webjoke.de

I've been running this site for about 18 years now and the code I post has been in much the same format since it was started. The code is rendered onto the page using a <code> element and (mostly) syntax highlighted using a JavaScript plugin.

I make use of sites like Codepen and JSFiddle quite a bit, and often link to those sites to show examples of the code in use. Those sites got me thinking about the static nature of the code examples on this site. I have been writing more front end code recently, but static code examples aren't the best way of showing these features in action. I can (and have) uploaded images and gifs of the feature in action, but those images are many times the size of the code examples in question and serve only to bloat the page.

What I would really like to do is allow active code examples, or a code sandbox, to be injected into the page. This would allow users to interact with code examples rather than them just being static. Clearly a valuable learning tool for any site.

I know that it's possible to embed Codepen examples into a page, but not only does that require a premium subscription, it also creates a disconnect between the code and the content on the site. I wanted a solution that would allow me to write the article and the code examples all within the back end of the Drupal site.

Hosting code examples on a third party site also comes with some risk as if that site went offline then all of the code examples on my site would stop working. By self hosting I can make the editing experience better and also ensure that everything works correctly.

What I needed for the site now was some form of code sandbox that could be used to demonstrate simple JavaScript and CSS code without being tied to a third party supplier. I therefore did some searching around to find a suitable container for the code.

Read more

Building a custom theme for Drupal Canvas requires integrating Tailwind CSS with Drupal's component system. This tutorial demonstrates the process of creating a theme from scratch, setting up the build tooling, and developing components that work with the Canvas page builder.

In the video above, you'll learn how to generate a theme using Drush, configure Tailwind CSS with Vite, create page templates with proper region handling, style elements using preprocessors, and build Single Directory Components for Drupal Canvas.

AI Single Page Importer: Fast, Flexible Single-page Imports for Drupal

AI Single Page Importer is a Drupal contributed module designed to help bring content into a Drupal site from a single URL or source page in a streamlined way.

markconroy 17th Jan 2026

One of the gold standards of impeccable search engine optimization (SEO) is using canonical tags for your web pages. These small but powerful tools make a big difference; they help you avoid duplicate content issues and keep your SEO signals strong.

 

DrupalCon Chicago 2026’s Trivia Night promises to be an unforgettable evening filled with fun, laughter, and the perfect opportunity to meet fascinating people. The event is being organized by a dedicated and diverse team eager to showcase the best of Chicago and welcome everyone into the fold.

Trivia is taking a new form this year - three questions per round and six total rounds, each with different point values and levels of difficulty. You and your team will go head-to-head with other groups, tackling a variety of topics, including Drupal, Chicago, and pop culture. Our amazing DJ Kerry will be in charge of the music and the scoreboard. Get ready to "name that tune"—music rounds will count for points too! Oh, and you might want to practice your handwriting, because this year, trivia is going back to analog.

Image

Photo Gobinath Mallaiyan licensed as CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Between rounds, why not make a new friend? Trivia Night isn’t just about answering questions—it’s a celebration! We come together to mark the end of another amazing DrupalCon, sharing stories of the week and preparing for the work to come. Take this chance to strengthen old connections and forge new ones.

Chicago might be cold outside, but our gathering will be full of warmth and excitement! Enjoy the night, make plenty of toasts, share lots of laughs, and most importantly, have fun. That’s what Trivia Night is all about!

Mark your calendars for Thursday, March 26 from 6pm - 9pm at the Weather Mark Tavern (1503 S Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60605). Free food and drinks and awesome prizes for the winners!

Cuando una sola Vista necesita ordenar múltiples tipos de contenido que dependen de distintos campos de fecha, las configuraciones estándar de Views y Search API no son suficientes. Este artículo explica cómo resolver esa limitación creando un campo personalizado en Search API que asigna dinámicamente la fecha correcta según las reglas de cada tipo de contenido. Al centralizar la lógica en el momento de la indexación, se logra un ordenamiento consistente, mejor rendimiento y una solución escalable que evita configuraciones complejas en Views.

Drupal turned 25. A personal thank-you to the project and community that shaped my career, values, and understanding of good software.

2026 Plans and Notes

Every year we try to lay out a bit of a plan for the coming year.

One of DDEV's primary strengths is our connection to a wonderful community, so each year turns out a bit different than expected. As we listen to people's actual experience, we try to adjust. And of course as upstream changes bring new features and bugs, we get lots of fun things to work on that we could never have anticipated. The items listed here are notes about what we think we understand at this point, but the year ahead and user experience and requests will affect what really happens.

We look forward to your input as the year goes forward.

Community

Community is core to our strength and growth. We are committed to maintaining the outstanding support that we offer for free and keeping that communication line open. And we want to continue to grow the amazing corps of contributors who offer improvements to the DDEV ecosystem.

Board of Directors

In 2025 we established Board of Directors, but now we have to learn what that means. The Board will have to establish itself, begin helping to determine priorities, and find its way to a strong oversight role. Here are a few issues to toss to the board early:

• Governance strategy and technique. Meetings? Voting?
• Overall Marketing/Fundraising strategy, including Fundraising drive
• Consider spending more on AI (Higher level of Claude Code plans)
• Discuss and create AI strategy, including policy, guidelines, tools, etc.
• How many conferences to attend (and what conferences) and spending priorities
• Should we move toward a Freemium model with "premium" features? What infrastructure and code would be required?

Features and Initiatives

• Consider a general AI strategy for DDEV users. How can we support the community in its use of AI for web development? Many platforms (like Laravel) have explicit MCPs; people want to know how to use them with DDEV.
• Update macOS install blog + Xdebug usage blog (carried forward from 2025)
• AI Sandboxing as key DDEV feature (from issue)
• Consider MCP (for projects) as key DDEV feature
• Consider MCP for DDEV (experimental PR)
• Integration of mkcert CA without use of external mkcert tool
• Start a project without ddev config, Consider offering ddev config --auto or ddev config when ddev start in a directory without config (issue)
• Explore using real certificates instead of mkcert CA
• Subdomains for extra ports/services instead of separate ports. (Prereq for some web-based setups like coder). See the blog on this approach.
• Coder support for subdomains. Could codespaces use some proxy/redirect technique to route subdomains to main item, but have a header that determined how traefik would route it?
• Use a DDEV proxy on the host to allow commands like ddev list and ddev describe and ddev launch to work from inside the web container.
• Explore moving Mutagen completely into container (syncing between volume and bind-mount)
• Improved management of .ddev/.env* files, marking DDEV-owned lines, etc.
• More work on web-based setups like Coder and Codespaces and Dev Containers in general.
• Explore environment adjustments that might let users work "inside the web container" as if they were on a real host (use composer instead of ddev composer, etc). People can already do this with ddev ssh, but that isn't directly compatible with VS Code or PhpStorm.
• Serialize concurrent runs of ddev start and similar commands.
• Move the DDEV IntelliJ/PhpStorm plugin to the DDEV organization.

Procedures

• Randy and Stas have always done timekeeping and timesheet reporting, but will improve their reporting a bit with categories/projects in 2026. discussion.
• Explore additional benefits of being open source and 501(c)(3) nonprofit. We have a number of benefits already, including GitHub nonprofit status, etc. But we can probably get additional benefits from AWS, etc. (JetBrains and Docker also provide us open source benefits.)

