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For Drupalists in the nonprofit sector, the Nonprofit Summit on Monday, 24 March is a must. We also invite all DrupalCon Atlanta attendees to register for the Nonprofit Summit, which promises a highly informative agenda. This is more than just another conference track—it’s an opportunity to connect with mission-driven professionals, sharpen your Drupal skills, and gain insights into how open-source technology can empower your organization. 

Nonprofits and open source share core values—collaboration, transparency, and community-driven innovation. In an era where the nonprofit sector faces increasing challenges, it’s important to remember that Drupal isn’t just a technology choice; it’s a commitment to an ecosystem that aligns with your mission. Attending the summit will reinvigorate your appreciation for the open-source community and provide a refreshing sense of camaraderie when the sector needs it most.

DrupalCon Atlanta 2025 Nonprofit Summit Agenda 09:00-09:15: Welcome 

Stephen Musgrave: Welcome and overview

09:15-11:30: Fireside Chats

• 9:15am: Cristina Chumillas and Pamela Barone: The Future of Drupal CMS
• 10:15am: Emma Horrel: User Experience in Drupal CMS
• 11:15: Tim Lehnen: Drupal for Nonprofits: nuances to bring back to your org 

11:30-11:45: Break 11:45-12:45: Breakout Sessions (Concurrent Roundtable Discussions)

• Improving the user experience on nonprofit websites
• Aspects and features of Drupal that make it the best choice for nonprofits
• When headless might make sense for your nonprofit
• How to have a conversation with technical and non-technical stakeholders 
• Accessibility & inclusive design

12:45-13:45: Lunch

A time for relaxing and networking if you feel like it.

13:45-14:45: Breakout Sessions (Concurrent Roundtable Discussions)

• Getting the most out of Drupal for nonprofit websites
• Harnessing AI for your nonprofit website
• Using Drupal at your membership organization.
• Simplifying content management for nonprofit teams
• Keeping up with advancements in technology on a nonprofit budget

14:45-15:00: Break 15:00-16:00: Recipes

Tim Lehnen: Recipes for nonprofit Drupal CMS users and Q&A

16:00-17:00pm: Optional Networking

Wrap up conversations, meet new colleagues, and explore partnership opportunities.

Here’s a glimpse of the activities and topics covered.

Drupal CMS

The morning is dedicated to Drupal CMS. We will explore how the Starshot initiative launched the first release of Drupal CMS and what the future holds. We will discuss the user experience for nonprofit users and what Drupal CMS means for nonprofit adopters. This portion of the day will be interactive and include plenty of time for discussion. 

Tim Lehnen from the Drupal Association will close out the section by summarizing the big picture Drupal CMS adventure and connecting the open source framework to nonprofit value systems and providing talking points to bring back to nonprofit orgs in support of Drupal. One of the biggest hurdles to adopting Drupal is securing leadership buy-in. The Nonprofit Summit will equip you with the tools to make the case for Drupal with confidence. 

A Lineup of Engaging Breakout Sessions

A diverse set of breakout sessions will ensure you can focus on the topics most relevant to your organization’s needs. Expect discussions on nonprofit-specific challenges, case studies from organizations that have successfully implemented Drupal, and hands-on workshops where you can troubleshoot real-world problems. 

Network with Like-Minded Changemakers

The nonprofit world thrives on collaboration, and there’s no better place to build connections than at the Nonprofit Summit. You’ll meet others who share your passion for social good and open-source technology. You’ll find a community of people eager to share experiences, offer advice, and even explore potential partnerships. Nonprofits are stronger when we work together, and the summit is a perfect chance to forge new relationships.

Join Us in Atlanta!

The nonprofit sector is constantly evolving, and technology plays a crucial role in helping organizations achieve their goals. Whether you’re looking to refine your Drupal expertise, advocate for open-source solutions, or simply find inspiration among your peers, the Nonprofit Summit at DrupalCon Atlanta is the place to be. Mark your calendar, pack your bags, and get ready to be part of a movement that empowers nonprofits through technology.

Register here: https://events.drupal.org/atlanta2025

DrupalCamp England returns! The Drupal community came together in Cambridge for a weekend. Inspiring keynotes, AI innovations and new connections proved the community is stronger than ever.

