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In June, we set an ambitious goal: to raise 1 million dollars to accelerate the Drupal AI initiative. Today at DrupalCon Vienna, Dries Buytaert announced that we have achieved that goal. Remarkably, it took just five months.

This is by far the single greatest fundraising effort ever seen in the history of Drupal. It positions us well to win the race in AI.

Dries Buytaert

This marks the largest fundraising effort in Drupal’s history, driven by the commitment of our expanding group of AI Makers. The funding model combines financial contributions with a commitment to provide full-time staff who actively contribute to Drupal AI development.

With the addition of six new organisations — Pronovix, Pantheon, OpenSense Labs, Vardot, Foster Interactive, and Esinergia — the total number of Makers now stands at 22. Their involvement was instrumental in reaching the 1 million dollar target.

We met with Dominic De Cooman who leads the fundraising for the Drupal AI Initative to get the inside track on why this funding is so vital and what it will be used for.

Who are the latest Makers, and why is their support so important at this stage?

This support is vital because it enables a dedicated team, guided by increased capacity in management roles, to develop solutions that deliver tangible value for organisations across the Drupal ecosystem.

Why have so many prominent Drupal companies chosen to join in this phase?

Drupal is inherently designed for AI, and organisations are acutely aware of both the opportunities and challenges this presents. Companies are seeking to reinvent themselves as AI-powered agencies and platform providers. The Drupal AI initiative accelerates this transformation. Establishing Drupal as the leading AI-powered CMS is essential for the shared success of the ecosystem.

What was the overarching vision guiding this new round of sponsorship for Drupal AI?

The vision is to establish Drupal as the number one AI-powered CMS globally, while enabling our community and businesses to adapt and thrive in the AI era.

Explain how the funding is split between financial resources and FTE commitments, and why FTEs are critical.

• $240,000 is allocated to manage the team, ensuring delivery and accountability.
• Six full-time equivalent (FTE) staff members are committed to executing the work.

FTEs are crucial because they provide consistent, focused effort, ensuring progress is sustained for the long term.

What tangible outcomes are expected from this funding in the short to medium term?

The funding will support a professional approach to innovation and product development. An RFP will be announced later this week, inviting Makers to participate and contribute to this work.

How will this funding accelerate AI capabilities within the Drupal ecosystem?

With dedicated resources for innovation and product development, solutions can be delivered faster and with higher quality than would be possible relying solely on volunteer efforts.

How does this funding model support long-term sustainability rather than short-term project boosts?

The six-month commitment ensures sustained access to first-hand information and practical AI “recipes.” By building a library of AI knowledge and tools, we aim to create a flywheel effect, encouraging long-term contribution from the community. Success will depend on how effectively we utilise the funds over the coming months, which is why the RFP process is a critical next step.

How can my agency or organisation join the initiative as a maker?

You can find out all about how to become a maker on our dedicated page.

If you are at DrupalCon Domininque De Cooman would love to meet you. You can also reach him on Drupal Slack.

At DrupalCon Vienna 2025, Dries Buytaert delivered a powerful keynote on how AI is redrawing the web and how Drupal is evolving to meet the moment. From the upcoming launch of Drupal Canvas to the Drupal AI Initiative and new automation tools, the talk laid out a roadmap filled with innovation, resilience, and community spirit.

If you couldn’t make it to DrupalCon Vienna, here’s what you missed in the DriesNote. 

Dries just delivered a DriesNote that marks a true turning point for Drupal — and the message couldn’t be clearer: we’re not just adapting to AI, we’re accelerating straight into it.

With 69% of Google searches now resulting in zero clicks, AI is fundamentally changing how people interact with the web. This is a new challenge for developers and agencies alike — but Dries says this can be an opportunity for Drupal.

Dries said AI isn’t replacing websites, it’s expanding their importance. Websites remain the source of truth — the home of trust, authenticity, and brand identity. AI agents will always need to cite and link back to authoritative sources.

Drupal's strategic investments in modern APIs, versioning, and configuration management have made it one of the most AI-ready frameworks in the world.

When AI agents make mistakes, you need systems that can roll back safely — and that’s exactly what Drupal excels at.

With innovation in the Drupal community doubling over the past year, the project is ready to run toward the storm. As Dries put it: AI is the storm, but AI is also the way through the storm.

