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In episode 548 we welcome back JD Leonard to discuss what CRMs are, what problems they solve, and which organizations benefit from them. JD explains why Drupal CRM defines CRM as "Contact Relationship Management," outlines core expectations like contact and relationship tracking and integrations, and describes Drupal CRM's Drupal-native architecture using dedicated, fieldable entity types for contacts, relationships, and contact methods. The panel compares Drupal CRM to older Drupal CRM efforts and user-based approaches, covers security considerations for PII and plans for field encryption, and highlights ecosystem projects such as CRM Email, CRM Membership (including Drupal Commerce integration), and event registration needs.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/548

Topics

• Module of the Week: Module of the Week: Social Media Links Block and Fields
• Use Cases and Discussion
• How to Suggest Modules
• What Is a CRM
• CRM Hats and Naming
• Core CRM Features and Users
• Why Drupal CRM Exists
• Drupal CRM Architecture Deep Dive
• Demos and Legacy Alternatives
• Project Origins and Community
• Out of the Box Features
• Security and PII Considerations
• Field Encryption Limits
• Core First Drupal Native
• Search Deprecation Drupal 12
• Choosing Contrib Integrations
• Ecosystem Modules Upstream
• Getting Started
• Evaluating CRM Options
• Common CRM Pitfalls
• Community Sustainability Vision
• Funding Volunteers Sponsors
• Roadmap Toward 1.0
• Ecosystem Membership Events

Resources

Try the latest - https://drupal.org/project/crm Field encrypt - https://www.drupal.org/project/crm/issues/3558040 Primary entity reference - https://www.drupal.org/project/primary_entity_reference Member Platform initiative - https://www.drupal.org/project/member Financial sponsor of Steve Ayers' time working on Drupal CRM - https://www.govwebworks.com https://www.portlandwebworks.com CRM ecosystem modules - https://www.drupal.org/project/crm/ecosystem Drupal Slack #crm channel: - https://drupal.slack.com/archives/C08N90UF9TR

Guests

JD Leonard - modernbizconsulting.com jdleonard

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

Module of the Week

with Martin Anderson-Clutz

Social Media Links Block and Field

The modules provides a configurable block that display links (icons) to your profiles on various popular networking sites. With this module, a website can be quickly extended with a "Follow us" functionality. Or you make the block available for your site editors, and they can configure the social networks themselves.

The conversation around AI is drifting into a familiar trap. We’re treating it as a question of alignment when it’s really a question of judgment. A recent reflection by Matthew Tift, written after DrupalCon, captures this tension well. Debates harden into sides, positions get defended, and nuance disappears. But the more useful observation is this: most of the people doing meaningful work with AI aren’t anchored to a fixed stance. They’re working through it, using principles they already trust.

That’s the part many organisations are skipping. Instead of grounding decisions in existing values, they’re reacting to the pace of change. This creates a false urgency to define a position quickly, often at the expense of clarity. In practice, that leads to inconsistent decisions. One team leans into AI for speed, another resists it for control, and neither is wrong. What’s missing is a shared framework that makes those decisions coherent over time.

At TDT, we see this as less of a technology shift and more of a decision-making test. AI doesn’t require new values as much as it exposes whether existing ones are actually being used. If your principles only show up in documentation but not in how choices are made under pressure, they’re not doing much work. The organisations that navigate this well won’t be the ones that pick a side early, but the ones that stay consistent in how they decide as the landscape keeps changing.

Discover Drupal

• UI Suite Pushes Core APIs and Display Builder Toward RC1 Ahead of Drupal Freeze
• Drupal 11.3.6 Released With Bug Fixes and Stability Improvements

Events

• DrupalCamp Ottawa 2026 to Take Place on 1 May with Free Registration
• Drupal Camp Asheville Opens Training Proposal Submissions
• Drupal Pune Meetup Set for 18 April With Session Submissions Open
• Florida DrupalCamp 2027 Scheduled for 29–30 January in Orlando
• DrupalCamp Grenoble Begins Today with Expanded Bilingual Programme
• DrupalSouth Wellington 2026 Opens Ironstar Community Awards Nominations
• Drupal Mountain Camp 2027 Set for 2–4 March in Davos
• Acquia Engage 2026 to Focus on Enterprise AI Adoption and Governance in Denver
• DrupalCon Rotterdam 2026 Opens Registration With 20% Lower Early Bird Pricing