Drupal 11: A Major Version... Drupal hannaholeary Thu, 06/03/2025 - 09:16 As a Platinum Certified Drupal agency specialising in Drupal website development, we're excited to upgrade our clients' websites to Drupal 11, unlocking new value and bringing enhancements to their digital platforms. Here’s why we believe this version represents a significant milestone for Drupal and why we’re looking forward to this upgrade. The Impact of Drupal CMS…

Fibers is a new feature in PHP 8.1 that brings lightweight and controlled concurrency to PHP.

PHP 8.1 Fibers introduce efficient, non-blocking execution, making Drupal faster and more responsive. Instead of waiting for sequential HTTP requests, Fibers run them simultaneously, reducing load times and enhancing user experience. This optimization is particularly useful when working with multiple cURL-based API calls or external data fetching.

Drupal Use

Real-Time Use Case of PHP Fibers in Drupal

Since Drupal is single-threaded, we can't run true asynchronous tasks like in Node.js. However, PHP Fibers can help optimize performance by allowing tasks to be executed without blocking the main script.

Ecommerce businesses require a robust, scalable, and customizable solution to meet evolving customer needs. Many struggle with rigid platforms, high operational costs, and security concerns, limiting their growth potential. Drupal Commerce provides an open source, flexible, and feature-rich solution that empowers companies to create tailored ecommerce experiences with full control over functionality and scalability.

Experience Builder (XB) most prominent UI piece is its preview canvas, where multiple viewport widths are visible next to each other. The preview canvas is meant for placing components, modifying their inputs and moving them around. For that reason, you cannot interact with the contents of each component. What if you do want to try that?

That’s where the new Preview functionality comes in that was built by Jesse Baker, Dave “longwave” Long and Harumi “hooroomoo” Jang, which removes UI chrome and allows the content author to focus on their creation:

XB’s preview mode: interactable previews, without UI chrome other than the top navigation bar.
Issue #3486785, image by Jesse.

With the UI chrome removed, interacting with the individual components in this mode makes sense:

XB’s preview mode: interactable previews allow for example clicking links in component instances — but with some guardrails.
Issue #3486785, image by Jesse.

Then there’s the small matter of being able to actually save what you created

Many online course creators wonder how to effectively manage sales and automatically grant access to educational content. With Drupal and the available modules, we can build a fully functional online store that handles payments and automatically assigns users to purchased courses. We encourage you to read the article or watch an episode of “Nowoczesny Drupal” series (the video is in Polish).

This list highlights key Drupal contributed modules designed to enhance SEO performance. Covering URL optimization, metadata management, redirects, sitemaps, and more, these modules help improve search rankings, site navigation, and content discoverability in Drupal CMS.

The Hidden Costs of Choosing Budget Hosting for Your Drupal or WordPress Website jenna Tue, 03/04/2025 - 14:29 Drupal WordPress

When selecting a hosting provider for your Drupal or WordPress site, it’s tempting to choose the cheapest option available. After all, it looks like a cost-effective solution up front. But in reality, budget hosting can introduce hidden costs that could affect your website’s performance, security, and long-term stability.

To back up a little and provide context for non-technical website decision makers, let’s answer the question: What role does web hosting play? Web hosting is essentially the service that stores your website’s files and makes them accessible on the internet. The quality of hosting affects everything from site speed to uptime and security.

Having hosted websites since 2003 and worked with providers ranging from budget hosts like DreamHost to cloud services like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, and DigitalOcean, I’ve seen how these choices impact organizations. I am going to break down why specialized hosting providers are often the smarter choice.

Why Budget Hosting Can Cost More in the Long Run

Unless your organization has a dedicated Development or DevOps team, relying on a single developer or IT professional to manage your site hosted on a platform like AWS or DigitalOcean can be risky. This developer needs to handle everything: server maintenance, security patches, and performance optimization. If that person leaves, your site could be left vulnerable, and finding a replacement with the same expertise can be challenging—and expensive.

Specialized hosting reduces reliance on individual expertise and ensures greater stability. On the other hand, specialized hosting providers like Pantheon, Acquia, Kinsta, and Platform.sh handle server management for you. This means you won’t need a developer to manage critical tasks like software updates or security patches.