2026 Planning Additional Notes Recognized Risks

We are a very small organization, so we try to pay careful attention to the risks as we go forward. In many ways, these are the same as the 2025 noted risks.

• Key maintainer Stas lives in a very volatile situation in Ukraine, and none of us knows how to predict the future. Physical risks, communication risks, and financial transfer risks are always possible.
• Randy is not young and can always face new risks.
• The financial outlook for discretionary funding from agencies and hosting companies (and perhaps individuals) remains horrible.
• Any of our maintainers can become overworked or discouraged or can burn out. We take the risk of burnout and overwork very seriously and are careful to talk about them and try to prevent them.
• Mutagen maintenance and future: Mutagen is a critical part of DDEV, and it's in maintenance-only mode since Jacob went to work for Docker. It's outstanding in quality, so should last, and Jacob has been responsive when there are problems. Its future is not clear.
• Scope expansion could be unsustainable. We support so many different environments, and our testing is so enormous. Without the current expertise, we couldn't maintain the existing scope.

Minor Notes Past Plans and Reviews

Previous plans and reviews have obviously framed this year's plans: 2025 Plans and 2024 review, 2024 plans

In preparing for this, we have been discussing these things in regular advisory group meetings and a specific brainstorming meeting.

We always want to hear from you about your experiences with DDEV as the year goes along!

Want to keep up as the month goes along? Follow us on:

• Monthly Newsletter
• blog
• LinkedIn
• Mastodon
• Bluesky
• and join our community on Discord

I Wanted to Celebrate Drupal's 25th. So I Built Something for Our Moms. Image Imagen Article body

January 15, 2026 marks 25 years since Drupal 1.0.0. Twenty-five years. From a simple message board to powering some of the world's most complex websites. I wanted to do something to celebrate, but not just write a "happy birthday" post. I wanted to test what's actually possible with Drupal today.

Anilu and I had found some recipe PDFs. Two Colombian ones that I had. Five or six Costa Rican ones from her side. We'd also been cooking from the Accademia Italiana della Cucina website for a while. Our moms are both 75+, they love cooking, and these recipes were scattered around... difficult to read, impossible to search.

So we had an idea. What if we built them something? A real site. Multilingual. Searchable. Something they could actually use and we could share with friends. And what if I did it using Claude Code and modern Drupal to see how far things have come in 25 years?

The result is https://laollita.es. It took 3 days.

The Challenge

Let me be honest about what I was facing.

The Spanish PDFs were challenging. Massive amounts of content. The OCR quality was inconsistent. Recipes formatted in ways that made extraction tricky. Getting clean data required multiple passes of reading and confirmation because of the sheer volume of information.

Beyond the content problem, I needed multilingual support with AI-assisted translations. I needed search that actually worked. Facets. Filters by country and region. An interface accessible enough for someone who didn't grow up with computers.

Could Drupal and AI actually handle this without turning into a month-long project?

The AI-Assisted Development Journey

I started with the Umami demo. This is important. Umami gave me a Recipe content type, a structure, a foundation. It functioned exactly like what Drupal Recipes and templates are designed to do... get you started with something real instead of building from zero. The repetitive work was already done, so I could focus on improvements.

From there, Claudito (my Claude AI assistant) became my development partner. Not a magic wand. A helper.

Here's what AI handled well:

• Analyzing PDFs and extracting recipe information

• Initial translation passes and export to JSON

• Creating migrate plugins to import recipes and translations

• A special migration plugin specifically for translations

• Building Views and fixing UX and CSS issues

• Search API integration with autocomplete and facets

• Creating a View to find recipes missing English translations

• Bulk operations for translation (this was 100% Claudito, with me directing it to read the VBO module to understand the approach, and re-reading the AI translate module to use the right plugins)

Here's where I had to step in:

• Redirecting AI to the right module, the right approach

• Making sure AI read the right code or files before doing anything in Drupal

• Guiding AI to follow best practices and modern Drupal development

• Decisions about architecture and information structure

• Changing fields to use more taxonomies to better standardize the recipes

Let me give you some examples. At one point, Claudito wanted to create a module to add CSS classes to a template. I redirected it to change the CSS to add selectors instead. Another time, Claudito started creating a custom module when the code could simply go in the custom theme. These redirections kept the project clean and maintainable.

Claudito let me focus on the decisions that matter. This is the human-in-the-loop approach I've written about before.

For translations, AI did most of the work in the first round. I imported those via the special migration plugin. But we still needed the View for recipes that we identified were missed in the first round, plus an extra PDF we found later. That View now serves as a way to bulk translate in the future when our moms or us add new recipes in Spanish or any other original language.

The Result

https://laollita.es is live.

Our moms can browse recipes in Spanish. Our friends can read them in English. The Italian originals are preserved. You can search by name, filter by country, filter by region. The interface is clean enough that someone who's 75 can use it without calling me for help.

Three languages. Thousands of recipes. Search, autocomplete, facets, AI translations. Three days. One person.

What This Means for Drupal at 25

Here's what surprised me. Not that it was possible. I knew Drupal could handle this technically. What surprised me was how quickly the pieces came together when you combine modern Drupal with systematic AI assistance.

The Umami demo acting as a Recipe/template meant the repetitive groundwork was already done, making modern Drupal more accessible than ever. The Drupal AI module meant translations weren't a separate nightmare. Claudito let me focus on decisions, guidance, and architecture. The ecosystem worked together.

And here's the forward-looking part. I didn't use Drupal CMS. I didn't use Canvas. I didn't use the newer Recipe installation tools. I decided to test it this way because Umami had already given us a solid foundation.

Imagine what this build would look like with those tools added. Drag-and-drop layout building. Even faster site assembly. More accessible for people who aren't command-line comfortable.

Drupal at 25 is not the Drupal I learned a decade ago. The learning curve is flattening as the ecosystem evolves. The AI integration is real and practical. The Recipe/template approach (demonstrated here with Umami) changes how fast you can get to something functional.

If you've been wondering whether Drupal is still "hard"... try building something. Give yourself a few days and a reason that matters to you. Then tell me what you built.

Happy 25th birthday, Drupal. Thanks for letting us build something for our moms.

About AI as an Assistant: A Practical Approach to Responsible AI Usage Rebuilding Drupal's Ecosystem Pyramid: A Path to Sustainable Growth Author Carlos Ospina Abstract For Drupal's 25th anniversary, I built laollita.es—a multilingual recipe site—in 3 days using AI. Here's what modern Drupal can actually do today. Tags Drupal Drupal Planet AI Development Drupal Future Open Source Community Human In The Loop Rating Select ratingGive I Wanted to Celebrate Drupal's 25th. So I Built Something for Our Moms. 1/5Give I Wanted to Celebrate Drupal's 25th. So I Built Something for Our Moms. 2/5Give I Wanted to Celebrate Drupal's 25th. So I Built Something for Our Moms. 3/5Give I Wanted to Celebrate Drupal's 25th. So I Built Something for Our Moms. 4/5Give I Wanted to Celebrate Drupal's 25th. So I Built Something for Our Moms. 5/5Cancel rating No votes yet Leave this field blank Add new comment

Twenty-five years! In the world of technology, hitting a quarter-century milestone while remaining a top-notch powerhouse of the internet is an achievement so rare it's almost unheard of. Today, we're popping the confetti and cutting the cakes around the world to celebrate a colossal journey. This isn't just a birthday for a piece of software; it's a testament to resilience, constant evolution, and the deep-seated belief in doing things the right way. Join us as we look back on 25 years of shared passion, contribution, and the incredible community that has made Drupal so powerful. Happy birthday, Drupal!