Free Software

• Open Source Licensing Emerges as Key Fault Line in EU Cloud Sovereignty Debate

Organisation News

• DXPR Builder 2.8 Adds AI Page Creation and Editing Tools to Drupal

Additional developments from across the Drupal ecosystem were published during the week. Readers can follow The DropTimes on LinkedIn, Twitter, Bluesky, and Facebook for ongoing updates. The publication is also active on Drupal Slack in the #thedroptimes channel.

Alka Elizabeth
Sub-editor
The DropTimes

Is your website ready for AI search? Learn how AIO and GEO help your content get cited in AI-generated answers, not just ranked in search results. Discover the S1x SIGNALS framework and request a free assessment.

Building new modules using AI

I am setting up a playground to experiment with AI. My last post discussed developing and contributing a new Entity/Field Labels module to Drupal using AI. I look forward to seeing what I can create next. Before moving forward, I want to pause and explore how AI can assist me in managing and maintaining my existing contributed modules.

Maintaining my contributed modules using AI

Over the past decade, I’ve created and managed numerous contributed modules. I'm not sure how many there are, and it's been challenging to keep them all up to date. In the long run, I believe an AI agent with the right skills could help me manage my overwhelming list of modules. First, I need to clone my modules into my local development environment.

Cloning my contributed modules via Composer

It's unrealistic for me to manually clone each module's repository. Fortunately, Composer supports Git repositories. However, setting up and testing each module's Git repository using Composer can still be very time-consuming. Since AI excels at repetitive, predictable tasks, this is a perfect opportunity for me to let my AI assistant step in and make my life easier.

Using Agent skills to make things easier

Since cloning a Drupal repository for local development is quite straightforward, this presents a great opportunity to develop a custom agent skill. As with many AI-related tasks, it's best to seek help from the AI. Therefore, I prompted Claude to assist me in planning my drupalorg-project-clone skill.

Here is the front matter description of my new drupalorg-project-clone skill, which was generated by Claude Code and Codex.

Adding a dozen repositories to one's composer.json file makes it harder for humans to review dependencies....Read More

This is part three of a series of articles looking at HTMX in Drupal. Last time I looked at using HTMX to run a "load more" feature on a Drupal page. Before moving onto looking at forms I thought a final example of using HTMX and controllers to achieve an action.

One of the key examples that helped me understand HTMX was when it was used to create a tabbed interface, without reloading the page. This was quite simple to recreate in Drupal and can be done in a single controller.

In this article we will be creating a tabbed interface in Drupal, where HTMX is used to power loading the data in a tab like interface without reloading the page.

All of the code contained in this article can be found in the Drupal HTMX examples project on GitHub, but here we will go through what the code does and what actions it performs to generate content.   

The first task is to create the route for our controller.

The Route

The route we create here just points to an action in a controller.

drupal_htmx_examples_tabbed: path: '/drupal-htmx-examples/tabbed' defaults: _title: 'HTMX Tabbed' _controller: '\Drupal\drupal_htmx_examples\Controller\TabbedController::action' requirements: _permission: 'access content'

When the user (assuming they have the access content permission) visits the path /drupal-htmx-examples/tabbed then they will trigger the action() method in the controller.

Let's build the controller that this route points to.

Read more

Solving a small Drupal issue with plenty added tests: most basic Claude Code setup, without writing a single line of code, issue commentary or commit message myself

To say that there is not an agreement of using large language models (LLMs) for Drupal development would be an understatement. I've been using Claude Code for a while to assits with my Drupal development and I shared a month ago how I brought back the Drupal 7 module upgrader tool from the dead. That was a bit of an involved example, so I wanted to find a simpler one and this time rely even more on Claude.

Gábor Hojtsy Fri, 04/10/2026 - 12:20

Introducing LocalGov Bus Data: Bringing Bus Information into Your Council Website

We’re excited to announce the release of LocalGov Bus Data — a new Drupal module built with and for councils, now available for the entire local government community to use.

markconroy 10th Apr 2026

This is a guest post from the incredible team at DevBranch, a Drupal development team based in Lutsk, Ukraine.