Key Features of Specialized Hosting Providers

Specialized hosting providers offer features that budget and cloud hosts often don’t, including:

• Staging environments: Budget hosts typically lack staging environments, crucial for testing changes before going live. Without this, you’d need to set up a separate server for testing—an additional hassle and expense. Specialized hosts provide built-in environments where you can test updates with ease.
• Automated backups: Budget hosts often don’t include automated backups by default. With specialized providers, backups are built-in and accessible to developers, making it easier to restore your site or troubleshoot issues.
• Security and updates: Providers like Pantheon and Platform.sh handle server-level security updates automatically. This eliminates the need for a dedicated team or developer to manage these critical aspects.
• Standardized developer access: Specialized hosts follow best practices for Drupal and WordPress hosting. This includes version control systems like Git, ensuring seamless collaboration and reducing onboarding time for new developers.
• Access control for non-technical users: Many specialized hosts provide tools that allow less technical people to manage developer access to servers, reducing dependency on specific team members.
• Website speed: Specialized hosts optimize server configurations for Drupal and WordPress out of the box, ensuring faster load times and better performance without requiring manual tuning. This not only improves user experience but also boosts SEO, helping your site gain better visibility in search engines.

The Bigger Picture: Saving Time and Reducing Risk

If your organization works with multiple developers or plans to expand, specialized hosting provides a safety net. Developers spend less time managing servers and more time focusing on what matters—improving your website. By minimizing time spent on server issues, specialized hosting reduces the risk of downtime, security breaches, or costly mistakes.

While budget hosting may seem cost-effective initially, it can lead to higher costs in the long run. Opting for a specialized Drupal or WordPress hosting provider ensures your website remains secure, scalable, and manageable—saving you time, money, and headaches down the road. Investing in a specialized provider today protects your site’s future and eliminates reliance on a single developer for server management.

Are you interested in moving your website to a specialized host and don’t know where to start? Let’s talk.

 

Joel Steidl

DrupalCamp England 2025 gathered Drupal experts and enthusiasts at the University of Cambridge for a day of innovation and learning. Highlights included AI-driven advancements, the unveiling of "Swarms" for AI-powered workflows, and discussions on UX, open-source contributions, and Drupal recipes. The event concluded with Annertech announcing two fully funded scholarships for 2026.

DrupalCon is a flagship event for everyone in the Drupal community, and developers are a huge part of the action. With DrupalCon Atlanta 2025 just around the corner, let’s take a look at what’s in store for these tech-savvy minds — especially the seasoned masters of the craft: senior developers.

There’s plenty to get involved in — contributing to Drupal’s future in code sprints, showing off your knowledge at Drupal Trivia Night, or grabbing cool swag from sponsors. But at the heart of the event? Insightful and thought-provoking sessions! 

If you’ve been building Drupal sites for years, you know that learning never stops. Staying ahead means keeping up with the latest innovations, tackling tough challenges, and exchanging ideas with fellow experts. DrupalCon 2025 is your chance to do exactly that — hear from top Drupal minds, ask the hard questions, and dive into discussions that push your skills further. Here’s a handpicked selection designed to challenge, inspire, and get you excited as a senior developer for 24-27 March.

Top sessions for senior developers at DrupalCon Atlanta 2025

“The future of Drupal core in the age of Drupal CMS” — by Gábor Hojtsy

Drupal CMS has been making waves, offering a fresh, flexible approach to building with Drupal. With Drupal CMS 1.0 officially released and work on version 2.0 already in motion, big questions are emerging about the future of Drupal core.

Will Drupal 12 simply be Drupal CMS? Well… yes and no. But what does that really mean? How will Drupal continue to support essential use cases like headless architectures, social, and e-commerce? And what about developers and other personas not directly in Drupal CMS’s focus — what changes can they expect?

When there are many questions, listen to the tech-savvy person behind many of Drupal’s innovations. Gábor Hojtsy, Drupal core committer and initiative coordinator, knows the answers. He always brings fresh perspectives and shares insights you might not have heard before.

Attend his session for a deep dive into the role of Drupal CMS in the entire ecosystem and the technical evolution of Drupal core. You’ll understand how this should impact long-term development strategies and how to adapt to the changing landscape.

“The Future of Drupal Theming: AI, Experience Builder, and Beyond” — by Mike Herchel

Drupal’s theming layer has evolved significantly in recent years, with new Twig filters, theme generation tools, and Single Directory Components making front-end development smoother than ever. But the biggest changes are still ahead.

With the introduction of Experience Builder and modern AI-driven tools, theming in Drupal is about to take a giant leap forward. How will these innovations reshape the way you build and style Drupal sites?