Trusted by millions of sites and applications, Drupal has been the secure, flexible backbone for everyone from global governments and prestigious universities to world-renowned NGOs, major media outlets, and countless ambitious startups. Drupal's versatility allowed it to power a wide array of systems far beyond traditional websites, including intranets, booking systems, learning platforms, data hubs, and IoT dashboards.

For a quarter century, Drupal remained true to its technical soul. Its strength remains in structured content, best-in-class workflow features—including moderation, granular permissions, and multilingual support—and delivery to various displays via reusable content and APIs. Under the hood, proven performance, precise caching, and a mature security process ensure scalability. Its core strengths of extendability, customizability, and openness solidify its status as a uniquely flexible and sovereign digital platform.

Not only technically capable itself, Drupal's design and culture inherently promoted sharing and reuse. This encouraged people to build widely capable and powerful general components, and contribute them back, a mindset that fueled the growth of over 50,000 modules. 

But beyond the millions of sites, the technical power, and the tens of thousands of modules, Drupal's true magic lies in the people. It's a platform that created careers. For many, Drupal was the first step into the world of content management. For tens of thousands more, it blossomed into a fulfilling career. Developers, architects, designers, editors, trainers, marketers, agency founders—a full spectrum of digital careers have flourished around Drupal.

Drupal's influence stretches far beyond the codebase and business, it is also a world-class social network. It sparked friendships, and yes, even led to a few real life Drupal families. People who would otherwise never have met have become lifelong friends. We have learned together, collaborated on projects, and passionately argued over UIs, policies and APIs, but with the goal of emerging with a stronger connection. This vibrant, global community is the true essence of Drupal: a place where even disagreement comes from a shared passion, and where professional collaboration blossoms into genuine human friendship.

Without the community, Drupal wouldn't be here today. So raise a glass for yourselves! The thinkers, designers, marketers, organizers, testers, developers, maintainers, managers, documenters, trainers, reviewers, bugfixers, funders, accessibility professionals, translators, authors, photographers, videographers and countless others who made Drupal what it is. 

Drupal is here today not because it chased trends. But because people cared and they did the right thing. Happy birthday, Drupal!

Thanks to Gábor Hojtsy, Frederick Wouters, Surabhi Gokte, Nick Vanpraet and Joris Vercammen for their contributions to this post.

We are excited to announce that the main branch is now the official Drupal core development branch. Using a main branch aligns Drupal core with the best practices of industry and major open-source projects. This move is the final step of infrastructure changes that began in 2023.

Going forward, main is the new, primary development trunk for Drupal core. Most active work and outstanding issues currently filed against 11.x should now be targeted at main. The 11.x branch will remain for Drupal-11-specific issues, while Drupal 12 development will happen in the main branch.

Simplifying issue management

With this update, it will be easier for contributors to identify the primary development branch. Contributors don't need to know what the current development version number is.

This change also eliminates the overhead of mass updates to change the version number on open issues. The use of version-specific development branches required a cumbersome cycle of new branches and mass updating of issues with each major version release. Using a main branch significantly simplifies our release and issue management.

What contributors need to do Use main for most issues

Most merge requests for Drupal Core should now be submitted to the main branch. In general, only backports or issues that do not affect Drupal 12 should be filed against other branches.

Update local checkouts

If you have any local clones of the repository, you should update them:

git fetch origin git branch -u origin/main mainUpdate merge requests

Merge requests will be automatically updated to target the main branch this week, so there should not be a need to do this manually. However this retargeting will not include a rebase or adding the main branch to the issue fork, which may be necessary steps. These could be done when other changes are being made to the MR. To make contributors' work easier, MRs that cleanly apply to main will be committed for now, even if the main branch does not exist in the MR.

Update the issue version number

Issues against 11.x on Drupal.org will have the version number updated to main via an automated process within the next few days. Updating issues to point to main in the meantime is OK but does not need to be done manually in bulk.

We appreciate your patience and flexibility as we have worked to implement this important step in modernizing the Drupal core development workflow.

Drupal turns 25 today. A quarter of a century.

What started as a hobby became a community, and then, somehow, a pillar of the web's infrastructure.

Looking back, the most important things I learned weren't really about software. They were about people, scale, and what it takes to build something that lasts.

Twenty-five years, twenty-five lessons.

1. You can do well and do good

I used to think I had to choose: build a sustainable business or build something generous. Drupal taught me that is a false choice. Growth and generosity can reinforce each other. The real challenge is making sure one does not crowd out the other.

2. You can architect for community

Community doesn't just happen. You have to design for it. Drupal's modular system created clear places to contribute, our open logo invited people to make their own variants, and our light governance made it easy for people to step into responsibility. You cannot force a community to exist, but you can create the conditions for one to grow.

3. A few decisions define everything

Most choices don't matter much in hindsight, but a few end up shaping a project's entire trajectory. For Drupal, that included licensing under the GPL, the hook system, the node system, starting the Drupal Association, and even the credit system. You never know which decisions those are when you're making them.

4. Coordination is the product

In the early days, coordination was easy: you knew most people by name and you could fix things in a single late night IRC conversation. Then Drupal grew, slowly at first and then all at once, and I remember release cycles where the hardest part was not the code but aligning hundreds of people across time zones, cultures, companies, and priorities, with far too much energy spent "bike shedding". That is when I learned that at scale, code is not the product. It is what we ship, but coordination is what makes it possible.

5. Everyone's carrying something

I've worked with people navigating challenges I couldn't see at first. Mental health struggles, caregiving burdens, personal crises. It taught me that someone's behavior in a moment rarely tells the whole story. A healthy community makes room for people. Patience and grace are how you keep good people around.

6. Nobody fully understands Drupal anymore, including me

After 25 years and tens of thousands of contributors, Drupal has grown beyond any single person's understanding. I also google Drupal's documentation. I'm strangely proud of that, because it's how I know it has become something bigger than any one of us.

7. Volunteerism alone doesn't scale

In the early years, everything in Drupal was built by volunteers, and for a long time that felt like enough. At some point, it wasn't. The project was growing faster than the time people could give, and some important work needed more hands. Paid contributors brought stability and depth, while volunteers continued to innovate. The best projects make room for both.

8. Your words carry more weight than you realize

As recently as a few weeks ago, I sent a Slack message I thought was harmless and watched it create confusion and frustration. I have been making that same mistake, in different forms, for years. As a project grows, so does the gravity of what you say. A passing comment can redirect weeks of work or demoralize someone who is trying their best. I had to learn to speak more carefully, not because I am important, but because my role is. I am still learning to do this better.

9. Maintenance is leadership with no applause

The bottleneck in Open Source is rarely new ideas or new code. It's people willing to maintain what already exists: reviewing, deciding, onboarding new people, and holding context for years. I have seen projects stall because nobody wanted to do that work, and others survive because a few people quietly stepped up. Maintainers do the work that keeps everything together. If you want a project to last, you have to take care of your maintainers.

