Drupal Showcase

DrupalCon Atlanta: Drupal Community &... Drupal hannaholeary Wed, 09/04/2025 - 14:59 DrupalCon Atlanta - An Introduction At the end of March I crossed the Atlantic and attended DrupalCon Atlanta. This was my first North American DrupalCon, but not my first DrupalCon ever, having attended DrupalCon Amsterdam 2019 and presented at DrupalCon Prague 2022. It can be a common misconception that DrupalCon attendance is reserved for developers only. Of course…

At its March 28, 2025, event in Jaipur, Dotsquares launched a no-code Drupal platform aimed at making website development accessible to non-technical users. The platform, powered by AI, was developed at the Dotsquares Global Capability Centre in India.

This is the third article in the "Why Drupal" series. In the first one, I presented the business and finance arguments for using this system, and in the next one, I focused on the developer and IT aspects of Drupal. This blog post highlights 13 key features that editors, marketing teams, and HR professionals will especially appreciate. I invite you to read the article or watch the “Nowoczesny Drupal” episode. 

Doesn't exist.

I don't know if this was ever common knowledge, but it's certainly not a new idea. Free software, per the Free Software Foundation, is only free if people are free to redistribute it commercially without having to pay the author. In a sense, every time you build a Drupal site for someone else for a fee, you are charging to distribute free software to them that was authored by other people while providing additional services to tailor it to their needs.

If I had to guess, the more mainstream open source as a development methodology became, the more people adopted it without understanding or appreciating its philosophical origins. Open source as a growth strategy became inevitable while simultaneously kicking against the goads of the four essential freedoms of the movement that birthed it, even though these freedoms are what enabled multi-billion dollar ecosystems like Drupal's to grow.

Read more

Is your website due for a UI/UX update? If you’re not sure how to answer this question, it probably is. Read this blog to find out how to spot the signs and what to do next.

Spring has Sprung in Palisade, Colorado!

DDEV v1.24.4 was released with the new XHGui profiling feature (funded by TYPO3 Community Ideas Budget!).

DDEV Notes and News

• XHGui Feature Makes Profiling Even Easier
• Thanks to our Amazing Sponsors
• DDEV at DrupalCon Atlanta
• Set up an existing WordPress multisite locally with DDEV (with Bonus Pantheon support!)
• Darren Oh: Zscaler, DDEV, and Colima. (We'd love to have you contribute your own experience with packet-inspection VPNs in this docs PR. Note that in DDEV v1.24.4 a significant problem with using internet proxies was resolved; full documentation will be included in that PR.
• The TYPO3 Q2 Community Budget Idea to implement mDNS (multicast DNS) in DDEV didn’t receive enough votes, so unfortunately it won’t be funded this quarter. The proposed mDNS feature offers an alternative to the standard ddev.site DNS resolution. It’s especially helpful for users who experience issues with DNS, and it could also eliminate the need for DDEV to modify the /etc/hosts file in those cases. We still hope to explore this in 2025!

We welcome your contributions to the blog! A number of community members have contributed blog articles demonstrating their use of DDEV to solve problems, and we welcome your contributions. It's easy, it's just Markdown, and full instructions are at the ddev.com repository.

Thanks for subscribing to the newsletter! We love to have this way to keep in touch. If you're not getting it yet by email, please sign up at ddev.com/newsletter.

Great News: Sponsorship Level is Increasing! According to our open sponsorship feed our total monthly average income went up from $7099 to $7639 since March 1, a $540 bump in one month. Wow, you're awesome, thank you! If your organization or you aren't on the bandwagon yet, join us to help make DDEV sustainable. GitHub Sponsors is great, but we also do support contracts, invoicing, PayPal — anything that works for you! Our goal is $12,000/month, so we're more than halfway there. Special thanks to new $100/month sponsors @fullfatthings, @liip, @andreas-anwesoft, @wearrudder!

THANKS to all of you who are supporting DDEV’s path to sustainability and who have gotten your organizations to do so.

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

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

Happy April from Randy Fay, DDEV Project Lead. It's a delight to collaborate with you!

Today we are talking about Drupal Basics, Why we got away from them, and what we do to bring them back with guest Mike Anello. We’ll also cover Entity Reference Override as our module of the week.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/496

Topics

• Where did this idea come from
• Why do you feel more basic content is necessary
• How did Drupal get away from the basics
• How can we get more basic talks into Drupal events
• How do we balance basic content with new topics like recipes or Drupal CMS
• How do we entice speakers to take these talks
• Could this adversely affect attendance
• Question from Stephen: How do we address virtual events and that they are preferred by a younger crowd
• Will Florida Drupal Camp have a track

Guests

Mike Anello - drupaleasy.com ultimike

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Kathy Beck - kbeck303

MOTW Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

• Brief description:
  • Have you ever wanted to replace a text field on entities you reference in your Drupal site? There’s a module for that.
• Module name/project name:
  • Entity Reference Override
• Brief history
  • How old: created in Sep 2016 by Jeff Eaton, though recent releases are by Benjamin Melançon (mlncn) of Agaric
  • Versions available: 2.0.0-beta3 which works with Drupal 10.1 or 11
• Maintainership
  • Actively maintained
  • Security coverage, yes but needs a stable release
  • Test coverage
  • Documentation - user guide
  • Number of open issues: 13 open issues, 2 of which are bugs against the 2.0.x branch
• Usage stats:
  • 2,004 sites
• Module features and usage
  • The module defines a new field type, with associated widgets and formatters.
  • Your site editors will see a normal entity reference field (autocomplete or select) with an additional text field. Text provided in that additional field can be used to override a specific field in the referenced entity’s display, or add a class to its rendered markup.
  • This could be handy in use cases like showing people with project-specific roles, or showing related articles with the summary tweaked to be more relevant to the main content being viewed.
  • It’s not a super-common need, but if you need this capability, it can save having to set up a more complicated content architecture with some kind of intermediary entity
  • I thought this module would be interesting because today’s guest, Mike Anello, is listed as one of the maintainers. Mike, what can you tell us about your history with the module and how you’ve used it?