Immerse yourself in all the details at this session with Mike Herchel (mherchel), Drupal core committer, and the creator of the Olivero front-end theme. You’ll get a practical look at what’s coming in the next era of Drupal theming. Mike will share how to develop components for Experience Builder, where AI fits into your frontend process, and what should (and shouldn’t) be a component. Plus, you’ll pick up best practices to avoid unnecessary code bloat and ensure your work stands the test of time.

As a senior developer, you’re certainly already familiar with the quirks, strengths, and challenges of Drupal theming. This knowledge should be very helpful for getting the most out of the session. 

“Leveraging GitLab CI for contributions” — by Deepak Mishra and Ankit Pathak

Having a smooth and efficient development workflow can make all the difference. Automation is key to keeping things running smoothly. Here is where GitLab CI/CD comes in — a Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery system built into GitLab. It automates the process of testing, building, and deploying your code.

The session by Deepak Mishra (deepakkm) and Ankit Pathak (ankitv18) will show you how to harness the power of GitLab CI/CD. You’ll explore how to set up a GitLab CI pipeline, run automated quality assurance checks, manage deployments, and handle merge requests.

Say goodbye to repetitive manual tasks and deployment headaches and embrace better collaboration with other developers. With practical tips from this session, you’ll level up your workflow, making your development process faster, smoother, and more reliable.

The session will focus on using GitLab CI/CD for contributions to drupal.org, so Deepak and Ankit will demonstrate the best practices in this area. However, the knowledge you obtain will be helpful in your client projects, too.

“Creating Composer aware modules with Drupal core’s new Package Manager module” — by Ted Bowman

Have you heard about Package Manager — a new experimental module in Drupal core that provides an API for interacting with Composer? It’s the key tool behind such innovative solutions as Project Browser and Automatic Updates, running Composer behind the scenes and allowing users to rely on the admin dashboard.

If you are curious about its work or want to build a module that performs Composer operations or integrates with Project Browser or Automatic Updates, here is a can’t-miss session. Who better to guide you through this than Ted Bowman (tedbow), Drupal core committer and the maker of Automatic Updates?

Using the example modules that rely on the Package Manager API, Ted will demonstrate the steps to implementing various features:

• making a simple form for installing modules by project name or URL
• cleaning up unused packages from your codebase
• showing detailed information about Project Browser’s work
• controlling which modules can be installed with Project Browser

You’ll also learn how to build user-friendly interfaces for Composer operations, customize Composer tasks with the Package Manager’s event system, retrieve detailed package information, and much more.

“Mixing the Schema.org Blueprints module into a Drupal Recipe to bake a sweet content model” — by Jacob Rockowitz

Structured data helps search engines better understand the content of a web page, leading to richer search results. Schema.org markup is a reliable way to achieve this goal. Want to be equipped with the best tools and practices for using it? Then read on.

In this DrupalCon session, you’ll get a look at two exciting, innovative solutions for building and managing structured content:

• First, the Schema.org Blueprints module offers a great way to define content using schema.org standards. Jacob Rockowitz (jrockowitz), the speaker of the session, is the creator of the Schema.org Blueprints module, as well as of the famous Webform module.
• But what if you could take that content model and arrange it into a ready-to-use package? That’s where Drupal Recipes come in — a ground-breaking innovation in Drupal for creating pre-configured functionalities and easily adding them to any new or existing Drupal project.

This session will show you how to combine the power of both. You’ll see a demo of how to build structured content types, as well as hierarchical content and organization charts.

“Collecting Data in Drupal When Internet is Unstable: Browser Local Storage and Service Workers” — by Nia Kathoni and Daniel Cothran

Drupal Recipes deserve a dedicated session in your schedule. They have really revolutionized how feature sets are added to websites. You can now pre-package the necessary modules and configurations in flexible ways, without being locked into the constraints of a specific distribution. Recipes can be applied, mixed, matched, and updated to meet the evolving needs of your website.

Introduced as experimental in Drupal 10.3, the Recipes APIs laid the foundation for Drupal CMS. Since then, the team has been refining the code base and gathering valuable feedback. DrupalCon Atlanta 2025 is the perfect opportunity to hear exclusive insights from the team.

If you are curious about one of Drupal Recipes, join Jim Birch (thejimbirch), the architect behind this solution. In his session, Jim will update you on the progress of the phase 2 roadmap of the Drupal Recipes Initiative. He will also delve into important topics such as config actions, default content, config checkpoints, and the process of creating recipes. Plus, he’ll explore idempotency — ensuring configurations remain reliable and consistent, no matter how many times they are applied.