10. Culture is forged under stress

The Drupal community was not just built on good vibes. It was built in the weeks before releases and DrupalCons, in late night debugging sessions, and in messy moments of disagreement and drama. I have seen stress bring out the best in us and, sometimes, the worst. Both mattered because they forced us to learn how to disagree, decide, and recover. Those hard moments forged trust you cannot manufacture in calm times, and they are a big reason the community is still here.

11. Leadership has to outgrow its founder

For Drupal to last, leadership had to move beyond me, and for that to happen I had to let go. That meant stepping back from decisions I cared deeply about and trusting others to take the project in directions I might not have chosen. There were moments when I felt sidelined in the project I started, which was nobody's fault, but not easy. Letting go was not always easy, but it is one of the reasons Drupal is still here.

12. Open source is not a meritocracy

I used to say that the only real limitation to contributing was your willingness to learn. I was wrong. Free time is a privilege, not an equal right. Some people have jobs, families, or responsibilities that leave no room for unpaid work. You can only design for equity when you stop pretending that Open Source is a meritocracy.

13. Changing your mind in public builds trust

Over the years, I've had to reverse positions I once argued for. Doing that in public taught me that admitting you were wrong builds more trust than claiming you were right. People remember how you handle being wrong longer than they remember what you were wrong about.

14. Persistence beats being right early

In 2001, Open Source was a curiosity that enterprises avoided. Now it runs the world. I believed in it long before I could prove it, and I kept working anyway. It took many years before the world caught up, and I learned that sticking with something you believe in matters more than being right quickly.

15. The hardest innovation is not breaking things

For years, I insisted that breaking backward compatibility was a core value. Upgrades were painful, but I thought that was the price of progress. The real breakthrough came when we built enough test coverage to keep moving forward without breaking what people had built. Today, Drupal has more than twice as much test code as production code. That discipline was harder than any rewrite, and it earned more trust than any new feature.

16. Most people are here for the right reasons

Every large community has bad actors and trolls, and they can consume all your attention if you let them. If you focus too much on the worst behavior, you start to miss the quiet, steady work of the many people who are here to build something good. Your energy is better spent supporting those people.

17. Talk is silver. Contribution is gold

Words matter. They set direction and invite people in. But the people who shaped Drupal most were the ones who kept showing up to do the work. Culture is shaped by what actually gets done, and by who shows up to do it.

18. Vision doesn't have to come from the top

For a long time, I thought being project lead meant having the vision. Over time, I learned that it meant creating the conditions for good ideas to come from anywhere. The best decisions often came from people I'd never met, solving problems I didn't know we had.

19. The spark is individual but the fire is not

A single person can change a project's direction, but no contribution survives on its own. Every new feature comes with a maintenance cost and eventually depends on people the original author will never meet. Successful projects have to hold both truths at once: the spark is individual, but the fire is not.

20. At scale, even your bugs become features

Once enough people depend on your software, every observable behavior becomes a commitment, whether you intended it or not. Sooner or later, someone will build a workflow around an edge case or quirk. That is why maintaining compatibility is not a lesser form of work. It is core to the product.

21. A good project is measured by what people build next

For a long time, it felt like a loss when top contributors moved on from Drupal. Over time, I started to notice what they built next and realized they were carrying what they learned here into everything they did. Many went on to lead teams, start companies, or build new Open Source projects. I have come to see that as one of Drupal's most meaningful outcomes.

22. Longevity comes from not chasing trends

Drupal is still here because we resisted the urge to chase every new trend and kept building on things that last, like structured content, security, extensibility, and openness. Those things mattered twenty years ago, they still matter today, and they will still matter twenty years from now.

23. If it matters, keep saying it

A community isn't a room. People join at different times, pay attention to different things, and hear through different filters. An idea has to land again and again before it takes hold. If it matters, keep saying it. The ideas that stick are the ones the community picks up and carries forward.

24. It takes a community to see the whole road

Sometimes the path forward seems clear, but it takes the perspective of a community to see the cracks, the forks, and the doubts. Being right alone brings clarity. Bringing others along brings confidence.

25. Start before you feel ready

When I released Drupal 1.0.0, I knew almost nothing. For much of the journey, I felt out of my depth. I was often nervous, sometimes intimidated. I didn't know how to scale software, how to build a community, or how to lead. I kept shipping anyway. You don't become ready by waiting. You become ready by doing.

A group photo taken at DrupalCon Seattle in 2019.

For those who have been here for years, these lessons will feel familiar. We learned them together, sometimes slowly, sometimes through debate, and often the hard way.

If Drupal has been part of your daily life for a long time, you are not just a user or a contributor. You are part of its history. And for all of you, I am grateful.

I am still here, still learning, and still excited about what we can build together next. Thank you for building it with me.

2025 has been a year of significant growth and accomplishment for DDEV. With 579 commits to the main repository and releases from v1.24.0 through v1.24.10, we've made substantial progress on features, infrastructure, and community building. Here's a look back at what we all achieved together.

Table of Contents

• Organizational Milestones
• Community Engagement
• Major Features and Improvements
  • Sponsorship Communication
  • Add-on Ecosystem
  • Container and Infrastructure
  • Developer Experience
  • Language and Database Updates
  • Windows Improvements
• ddev.com Website and Documentation
• IDE Integration
• DDEV Developer Improvements
• AI in DDEV Development
• Removals in v1.25.0
• Challenges and things that could have gone better
• Comparing Outcomes to 2025 Goals
• By the Numbers
• Wow, Community Contributions!
  • By Contributor
  • Summary by Count
  • Blog Guest Contributors
  • Amazing Official Add-on Maintainers
• Looking Ahead to 2026

Organizational Milestones

• Board of Directors Established: In December 2025, we formally established a Board of Directors for the DDEV Foundation, enhancing governance and setting the stage for long-term sustainability. We're super proud of this as it's something we've been working toward for years. Read all about it.
• Advisory Group Continues: Our Advisory Group meetings continued throughout the year, providing valuable input and oversight. It will continue just about the same even though we now have a formal Board.
• "Almost Everybody Loves DDEV": The Ironstar Developer Survey 2025 confirmed what we suspected - DDEV has strong community support and satisfaction.

Community Engagement

The DDEV open-source community continues excellent engagement on several fronts.

• addons.ddev.com now shows 147 community-contributed add-ons (176 in total).
• Several key features were suggested, initiated, and developed by community members. SO MANY of these are listed below.
• Online Training: We restarted online contributor and user training
• Offline Training: Randy conducted many Birds-of-a-Feature sessions at DrupalCons, spoke at Florida Drupalcamp, attended, spoke, and trained at TYPO3Camp RheinRuhr, etc.

Major Features and Improvements Sponsorship Communication

• Massively improved reporting, communication, and management of sponsorship information
• Public sponsorship data feed via sponsorship-data repository
• Banners on DDEV web properties and The Drop Times show current funding status
• Daily ddev start notifications keep users informed about sponsorship status

Add-on Ecosystem

• The Add-on Registry launched in January 2025, now displays 176 add-ons, 29 of which are officially maintained by the DDEV team.
• PHP-based add-ons: Add-ons can now be written in PHP, as the ddev-upsun add-on shows. The PHP language is far more powerful for complex tasks than shell scripts.
• ddev add-on get now downloads add-on dependencies automatically
• x-ddev extension allows add-ons to add important information to ddev describe output
• Add-on monitoring continues for both official and community add-ons. We monitor the nightly tests of official add-ons, and periodically check in with all the community add-ons, asking people to re-enable or fix tests.
• New official add-ons: FrankenPHP (June), Redis Insight (July), Upsun (August), NVM Standalone (November)
• By year's end: 29 official add-ons and 176+ total add-ons.
• Stas continued to document and promote best practices with add-ons, including improved testing and upgrading strategies.