Major Announcements from the DriesNote

Drupal Canvas 1.0 - Release candidate is OUT (as of this week). Full release November 2025. This is the no-code visual site builder that's been in development across multiple DriesNotes. It includes integrated CKEditor, Metatag support, Webform compatibility, content templates, and even code components for JavaScript developers. Canvas will become the default experience in Drupal CMS 2.0.

Site Templates & Marketplace - The Drupal Association Board unanimously approved funding from their Board Vision Fund for a curated marketplace on Drupal.org. The first template "Byte" (built by Media Current) gets you from install to complete B2B SaaS site in under 3 minutes with the Mercury theme and design system. 10-15 more templates are coming from Drupal Certified Partners during the pilot phase. Soon, designers will be able to create and export templates with no code required.

Drupal AI Initiative - In the past 6 months, the AI Initiative raised $1M in combined funding ($200K cash + $800K in FTE hours from 22 agency partners) — the biggest fundraising effort in Drupal's history. Major features demonstrated:

• AI-powered full page generation with dozens of components in Canvas
• Context Control Center - teach AI your brand voice, target audience, product info, and messaging for consistent outputs
• Autonomous background agents that work while you sleep, updating content based on product changes
• Design-to-code workflow with Figma MCP server integration (demonstrated by student contributor Witze)
• Hybrid workflows mixing deterministic logic with AI steps

Drupal CMS 2.0 - Launching January 2026, potentially on Drupal's 25th birthday. Will ship with Canvas as the default out-of-the-box experience. Major marketing push planned for March 2026, with site templates and marketplace becoming a primary focus throughout the year.

Orchestration as "DXP 2.0" - Dries introduced a vision for internal orchestration (ECA improvements) and external automation tools (like ActivePieces) working together. ECA will get a major UX overhaul to make it more accessible. External tools can trigger Drupal AI agents and ECA workflows, creating powerful hybrid automation. This could redefine what agencies build and how they generate revenue.

Who This Benefits

This isn't all just for no-code site builders. Developers get powerful APIs and code components. Agencies gain new service offerings through AI and orchestration tools. Enterprises get the governance, security, and scalability they need with modern experiences their teams can actually use.

Thank You to the Community

Dries thanked the Drupal community. He pointed out that innovation in Drupal has doubled in the past year, and said that doesn't happen by accident. The community rallied around the Starshot project (Drupal CMS), contributed to strategic initiatives, and built these tools together. The 22 agencies funding Drupal AI, the Drupal Certified Partners building templates, leadership from people like Tiffany Farris on the marketplace — this is what makes Drupal different.

#Drupal #DrupalCMS #AI #OpenSource #WebDevelopment #DrupalCanvas #DigitalExperience #CMS

Relive the #Driesnote

Exactly four months after we released AI 1.1.0 and AI Agents 1.1.0, we are very proud to release the 1.2.0 in stable releases.

A major milestone for Drupal AI

The Drupal AI 1.2.0 release marks a huge step forward in making AI practical, transparent, and empowering for everyone — from developers to editors to digital leaders. 

It transforms how content is created and managed, letting users and editors interact with AI directly inside Drupal’s UI through the new Field Widget Actions, and giving organizations total visibility and control with AI Observability.

With tools like the Prompt Library for consistent, best-practice AI prompts, a redesigned Toolbar Chatbot for seamless assistance, and innovations such as Progress Service for Agents, OpenAI PDF support, Image-to-Image editing, and PHP Fibers for faster performance - Drupal AI brings enterprise-grade intelligence right into everyday workflows.
For companies, it means smarter, faster, and more consistent digital experiences; for end users, it means AI that feels natural, helpful, and transparent - all built on Drupal’s trusted open-source foundation.

Key Highlights in Drupal AI and AI Agents 1.2.0 Field Widget Actions – Invoke AI from Anywhere

Editors can now interact with AI directly within any entity form. The new Field Widget Actions module introduces one-click AI assistance for tasks such as generating summaries, titles, categories, or tags—all while keeping editorial control front and centre.

This feature integrates seamlessly with AI Content Suggestions, AI Automators, and AI Agents, enabling both simple preset interactions and complex autonomous logic.

Advanced users can extend it further via ECA integrations, unlocking over 100+ potential use cases.

AI Observability – Full Transparency for AI Operations

The all-new AI Observability module delivers enterprise-grade monitoring for AI processes.

Built atop Drupal’s PSR logging infrastructure, it tracks token usage, errors, and performance metrics—paving the way for integrations with tools like OpenTelemetry.Partnerships with the Extended Logger module will soon offer advanced visualizations for real-time insights.