Drupal Café Lutsk and Drupal Global Contribution Weekend (DGCW) have become regular opportunities to strengthen the Drupal community in Lutsk, Ukraine. Organized by the DevBranch development team, they connect developers and grow an active community both locally and within the global Drupal ecosystem.

Is Drupal Café Lutsk the biggest systematic free Drupal meetup?

Drupal Café Lutsk became one of the largest events of this kind and one of the world’s leading Drupal meetups. It all started with the desire to promote this CMF to local programmers.

This idea took shape as free and offline meetups. Their format included two speakers giving sessions on technical Drupal topics in an informal setting. Recordings of the sessions were streamed on Facebook, but the main emphasis remained on live interaction among participants.

The first Café, held on February 18, 2016, attracted nearly 40 attendees. Such a strong start inspired the organizers to continue their mission of introducing more people to Drupal. Their creative peak was to put Drupal’s founder, Dries Buytaert’s, portrait on the logo. To everyone's sheer surprise, Dries himself replied to the email with a confirmation! As a result, the announcement of the next Café had the aforementioned logo.

Drupal Café Lutsk (18.02.2016)

One of the key challenges in organizing the event was finding the right venue. Since the primary goal was to create informal communication in a comfort zone with no recruitment or headhunting, the choice fell on open-space venues to rent.

Drupal Café Lutsk (05.08.2021)

This, however, was only at the beginning. As the company grew, DevBranch built its own office in late 2021. One of its rooms was a conference hall, which became the permanent venue not only for Drupal Café Lutsk, but also for other similar events.

Drupal Café Lutsk (23.10.2025)

Now, Drupal Café Lutsk is held four times a year. To attract more attendees and broaden the audience, a third session (non-technical IT-related) was added. From that point on, the number of attendees steadily grew and eventually exceeded 100 per event. Thanks to this, has Drupal Café Lutsk become the largest free recurring Drupal meetup in the world?

The initiative also received support from software agencies like AnyforSoft and YozmaTech. Their contributions helped provide dinners/afterparties and photos.

Drupal Global Contribution Weekend (DGCW) in Lutsk - 100+ successfully closed issues every event annually!

Another important contribution to the community’s development is the Drupal Code Sprint, based on the Drupal Association initiative — the Drupal Global Contribution Weekend. The association’s goal was to convene Drupal developers worldwide annually to collaborate on core, modules, themes, and documentation.

Drupal Global Contribution Weekend in Lutsk (25.01.2020)

The DevBranch’s idea was to join this initiative by arranging a local event. Their partners and friends — Drupal companies from different parts of Ukraine — were invited to join the Drupal Code Sprint as sponsors, mentors, and participants. Organizers provide an office location and all the necessary equipment, along with overall event administration. Sponsors — AnyforSoft, ImageX, Lemberg Solutions, Five Jars, UniOne, Sigma Software, and Mint Innovations — cover direct expenses such as lunch, mentors’ presents, and participants’ souvenirs.

Following the tradition established by the Drupal Association, the day for Drupal Code Sprints was set for the last Saturday of January. Those interested in participating choose the role of developer or mentor, depending on their expertise and availability of drupal.org issues. At the end of an all-day marathon, both contributors and mentors receive pleasant bonuses: souvenirs and gifts.

Drupal Global Contribution Weekend in Lutsk (25.01.2025)

As a result, Code Sprints became an accessible way for Ukrainian developers to contribute to community issues as part of a broader global movement. Beginners can make their first open-source contributions under the guidance of more experienced developers, who, in turn, finally have the time to contribute themselves :)

The outcomes spoke for themselves: 100+ successfully closed issues every event annually!

Drupal Ukraine Community banner at Drupal events

With the start of the full-scale russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, all those initiatives were put on hold. Many Ukrainians were stripped of the opportunity to attend global Drupal events in person. To highlight the impact of the war, DevBranch cooperated with AnyforSoft to create a banner with a simple message:

"Ukrainian Drupal Community: Absent from In-Person Events since 2022".