Or maybe you’re ready to roll up your sleeves and help shape the next chapter? This session has a strong contribution focus, bringing together maintainers and contributors. You’ll learn how you can get involved with the Drupal Recipes Initiative.

“Supply Chain Security in Drupal and Composer” — by Christopher Gervais, Tim Hestenes Lehnen, and Neil Drumm

There can never be too much talk about security — especially when it comes to securing software supply chains. A software supply chain ensures that all the necessary software elements (like libraries, modules, or tools) are in place and function properly together. 

Join this DrupalCon Atlanta 2025 session to discover more about supply chains and how to protect them from unauthorized access. You’ll be introduced to the nature of supply chain attacks and understand Drupal’s vulnerability to such threats. You will also gain insight into how Composer, along with services like packagist.org and Private Packagist, fits into the supply chain, and the crucial role PHP dependencies play in securing your project.

Next, the session will cover the Automatic Updates Initiative, one of the Drupal Association’s most impactful efforts to ensure websites stay up to date and secure. You’ll also be introduced to essential tools for bolstering security, including:

• the Update Framework (TUF), which ensures that packages are safe and have not been tampered with before download
• the PHP-TUF Composer Integration Plugin, which adds an extra layer of security by verifying modules, themes, and profiles downloaded from drupal.org
• the Rugged TUF Server, which safeguards signing keys and supports the drupal.org packaging pipeline

The session will be led by Christopher Gervais (ergonlogic), Tim Hestenes Lehnen (hestenet), and Neil Drumm (drumm). They are renowned Drupal experts and active contributors to the Drupal Security Team, Automatic Updates, Drupal core, and more. This makes them perfectly suited to guide you through supply chain security.

Driesnote by Dries Buytaert

The central keynote at DrupalCon, Driesnote, is always something to look forward to. If there’s anyone at the event who hasn’t yet heard of Dries Buytaert, it certainly won’t be you. As a senior developer, you know Dries will keep you up to date with Drupal’s latest developments, and you will never want to miss his presentation.

Your experience has already shown you how quickly technology evolves, and Driesnote is the perfect opportunity to see Drupal’s momentum in action. Dries will share what’s next for the platform, including what’s in store for developers like you. This talk will give you a clear view of where Drupal is headed — whether it’s new features, tools, or improvements in how the platform works. Furthermore, based on past Driesnotes, even the most seasoned developers might find themselves completely amazed by the demos Dries has in store.

You’ll understand how the latest changes might impact your projects moving forward and how you can make the most of them. It’s a fantastic opportunity to stay ahead of the curve and connect with the Drupal community.

Final thoughts

Make sure to grab your ticket to the biggest Drupal gathering, where these and plenty of other great sessions are waiting for you. After enjoying this adventure, you’ll leave Atlanta with fresh techniques, smart solutions, and a stronger bond with fellow Drupal enthusiasts — fueling your work long after the event ends.

Welcome back, Site builders! We've got something you'll love.

If you've been around for a while you may be aware that Drupal 7 was much more accessible to the casual tinkerer than newer versions of Drupal. You'd regularly see Drupal 7 sites built by people who sometimes refer to themselves as "Site Builders" - a term which describes people who are comfortable building sites with Drupal, but may be less comfortable creating custom modules and themes.

The dropoff in Site Builders' participation since Drupal 7 is due in no small part to Drupal's decision to adopt modern development practices such as object-oriented programming, building on top of the Symfony framework, and utilizing a package manager. These are all good things! But we, as a community, are ready to welcome the casual Site Builder back with our latest developments.

ashrafabed Tue, 03/04/2025

Those of us in the UK had a great opportunity this last weekend to get together at the new DrupalCamp England event, held at Cambridge University. Protecting my work-life balance means I don't usually get to many in-person events, but I made it to this one. It was lovely to finally put some names to faces and build better understanding together. So thank you to the organisers and sponsors who put on a great day! A couple of us from our Coventry team went along, read on as I reflect on my own experience...