Container and Infrastructure

• Parallel Docker image pulls for faster project starts
• Docker Compose profiles: Start projects with specific profiles using ddev start --profiles=list,of,profiles
• Refactored Docker API code: no calls to docker binary (switched to github.com/docker/cli) and no fragile YAML map structures (switched to github.com/compose-spec/compose-go/v2)

Upcoming v1.25.0:

• Podman support: Podman rootless/rootful environments
• Docker rootless functionality added for Linux environments
• Base web server image updated to Debian 13 Trixie

Developer Experience

• XHGui integration funded by TYPO3 Association, read more
• ddev-upsun add-on provides new integration with Upsun (formerly Platform.sh) fixed and flex projects.
• New handling of privilege elevation using the ddev-hostname binary, improving security, read more
• --user/-u flag for ddev exec and ddev ssh
• ddev describe now works on stopped projects
• ddev utility download-images --all forces pulling all images in use
• Shell completion added and expanded thanks to community contributions
• ddev npx command support
• Improved cleanup for ddev delete and ddev delete images
• Automatic HTTP/S communication between DDEV projects
• Enhanced and simpler Pantheon support

Upcoming v1.25.0:

• Improved ddev share: More configurable, customizable, with pre-share hooks and DDEV_SHARE_URL environment variable
• ddev utility mutagen-diagnose: Automatic study of Mutagen problems or misconfiguration
• ddev utility xdebug-diagnose: Automatic study of possible Xdebug configuration problems

Language and Database Updates

• PHP 8.5 support added with a limited set of extensions (in v1.24.10)
• MariaDB 11.8 support added
• PostgreSQL 18 support added
• Node.js as primary web server support

Upcoming v1.25.0:

• PHP 8.4 is the default for new projects (previously PHP 8.3)
• PHP 8.5 support with all extensions
• Node.js 24 as default for new projects (previously Node.js 22)
• MariaDB 11.8 as default for new projects (previously MariaDB 10.11)

Windows Improvements

• New Windows GUI Installer handling Traditional Windows, WSL2/Docker CE, and Docker/Rancher Desktop
• ARM64 Windows installer support

ddev.com Website and Documentation

• Downloads page with improved installer access
• Theme switch button for light/dark mode
• Copy button for code blocks thanks to Bernardo Martinez
• Giscus commenting system for community discussions on blog posts
• AI integration documentation
• Multiple blog posts published covering technical guides, platform-specific instructions, and organizational updates
• Monthly newsletters tracking progress sign up!

IDE Integration

• IntelliJ IDEA plugin got regular, consistent maintenance thanks to @AkibaAT and moved to the DDEV organization on GitHub
• The VS Code DDEV Manager extension continued to be well maintained thanks to @biati-digital

DDEV Developer Improvements

• The new Quickstart tests have proved to be extremely valuable, providing early warning when upstream projects change. They also are a completely new perspective into problems with DDEV. Kudos to @rpkoller for taking those on and maintaining them!
• AkibaAT reorganized our Docker image builds so that multi-architecture builds that used to take an hour now take 10 minutes or less.
• Continuous improvements to AGENTS.md and CLAUDE.md to improve our efficiency in using AI.

AI in DDEV Development

2025 saw significant AI integration in our development workflow:

• Substantial features enabled by AI: Several features that seemed too daunting to start became achievable with AI assistance
• Increased code volume: More code, including extensive tests (though test quality varies)
• Tools used: Claude Code, GitHub Copilot
• Training: Our use of Claude Code was significantly improved by taking a Coursera Course.

Removals in v1.25.0

• NFS support removed
• ddev service command removed
• ddev nvm functionality removed, but still supported with ddev-nvm add-on
• Legacy configuration syntax cleanup

Challenges and things that could have gone better

• Market conditions are affecting agency and hosting company funding, and we go into 2026 with limited funding
• We applied to participate in the Google Summer of Code and the GitHub Secure Open Source Fund but were not accepted in either.
• Although the TYPO3 Association funded one feature submission (XHGui) later submissions were not accepted, and the nature of their program now seems to exclude DDEV features.
• Key upstream groups like the TYPO3 Association and Drupal Association still are not figuring out how to fund DDEV.
• bitnami/mysql issue: Using bitnami/mysql for MySQL 8.0 and 8.4 backfired with Bitnami ceasing its traditional support of important Docker images. This raises questions about dependency management when upstream projects change direction.
• We continue to struggle with funding for DDEV and went backward this year instead of forward.
• GitHub killed off the best strategy we had for keeping add-on tests running, which means that nightly tests must be manually enabled by their maintainers when they are discontinued automatically.
• We're so interested in solving user problems that it's possible we're too aggressive in Discord and maybe the issue queue in pursuing them. I'm thinking about whether this is an issue with users and will appreciate comment.

Comparing Outcomes to 2025 Goals

In 2025 Plans we laid out ambitious plans for 2025. Here are the outcomes:

• Continue outstanding user support Done.
• Begin formal governance for the DDEV Foundation. Done.
• Improve our Marketing CTA and information: Significant progress, with much better communication.
• Continue to develop contributors and maintainers: Great year, as shown below.
• XHGui support: Done
• addons.ddev.com: Done
• Feature: Implement mDNS as an alternate name resolution technique. Not funded, not implemented, de-prioritized.
• Allow Add-ons to include other add-ons: Done
• Go-based Upsun Add-on like ddev-platformsh: Done, but with PHP instead of Go.
• Rewrite ddev-platformsh Add-on in Go: Done, but in PHP. ddev-upsun now supports the older Platform.sh "fixed" projects.
• Develop a replacement for "Gitpod Classic": Gitpod was removed from codebase, and GitHub Codespaces support was improved, but a full replacement remains a goal for 2026.
• Improve self-diagnose capability: Done. Massive improvement with ddev utility diagnose, ddev utility mutagen-diagnose, ddev utility xdebug-diagnose.
• DDEV's Message-of-the-day and ddev.com should show current funding status and need: Done
• DDEV Windows/WSL2 packaging and installation: Done
• Change ddev share to a more configurable custom-command-based option: Done (in v1.25.0)
• Rework configuration system using Viper. Not done and de-prioritized.

By the Numbers

• 579 commits to the main repository
• 100+ pull requests merged
• Releases v1.24.0 through v1.24.10 with v1.25.0 coming in early 2026
• 93 repositories in the DDEV ecosystem
• 3,400+ GitHub stars on the core project
• 29 official add-ons
• 176+ total add-ons

Wow, Community Contributions!

As an open-source project we truly value the amazing contributions of the community. There are so many ways these contributions happen, including support requests and issues (we learn so much from those!) but also direct contributions.

By Contributor

I know this is "Too Much Information" but here is a simple and inadequate list of the amazing contributions directly to the main project by contributors other than Randy and Stas. It inspires me so much to see this consolidated list.