It has already traveled to DrupalCon Barcelona, DrupalCamp Ottawa, Drupal GovCon, DrupalCamp Finland+Baltics, DrupalCamp Ghent, DrupalCon Portland, Drupal Dev Days Belgium, Drupaljam, and DrupalSouth Melbourne, adding Ukrainian context to the global Drupal community.

Behind this journey stands the support of the community and those who helped make it happen. Props to all the event organizers and Lenny Moskalyk for her enormous assistance with logistics and for making sure the banners were in place!

If you are an event organizer and want to support Ukraine in such a way, just drop an email to merge@dev-branch.com! They can help from providing design assets, to printing a banner, and handling delivery to your venue.

Drupal Ukraine Community banner at Drupal events

Summary

When organizing all of these events, one of the key priorities was to create lively and in-person communication and urge a local IT community to grow. For this reason, all events were held on-site. Accordingly, with the onset of COVID-19 pandemic, the organizers deliberately suspended all such initiatives. Once regulations allowed gatherings in public spaces again, DevBranch brought back on-site events, taking care to provide attendees with masks and sanitizers.

However, this return to the in-person format took place shortly before the start of the full-scale russian invasion of Ukraine. And only thanks to the Defence Forces of Ukraine, it eventually became possible to organize on-site events again. No event now takes place without the company’s traditional fundraising for the needs of the Ukrainian military.

Drupal Global Contribution Weekend in Lutsk (25.01.2025)

Thus, despite all obstacles and the challenging conditions dictated by today’s Ukrainian realities, Drupal Café Lutsk meetups and DGCW code sprints continue to bring developers together, promoting this CMF in Ukraine, attracting new participants, and helping experienced specialists continue to grow.

Over the course of 10 years, a proud number of events have been organized: 

• 30 Drupal Café Lutsk meetups;
• 10 Сode Sprints;
• 2 Drupal TriviaNights (inspired by the same venues at DrupalCons, Thursday evenings);
• numerous Upwork Freelance huddles.

All the local events highlighted Lutsk town as the Drupal capital of Ukraine! 

You can see photos from every event here: https://devbranch.ua/events

One day, DevBranch was asked, ‘Are you a Drupal development team, or an events agency?’
The reply was ‘Yes :)’

Managing a council website is a high-stakes balancing act where a single accidental “publish“ can impact public trust. Learn more about how LocalGov Drupal solves this problem for councils.

Drupal site-builders rejoice! We currently have two major page building projects approaching production-maturity: Drupal Canvas and Display Builder. In this article series, I compare the two projects by implementing real world use cases from the perspective of a site-builder.

DrupalCamp Grenoble begins today in Grenoble, France, bringing together more than 110 attendees for three days of sessions, keynotes, and contribution work. The event introduces a third English-language track alongside two French tracks, reflecting a broader European outreach while maintaining its Francophone roots. With topics ranging from Symfony’s evolution to security and sociotechnical reflection, the programme signals a balance between technical depth and community introspection.

Discover how 1xINTERNET and UICC apply responsible AI to real-world digital experiences. Webinar and podcast recordings are ready to watch!

A personal, powerful Driesnote shows how Drupal’s community, AI innovation, and leadership shape the future of digital experiences.

Overall SummaryOur 34th monthly meeting brought together a smaller-than-usual but engaged group of contributors to review the state of the UI Suite ecosystem. With Drupal's core freeze just six weeks away, we focused on what it takes to get our APIs — Style API, Design Tokens, and Icon API — across the finish line for Drupal 11.1 or 11.4. We also reviewed the rapid cadence of Display Builder beta releases, celebrated impressive adoption numbers for UI Icons, and opened an exciting conversation about AI agent integration with our UI Pattern suite. The session closed with a deep-dive discussion on how Display Builder can eventually work alongside or replace Paragraphs-based workflows for site builders.

Are you a Drupal enthusiast who’s ever thought, “I’m not expert enough to speak at DrupalCon”? You’re not alone. Imposter syndrome can affect even the most experienced developers, designers, and site builders. But here’s the truth: real-world experience matters far more than textbook expertise. Your lessons learned, project insights, and practical workflows are exactly what the community wants to hear.

