, tools, and events. We need to do a better job of responding to behavior that makes people feel unwelcome. We should not treat volunteers who maintain projects as if they were paid employees maintaining something we bought.
We need to improve our ability to work with people of different languages, skills, and availability. Many issues have been ignored for years because a contributor did not provide a requested test or change notice. We should establish a norm of assuming people have given their best; and, if more is needed, it’s up to the rest of us to move it forward.
To me, advocating for Drupal means spreading its value widely and making it easy to discover. Advocating for Drupal includes promoting the wider open source ecosystem and helping more vendors distribute ready made, fully customizable experiences to users. Everyone has a stake in Drupal; they just need to realize it.
I have a vision for making the value of Drupal easier to discover. In 2024 I moved to fulfill this vision by founding Drupal Forge as a community platform for zero-friction trial experiences. My vision includes developing ready-made kits for launching Drupal businesses. I want to ensure that Drupal experts like me always have work and that Drupal benefits projects that are too small for big agencies but introduce it to a wider audience.
I believe the Drupal Association is ready to lead us to this vision. After two years of leading from outside, it is time for me to try leading from within.
I have proved my effectiveness by leading the Drupal Forge project. I know the Drupal community from 20 years of contribution. I also know the challenges facing new members from volunteering as a mentor for Discover Drupal, the Open University Initiative, and Drupal events.
Like many of you, I lost a secure, well-paid job when the company I worked with switched to a different platform. I am committed to regaining the ground we have lost. I understand the value of Drupal. Drupal is not only more open but also ahead of other platforms in many ways. In many cases where Drupal is not the right solution, it is very close to being the right solution and just needs a push to get there.
My single favorite moment is the first time I installed Drupal and learned how many features I could enable without writing code.
I'm a software developer located in Los Angeles. I've contributed some modules and even a little code for D11.
It means expanding the community by reaching out to developers and users of other CMSes.
It means explaining to various audiences what Drupal can do for them. That starts with having a system that can be used by a wide range of people, not just experts.
I have three goals (expanded on below):
I'm already trying to make Drupal more usable by a wider range of people. For instance, I'm trying to make the permissions page easier to understand. I'm also the author of a wrapper for composer. That lets users run composer commands without having to learn how to use the command line. Having to deal with composer, SSH, etc is one of the main reasons why many won't use Drupal. An insecure configuration where the web server can write to code directories is not the answer.
Although my contribution to D11 is small, it's one of my favorite memories of this project.
To expand on the above, if people want to put messages on their profile pages or on the pages for projects they administer, they should feel free to do so. However, Drupal itself shouldn't take a stance on political issues. Another aspect of this is opposing censorship, brigading, in-fighting, etc etc. Well over a million people have signed up for Drupal accounts but, as issues languishing for years shows, there aren't enough active developers already. Let's work towards increasing that number.
As for the second item, I personally wouldn't be doing the developer outreach but would help recruit ambassadors/evangelists to promote Drupal as an option on various forums and so on. Representing themselves as ambassadors, they could correct misconceptions; for instance, some years ago I saw several people on a forum who thought that Drupal was intertwined with Flash.
For the third item, the U.S. government and other large organizations make extensive use of Drupal and don't contribute as much as they take in many cases. Asking them to contribute money is problematic because it would favor some over others. The best thing is to ask them to contribute in the issues queues. Those ambassadors can reach out through various channels and urge such participation.