I was impressed that Baddý Sonja Breidert was doing the opening session - especially when we got to share her birthday cake! She demonstrated some fun use of an AI chatbot within a Drupal site; which looked like the kind of thing our clients could use to help visitors find what information they want. Rather than interacting with websites in the traditional point-and-click manner, browsing around pages to hunt down details, we need to watch out for how users are increasingly expecting to use the internet. Younger people aren't just typing keywords into a Google search and then gathering information like a researcher might. Instead, they're increasingly using voice or chat-based experiences, expecting the information to be brought to them, often via summaries from an AI. Including this in a Drupal website keeps users engaged directly, controlling the feel of interacting with a brand, and without surrendering the journey to external agencies.

Jamie Abrahams talking on 'Why Drupal AI might take over the world'

Jamie Abrahams gave a talk a bit later about combining AI 'agents' to complete all sorts of tasks. This combined the theory of this design pattern with some clear practical examples, to leverage LLMs' strengths in a controlled and understandable way. He also announced a new service for using AI with Drupal which would manage AI configuration (including API keys), to allow site builders to use it much more easily. At the moment they have to do hard work just to be able to ask AI to then do less complex tasks! My favourite part of the day followed immediately after when I joined my former colleague James Silver in conversation with Jamie's colleague Andrew Belcher out in the lobby. Andrew took us through a much deeper look at vector search and how these agents can be orchestrated together (as a 'swarm') within the Drupal UI, without writing any code! I challenged him on how this still needs the skills of a developer - as it requires architecting a solution, breaking work down into parts, etc - even if no code has to be written. I suppose coders and architects could be different personas; the term 'developer' might just describe the overlap. Now I wonder: could we treat each more helpfully, according to their strengths and interests?

Before long, even Baddý joined our table chat - she wanted to show off her team's efforts with AI and collaborate on using AI with Drupal. It was ace to see the authentic desire from these community figureheads to work together without egos, and to find myself actively participating in bouncing dreams together of what the internet might look like before long! Why invest in web pages when an AI can provide our content, or even build designs for us? How can we influence the window that people look through to our online presence? Going beyond well-structured content, could we provide structured brand metadata to shape how it is presented by AIs? For me, these conversations were the most valuable part of the day - putting our brains together as a community as we inspire and challenge each other. (Thanks to everyone for letting me chat with you!)

Emma Horrell: All aboard the UX express – how we can all apply user-centred ideas to make a Drupal to be proud of

Thankfully the day wasn't entirely dominated by AI ;-) I learnt plenty from Emma Horrell's session on incorporating UX Design expertise into the way we build with Drupal. It provoked me to thinking how we facilitate individual achievement, and wide collaboration between developers, but it's not so easy to build cross-disciplinary work. Core changes are reviewed by experts in specialist fields but it's not so common to incorporate that elsewhere, and early enough in plans. I'll remember her point that the challenge to think of other users’ experiences is what can make us grow. Gareth Alexander's dive into how Drupal CMS uses Recipes gave me a list to investigate this week (e.g. easy_email_express, Simple Add More and the Recipe generator

Find out how RESTful web services work and how Drupal simplifies API-driven development with the RESTful web services module. Simplified, practical, and ready to implement!

In the evolving landscape of web development, delivering seamless and engaging user experiences is paramount. Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) have emerged as a solution that combines the best of web and mobile applications. Integrating PWAs with Drupal can significantly enhance website performance and user satisfaction.

Understanding Progressive Web Apps:

PWAs are web applications that utilize modern web technologies to offer experiences similar to native mobile apps. They are designed to be reliable, fast, and engaging, providing functionalities such as offline access, push notifications, and home screen installation.

For a comprehensive guide, refer to the Progressive Web App (PWA) module documentation.
In this guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about implementing PWAs in Drupal, from setup to optimization.

Happy March!

DDEV v1.24.3 was released earlier than planned for two major reasons: the new generic web server type allows Node.js and other interesting possibilities, and an upcoming Docker engine release was going to be incompatible with current Mutagen version. We encourage you all to upgrade because of this upcoming incompatibility, thanks!

Open-Source For The Win: See the details about how a future incompatibility with the Docker engine was pre-emptively caught and fixed, Open Source for the Win!

Web-based DDEV Add-on Registry is now live! Try it out at https://addons.ddev.com and check out the introduction blog.

TYPO3 Community Budget Ideas: Please vote!: We applied for the Q2 approval process to fund a great feature for DDEV, supporting mDNS as a domain-name resolution technique. If you're a member of the TYPO3 Association, you should have received an email to vote on this. We'd appreciate your vote!