Prompt Library – Share and Standardize Prompts as Configurations

Prompt management is now easier than ever. The Prompt Library allows modules and organizations to ship preconfigured prompts, ensuring consistency and best practices across projects.

This enables teams to embed domain-specific prompt engineering directly into their Drupal distributions or recipes.

New Toolbar Chatbot – Smarter, Friendlier, and More Integrated

A refreshed Toolbar Chatbot interface provides a larger, more intuitive conversational design for AI assistants helping site admins and editors.

The updated style becomes the new default, remaining fully backwards compatible with existing chatbots.

Progress Service for Agents – Transparent Multi-step Interactions

Complex agent workflows can now display progress in real time.

The new Progress Service gives granular insights into what an agent is doing, which tools it has invoked, and what actions it plans next—ideal for debugging, logging, and enhancing user trust during long-running operations.

OpenAI PDF Support – Chat with Your Documents

The OpenAI provider now supports direct PDF ingestion in Chat Explorer and custom integrations.

Upload PDFs as contextual data sources and use them in AI tasks—perfect for “chat with your documents” features.

Image-to-Image Operations – Edit images using natural language

The Image-to-Image operation type has been added and thanks to innovations from Nano Banana and DreamStudio, Drupal AI can now support background removal, style transfer, and natural-language-based image editing—unlocking new creative possibilities.

Support for PHP Fibers – Faster Parallel AI Calls

Drupal AI now leverages Fibers for asynchronous operations, enabling multiple AI requests to run in parallel.
This dramatically accelerates processes such as multi-field translation or bulk content enrichment.

Normalized Token Usage – Unified AI Metrics

Token usage data is now possible to standardize across all providers, simplifying cost tracking, reporting, and usage limits for third-party integrations.

Views Automators Type – Automate with Drupal Views

The new Views Automator Type brings Drupal’s powerful Views system into AI workflows.
Automators can now query, analyze, and summarize content on demand—for example:

• Generate sentiment summaries for the most commented articles.
• Write contextual “related content” descriptions dynamically.
• Create weekly editorial quote digests automatically.

New Automator Types – Accessibility, SEO, and Content Enhancement

Three new AI Automators extend Drupal’s automation toolkit:

• Image Alt Text Generator – Improves accessibility automatically.
• Image Filename Rewrite – Boosts SEO by renaming uploaded images contextually.
• Summary Generator – Creates concise summaries for “Text with Summary” fields.

Mocking Library – Faster Development and Testing

A new Mocking Library allows developers to replay AI provider responses locally—saving cost, time, and tokens during development and automated testing.

• Vector Databases Abstracted for Recipes
• Vector database connections are now fully abstracted, making it possible to ship recipes that “just work” regardless of whether you use Milvus, Postgres, or Pinecone—simplifying RAG and knowledge-based applications.

More issues worked on by more contributors from more organisations than any other Drupal AI release

This release is based on over 240+ issues worked on, including over 60 feature issues, with 127 different contributors from 64 different organizations contributing in one way or another.

A huge thanks to everyone who has worked with us on making this release possible. Perfectly timed for celebrating at DrupalCon.

Try Drupal AI 1.2.0 for yourself

Read more and download Drupal AI 1.2.0 here.

No write access? No problem! This guide shows you how to create and apply Git patches effortlessly using Git Diff and Git Apply. Perfect for developers who want quick, clean fixes!

DrupalCon Vienna 2025 kicks off with insights from keynote speaker Vera Herzmann on neurodiversity in tech, plus sessions on design systems, post-COVID community building, burnout, and AI in Drupal. Here's what speakers shared ahead of the event.

Drupal is an excellent tool for building intranet networks. The Drupal core already provides many essential intranet features, while its real strength lies in the contributed modules developed by the community. These extensions allow companies to add advanced functionality at minimal cost. In this article, we will present 16 of the best contributed modules that will transform your Drupal intranet into a professional communication and collaboration center.

Vienna-based agency drunomics is making a major impact at DrupalCon Vienna 2025 as a Gold Sponsor. With the launch of their new cloud CMS platform, mossbo—built on Lupus Decoupled—and three sessions covering headless Drupal, AI integrations, and sustainable UX, the team highlights their commitment to open-source innovation on home ground.

Discover how to extend Drupal AI with custom tokens to provide your chatbot with the current page context, ensuring more accurate, context-aware answers for users.

