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Should we use Paragraphs or Layout Builder in Drupal? This guide breaks down the strengths of each approach and helps you choose the right module for flexible, editor-friendly page building.

In this post, we share our CI strategy for all Drupal contributed modules. We believe that other large open-source projects may want to adopt or learn from the way we implemented a solution to centrally-manage CI while still allowing per-project customization.

How Drupal contributed modules do CI today?

Let's give some more details about how did we get here.

The past

In summer 2023, only 2 and a half years from today, we enabled the usage of GitLab CI for the Drupal ecosystem, which includes all contrib modules and Drupal core. We announced and promoted it at DrupalCon Lille 2023.

This new system would replace entirely the DrupalCI, the custom testing solution that Drupal core and projects used for nearly 10 years prior to enabling GitLab CI.

Core tests went from taking nearly 1h to taking 10 minutes. Adoption for contrib modules was as easy as adding a six-line file to their project.

The present

Core continued to evolve at its own pace, and the CI runs are now down to 5 minutes. They’ve been able to leverage concurrency, caching, and many other features available on GitLab CI.

Contrib modules also saw significant changes to improve their quality. Adoption was continuously growing, and the standard templates really took off, adding many new features.

As of today, we have more than 2000 contrib projects using GitLab CI.

Jobs

We offer, without writing a single line of code, the same type of tests and checks that core does.

These are: Composer lint, PHPCS, CSpell, PHPStan, ESLint, Stylelint, Nightwatch, PHPUnit, Test-only.

In addition to those, we also have: Upgrade status, Drupal CMS, GitLab Pages.

You can see that having things like “Upgrade status” or “Drupal CMS” compatibility are key for our contrib modules, and it’s available out of the box.

Also, the GitLab Pages job allows for modules to publish a full documentation site based on their markdown files. If the files are there, the documentation site will be published. An example of this is our own documentation site for the shared CI templates: https://project.pages.drupalcode.org/gitlab_templates. 

Most of these jobs will offer artifacts that can be downloaded by maintainers to fix the issues reported.

Customizations

Most of the above jobs can be disabled, if they are not wanted, with only a few lines of code (turn variables to 0). 

We can also test multiple versions of Drupal, like the next or previous minors or majors, again with a few lines of code (turn variables to 1).

We achieved this by extending base jobs that can be configured via variables, like this:

composer: extends: .composer-base variables: DRUPAL_CORE: $CORE_STABLE IGNORE_PROJECT_DRUPAL_CORE_VERSION: 1 composer (max PHP version): extends: .composer-base rules: - *opt-in-max-php-rule - *check-max-php-version-rule - when: always variables: PHP_VERSION: $CORE_PHP_MAX DRUPAL_CORE: $CORE_STABLE IGNORE_PROJECT_DRUPAL_CORE_VERSION: 1 composer (previous minor): extends: .composer-base rules: - *opt-in-previous-minor-rule - when: always variables: DRUPAL_CORE: $CORE_PREVIOUS_MINOR IGNORE_PROJECT_DRUPAL_CORE_VERSION: 1

We always keep up with the latest core releases, so maintainers don’t need to change anything to test the latest core versions. But if they want to “fix” the versions tested so these don’t change, they can pin the version of the templates that they are using with just one line of code.

They can choose with PHP version or database engine to run tests with.

External integrations

The contrib templates can be used in external instances. This is actually a five-line file (similar to the one mentioned above), but the integration remains the same. We have several community members using the templates in their own GitLab instances with their own company projects, and everything works the same.

The future

Ever since we made the switch, we have positively shaped the contribution to Drupal. Module standards are very much aligned with core standards. We get really quick in-browser feedback about what to fix; we no longer need to upload extra (test-only) patches, etc.

The possibilities are endless, and we continue looking at the future as well. We are always open to hearing about improvements. For example, only recently, thanks to suggestions from the community, we added Drupal CMS compatibility check and support for recipes.

We are also checking if we can convert some of the jobs to reusable GitLab CI components (they weren’t stable when we launched the templates).

All in all, the future looks bright, and we are really glad that we made this move as part of our broader GitLab initiative. 