Platform.sh has transferred domain names to DDEV: Thanks again to Platform.sh for their ongoing support. As a part of the process in change of their support, they have transferred control of the ddev.com and ddev.site domain names to the DDEV Foundation.

DDEV Notes and News

• The DDEV Advisory Group Annual Review and Planning Meeting is on Wednesday, March 5 (tomorrow!), and all are invited. The Zoom link is in the agenda link. We'll be looking at 2025 ambitions and 2024 review, we'd love to have you there!
• A review of DDEV's year 2024 has been added to the 2025 Plans and 2024 Review blog post. We'd love your feedback about both 2024 and the 2025 plans!
• The Drop Times rolled out an amazing promotion for DDEV, showing the current funding status against our goals. Now we need a community member to do the same thing for us in our website!
• The promotion done by The Drop Times consumes DDEV's current sponsorship information from the sponsorship-data repository, which has lots of potential for communicating about DDEV's funding status. Today's situation and totals are in all-sponsorships.json.
• Randy presented on Divide and conquer: A systematic approach to troubleshooting issues at Florida Drupalcamp. The full recording is on the link.
• Blog: Installing Drupal CMS with DDEV
• Blog from Matthias Andrasch: Vite suddenly not working due to CORS errors?

As part of our preparation to migrate issues from Drupal.org to GitLab on git.drupalcode.org, we are simplifying the access control for who can grant issue credit.

All maintainers of a project can grant issue credit

All maintainers of a project now have permission to grant issue credit. In the past, maintainers needed to have the “Write to VCS” or “Maintain issues” role on their project in order to have permission to assign credit on their issues.

Since issues are moving to GitLab, we will no longer have the “Maintain issues” project role managed by Drupal.

Credit may be granted for closed, not-fixed issues

We will also be simplifying credit so that is granted for all “closed” states where maintainers can grant credit, not just “fixed” and “closed (fixed)” issue states. Follow #3427961: Grant credit for all closed issues, not just fixed issues for updates on this change. This provides more options for maintainers, but they are not obligated to credit all closed, not-fixed issues. That is up to each maintainer. We encourage giving credit to issue contributions which have impact.

This change is partly motivated by adapting our credit model to prepare for the GitLab issue migration. GitLab does not have a specific “fixed” state for issues; issues are only open or closed, and can have additional labels that may vary for each project. See #3254602: Using GitLab labels for issues on Drupal projects for more information about labels in the GitLab issue migration.

More broadly, you can expect to see three key work areas in our final phase of the GitLab migration:

1. Role and permission reviews, so that we can fully enable single sign on to new.drupal.org.
2. Migration of issue credit to new.drupal.org.
3. Issue migration for a few test projects, followed by an opt-in period, followed by a mass migration of all remaining projects. As issues are migrated, issue fork management will also take place on new.drupal.org.

For further updates, you can join asynchronous initiative meetings every other week on Wednesdays starting at 19:00 UTC in the #gitlab channel on Drupal Slack.

Today we are talking about OpenY, a distribution for YMCAs, why it was created, and how it’s used today with guests Avi Schwab and Brent Wilker. We’ll also cover AI Media Image as our module of the week.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/491

Topics

• What is OpenY
• Why is it important to the YMCA
• How many Y's use it
• Is each Y independent technologically
• Why doesn't the Y create a platform as a service
• How do you get the message out about OpenY
• What does a Y pay for and how do they pay
• What is the governance layer like
• Any thoughts on recipes
• How does theming work
• New features to come
• How does ImageX support OpenY

Resources

• MOTW
  • FLDC session: From Chatbots to Content Magic: The AI-Driven Future of Drupal
• YMCA Website Services (OpenY) Glossary
• YMCA Sandboxes
  • https://sandboxes.y.org/
  • https://sandbox-carnation-std.y.org/
• Get in touch with ImageX about Open Y
• Avi’s sourdough recipe base and flour
  • https://tartinebakery.com/stories/country-bread
  • https://www.janiesmill.com/

Guests

Brent Wilker - ImageX.co brent.wilker

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Avi Schwab - froboy.org froboy