Today we are talking about Single Directory Components, Leveling up your skills, and How DrupalEasy can help with our guest Mike Anello. We’ll also cover Markdown Easy as our module of the week.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/524

Topics

• Discussion on Single Directory Components
• Drupal Easy's Training Programs
• Light Bulb Moments in Learning
• Choosing Post CSS for Front-End Development
• Course Materials and Updates
• Course Structure and Student Engagement
• Introducing the Show and Tell Series

Resources

• DrupalEasy's Professional Single Directory Components course
• Dries blogs about Markdown Easy:
  • https://dri.es/installing-and-cbonfiguring-markdown-easy-for-drupal
  • https://dri.es/switching-to-markdown-after-20-years-of-html
• DrupalEasy Show & Tell
  • https://www.drupaleasy.com/blogs/ultimike/2025/10/introducing-drupaleasy-show-tell-our-new-youtube-video-series
  • https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUf-wKGJjCXEXH03Mw44hJ84YG-ZwmVKp
• Drupal dojo
• Ignore missing
  • {% include 'test:button' ignore missing with {

Guests

• Mike Anello - drupaleasy.com ultimike

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan Stephen Cross - stephencross.com stephencross Hayden Baillio - hgbaillio

MOTW Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

• Brief description:
  • Have you ever wanted an easy way to use Markdown to write content in your Drupal site? There’s a module for that.
• Module name/project name:
  • Markdown Easy
• Brief history
  • How old: created in July 2023 by Michael Anello (ultimike) of Drupal Easy
• Versions available: 1.0.1 and 2.0.0, both of which work with Drupal 9 or later
• Maintainership
  • Actively maintained
  • Security coverage
  • Test coverage
  • Documentation guide available
  • Number of open issues: 9 open issues, none of which are bugs against the 2.x branch
• Usage stats:
  • 556 sites
• Module features and usage
  • For anyone who doesn’t know, Markdown is a popular, lightweight markup language for creating formatted text using a plain-text editor. Initially defined in 2004, Markdown grew out of existing conventions for formatting text in emails and usenet posts
  • People like writing in Markdown because it allows them to focus on what’s being said without the distraction of concerns about how it will look
  • With the Markdown Easy module installed, your Drupal site will now have a Markdown Easy text format available. Within the settings for that format, you can choose "Standard Markdown", "GitHub-flavored Markdown", or "Markdown Smörgåsbord" as the variant of Markdown syntax you want to use. Standard Markdown is the most restrictive, and the other two allow more elements to be included. You can also configure which HTML tags you want to allow, as part of the normal text format configuration.
  • It’s worth noting that Dries has posted a couple of blogs about using this module, the more recent about working with Mike to better handle HTML tags. So Mike, what inspired you to write this module, and what can you tell us about the experience of collaborating with Dries?

Alex Moreno, Partner Manager at Pantheon and Board Member of the Drupal Association, outlines the eight top things he’s looking forward to at DrupalCon Vienna 2025. From the evolution of Drupal CMS to AI-powered features, community energy, and the future of the Drupal Marketplace, his insights offer a preview into the momentum building around Drupal’s next chapter.

Open source platforms are often selected in the public sector not solely for cost savings, but for reasons tied to control, transparency, and long-term maintainability. When governments adopt a content management system, the decision typically reflects broader priorities: data governance, compliance, vendor independence, and the ability to adapt to changing policy or operational needs over time. These factors often outweigh individual feature sets in the selection process.

Drupal continues to be used in many of these environments due to its emphasis on structured content, granular access control, and support for accessibility and multilingual requirements. It offers a configuration-driven approach that aligns with the needs of IT departments managing complex content workflows and multi-site environments. Its community-led governance and dedicated security team provide predictability in how updates and vulnerabilities are handled—a key consideration for public-facing services.

Institutions such as the European Commission, NASA, and the U.S. Department of Justice have adopted Drupal in part because it supports internal workflows and regulatory demands without locking them into proprietary solutions. The choice is often less about the platform itself and more about its ability to operate reliably within a broader ecosystem of accountability, policy, and infrastructure planning.