Ralf Koller - rpkoller - 36 contributions

• test: add a no-interaction flag to the install command in ibexa bats file (#7479)
• test: adding quickstarts for typo3 v13 and v12 plus bats tests (#7302)
• feat: add success message for xhgui on and off, fixes #7202 (#7205)
• test: make the drupal cms bats test a bit more robust and trustworthy (#7203)
• test: fix for magento2 quickstart and bats test, fixes #7191 (#7192)
• test: adjust openmage bats test assertions to the now available demo content (#7126)
• test: bats test for Statamic Composer quickstart (#7116)
• test: craftcms bats test (#7107)
• test: adding silverstripe quickstart bats test (#7112)
• test: symfony bats tests (#7102)
• (and 26 more)

Akiba - AkibaAT - 7 contributions

• build(image): use native arm builder for building Docker images, fixes #7539 (#7553)
• feat: add ddev add-on search subcommand, fixes #7491 (#7554)
• fix: add missing ephemeral port handling to xhgui service, fixes #7557 (#7560)
• fix: replace broken http and https port lookup, fixes #7246 (#7259)
• feat: add new envs DDEV_PRIMARY_URL_PORT, DDEV_PRIMARY_URL_WITHOUT_PORT and DDEV_SCHEME, fixes #7214 (#7218)
• fix: Use fast checkpoint during PostgreSQL backup, fixes #7098 (#7219)
• fix: disable Xdebug trigger for Xdebug and xhprof status checks, fixes #6191, fixes php-perfect/ddev-intellij-plugin#414 (#7216)

Ariel Barreiro - hanoii - 6 contributions

• docs: trailing whitespace on template (#7321)
• refactor: improve ddev add-on get output, add warning exit code annotation (#7263)
• fix: add BASE_IMAGE arg before everything else, for #7071 (#7258)
• feat: support prepend.Dockerfile* files for multi-stage builds (#7071)
• feat: show config..yml on ddev start (#7089)
• fix: the #ddev-description stanza in add-on install actions not showing if it's the first line (#7022)

tyler36 - tyler36 - 4 contributions

• fix(cakephp): do not override APP_DEFAULT_LOCALE (#7653)
• docs: update ngrok link (#7359)
• feat: Add live link to Discord (#7042)
• refactor: remove outdated move-issue config , fixes #6899 (#6906)

Travis Carden - TravisCarden - 3 contributions

• docs: fix a little custom command annotations code example (#7711)
• docs: Add missing sequelace command link to database-management.md (#7184)
• docs: Fix niggling code sample inconsistency in troubleshooting.md (#6984)

Laryn - laryn - 3 contributions

• feat: backdrop add bee to quickstart (#7053)
• docs: add Backdrop-specific config considerations. (#7037)
• docs: change code refs to include info about Backdrop config storage options, fixes #7013 (#7014)

Andrew Berry - deviantintegral - 2 contributions

• feat: support using zstd for snapshots, fix postgres:9 snapshot, fixes #7844, fixes #3583 (#7845)
• build: fix getopt detection on macOS (#7846)

Raphael Portmann - raphaelportmann - 2 contributions

• fix(heidisql): add default --databases=db to postgres, for #7830 (#7847)
• feat(heidisql): allow postgres connections, fixes #7675 (#7677)

cyppe - cyppe - 2 contributions

• feat(db): remove the hardcoded --server-id=0 parameter from MySQL startup, fixes #6768 (#7608)
• fix(laravel): don't edit database config in .env when there's no database (#7584)

Peter Bowyer - pbowyer - 2 contributions

• docs: clarify instructions for using PhpStorm inside WSL2 (#7333)
• docs: add MySQL 8.4 to supported databases (#6971)

Shelane French - shelane - 2 contributions

• feat: add DDEV_APPROOT variable to web container and updates documentation, fixes #7198 (#7199)
• refactor: remove solrtail from installed example commands, fixes #7139 (#7140)

Pierre Paul Lefebvre - PierrePaul - 2 contributions

• fix: XHGui launch command support custom ports, fixes #7181 (#7182)
• docs: Add the xhgui container to the building and contributing page. Add more description to the xhprof profiling page. (#7168)

Sven Reichel - sreichel - 2 contributions

• test: Add OpenMage composer quickstart and tests (#7133)
• test: add OpenMage/Magento 1 quickstart test and split it from Magento 2, for #7094 (#7091)

lguigo22 - lguigo22 - 1 contribution

• docs: add Cloudflare warp networking instructions (#7975)

Justin Vogt - JUVOJustin - 1 contribution

• fix(router): ensure Traefik monitor port is always bound to localhost (#7942)

grummbeer - grummbeer - 1 contribution

• fix(diagnose): Remove the hardcoded IP "127.0.0.1" from the DNS check, since it may be incorrect, fixes #7871 (#7872)

crowjake - crowjake - 1 contribution

• fix(commands): make HostWorkingDir respect WebWorkingDir (#7907)

Markus Sommer - BreathCodeFlow - 1 contribution

• fix: db port should be integer in generated TYPO3 AdditionalConfiguration.php, fixes #7892 (#7893)

James Sansbury - q0rban - 1 contribution

• docs: clarify instructions for disabling Mutagen on a single project (#7861)

Moshe Weitzman - weitzman - 1 contribution

• docs: remove community examples link in documentation (#7834)

Yan Loetzer - yanniboi - 1 contribution

• docs: add missing dot in .ddev/.env.* (#7828)

Garvin Hicking - garvinhicking - 1 contribution

• docs: add crosslink for shortened DDEV env variables to full list, fixes #7781 (#7782)

Benny Poensgen - vanWittlaer - 1 contribution

• feat: use composer_root in cakephp, craftcms, laravel, magento2, shopware6, symfony for app type detection (#7558)

Rob Loach - RobLoach - 1 contribution

• chore(provider): remove trailing whitespace in YAML files (#7770)

JshGrn - JshGrn - 1 contribution

• docs: explicitly mention setting system managed nvm version, for #6013 (#7733)

E - ara303 - 1 contribution

• docs(faq): remove traefik config when changing project's name, for #7638 (#7639)

Alan Doucette - dragonwize - 1 contribution

• feat: add ddev npx command (#7599)

Brooke Mahoney - brookemahoney - 1 contribution

• docs: clarify comments in the Drupal 10 and 11 quickstarts, fixes #7619 (#7620)

gitressa - gitressa - 1 contribution

• docs: remove Prerequisite section (#7621)

Eduardo Rocha - hockdudu - 1 contribution

• docs: fix typo in documentation (#7618)

Dezső BICZÓ - mxr576 - 1 contribution

• docs: Fix blog link in main nav (#7566)

Tomas Norre Mikkelsen - tomasnorre - 1 contribution

• feat: add ddev version to ddev describe command, fixes #7398 (#7541)

Danny Pfeiffer - danny2p - 1 contribution

• fix(pantheon): update Pantheon database pull to get fresh DB and file push to be CMS-agnostic, fixes #5215, fixes #4760 (#7486)

Popus Razvan Adrian - punkrock34 - 1 contribution

• feat: add Linux support for heidisql command (#7399)

Daniel Huf - dhuf - 1 contribution

• refactor: add SVG to rewrite rule for TYPO3 (#7482)