Dear Readers,

The Drupal Burkina Faso Association is working hard to bring back DrupalCamp this April at Joseph KI-ZERBO University in Ouagadougou. But there's a hitch: they’re still short on the funding needed to make it happen. That means a potential pause, not for lack of passion or planning, but because access to resources still draws the line between who gets to gather, learn, and grow, and who doesn’t. And for a community that’s trying to build something from the ground up, that line is everything.

This isn’t just Burkina Faso’s problem. It’s a challenge for the entire Drupal ecosystem. If Drupal is going to stay relevant and expand beyond its current reach, it has to grow where the need is greatest and the potential is untapped. Africa’s tech scene is rising fast, and platforms like Drupal could be part of that momentum. But that depends on whether we show up for the developers and organizers making it possible. These aren’t side stories. They’re the future of Drupal, and they deserve real investment.

The code is solid. The talent is there. What’s missing is community at scale. Supporting efforts like DrupalCamp Burkina Faso isn’t charity. It’s strategy. It’s how we build a global, sustainable open-source movement that reflects the diversity of the world it serves. If you believe in the long-term vision of Drupal, now’s the time to act. Because when one community grows, we all move forward.

DISCOVER DRUPAL

• Let’s Get Loud: Using LinkedIn to Amplify Drupal
• Drupal Considers Marketplace for Site Templates with Open Source and Commercial Options
• Drupal Deep Dive Project Connects Scuba Divers in the Drupal Community
• Media Library Translate Module Crosses 100-Site Usage on Drupal
• Metadrop's “Content First” Module Adds Text-Only View for Easier Content Review
• CivicTheme 1.10.0 Launches with Major Upgrades

EVENT

• DrupalCamp Burkina Faso 2025 Seeks Sponsors to Support April Event in Ouagadougou
• Merlijn Sebrechts to Present Keynote on WebAssembly at Drupal Developer Days 2025
• James Abrahams to Keynote on AI in Drupal CMS at Developer Days 2025
• Registration for DrupalCon Vienna 2025 is Now Officially Open!
• COSCUP 2025 Set for August, Celebrating Open Source in Taiwan
• Drupal Events This Week: Webinars, Meetups, and Community Sessions

ORGANIZATION NEWS

• Meet the 2025 Pantheon Partner Award Winners: A Closer Look at Their Impact
• DDEV Adds XHGui Support for Easier PHP Profiling
   

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 and Facebook. You can also join us on Drupal Slack at #thedroptimes.

Thank you, 
Sincerely 
Alka Elizabeth 
Sub-editor, The DropTimes.

Drupal CMS 1.0 launched in January with a fresh and simple installer, and user feedback was great! But even with these improvements, getting Drupal up and running is still harder than it should be. At DrupalCon Atlanta, Dries Buytaert shared a solution: a super simple desktop app. Instead of downloading and setting up Drupal manually, you can now install it with just a few clicks!

The Drupal CMS Launcher is already available for Mac (Windows is coming once we are able to sign the app). It has everything you need to run Drupal locally built-in—no extra software required! It comes with a web server and an SQLite database, so you can run Drupal right away. It also has Drush built-in, making it even easier to manage your site. Your Drupal files are stored in your Documents folder, so you can access them anytime.

This app is still new, and the team isn’t sure what’s next for it. But it’s already a big step toward making Drupal more accessible. Once you set it up, you can use Project Browser to add extensions to Drupal that are not yet installed.

To try it, download it now at new.drupal.org/drupal-cms/launcher. Check out the source code and contribute on GitHub at github.com/drupal/cms-launcher!

Preamble

Before I express my thoughts, I want to clarify that this blog post will be reviewed, revised, and improved with the help of Grammarly's AI. Although I've been cautious about relying on AI to enhance my writing, I recognize that my dyslexia and ongoing grammar challenges impact my writing ability. However, I'm skilled at organizing my ideas to convey a message. In the context of this post, I see AI as a helpful tool, similar to wearing glasses, that aids me in communicating and interacting with the Drupal community. Nothing in this post is generated by AI through prompts. My inspiration for sharing these thoughts came from attending DrupalCon Atlanta.

Background

Like many people, I am skeptical and hesitant about using AI in my day-to-day tasks, but this is about to change. Until recently, my daily use of AI was limited to using PHPStorm's AI assistant to suggest or look up some code occasionally. Frequently, I’d smirk at its hallucinations and never ask the AI assistant to correct itself.\

At DrupalCon Barcelona, I was impressed by the demo of Drupal CMS' AI capabilities, but I did not attend any AI sessions. A month after DrupalCon, I had breakfast in Brooklyn with Jamie, co-founder of FreelyGive and one of Drupal's AI evangelists. We discussed improving the sustainability of the AI module's ecosystem based on my experience with the Webform module's sustainability. At the same time, I sensed from his excitement that the possibilities with Drupal and AI were limitless.

At DrupalCon Atlanta, the only AI...Read More

Hey there, this is my Drupalcon-experience review, all the views/opinions here are mine and don’t extend to the company or partners I work with.

This was my second Drupalcon in general, and first one in North America - I used to be cautious about attending Drupalcons because the pricing can be quite prohibitive for small businesses, freelancers, and independent devs… I do enjoy DrupalCamps though - my 1st being BADCamp (US), then followed by camps in Ukraine, Romania and the ones we organized in Moldova, I think I attended ~6 camps and co-organized 3 more.

This year, thanks to Dropsolid, I had the chance to visit the US-flavored Drupalcon. This time it was in Atlanta, Georgia - in the Hyatt Regency Hotel. The venue was pretty fancy, I’d say - classy. I liked it, although not sure it was ca...