Case Study

• Crafting a Joyful, Accessible, and Unified Digital Experience

Tutorial

• Unmanaged Files in Drupal: Rendering via a Twig Template (Part 4)

Discover Drupal

• Speakeasy 1.2 Brings Browser-Native Text-to-Speech to Drupal
• ONLYOFFICE Docs Connector v9.0.4 Introduces Native PDF Form Editing in Drupal
• Typography Filter 2.0.0 Brings Granular Control and Developer Integration to Drupal
• Kevin Quillen Releases Alpha7 of Drupal Solr Dense Vector Module

Organization News

• ProseMirror Module Arrives in Drupal: Structured JSON Editing for a Headless Future
• Adaptive Integrates Interact AI with AX+ to Simplify Conversational Features in Drupal
• DrupalEasy Launches ‘Show & Tell’ YouTube Series Featuring Unrehearsed Drupal Demos
• Acquia Highlights How CKEditor Simplifies Content Workflows in Drupal

Event

• DrupalCon Vienna 2025: What the Organizers Revealed About the Program, Keynotes, and What’s Ahead
• Understanding the Importance of Website Maintenance in the Digital Age
• Call for Speakers Extended for DrupalCon Chicago 2026: New Deadline is October 19
• Zoocha at DrupalCon Vienna 2025: A Return, A Refresh, and A Commitment to Community
• amazee.io, Official Sponsor of DrupalCon Vienna 2025, Showcases Open Source Commitment, Private AI, and Expert Sessions

We acknowledge that there are more stories to share. However, due to selection constraints, we must pause further exploration for now. To get timely updates, follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Bluesky, and Facebook. You can also join us on Drupal Slack at #thedroptimes.

Thank you.
Sincerely,
Kazima Abbas
Sub-editor, The DropTimes

Zoocha is returning to the DrupalCon Europe exhibition floor as a sponsor at DrupalCon Vienna 2025, bringing fresh branding and a focus on community-led innovation. The UK-based agency will host four sessions covering accessibility, CDN routing, content architecture, and mental health in open-source teams—underscoring their renewed commitment to creativity, impact, and knowledge-sharing in the Drupal ecosystem.

Overall SummaryOur October monthly meeting showcased the incredible momentum building across the UI Suite ecosystem as we approach critical deadlines and milestones. With Drupal 11.3's feature freeze just two weeks away, we're pushing hard to land several major APIs in core while simultaneously advancing our contrib modules. The meeting highlighted our growing community engagement, reaching 380 members on Slack and over 1,100 installs across our key modules. We also celebrated Florent's official addition as a Drupal core maintainer and explored exciting new collaboration opportunities with the German government's Kern UX design system initiative.

As the official sponsor of DrupalCon Vienna 2025, amazee.io will showcase new private AI tools, scalable Drupal hosting, and insights from their open source experts in a series of hands-on sessions and live booth demos.

We're excited to share something we've been working on for some time: a comprehensive refresh of Tag1's brand and digital presence. Today, we're officially launching our new website at tag1.com and a modernized visual identity that better reflects who we are and where we're headed. Why Now? After more than eighteen years building our reputation as open-source experts through Drupal contributions, infrastructure management, and solving complex digital challenges for organizations worldwide, we realized our brand wasn't telling the complete story of what Tag1 delivers today. While we're incredibly proud of our Drupal heritage (and always will be), our expertise has evolved naturally alongside the open-source ecosystem. Today's Tag1 tackles AI...

Drupal has always been powerful. That’s why organizations choose it for large, complex websites. But let’s be honest—building and editing pages in Drupal has never been as simple as it could be. Marketing teams often depend on developers for every layout change or new page, and that slows everything down. That’s now starting to change with Drupal Canvas (previously called Experience Builder) and Single Directory Components (SDC). Together, they make Drupal feel modern, visual, and far more approachable for editors.

Single Directory Components (SDC) consist of a directory of files that go together to create a small component on a Drupal website. SDC can be nested together, which means that a consistent set of elements can be created and plugged together on a site.

The power of SDC comes from their ability to be self contained. If you have the need to build a complex component that displays data in a widget then building it as a SDC means that you can ensure that every time you include it, the same widget will be shown.

It is possible to add an SDC to your Drupal site without adding them into tempaltes first. You can use the SDC Component Library module to preview them whilst you are building them, and then integrate them into your site once they are ready.

This article is more or less a recreation of the article Using Storybook To Preview Single Directory Components, but centered around the SDC Component Library module instead. As such, there will be a little bit of duplicaton, but each article is self contained so you don't need to jump back and forward between the pages.

In this article we will look at setting up a theme with an SDC, and then using the SDC Component Library module preview that component.

Creating A Single Directory Component

To preview an SDC in SDC Component Library we first need to create one, this will be used as an example thoughout the rest of the article. It is assumed that you have a custom theme that you can build an SDC in.

Read more

Want all of your microsites to have an identical theme, but also one some of them to have slight variations? I got you covered.