How other open source projects can adopt a similar solution (aka "implementation details")

Whether you have an open source project and want to do something similar, or you are just curious, here are some of the details about how we implemented this for the Drupal Ecosystem.

We had several goals in mind, some of them as must-haves, some of them as nice-to-haves. The must-haves were that it needed to be easy to adopt, and that it should allow the same functionality as the previous system. The nice-to-haves were that it would be easy to iterate and push changes to all projects using it, without project interaction, and that we could easily add new features and turn them on/off from a central place.

At the time, GitLab components were still in the works and didn't have a timeline to be stable, so we needed to think which other options were available. GitLab has the include functionality, that allows including external YAML files in a project's CI configuration. This was our starting point.

Template inheritance

We control the templates centrally at the GitLab Templates project. In there, you can see a folder called "includes", and those are the files that projects include. That's it! To make this easier, we provide a default template that gets prepopulated in GitLab and that containsthe right "includes" in the right places. The six-line template is here.

You can create a ".gitlab-ci.yml" file in the repo and add these:

include: - project: $_GITLAB_TEMPLATES_REPO ref: $_GITLAB_TEMPLATES_REF file: - '/includes/include.drupalci.main.yml' - '/includes/include.drupalci.variables.yml' - '/includes/include.drupalci.workflows.yml'

From that moment on, the project "inherits" all the templates (that we control centrally) and will start running the above CI jobs automatically.

You can see that there are three main files: one with variables, one with global workflow rules, and one containing all the jobs.

That is just the base. Each project can deviate, configure, or override any part of the template as desired, giving them flexibility that we might not be able to accommodate centrally. 

We created extensive documentation and generated a GitLab Pages site to help with this: https://project.pages.drupalcode.org/gitlab_templates.

Should you want to include this in any other external GitLab instance, you just need to adapt the above to be fully qualified links as explained in our documentation page here.

As mentioned before, we can push a change (eg: bug fix, new feature) centrally, and as long as the projects make reference to our files, they will automatically receive the changes. This gives us great flexibility and extendibility, and best of all, maintainers don't need to worry about it as it is automatic for their projects.

We define variables that control the Drupal versions to tests against, the workflow rules that determine which jobs run and under which conditions, and most important of all, the logic for all the jobs ran in the pipelines.

We did it this way because it was the solution that would allow us to get all the must-haves and all the nice-to-haves. It allows literally thousands of projects to benefit instantly from shared CI checks and integration without barely writing code.

Versioning

We don't need a complex system for this, as the code is relatively small and straightforward compared to other projects, but we realised early that we needed a system because pushing the "latest" to everybody was risky, should a bug or unplanned issue arise.

We document our versioning system in the "Templates version" page. We use semver tagging, but we only maintain one branch. Depending on the changes introduced since the last tag, we increment X.Y.Z (X for breaking changes, Y for new features, Z for bug fixes), and we also generate a set of tags that will allow maintainers to pin specific versions, or moving-tags within the same major or minor. You can see the tagging script we use here.

Excerpt:

# Compute tags. TAG="$1" IFS=. read major minor micro <<<"${TAG}" MINOR_TAG="${major}.${minor}.x-latest" MAJOR_TAG="${major}.x-latest" ... echo "Setting tag: $TAG" git tag $TAG git push origin $TAG ... echo "Setting latest minor tag: $MINOR_TAG" git tag -d $MINOR_TAG || TRUE git push origin --delete $MINOR_TAG || TRUE git tag $MINOR_TAG git push origin $MINOR_TAG ... echo "Setting latest major tag: $MAJOR_TAG" git tag -d $MAJOR_TAG || TRUE git push origin --delete $MAJOR_TAG || TRUE git tag $MAJOR_TAG git push origin $MAJOR_TAG

This process has been working well for us for around 2 years already.

Pushing changes to all contributed projects

Once the above versioning system was implemented, it was easier and quicker to iterate, and it also gave maintainers a chance to pin things. We normally push changes to the "main" branch, so all users wanting the latest changes can both benefit from them and also help us discover any possible regressions.

Once we are happy with the set of changes from the last tag, we can create new tags that maintainers can reference. Also, once we are happy that a tag is stable enough, we have a special tag named "default-ref" and all we need to do is change that tag to point to the specific stable version we want. Once we do it, that tag will automatically be pushed to all the contributed projects using the default setup.