Read the Full Article

If you caught the State of Drupal presentation (aka Driesnote) from DrupalCon Atlanta, maybe you noticed something missing. There was no news about Drupal 11 or what lies ahead with Drupal 12. Instead, we talked about Drupal CMS, Experience Builder, and the upcoming concept of site templates.

Lupus Decoupled Drupal: Bridging Drupal’s Backend Strength with Frontend Freedom sinduri.guntup… Thu, 09/26/2024 - 12:36 Lupus Decoupled Drupal is an open source project that combines Drupal’s robust content management system with modern frontend technologies. The project provides a fully configured headless setup, retaining key Drupal features while using a component oriented decoupled architecture. This results in a flexible and dynamic development experience, which makes it a suitable option for developers, themers and site builders who wish to utilise the versatility and capabilities of Drupal in a decoupled framework.

Typography isn’t just a visual asset — it’s a language of its own. Are you ready to allow beautiful fonts to tell their tale and give your website the typographic personality it deserves?

Can AI actually help with real Drupal development? I wanted to find out.

This morning, I fired up Claude Code and pointed it at my personal Drupal site. In a 30-minute session, I asked it to help me build new features and modernize some of my code. I expected mixed results but was surprised by how useful it proved to be.

I didn't touch my IDE once or write a single line of code myself. Claude handled everything from creating a custom Drush command to refactoring constructors and converting Drupal annotations to PHP attributes.

If you're curious what AI-assisted Drupal development actually feels like, the video captures the experience.

DDEV at DrupalCon Atlanta 2025

While I didn’t speak at any formal sessions this year, I had the chance to lead several Birds-of-a-Feather (BoF) discussions:

• DDEV VS Code Integration Improvement: We talked about ways that DDEV could integrate better with VS Code. Although the well-maintained DDEV Manager VS Code Extension does great for people, there are a couple of things VS Code does not know how to do well. The biggest is that it doesn't know how to use php or phpstan or phpunit properly inside a Docker container (like the DDEV web container), so it's hard to use the nice VS Code integration with those tools. DDEV Community member Mike Anello was present and talked about his favorite usage, which involves the Remote Explorer extension. In his long-form Drupal trainings at DrupalEasy he teaches folks to use Remote Explorer with DDEV and work inside the web container all the time, and that solves the problem, but it is different from what DDEV users normally do. (PhpStorm knows how to use tools and interpreters inside the container, so doesn't have this problem.) Mike has presented his technique many times as Maximizing Visual Studio Code with DDEV.
• Replacing Gitpod for DrupalPod and DDEV: Many of you know that Gitpod has been a great resource for DDEV users to do development in a web environment, and that Gitpod Classic is scheduled to shut down in April 2025. The DrupalPod project, which wrapped Gitpod and DDEV to make Drupal contribution easy in a browser was used extensively by Drupal community members to review issues and contribute code. It was great for Contribution Day at DrupalCons these last few years because there was no need for people to set up a local development environment, and the bandwidth requirements were minimal. The Drupal.org issue about this has the details of the discussion, including a recording.
• DDEV Office Hours: DDEV Office Hours are a simple place to talk about anything DDEV-related, and we had a pleasant time.
• Git Bisect for Fun and Profit: This Git tutorial on the lovely git bisect technique went well and we all had a good time. It was based on the Florida Drupal Camp presentation. Here's the git-bisect-example repository. This was a shorter version of the Florida Drupal Camp presentation.

First-time Contributor Mentoring

The highlight of every DrupalCon is helping new contributors on Contribution Day, a whole day where folks get help contributing for the first time to code, documentation, or marketing. I was able to help a few people, and of course, was the resident DDEV and DrupalPod expert.

Helping Out

I published an invitation to meet one-on-one and a few people took advantage of meeting in person to look at their DDEV issues. It was great to meet them!

Notes

• Drupal CMS was all the rage: The Drupal CMS project has been quite successful this year, and it seemed like dozens of sessions talked about it. It seems to me like the Drupal community has taken an excellent path with this. As Dries said in the Driesnote, Drupal was always a huge bunch of building blocks that could do lots of things and do them well... but only experts understood how to do that. And they all did it in different ways. Now Drupal CMS provides a clear and refined starting point for people who need a website, but still has all the power of Drupal behind it, and you don't have to be an expert to get that polish and those features at the very beginning of your journey.
• DDEV Maintainer Stas Zhuk can't travel outside Ukraine, but he was welcomed with an honorary badge!
• Docksal seems to be in trouble: In the Drupal community many folks have happily used Docksal over the years, but its maintenance has recently fallen off. (Docksal is a Docker-based local development environment similar to DDEV.) There were people at DrupalCon asking about the situation with Docksal and asking for help migrating their sites to DDEV because of frustration with the project, which hasn't had a release since May, 2024. As open-source maintainers ourselves, we understand the pressures of maintenance and life and hope the Docksal maintainers are getting all the support they need in both places.

Thanks!

Bernardo Martinez shared a room and a DrupalCon ticket, making this whole thing possible.

Platform.sh was kind enough to fund the airline ticket to Atlanta.

Thanks to both of you! I wouldn't have made it without both those things.

This blog has been re-posted and edited with permission from Dries Buytaert's blog.

This post looks at the idea of a Drupal Site Template marketplace and whether it should support both open source and commercial templates.

This is an unusual post for my blog, but I'm sharing it to start a broader conversation about an idea we're exploring: a marketplace for Drupal Site Templates. Both the Drupal CMS Leadership Team and the Drupal Association have discussed this concept, but no decision has been made. I'm posting to share our current thinking and invite feedback as we shape this together.

This post is being cross-posted here, and the comments are open. You're also welcome to join the conversation in the #drupal-cms-marketplace channel on Drupal Slack.

In my DrupalCon Atlanta keynote, I introduced the concept of Site Templates for Drupal. These templates provide pre-configured website starting points that combine Drupal recipes, themes, and default content.

If you haven't seen my keynote yet, I recommend watching it first. It provides helpful context for the rest of this post.