MOTW Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

• • Brief description:
    • Have you ever wanted to use AI to generate images, and save them directly into the Drupal media library once you have the result you want? There’s a module for that.
  • Module name/project name:
    • AI Media Image
  • Brief history
    • How old: created in Feb 2025 by coffeymachine
    • Versions available: 1.0.0-alpha2
  • Maintainership
    • Actively maintained
    • Security coverage: technically, but needs a stable release
    • Number of open issues: 2 open issues, neither of which are bugs
  • Usage stats:
    • 9 sites
  • Module features and usage
    • We have talked before on the podcast about a couple of ways you could use AI to generate images directly within a Drupal website. One used all the latest OpenAI APIs and the other had media library integration, though it only worked through its own admin form. Both were built to specifically DALL•E, OpenAI’s image generation service.
    • This new module is a big leap forward because it’s based on Drupal’s powerful and rapidly innovating AI module, so it can work with multiple AI image generation services.
    • What’s more, AI Media Image plugs into the Drupal core media system, so you can use the tool to generate images directly within the media library, including when you open it up in a modal to populate an entity reference field. This makes it significantly more intuitive to use this capability as part of a normal content creation flow.
    • There are a couple of things that may not be intuitive when you first start using AI Media Image. For example, by default it uses the prompt you used to create the image as the alt text that will be saved to the media library. That seems unexpected to me, but if the prompt exceeds the max alt text length of 255 characters then it will throw an error and then you can overwrite the value of the prompt field to contain proper alt text before saving the image to the media library. This is one of the open issues mentioned earlier and resolving it would really improving the experience of using this module
    • I got to play around with this module while preparing a demo for a session about AI I delivered with Mike Anello at Florida Drupalcamp on the weekend, so we’ll try to include a link in the notes so you can also watch for that recording and see this module in action

DrupalCamp England was held at the Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge, on March 1. The organizers have expressed their immense satisfaction with the event, which turned out to be a grand success. All tickets were sold out for this much-anticipated gathering, held after a five-year break. Seeing the vibrant photos, the Drupal community shares in the excitement of a major community event making a strong comeback.  

This revival is part of a broader wave of resurgent events worldwide, as community members work to rekindle the Drupal spirit by reorganizing meetups and gatherings that had gone into hibernation. It is fair to say that DrupalCamp England has set an optimistic precedent, demonstrating the community’s enthusiasm for such comebacks.  

To all the event organizers out there—you do a tremendous job. Your efforts do not go unnoticed or unappreciated. You are the lifeblood that keeps the community energized. At The Drop Times, we are committed to highlighting the remarkable work of event organizers and bringing their contributions to the forefront. We hope to see even more success stories this year, just like this one.

With that, let’s move on to the key stories of the week. 

Interviews

• "Hopelessly and Inseperably Entangled with Drupal"

Discover Drupal

• New Drupal Module "Sheephole Helper" Enables Secure Composer-Based Installations
• Drupal Public Data, Statistics & Silver Linings? An Exploration #4
• Config Pull Request Module Releases 2.0-beta3 with Drupal 11 Support
• Improve Your Drupal 9 SEO with the RobotsTxt Module

Event

• Drupal Events of the Week: March 3 - March 9, 2025
• DrupalCamp England 2025: A Triumphant Return to Community and Collaboration
• DrupalCamp England 2025: Sessions on Drupal Open University Initiative and Drupal CMS Recipes
• Lullabot Webinar: Balancing Consistency and Flexibility in State Government Websites
• Breaking the Myths: Webinar to Debunk Drupal Decoupled Misconceptions
• Webinar on Drupal Experience Builder and No-Code Website Creation
• DrupalCamp Ottawa 2025 Set to Bring Drupal Enthusiasts Together on May 2
• The Drop Times Seeks Volunteers to Cover DrupalCon Atlanta 2025

Organization News

• Droptica Introduces Open-Source Intranet System for Enterprise Collaboration
• Convox Introduces Quick Apps to Accelerate Drupal Deployments
• Aten Design Group Develops Interactive Map for Tampa International Airport
• DevCollab Becomes Certified Drupal Partner for Open Source Contributions
   

We acknowledge that there are more stories to share. However, due to selection constraints, we close the list here.

To get timely updates, follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. You can also join us on Drupal Slack at #thedroptimes.

Thank you, 
Sincerely 
Thomas Alias K 
Sub-editor, The DropTimes.

Drupal CMS integrates AI-powered modules to streamline content creation, automation, and SEO enhancements. Key modules like AI Image Alt Text, OpenAI Provider, and Drupal AI optimize images, generate content, and enhance search capabilities. This AI-driven approach simplifies workflows, making Drupal CMS a game-changer for modern website management.