The script that we use to set the default tag can be seen here.

Excerpt:

TAG="$1" DEFAULT_TAG="default-ref" echo "Setting default tag to be the same as: $TAG" # Checkout the tag. git checkout $TAG # Override the default one. git tag -d $DEFAULT_TAG || TRUE git push origin --delete $DEFAULT_TAG || TRUE git tag $DEFAULT_TAG git push origin $DEFAULT_TAG # Back to the main branch. git checkout main Implement it in your project

In the spirit of open source, we've documented the overarching strategy we used so that other teams fostering open source projects can adopt similar principles. We wanted to share how we did it, in case it helps any other project.

The key is to have a central place where you can control the default setup, and from there on, let projects decide what's best for their needs. They can stick to the default and recommended setup, but they could deviate from it should they need to.

Today we are talking about AI Marketing,Marketing Trends, and The caber toss with guest Hayden Baillio. We'll also cover Drupal core 11.3 as our module of the week.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/532

Topics

• AI in Marketing: Hayden's Insights
• The Role of AI in Content Creation
• Challenges and Ethical Considerations of AI
• AI Training Data and Bias
• AI in Security Testing
• AI Replacing Jobs
• The Future of Marketing with AI
• Highland Games and Personal Hobbies

Resources

• Drupal core 11.3 release highlights
• Carsinisation

Guests

Hayden Baillio - hounder.co hgbaillio

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Fei Lauren - feilauren

MOTW Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

• Brief description:
  • Have you been wanting a version of Drupal core that moves away from the hooks system, has PHP 8.5 support, or has better support for asynchronous queries? The newly released Drupal core 11.3 has all these and more.
• Module name/project name:
  • Drupal core 11.3
• Brief history
  • Created in the last few days (hopefully) by the time this episode is released
• Changes
  • Performance improvements
  • New MYSQLi database driver. In combination with the PHP Fibers support added in Drupal 10.2, this should allow Drupal sites to run much faster. Not all hosting environments will have PHP configured to work with the new driver, so for now the new driver is in an experimental core module you will need to install to try the new driver
  • Drupal can now lazy load multiple entities at a time using Fibers
  • PHP 8.5 support should also improve performance, as will a number of caching improvements
  • Some early testing in the community indicates some significant improvements for pages loaded from cold cache, anywhere from 30 to 40% fewer queries
  • One of the significant changes in Drupal core 11.2 was the addition of HTMX as the intended successor to Drupal's older AJAX system. Drupal core 11.3 includes some significant steps on the path to replacing all the places that AJAX system in core
  • There's a new HTMX factory object with methods to abstract the specifics of the attributes and headers needed to implement HTMX
  • HTMX is now used for the Form Builder and ConfigSingleExportForm
  • BigPipe no longer uses the older AJAX API, which itself uses jQuery
  • New Workspace Provider concept, will be interesting to see what new possibilities this creates
  • New administer node published status permission, previously required the much broader "administer nodes" permission
  • Drupal core 11.3 also includes some capabilities that previously required contrib modules
  • Links created within CKEditor5 now dynamically link to the entity and when rendered will automatically point to the most recent alias. Previously Drupal sites needed the Linkit module, which has been part of Drupal CMS since its release at the start of the year
  • Drupal CMS is also heavily based on Drupal's recipe system, which includes the ability to automatically import content included within a recipe. Until now you still needed the default_content module to export content as YAML for inclusion in a recipe. With Drupal 11.3 you can export all entities of a particular type, optionally filtered by bundle, and optionally including all dependencies
  • Many of Drupal's remaining hooks, particularly those for themes, now have OOP class replacements, so we're now very close to being able to deprecate .module and .theme files
  • Listeners may remember that the Navigation module was added as an experimental module in Drupal core 10.3. In 11.3, the module is now officially stable, so the rethought admin menu that originally debuted as part of the Gin admin theme is now fully realized in Drupal core
  • SDCs can now be marked to be excluded from the UI, for example if they are meant to only be nested within other components
  • Drupal core 11.3 also introduces some new deprecations:
  • Migrate Drupal and Migrate Drupal UI officially deprecated now that Drupal 7 is EOL
  • Also field_layout, which was ultimately superseded by Layout Builder
  • Promoted and Sticky fields are now hidden by default (an issue created more than 20 years ago! A five digit issue ID) - the user who created it had a drop.org username lol
  • Another issue that sets the "Promoted" default value to FALSE for new content types was also resolved, but only 15 years old. It had a six-digit issue ID - barely!
  • Theme engines have been deprecated!
  • This may be the last feature release of Drupal core before version 12, which could drop as early as June 2026
  • We'll include a link to the release highlights, but by the time you hear this there should also be an official announcement from Gabor and the DA with additional details