Speaking at DrupalCon isn’t just about sharing knowledge. It’s a chance to grow personally and professionally. You’ll gain visibility in the Drupal community, advance your career through skill development and recognition, and connect with peers, mentors, and potential collaborators.

Don’t let self-doubt hold you back. If you’ve tackled real Drupal challenges, you already have a story worth sharing.
 

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                               Photo by PdJohnson

What Makes a Great DrupalCon Talk Proposal

When reviewers look at submissions, they’re seeking talks that are educational, clear, and actionable, not sales pitches. Here’s what makes a proposal stand out:

• Clear takeaway: What will attendees actually learn?
• Specific audience: Who benefits most from your talk?
• Drupal relevance: Make it explicit why this matters to the community.

Tips for a strong proposal:

• Avoid vague titles like “Drupal Tips & Tricks”
• Focus on outcomes rather than just features
• Be specific about your context, challenges, and solutions

Top Ideas for DrupalCon Rotterdam 2026 Talks

Need inspiration? Here are some trending topics that resonate with the community and demonstrate thought leadership:

• AI and Drupal: How AI tools can enhance content creation and user experiences
• Decoupled & composable architectures: Building flexible, modern sites
• Accessibility & inclusive design: Making Drupal sites usable for everyone
• Performance at scale: Lessons from high-traffic projects
• Real client success stories: Challenges, solutions, and wins
• Content workflows & editorial UX: Improving efficiency and satisfaction

Your unique experience in these areas could spark the next great DrupalCon session.

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                               Photo by PdJohnson

From Submission to Stage: How to Get Selected

Wondering how your proposal moves from idea to spotlight? Here’s a peek behind the curtain:

1. Choose the right track and format: DrupalCon has multiple tracks: technical, design, strategy, and more. Pick the one your talk aligns with.
2. Craft a compelling description: Clearly state the problem, your approach, and what attendees will take away.
3. Match difficulty level to audience: Beginners, intermediate, or advanced. Be honest to set expectations.
4. Focus on practical value: Share actionable insights, not theory alone.

Remember, clarity and relevance are key. The more concrete your examples and lessons, the stronger your submission.

Call for Papers: Key Dates & How to Submit

Don’t miss your chance to speak at DrupalCon Rotterdam 2026!

Deadline: 13 April 2026

Tracks: 

• Community Health
• Digital Sovereignty & Open Web
• Drupal CMS
• Development AI and Agentic Architecture
• Agency, Business & Marketing
• Success Stories and Innovation
• User Experience, Accessibility, and Design

Formats: Sessions (45 or 20 minutes), workshops (45 or 2x45 minutes), panels (45 minutes)

How to submit:

1. Visit the DrupalCon CFP page
2. Choose your track and format
3. Write your title and description with clear takeaways
4. Submit before the deadline!

Whether you’re a first-time speaker or a seasoned presenter, DrupalCon is the perfect platform to share your story, contribute to the community, and grow your career. Your insights matter, so step up to the mic and make your mark!

SUBMIT YOUR SESSION
 

Drupal's config schema YAML supports dynamic expressions inside square brackets that resolve to values from the surrounding configuration data at runtime. Most developers have seen them — [%parent.type] in field formatter schema is a classic example — but few understand exactly how they work or when to use them.

I found a Todoist task from December 4th, 2024: \Drupal\Core\Config\TypedConfigManager::replaceVariable blog post. (Yeah, you do not want to see my "Overdue" list.) I have no memory of what I was working on that day or why I went deep on this. But past-me clearly thought it was worth documenting, so here we are. If you've ever stared at [%parent.type] in a schema file and just accepted it as magic — this one's for you.

Struggling with taxonomy cleanup in Drupal? Read this blog to learn how the Bulk Term Delete module helps remove multiple taxonomy terms at once and improve admin efficiency.