While Site Templates will help users launch websites faster, I also posed a bigger question: should we create a marketplace where users can discover and download or install these templates? And if so, should that marketplace offer only open source Site Templates, or should we also allow commercial templates?

What are Site Templates?

Site Templates combine Drupal recipes, a theme, design elements, and default content to give users a fully functional website right from the start. They solve one of Drupal's biggest challenges: the time it takes to build a site from scratch.

Unlike a bare Drupal installation, a Site Template provides all the components needed for a specific use case. A restaurant template might include menu management, reservation systems, and food photography. A nonprofit template could feature donation processing, event management, and impact reporting tools.

Why consider a marketplace?

A Drupal marketplace for Site Templates would:

1. Help new users launch a professional-looking site instantly
2. Showcase Drupal's full potential through high-quality starting points
3. Generate new revenue opportunities for Drupal agencies and developers
4. Support Drupal's long-term sustainability through a revenue-sharing model with the Drupal Association

Should we support both open source and commercial Site Templates?

Fully open source Site Templates align naturally with Drupal's values. They could function much like community-contributed modules and themes, and we hope that many contributors will take this approach.

A marketplace requires ongoing investment. The Drupal Association would need to maintain the platform, review submissions, provide support, and ensure templates meet high standards. Without dedicated resources, quality and sustainability would suffer.

This is why supporting both open source and commercial templates makes sense. Paid templates can create a sustainable revenue stream to fund infrastructure, quality control, and support.

Commercial incentives also give creators a reason to invest in polished, well-documented, and well-supported templates.

How can a template be commercial while respecting Drupal's open source values?

First, rest assured: Drupal modules will always be open source.

Drupal is licensed under the GNU General Public License, or GPL. We've always taken a conservative approach to interpreting the GPL. In practice, this means we treat any code that builds on or interacts closely with Drupal as subject to the GPL. This includes PHP, Twig templates, etc. If it relies on Drupal's APIs or is executed by Drupal, it must be GPL-licensed.

Some parts of a site template fall into a gray area. JavaScript is an example. If JavaScript code is integrated with Drupal, we treat it as GPL-covered. If JavaScript code is standalone, such as a self-contained React component, it may not be considered a derivative work. The same may apply to CSS or configuration files not tightly coupled with Drupal APIs. These cases aren't always clear, but our stance has been to treat all code that ships with and interacts with Drupal as GPL. This keeps things simple.

Other parts of a Site Template are likely not subject to the GPL. Assets like images, fonts and icons are not code and are not derived from Drupal. The same applies to demo content, such as placeholder text or sample articles. These elements are not integrated with Drupal in a technical sense and can use other licenses, including commercial ones.

So when we talk about a commercial Site Template, we mean one that combines open source code with separately licensed assets or is sold alongside value-added services like documentation, support, or updates.

What would people actually be paying for in a commercial template?

While the legal distinction clarifies which parts of a Site Template can be licensed commercially, it's only part of the picture. The real question is the value proposition: what are users actually paying for when they choose a commercial template?

When purchasing a commercial template, users wouldn't just be paying for code. They're potentially paying for:

• Professional design assets and media
• Time saved in configuration and setup
• Documentation and support
• Ongoing updates and maintenance

This approach aligns with the Free Software Foundation's stance (the organization that created the GPL), which has always supported commercial distribution of free software. Creating a commercial template means balancing open source code with separately licensed assets. However, the real commercial value often extends beyond just the files you can license differently.

A sustainable commercial strategy combines proper licensing with controlled distribution channels and value-added services, like support. This approach ensures the value of a site template isn't limited to easily copied assets, but includes expertise that can't be simply downloaded. This is how a template can be commercial while staying true to Drupal's open source values.

How would we maintain quality in the marketplace?

A marketplace filled with low-quality or abandoned templates would damage Drupal's reputation. To ensure quality we probably need:

• Technical reviews of templates for security and performance
• Standards for documentation and support
• Processes to handle outdated or abandoned templates
• Community ratings and reviews
• Processes for resolving disputes

These quality assurance measures require ongoing time, effort, and funding. This is why including a commercial component makes sense. A revenue-sharing model with template creators could help fund platform maintenance, reviews, support, and other efforts needed to keep the marketplace high quality and trustworthy.

What pricing models might be available?

We don't know yet, but we've heard many good suggestions from the community.

Ideas include one-time purchases for unlimited use, annual subscriptions with ongoing updates, and a marketplace membership model for template creators.

The marketplace could support multiple approaches, giving creators flexibility to choose what works best for their offerings.

Is it fair for template creators to profit while module contributors aren't paid?

When a site template is sold commercially, it raises an important question. What about the maintainers of the modules included in the template? The template builder receives payment. The Drupal Association may collect a revenue share. But the individual contributors who created the modules or core functionality do not receive direct compensation, even though their work is essential to the Site Template.

This may feel frustrating or unfair. Contributors often donate their time to improve Drupal for everyone. Seeing others earn money by building on that work without recognition can be disheartening, and could even discourage future contributions. It's an important concern, and one we plan to take seriously as we evaluate the marketplace model.

At the same time, this dynamic is not new. Agencies and developers already build paid Drupal sites using contributed modules without directly compensating the people who made the underlying code possible. This is both legal, expected, and common in open source.

A marketplace would not create this reality, but it would make it more visible. That visibility gives us a chance to confront a long-standing tension in open source: the gap between those who contribute foundational work and those who profit from it. As I wrote in Makers and Takers, sustaining open source requires a better balance between contribution and benefit. A marketplace could give us a way to explore new approaches to recognize, support, and sustain the people who make Drupal possible. Transparency alone won't solve the issue, but it opens the door to progress and experimentation.

When commercial activity happens off Drupal.org, there is no way to recognize the contributors who made it possible. When it happens on Drupal.org, we have an opportunity to do better. We can explore models for financial support, community recognition, and long-term sustainability.