Day 15 - Editoria11y Dec 15, 2025 0

We've spent the past two weeks discussing accessibility standards - what they mean, why they matter, and how to implement them. But there's a gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it consistently. Content editors add images without alt text. Headings get used for styling instead of structure. Links say "click here" instead of describing their destination.

Read More

Genero Inc. positioned its sponsorship of DrupalCon Nara as part of a larger strategy to promote digital transformation and open-source adoption in Japan. More than just event support, their involvement emphasized cross-cultural knowledge sharing, community engagement, and visibility for Drupal beyond technical circles. Through DXTimes and global partnerships, the company continues to amplify Drupal’s relevance for both business and development audiences locally and internationally. Weeks after the event, Genero’s commitment endures, reinforcing Nara’s potential as a growing hub for open tech talent.

ECA Use Case: Notifications Jürgen Haas Mon 15 Dec 2025 - 15:10

This article discusses how Drupal, despite its mature and robust APIs, lacks a unified notification framework — leaving site builders to navigate hundreds of separate modules for different notification types (new content, comments, user registrations, form submissions, etc.), each with its own configuration and limitations. ECA (Event-Condition-Action) offers a natural solution because notifications inherently involve events, conditions for determining who should be notified, and actions for message delivery, all of which ECA handles well. By using ECA, sites can consolidate notification management into a single module, reducing technical debt and ensuring consistent messaging across all delivery channels. The piece concludes by calling for the development of pre-built ECA recipes and a more intuitive UI to make this approach accessible to all Drupal site builders.

On December 9th, 2025, the Drupal community gathered in Paris for a special AI summit.

As part of the larger apidays / FOST conference, we held the inaugural Drupal AI Summit designed specifically for end customers. Despite a compressed four-week organization window and a marketing campaign that ran for only three weeks, the event was oversubscribed with 170+ registered attendees.

We saw a standing-room-only crowd, peaking at around 120 people, with a sustained audience of 80-90 highly engaged delegates throughout the day. Crucially, many attendees spilled in from the wider conference, people who hadn't considered Drupal before but were drawn in by the energy and the promise of our open ecosystem.

Watch the highlights reel here! (Credit: Dan Lemon, Amazee.io)

Why the World is Watching Drupal AI

The summit attracted a diverse mix of end users, agencies, and AI specialists from the UK, Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, and beyond. We saw heavy representation from Higher Education, Government, Manufacturing, and Enterprise sectors.

Why the sudden surge in interest? Because the Drupal AI Initiative is moving at incredible speed and momentum, leading to attracting many developers back into the community.

Want to be notified when the next Drupal AI events are coming? Follow us on LinkedIn.

One moment captured this velocity perfectly: a slide presented during the opening remarks claimed Drupal AI supported 50 AI providers, which was already outdated a week later, with another few providers being added to the list. This is the power of the open web.

While proprietary systems lock you in, the Drupal AI ecosystem expands daily, offering sovereignty, flexibility, and rapid innovation that closed platforms simply cannot match.

Showcasing the Ecosystem

The day featured eleven leading experts who demonstrated that Drupal is the most robust platform for building AI-driven digital experiences. The sessions proved that whether you need autonomous agents, secure enterprise data handling, or next-generation search, Drupal is ready today.

The Architecture of the Future

We explored the foundational power of Drupal as an orchestration layer. Alex Moreno (Pantheon) showcased how our modular architecture makes Drupal the ideal bridge between content, data, and intelligence. Giorgi Jibladze (Omedia) took this further by demonstrating Drupal as a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, integrating seamlessly with tools like ChatGPT for interactive UI components.