Ayu Adiati - adiati98 - 1 contribution

• docs(wsl): add wsl --update command for Windows (#7476)

Peter Philipp - das-peter - 1 contribution

• fix: temporarily allow write to /etc/mysql/conf.d/* for db container restart, fixes #7457 (#7458)

O'Briat - obriat - 1 contribution

• docs: How to use Xdebug with Composer for plugin development (#7423)

Andreas Hager - andreashager - 1 contribution

• feat: return real exit code from ddev exec and add quiet flag to it, fixes #3518 (#7385)

Bill Seremetis - bserem - 1 contribution

• docs: add Terminus downgrade tips, fixes #7352 (#7353)

Olivier Mengué - dolmen - 1 contribution

• build: upgrade mapstructure to v2 (#7396)

Rui Chen - chenrui333 - 1 contribution

• test: use main for setup-homebrew action instead of master (#7395)

michaellenahan - michaellenahan - 1 contribution

• docs: improve xhgui documentation, fixes #7376 (#7377)

August Miller - AugustMiller - 1 contribution

• docs: align Craft CMS quickstart with official documentation (#7323)

Loz Calver - lozcalver - 1 contribution

• feat: prune orphaned Node.js versions after install, fixes #7325 (#7326)

Tim Kelty - timkelty - 1 contribution

• docs: update Craft CMS quickstart, for #7236 (#7274)

Pedro Antonio Fructuoso Merino - pfructuoso - 1 contribution

• fix: Add path to docroot in wp parameters when not set, fixes #7241 (#7242)

Bang Dinh - bangdinhnfq - 1 contribution

• docs: Update Shopware quickstart with "shopware/production" instead of "shopware/production:^v6.5" (#7253)

nmangold - nmangold - 1 contribution

• docs: wrap quotes around commands that use the caret symbol (#7237)

Jeremy Gonyea - jgonyea - 1 contribution

• docs: fix minor typo in the Grav quickstart (#7197)

Colan Schwartz - colans - 1 contribution

• build: stop installing chocolatey, fixes #6636, fixes #6344 (#7049)

Mrtn Schndlr - barbieswimcrew - 1 contribution

• fix: nginx.conf should let index.php handle 404 errors for media files (#7050)

Marvin Hinz - marvinhinz - 1 contribution

• fix: add timeout for netutil::IsPortActive check for WSL2 with "mirrored networking mode" as opposed to default "NAT mode", fixes #6245 (#7166)

RubenColpaert - RubenColpaert - 1 contribution

• fix: use charset=utf8mb4 in DATABASE_URL for Symfony environment variables, fixes #7068 (#7076)

Alexey Murz Korepov - MurzNN - 1 contribution

• docs: Add docs about configuring browser for HTTPS certificates (#7075)

Adam - phenaproxima - 1 contribution

• docs: Update quickstart.md to remove Drupal CMS ZIP file instructions (#7119)

Nick Hope - Nick-Hope - 1 contribution

• docs: update Windows installation docs to use 'Docker Engine' terminology (#7092)

Damilola Emmanuel Olowookere - damms005 - 1 contribution

• docs: add DevDb tip to database management documentation (#7084)

nickchomey - nickchomey - 1 contribution

• docs: add WordPress special handling info about wp-cli.yml (#7080)

Andrew Gearhart - AndrewGearhart - 1 contribution

• refactor: improve Docker version checks, set minimum supported Docker API to 1.44, fixes #6916 (#6946)

Christopher Kaster - atomicptr - 1 contribution

• feat: change php-fpm setting 'decorate_workers_output' to 'no' (#6964)

Hervé Donner - vever001 - 1 contribution

• feat: switch apache mpm_prefork to mpm_event, fixes #6966 (#6967)

Bernhard Baumrock - BernhardBaumrock - 1 contribution

• docs: Add ProcessWire to the Quickstart List (#6879)

Erik Peterson - eporama - 1 contribution

• fix: update Drupal 7 settings.ddev.php and settings.php to match Drupal 7.103 (#6913)

Tom Yukhayev - charginghawk - 1 contribution

• fix: In acquia.yaml, specify default site source for ddev pull acquia. (#6874)

Summary by Count Contributor GitHub Count Ralf Koller rpkoller 36 Akiba AkibaAT 7 Ariel Barreiro hanoii 6 tyler36 tyler36 4 Travis Carden TravisCarden 3 Laryn laryn 3 Andrew Berry deviantintegral 2 Raphael Portmann raphaelportmann 2 cyppe cyppe 2 Peter Bowyer pbowyer 2 Shelane French shelane 2 Pierre Paul Lefebvre PierrePaul 2 Sven Reichel sreichel 2 lguigo22 lguigo22 1 Justin Vogt JUVOJustin 1 grummbeer grummbeer 1 crowjake crowjake 1 Markus Sommer BreathCodeFlow 1 James Sansbury q0rban 1 Moshe Weitzman weitzman 1 Yan Loetzer yanniboi 1 Garvin Hicking garvinhicking 1 Benny Poensgen vanWittlaer 1 Rob Loach RobLoach 1 JshGrn JshGrn 1 E ara303 1 Alan Doucette dragonwize 1 Brooke Mahoney brookemahoney 1 gitressa gitressa 1 ...and 36 more contributors Blog Guest Contributors

Guest contributions to the blog are always welcome and key contributors added significant posts this year:

Ajith Thampi Joseph - atj4me

• Tailscale for DDEV: Simple and Secure Project Sharing

Bill Seremetis - bserem

• How to Downgrade Terminus in DDEV's Web Container and Customize Other Bundled Tools

Garvin Hicking - garvinhicking

• Using DDEV to spin up a legacy PHP application

Jeremy Gonyea - jgonyea

• Building an Off-Ramp from WordPress with DDEV

ayalon - ayalon

• Exposing a Node.js App Over HTTP / HTTPS on a Subdomain in DDEV (blog author: J. Minder)

And thanks to all of you who use DDEV, report issues, answer questions in Discord and other venues, and spread the word. Your support makes this project possible.

Amazing Official Add-on Maintainers

There are so many unofficial add-ons being maintained by so many people, but here are the folks that maintained official repositories:

1. @tyler36 - ddev-browsersync, ddev-cron, ddev-cypress, ddev-qr, plus contributions to 20+ other add-ons
2. @weitzman (Moshe Weitzman) - ddev-drupal-contrib, ddev-selenium-standalone-chrome
3. @cmuench (Christian Münch) - ddev-opensearch
4. @julienloizelet (Julien Loizelet) - ddev-mongo, ddev-redis-insight
5. @mkalkbrenner - ddev-solr
6. @robertoperuzzo - ddev-sqlsrv
7. @b13 (TYPO3 agency) - ddev-typo3-solr, ddev-rabbitmq
8. @jedubois - ddev-varnish
9. @hussainweb - ddev-redis
10. @seebeen - ddev-ioncube, ddev-minio
11. @bserem (Bill Seremetis) - ddev-adminer
12. @AkibaAT - ddev-intellij-plugin
13. @biati-digital - vscode-ddev-manager

Looking Ahead to 2026

Stay tuned for our 2026 plans post where we'll outline what's next for DDEV. As always, we welcome your input through all our support venues.

Claude Code and GitHub Copilot were used as assistants in gathering lists and material, and in reviewing this article.