Others could build marketplaces for Drupal templates, but these would likely focus on profit rather than community support. An official Drupal Association marketplace allows us to reinvest in the project and the people behind it. It keeps value within our ecosystem, and gives us a platform to explore more equitable ways to sustain open source contribution.

Would this hurt digital agencies?

Many organizations pay thousands of dollars to digital agencies as part of a custom Drupal build. If Site Templates are available at a much lower cost, will that undercut agencies?

I don't believe it will.

Organizations investing in a Drupal website are not paying for a theme alone. Agencies provide strategy, consulting, design, customization, user testing, performance optimization, and long-term support. A template offers a starting point, but doesn't replace tailored work or a trusted partnership.

Could templates help agencies grow?

A template marketplace could expand the Drupal ecosystem by lowering the barrier to entry, making Drupal accessible to smaller organizations. Some of these will grow and require custom solutions, creating more opportunities for agencies in the long run.

Templates can also serve as powerful demonstrations of an agency's capabilities, attracting clients who want similar but customized solutions. For agencies, templates become both a product and a marketing tool.

What revenue opportunities would digital agencies have?

A template marketplace offers two revenue streams for Drupal agencies and freelancers.

First, agencies would earn direct income from template sales through revenue-sharing with the Drupal Association. While this income might be modest, it could provide recurring revenue as the marketplace grows.

Second, templates could serve as a foundation for more comprehensive service packages, including hosting, maintenance, and customization services.

How would templates connect agencies with new clients?

A marketplace could connect end users directly with service providers. With proper consent, contact details from template purchases could be shared with creators, opening the door to professional service opportunities. Template listings could also include a built-in contact form, making it easy for users to request customization or support.

This lead generation benefits both sides. Users access trusted professionals who understand their implementation, while agencies connect with qualified prospects who have already invested in their work. A marketplace becomes a matchmaking platform connecting those who need Drupal expertise with those who provide it.

Why is now the right time for this initiative?

With Drupal CMS, we're focused on growth. To succeed, we need to address two long-standing challenges: the lack of ready-made themes and a steep learning curve. Some of our new tools (Recipes, Experience Builder, and Site Templates) allow us to address these longstanding issues.

The result? We can take Drupal's flexibility and make it more available across different markets and use cases.

What was the initial reaction at DrupalCon?

The day after my keynote, we organized a Birds of a Feather (BoF) session to discuss the marketplace concept. Approximately 75 people attended, representing a cross-section of our community.

The discussion was lively and constructive. Participants raised thoughtful concerns about quality control, licensing, and impact on module contributors. They also offered suggestions for implementation, pricing, and sustainability models.

At the session's conclusion, we informally polled the audience. We asked people to raise their hand showing 1 finger if they thought a marketplace was a terrible idea, and 5 if they considered it a very impactful idea. Most responses were 4, with some 5s. Very few people indicated less than 3.

This initial reaction is encouraging, though we recognize that much work remains to address the questions raised during the session.

We also opened the #drupal-cms-marketplace channel in Drupal Slack to continue the conversation with the wider community.

What are the next steps?

The Drupal CMS Leadership Team and the Drupal Association Innovation Working Group have been exploring this idea the past month.

We believe it could be one of our strongest opportunities to grow Drupal adoption, support our Maker community, and strengthen the Drupal Association. (As a disclaimer: I serve on both the Drupal CMS Leadership Team and the Drupal Association Board of Directors.)

To be clear, no decision has been made. We recognize this initiative would have a substantial impact on our community and ecosystem. Before moving forward, we need to assess:

• Feasibility: Can we build and operate a marketplace efficiently?
• Sustainability: How will we support ongoing operations?
• Ecosystem impact: How would this affect contributors, agencies, and users?
• Funding: How do we bootstrap this initiative when we don't have spare resources?
• Values alignment: Does this approach honor Drupal's open source principles?
• Governance: Who makes decisions about the marketplace and how?

We cannot and should not make these assessments in isolation. We need the Drupal community's involvement through:

• Research into similar marketplaces and their impact
• User experience design for the marketplace interface
• Technical prototyping of the marketplace infrastructure
• Financial analysis of various revenue models
• Legal research on open source licensing considerations
• Community input on governance structures

Our goal is to make a decision by DrupalCon Vienna, 6 months from now, or sooner if clarity emerges. We want that decision to reflect input from the CMS Leadership Team, the Drupal Association Board, Certified Drupal Partners, and the wider Drupal community.

We're chartering a Marketplace Working Group with stakeholders from across the Drupal ecosystem. I'm pleased to announce that Tiffany Farriss (Drupal Association Board Member) has agreed to lead this effort. Please join the #drupal-cms-marketplace channel on Drupal Slack to share your thoughts and follow the conversation.

Drupal's greatest strength has always been its community and adaptability. I believe that by thoughtfully exploring new ideas together, we can make Drupal more accessible and widely adopted while staying true to our core values.

Thank you to everyone on the Drupal Association Innovation Working Group and the Drupal CMS Leadership Team who took the time to review this post and share thoughtful feedback. I really appreciate your input.

This blog has been re-posted and edited with permission from Dries Buytaert's blog.

DrupalCon North America 2025 Driesnote presentation

Three months ago, we launched Drupal CMS 1.0, our biggest step forward in years. Our goal is ambitious: to reimagine Drupal as both radically easier to use and a platform for faster innovation.

In my DrupalCon Atlanta keynote last week, I reflected on the journey so far, but mostly talked about the work ahead. If you missed the keynote, you can watch the video below, or download my slides (56 MB).

If you want to try Drupal CMS, you can explore the trial experience, use the new desktop launcher, or install it with DDEV. If you're curious about what we're working on next, keep reading.

1. Experience Builder

Some of the most common requests from Drupal users and digital agencies is a better page-building experience, simpler theming, and high-quality themes out of the box.

At DrupalCon Atlanta, I shared our progress on Experience Builder. The keynote recording includes two demos: one highlighting new site building features, and another showing how to create and design components directly in the browser.