In episode #547, guest JD Flynn joins us to discuss why developers don't choose Drupal, focusing on Drupal adoption, discoverability, and outdated perceptions from Drupal 6/7. JD cites survey data showing low interest among non-Drupal developers, arguing Drupal's biggest problem is invisibility and that developers often pre-filter it due to PHP stigma and friction getting started.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/547

Topics

• Welcome to Talking Drupal
• Meet JD Flynn
• Co Hosts Introductions
• Module of the Week: Native Observability
• Production Overhead Debate
• AI Patches and Etiquette
• Live Stream and Topic Setup
• Why Developers Skip Drupal
• Invisibility and Discovery
• Perception and Onboarding Friction
• Composer and Leaving the Island
• Perception Gap and PHP Stigma
• PHP Perception Versus Reality
• Why Developers Avoid Drupal
• Selling Drupal to Clients
• Instant Demos With Drupal Forge
• Discoverability in the AI Era
• Content Strategy Beyond Drupal
• PHP Stigma and Performance
• Community Effort and Live Streaming
• Marketing Drupal Out of the Box
• Wrap Up and Where to Connect

Resources

Why Developers Don't Choose Drupal (And What We Can Do About It) - https://www.fldrupal.camp/session/why-developers-dont-choose-drupal-and-what-we-can-do-about-it JD's stream - http://twitch.tv/jddoesdev Drupal is Great! Its Perception Might Not be. -https://picozzi.com/notebook/2025/jan/drupal-great-its-perception-might-not-be Drupal Forge - https://www.drupalforge.org/

Guests

JD Flynn - Crepdrop dorficus

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Rod Martin - DrupalHelps.com imrodmartin

Module of the Week Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

Native Observability brings real observability into Drupal. Trace requests, inspect execution, analyze performance, and explore runtime behavior — directly inside your application.

No core patches. No external dependencies required to get started. Just install, enable, and start seeing what actually happens inside your system.

DrupalCon Chicago 2026 outlined concrete developments already moving through the current cycle toward DrupalCon Rotterdam. The keynote highlighted progress in Drupal CMS, expanded site templates and marketplace functionality, and ongoing work on artificial intelligence features that are now transitioning from demonstration to implementation.

Drupal CMS 2.1 builds on Drupal Core 11.3 and introduces support for preconfigured site templates. The keynote demonstrated eleven templates available through a basic marketplace, all installable directly from the Drupal CMS installer. This signals that both template distribution and marketplace functionality have moved beyond concept into early rollout.

The Context Control Center now appears close to production readiness. The keynote positioned it as a central source of truth for brand voice, target audiences, key messages, product details, and editorial guidelines used by AI agents. In one demonstration, the system generated an on-brand page from a marketing brief, while a second example used Google Analytics data in a proof-of-concept workflow to improve content performance after publication.

Not all demonstrated capabilities are fully mature. Several features remain in alpha or beta stages as development continues toward DrupalCon Rotterdam. At the same time, increased AI-assisted contribution is placing pressure on maintainers, alongside a direct reminder that contributors remain responsible for the code they submit.

With that introduction, let us move to the major stories from last week. 

CASE STUDY

• Tulare County Migrates 50 Sites to Drupal Using Acquia Site Factory

EVENT

• DrupalCon Rotterdam 2026 Opens UX, Accessibility and Design Track for Submissions
• International Splash Awards 2026 Submission Deadline Set for 16 June

DISCOVER DRUPAL

• Drupal Recording Initiative Seeks Support to Expand Global Coverage
• Drupal 12 Adopts Argon2id for Default Password Hashing
• Drupal AI Initiative Reports Growth and Product Progress Six Months After Vienna
• Canvas Multilingual Module Adds Translation Support to Drupal Canvas
• Lovable AI and Drupal Canvas Workflow Enables Rapid Page Assembly

ORGANIZATION NEWS

• CKEditor AI Integrates Into Drupal With Premium Features Module 1.8.0

PHP

• PHPantom 0.6.0 Introduces Fast, Low-Memory PHP Language Server Built in Rust

Additional developments from across the Drupal ecosystem were published during the week. Readers may follow The DropTimes on LinkedIn, Twitter, Bluesky, and Facebook for continuing updates. The publication also maintains a presence on Drupal Slack in the #thedroptimes channel.

Thank you.

KAZIMA ABBAS
Sub-editor
The DropTimes