I used Claude Code to build a new feature for my site this morning. Any URL on my blog can now return Markdown instead of HTML.

I added a small hint in the HTML to signal that the Markdown version exists, mostly to see what would happen. My plan was to leave it running for a few weeks and write about it later if anything interesting turned up.

Within an hour, I had hundreds of requests from AI crawlers, including ClaudeBot, GPTBot, OpenAI's SearchBot, and more. So much for waiting a few weeks.

For two decades, we built sites for two audiences: humans and search engines. AI agents are now the third audience, and most websites aren't optimized for them yet.

We learned how to play the SEO game so our sites would rank in Google. Now people are starting to invest in things like Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), which are about getting cited in AI-generated answers.

I wanted to understand what that actually means in practice, so I turned my own site into a small experiment and made every page available as Markdown.

If you've been following my blog, you know that Drupal stores my blog posts as Markdown. But when AI crawlers visited, they got HTML like everyone else. They had to wade through navigation menus and wrapper divs to find the actual content. My content already existed in a more AI-friendly format. I just wasn't serving it to them.

It only took a few changes, and Drupal made that easy.

First, I added content negotiation to my site. When a request includes Accept: text/markdown in the HTTP headers, my site returns the Markdown instead of the rendered HTML.

Second, I made it possible to append .md to any URL. For example, https://dri.es/principles-for-life.md gives you clean Markdown with metadata like title, date, and tags.

But how did those crawlers find the Markdown version so fast? I borrowed a pattern from RSS: RSS auto-discovery. Many sites include a link tag with rel="alternate" pointing to their RSS feed. I applied the same idea to Markdown: every HTML page now includes a link tag announcing that an alternative Markdown version exists at the .md URL.

That "Markdown auto-discovery" turned out to be the key. The crawlers parse the HTML, find the alternate Markdown link, and immediately switch. That explains the hundreds of requests I saw within the first hour.

In the end, this took surprisingly little work. If your content already exists in a cleaner, structured form, you might be closer to this than you think. For me, this feels like the beginning of a longer experiment.

The speed of adoption tells me AI agents are hungry for cleaner content formats and will use them the moment they find them. What I don't know yet is whether this actually benefits me. It might lead to more visibility in AI answers, or it might just make it easier for AI companies to use my content without sending traffic back.

I know not everyone will love this experiment. Humans, including me, are teaching machines how to read our sites better, while machines are teaching humans to stop visiting us. The value exchange between creators and AI companies is far from settled, and it's entirely possible that making content easier for AI to consume will accelerate the hollowing out of the web.

I don't have a good answer to that yet, but I'd rather experiment than look away. I'm going to leave this running and report back.

Drupal 12 development has reached a point where the system requirements may be raised in the development branch. To prepare core developers for this and to inform the community at large, we are announcing the following requirements for Drupal 12.

Webserver

The webserver requirements have not changed since Drupal 11. They are Apache 2.4.7 or nginx 1.1 minimum. IIS is not supported.

PHP

Drupal 12 will require PHP 8.5. Older versions of PHP are not supported.

Database

The minimum database requirements for backends supported by Drupal 12 core are MySQL 8.0, MariaDB 10.11, PostgreSQL 18, and SQLite 3.45.

The MySQL and SQLite requirements have not changed since Drupal 11.0. MariaDB is raised from 10.6 and PostgreSQL from 16.

Composer

Drupal recommends the latest secure release of Composer, 2.9.3.

Browsers

The existing browser policy has not changed and there was no need to update it for Drupal 12. Drupal already drops support for older versions of browsers as new ones get released.

Drupal 11 will receive long term support

Drupal 11 will continue to be supported until mid-late 2028, at least until the release of Drupal 13.

Most things need regular care and maintenance to ensure they continue to run effectively, and your website is no exception. When it comes to website maintenance, one of the strongest parallels is with car maintenance. A vehicle only runs smoothly with routine check-ups, even if it looks perfect on the outside. You stay on the safe side when the engine is checked, parts are updated, and small issues are fixed before they turn into larger, more expensive repairs.

I’m excited to share that I’ll be teaming up with Lullabot’s Andy Blum to deliver an in-depth front-end theming training at DrupalCon Chicago 2026.

This training is especially meaningful to me because it brings together a large part of the work I’ve been doing at Dripyard over the past few years. Teaching and sharing hard-earned lessons is one of my favorite parts of being involved in the Drupal community.

Drupal completes 25 years this January 15th, 2026! Let’s celebrate Drupal with 25 compelling reasons why it remains a secure, scalable, open-source CMS trusted by enterprises and governments worldwide.

Join us THURSDAY, January 15 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.

Today we are talking about Recording Podcasts, The tech used, and How Drupal Can help with guest Stephen Cross. We'll also cover Chosen as our module of the week.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/535

Topics

• Podcasting and Second Signal Media
• Evolution of Podcasting
• Tech Essentials for Podcasting
• The CEO's Video Strategy Transformation
• Overcoming the Fear of Speaking on Camera
• The Importance of Consistency in Content Creation
• Editing vs. Authenticity in Video Content
• Choosing the Right Environment and Equipment
• Setting Realistic Goals for Your Podcast
• Recording Workflow Recommendations
• Tools and Tips for Improving Audio Quality

Resources

• Basic Editing with Kdenlive
• Audio clean-up tools
• Izotope
• Secret sounds

Guests

Stephen Cross - stephencross

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Andy Giles - dripyard.com andyg5000

MOTW Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

• Brief description:
  • Have you ever wanted to give users on your Drupal site a more intuitive alternative to native HTML multiselect widgets? There's a module for that.
• Module name/project name:
  • Chosen
• Brief history
  • How old: created in Jul 2011 by shadcn but recent releases are by Bálint Nagy (nagy.balint) of Hungary
  • Versions available: 3.0.6, 4.0.3, and 5.0.3, the last of which works with Drupal 10.2 or 11
• Maintainership
  • Actively maintained
  • Security coverage
  • Test coverage
  • Number of open issues: 221 open issues, 4 of which are bugs against the 5.x branch
• Usage stats:
  • Almost 38,000 sites
• Module features and usage
  • With the module installed, your Drupal site will selectively replace select elements with a more intuitive widget, leveraging the Chosen library. In the module's configuration you can specify how many options should trigger Chosen, and also specify form field selectors to explicitly include or exclude.
  • The three active branches of the module reflect usage of different forks of the Chosen library. Notably, the 5.x versions use a fork that no longer requires jQuery, and allows Chosen to be enabled for mobile devices.
  • In addition to the module configuration, you can also force a custom form's select element to use the Chosen library simply by adding the "chosen-select" class to the form array.
  • Back in episode #409 we talked about Tagify, which in some ways is similar, but is designed specifically to work with entity reference fields. That makes it less "general purpose", though Tagify does also include some additional capabilities, such as being able to include labels or icons on results based on a property of the result.
  • Years ago I used another popular project called Select2 for turning multiselects into listboxes that included a search filter, but that project relied on a library that required jQuery but is incompatible with jQuery 4. So, Select2 has been officially replaced by Tagify, but Chosen could also be useful if your field is not an entity reference.
  • There are a variety similar modules you can also look at, including Choices.js, Selectize, and Selectify, but Chosen is by far the most widely used, even if you're only looking at numbers for the 5.x branch