I also demonstrated how Drupal's AI agents can generate Experience Builder components. While this was an early design experiment, it offered a glimpse into how AI could make site building faster and more intuitive. You can watch that demo in the keynote video as well.

We still have work to do, but we're aiming to release Experience Builder 1.0, the first stable version, by DrupalCon Vienna. In the meantime, try our demo release.

2. Drupal Site Templates

One of the biggest opportunities for Drupal CMS is making it faster and easier to launch a complete website. The introduction of Recipes was a big step forward. I covered Recipes in detail in my DrupalCon Barcelona 2024 keynote. But there is still more we can do.

Imagine quickly creating a campaign or fundraising site for a nonprofit, a departmental website for a university, a portfolio site for a creative agency, or even a travel-focused ecommerce site selling tours, like the one Sarah needed in the DrupalCon Barcelona demo.

This is why we are introducing Site Templates: ready-made starting points for common use cases. They help users go from a fresh install to a fully functional site with minimal setup or configuration.

Site Templates are made possible by Recipes and Experience Builder. Recipes provide higher-level building blocks, while Experience Builder introduces a new way to design and create themes. Site Templates will bring everything together into more complete, ready-to-use solutions.

If successful, Site Templates could replace Drupal distributions, a concept that has been part of Drupal for nearly 20 years. The key advantage is that Site Templates are much easier to build and maintain.

3. A marketplace discussion

The first Site Templates may be included directly in Drupal CMS 2.0 itself. Over time, we hope to offer hundreds of site templates through a marketplace on Drupal.org.

At DrupalCon Atlanta, I announced that we'll be exploring a marketplace for Site Templates, including the option for Commercial Site Templates. We believe it's an idea worth evaluating because it could bring several benefits to the Drupal project:

1. Help new users launch a professional-looking site instantly
2. Showcase Drupal's full potential through high-quality examples
3. Generate new revenue opportunities for Drupal agencies and developers
4. Support Drupal's sustainability through a revenue-sharing model with the Drupal Association

You can watch the keynote recording to learn more. I also plan to publish a detailed blog post in the next few days. If you're interested, consider subscribing to my blog.

Looking ahead

Drupal CMS has brought a lot of fresh momentum to the Drupal project, but we're not done yet! The rest of this year, we'll keep building on this foundation with a clear set of priorities:

• Launching Experience Builder 1.0
• Releasing our first Site Templates
• Expanding our marketing efforts
• Exploring the launch of a Site Template marketplace
• Building out our AI framework and AI agents

If you have time and interest, please consider getting involved. Every contribution makes a difference. Not sure where to begin? Join us on Drupal Slack. We're always happy to welcome new faces. Key channels include #drupal-cms-development, #ai, #experience-builder, #drupal-cms-templates, and #drupal-cms-marketplace.

As I said in the keynote: "We have all the pieces, now we just need to bring them together!"

This is an unusual post for my blog, but I'm sharing it to start a broader conversation about an idea we're exploring: a marketplace for Drupal Site Templates. Both the Drupal CMS Leadership Team and the Drupal Association have discussed this concept, but no decision has been made. I'm posting to share our current thinking and invite feedback as we shape this together.

This post will also be cross-posted to Drupal.org, where comments are open. You're also welcome to join the conversation in the #drupal-cms-marketplace channel on Drupal Slack.

In my DrupalCon Atlanta keynote, I introduced the concept of Site Templates for Drupal. If you haven't seen my keynote yet, I recommend watching it first. It provides helpful context for the rest of this post.

Site Templates provide pre-configured website starting points that combine Drupal recipes, themes, and default content. While Site Templates will help users launch websites faster, I also posed a bigger question: should we create a marketplace where users can discover and download or install these templates? And if so, should that marketplace offer only open source Site Templates, or should we also allow commercial templates?

What are Site Templates?

Site Templates combine Drupal recipes, a theme, design elements, and default content to give users a fully functional website right from the start. They solve one of Drupal's biggest challenges: the time it takes to build a site from scratch.

Unlike a bare Drupal installation, a Site Template provides all the components needed for a specific use case. A restaurant template might include menu management, reservation systems, and food photography. A nonprofit template could feature donation processing, event management, and impact reporting tools.

Why consider a marketplace?

A Drupal marketplace for Site Templates would:

1. Help new users launch a professional-looking site instantly
2. Showcase Drupal's full potential through high-quality starting points
3. Generate new revenue opportunities for Drupal agencies and developers
4. Support Drupal's long-term sustainability through a revenue-sharing model with the Drupal Association

Should we support both open source and commercial Site Templates?

Fully open source Site Templates align naturally with Drupal's values. They could function much like community-contributed modules and themes, and we hope that many contributors will take this approach.

A marketplace requires ongoing investment. The Drupal Association would need to maintain the platform, review submissions, provide support, and ensure templates meet high standards. Without dedicated resources, quality and sustainability would suffer.

This is why supporting both open source and commercial templates makes sense. Paid templates can create a sustainable revenue stream to fund infrastructure, quality control, and support.

Commercial incentives also give creators a reason to invest in polished, well-documented, and well-supported templates.

How can a template be commercial while respecting Drupal's open source values?

First, rest assured: Drupal modules will always be open source.

Drupal is licensed under the GNU General Public License, or GPL. We've always taken a conservative approach to interpreting the GPL. In practice, this means we treat any code that builds on or interacts closely with Drupal as subject to the GPL. This includes PHP, Twig templates, etc. If it relies on Drupal's APIs or is executed by Drupal, it must be GPL-licensed.

Some parts of a site template fall into a gray area. JavaScript is an example. If JavaScript code is integrated with Drupal, we treat it as GPL-covered. If JavaScript code is standalone, such as a self-contained React component, it may not be considered a derivative work. The same may apply to CSS or configuration files not tightly coupled with Drupal APIs. These cases aren't always clear, but our stance has been to treat all code that ships with and interacts with Drupal as GPL. This keeps things simple.

Other parts of a Site Template are likely not subject to the GPL. Assets like images, fonts and icons are not code and are not derived from Drupal. The same applies to demo content, such as placeholder text or sample articles. These elements are not integrated with Drupal in a technical sense and can use other licenses, including commercial ones.

So when we talk about a commercial Site Template, we mean one that combines open source code with separately licensed assets or is sold alongside value-added services like documentation, support, or updates.

What would people actually be paying for in a commercial template?

While the legal distinction clarifies which parts of a Site Template can be licensed commercially, it's only part of the picture. The real question is the value proposition: what are users actually paying for when they choose a commercial template?

When purchasing a commercial template, users wouldn't just be paying for code. They're potentially paying for:

• Professional design assets and media
• Time saved in configuration and setup
• Documentation and support
• Ongoing updates and maintenance

This approach aligns with the Free Software Foundation's stance (the organization that created the GPL), which has always supported commercial distribution of free software. Creating a commercial template means balancing open source code with separately licensed assets. However, the real commercial value often extends beyond just the files you can license differently.

A sustainable commercial strategy combines proper licensing with controlled distribution channels and value-added services, like support. This approach ensures the value of a site template isn't limited to easily copied assets, but includes expertise that can't be simply downloaded. This is how a template can be commercial while staying true to Drupal's open source values.

How would we maintain quality in the marketplace?

A marketplace filled with low-quality or abandoned templates would damage Drupal's reputation. To ensure quality we probably need:

• Technical reviews of templates for security and performance
• Standards for documentation and support
• Processes to handle outdated or abandoned templates
• Community ratings and reviews
• Processes for resolving disputes

These quality assurance measures require ongoing time, effort, and funding. This is why including a commercial component makes sense. A revenue-sharing model with template creators could help fund platform maintenance, reviews, support, and other efforts needed to keep the marketplace high quality and trustworthy.

What pricing models might be available?

We don't know yet, but we've heard many good suggestions from the community.

Ideas include one-time purchases for unlimited use, annual subscriptions with ongoing updates, and a marketplace membership model for template creators.

The marketplace could support multiple approaches, giving creators flexibility to choose what works best for their offerings.

Is it fair for template creators to profit while module contributors aren't paid?

When a site template is sold commercially, it raises an important question. What about the maintainers of the modules included in the template? The template builder receives payment. The Drupal Association may collect a revenue share. But the individual contributors who created the modules or core functionality do not receive direct compensation, even though their work is essential to the Site Template.

This may feel frustrating or unfair. Contributors often donate their time to improve Drupal for everyone. Seeing others earn money by building on that work without recognition can be disheartening, and could even discourage future contributions. It's an important concern, and one we plan to take seriously as we evaluate the marketplace model.

At the same time, this dynamic is not new. Agencies and developers already build paid Drupal sites using contributed modules without directly compensating the people who made the underlying code possible. This is both legal, expected, and common in open source.

A marketplace would not create this reality, but it would make it more visible. That visibility gives us a chance to confront a long-standing tension in open source: the gap between those who contribute foundational work and those who profit from it. As I wrote in Makers and Takers, sustaining open source requires a better balance between contribution and benefit. A marketplace could give us a way to explore new approaches to recognize, support, and sustain the people who make Drupal possible. Transparency alone won't solve the issue, but it opens the door to progress and experimentation.

When commercial activity happens off Drupal.org, there is no way to recognize the contributors who made it possible. When it happens on Drupal.org, we have an opportunity to do better. We can explore models for financial support, community recognition, and long-term sustainability.

Others could build marketplaces for Drupal templates, but these would likely focus on profit rather than community support. An official Drupal Association marketplace allows us to reinvest in the project and the people behind it. It keeps value within our ecosystem, and gives us a platform to explore more equitable ways to sustain open source contribution.

Would this hurt digital agencies?

Many organizations pay thousands of dollars to digital agencies as part of a custom Drupal build. If Site Templates are available at a much lower cost, will that undercut agencies?

I don't believe it will.

Organizations investing in a Drupal website are not paying for a theme alone. Agencies provide strategy, consulting, design, customization, user testing, performance optimization, and long-term support. A template offers a starting point, but doesn't replace tailored work or a trusted partnership.

Could templates help agencies grow?

A template marketplace could expand the Drupal ecosystem by lowering the barrier to entry, making Drupal accessible to smaller organizations. Some of these will grow and require custom solutions, creating more opportunities for agencies in the long run.

Templates can also serve as powerful demonstrations of an agency's capabilities, attracting clients who want similar but customized solutions. For agencies, templates become both a product and a marketing tool.

What revenue opportunities would digital agencies have?

A template marketplace offers two revenue streams for Drupal agencies and freelancers.

First, agencies would earn direct income from template sales through revenue-sharing with the Drupal Association. While this income might be modest, it could provide recurring revenue as the marketplace grows.

Second, templates could serve as a foundation for more comprehensive service packages, including hosting, maintenance, and customization services.

How would templates connect agencies with new clients?

A marketplace could connect end users directly with service providers. With proper consent, contact details from template purchases could be shared with creators, opening the door to professional service opportunities. Template listings could also include a built-in contact form, making it easy for users to request customization or support.

This lead generation benefits both sides. Users access trusted professionals who understand their implementation, while agencies connect with qualified prospects who have already invested in their work. A marketplace becomes a matchmaking platform connecting those who need Drupal expertise with those who provide it.

Why is now the right time for this initiative?

With Drupal CMS, we're focused on growth. To succeed, we need to address two long-standing challenges: the lack of ready-made themes and a steep learning curve. Some of our new tools (Recipes, Experience Builder, and Site Templates) allow us to address these longstanding issues.

The result? We can take Drupal's flexibility and make it more available across different markets and use cases.

What was the initial reaction at DrupalCon?

The day after my keynote, we organized a Birds of a Feather (BoF) session to discuss the marketplace concept. Approximately 75 people attended, representing a cross-section of our community.

The discussion was lively and constructive. Participants raised thoughtful concerns about quality control, licensing, and impact on module contributors. They also offered suggestions for implementation, pricing, and sustainability models.

At the session's conclusion, we informally polled the audience. We asked people to raise their hand showing 1 finger if they thought a marketplace was a terrible idea, and 5 if they considered it a very impactful idea. Most responses were 4, with some 5s. Very few people indicated less than 3.

This initial reaction is encouraging, though we recognize that much work remains to address the questions raised during the session.

We also opened the #drupal-cms-marketplace channel in Drupal Slack to continue the conversation with the wider community.

What are the next steps?

The Drupal CMS Leadership Team and the Drupal Association Innovation Working Group have been exploring this idea the past month.

We believe it could be one of our strongest opportunities to grow Drupal adoption, support our Maker community, and strengthen the Drupal Association. (As a disclaimer: I serve on both the Drupal CMS Leadership Team and the Drupal Association Board of Directors.)

To be clear, no decision has been made. We recognize this initiative would have a substantial impact on our community and ecosystem. Before moving forward, we need to assess:

• Feasibility: Can we build and operate a marketplace efficiently?
• Sustainability: How will we support ongoing operations?
• Ecosystem impact: How would this affect contributors, agencies, and users?
• Funding: How do we bootstrap this initiative when we don't have spare resources?
• Values alignment: Does this approach honor Drupal's open source principles?
• Governance: Who makes decisions about the marketplace and how?

We cannot and should not make these assessments in isolation. We need the Drupal community's involvement through:

• Research into similar marketplaces and their impact
• User experience design for the marketplace interface
• Technical prototyping of the marketplace infrastructure
• Financial analysis of various revenue models
• Legal research on open source licensing considerations
• Community input on governance structures

Our goal is to make a decision by DrupalCon Vienna, 6 months from now, or sooner if clarity emerges. We want that decision to reflect input from the CMS Leadership Team, the Drupal Association Board, Certified Drupal Partners, and the wider Drupal community.

We're chartering a Marketplace Working Group with stakeholders from across the Drupal ecosystem. I'm pleased to announce that Tiffany Farriss (Drupal Association Board Member) has agreed to lead this effort. Please join the #drupal-cms-marketplace channel on Drupal Slack to share your thoughts and follow the conversation.

Drupal's greatest strength has always been its community and adaptability. I believe that by thoughtfully exploring new ideas together, we can make Drupal more accessible and widely adopted while staying true to our core values.

Thank you to everyone on the Drupal Association Innovation Working Group and the Drupal CMS Leadership Team who took the time to review this post and share thoughtful feedback. I really appreciate your input.

My First DrupalCon: A Decade in the Making demet Wed, 04/02/2025 - 08:50

What I learned and how you can get the most out of the DrupalCon experience

After nearly a decade at Palantir.net, and even longer in the world of Drupal, I finally took the plunge and attended my first DrupalCon! I’d previously attended a few other community events like MidCamp and Texas Camp, but DrupalCon always felt like a more intimidating undertaking. Between project deadlines and a desire to be mindful of my professional development budget, it never seemed to align. With all of the innovation happening in the AI and Experience Builder space, I decided to take the plunge this year and attend. I’m really glad I did!
The experience was extremely valuable, and here are my key takeaways for others looking to attend their first DrupalCon:

1. Arrive Early, Secure Your Seat!

My first lesson was learned the hard way. I walked into my initial session just a few minutes before it started, only to find a packed room where I was forced to stand in the back behind a support pillar. This isn’t a college lecture — seats and space aren’t guaranteed! I made a mental note to attend other sessions that I thought would be popular a few minutes early.

2. The Drupal Community: Warm and Welcoming

Despite a lot of attendees, everyone I met was incredibly friendly and approachable. I’m pretty introverted by nature, but small talk proved to be a fantastic way to connect with fellow Drupalers. I found myself waiting for a fresh supply of hot water to make a cup of tea with some fellow attendees. It turned out to be an opportune time to pick their brains about a dashboard initiative I’ve been looking into. If you need help, use my favorite way to break the ice — a deprecating joke about Drupal.

3. You’ll Recognize Familiar Faces

I was pleasantly surprised by the number of familiar faces I encountered. Former colleagues, individuals I’d heard about in the Drupal space, and even online acquaintances were all there. It was a fantastic opportunity to connect in person and put faces to names. For example, I ran into Bálint in the expo hall after attending a session he hosted the day before and got to pick his brain with some questions I had about Experience Builder.

4. The Power of Community is Real

The often repeated phrase, "come for the code, stay for the community," really resonated with me. The energy and passion within the Drupal community is real. I left feeling inspired and motivated to contribute back to this incredible open-source project. It left a salient reminder that this project is successful because a bunch of people like me contribute their time and talent. If I want Drupal to be successful, it takes my contributions, too.

5. Swag, Snacks, and Networking

Both spending some time at the Palantir booth talking to passers by and taking a few laps around the exhibit hall was well worth it. I had a lot of great and insightful conversations with vendors, partners, and even competitors. It’s nice to get on-the-ground insight into  the latest trends within the Drupal ecosystem. And yes, the swag and snacks were a nice bonus! My favorite souvenir was a retro-styled Atlanta poster that I brought home to commemorate my first DrupalCon.

6. Overcoming Presentation Intimidation

For years, I've been hesitant to propose a session at DrupalCon. This experience helped break down that intimidation. I realized that it's not as daunting as I imagined, and I'm determined to submit a proposal for a future DrupalCon. The Drupal space is large, and we’re all working on really cool stuff. I’m determined to capture learnings from my projects and share them out with the larger community.

All in all, my first DrupalCon was an unforgettable experience. I highly recommend it to anyone involved in the Drupal community, and I'm already looking forward to attending DrupalCon Chicago in 2026!