Agents and Automation

The Summit highlighted that we are moving beyond simple chatbots. Marcus Johansson (FreelyGive) and Jamie Abrahams (FreelyGive) were standout voices here. Jamie introduced the Drupal AI Agent Framework, showing how we can build autonomous agents that create complex pages while keeping humans in the loop.

Marcus demonstrated the power of AI Automators, proving that complex, chained AI workflows can be built without writing a single line of code. Andrew Mallis (Kalamuna) showed how these agents can even revolutionize our workflows, using AI to "chat" with the migration process to speed up complex site upgrades.

Trust, Sovereignty, and UX

For our Enterprise and Government attendees, security was paramount. Dan Lemon (amazee.io) presented a privacy-first AI assistant that ensures data sovereignty when interacting with internal documents. Moritz Arendt (Open Social) discussed the ethics of AI in community platforms, focusing on maintaining trust. Emma Horrell (University of Edinburgh) proved that the success of these tools relies on people, sharing research on how AI-assisted editorial guidance can reshape web publishing in Higher Education.

Optimization and Search

We also looked at how content is consumed by machines. Christoph Breidert (1xINTERNET) introduced the concept of AIO (Artificial Intelligence Optimisation), teaching us how to prepare Drupal content for AI-generated search results. Artem Dmitriiev (1xINTERNET) showed how to build intelligent, semantic search tools without writing code, and Kristof Van Tomme (PRONOVIX) highlighted how AI automates documentation and "answer engine" optimization.

A Community Like No Other

This event was a huge success, not just in numbers, but in the connections made. It was a powerful way to promote Drupal to a non-Drupal audience, proving that our open-source ecosystem is the safest and most powerful bet for the future of AI.

After a day of high-speed innovation, we reconnected with our roots - human connection. We wrapped up the summit at the Paris Christmas market, sharing ideas over glühwein. It was a fitting end to a day about the future: high-tech solutions grounded in a warm, collaborative community.

Here's to wishing we all get an upgraded Drupal site with AI for Christmas!

Want to be notified when the next Drupal AI events are coming? Follow us on LinkedIn.

DrupalCon Nara brought together the Drupal community in beautiful Japan a couple of weeks back, and the AI track delivered something valuable: practical sessions showing how teams are using AI to solve real problems right now. This post by Witze Van der Straeten highlights seven presentations well worth watching.

Photo: Karl Hepworth

If you're selling or managing: Stop losing deals to "AI-Powered" competitors "Selling Drupal in the AI Age" with Niels Aers

You know the scenario: a client gets excited about some "AI-powered" platform, and suddenly your Drupal proposal seems old-fashioned. Or worse, they ask "doesn't AI make CMSs obsolete?"

Niels from Dropsolid flips this conversation with one simple truth: AI needs good data to work, and Drupal is exceptional at organizing data. While many platforms just store messy text and images, Drupal has always structured everything properly. Think of it like the difference between throwing papers in a drawer versus filing them in organized folders with labels. When AI needs to find information, organized folders win every time.

He shares a great example from a Belgian water company. They added AI search to help their customer service team answer questions faster. The team loved it so much, it saved them so much time, that the company decided to invest in AI across the whole organization. One small win created momentum for everything else.

The session gives you the actual words and examples you need when talking to clients or leadership. It shows real cost comparisons and explains why Drupal's approach is actually more reliable and affordable than those flashy alternatives.

Watch this if: You're tired of losing deals to buzzwords, or you need to convince someone that Drupal isn't outdated.

Watch Selling Drupal in the AI Age on YouTube

If you're managing a team: How to actually get people using AI "Lessons from Integrating AI Into Real Marketing Teams" with Akansha Saxena

Akanksha tells it straight: after six months of trying to get her marketing team at Acquaia to use AI, she learned that nobody really knows what they're doing yet, and that's okay.

Here's the disconnect: you see headlines saying "88% of marketers already use AI!" But then Massachusetts Institute of Technology publishes a study showing 95% of AI projects fail. Akanksha lived in that gap and figured out what actually works.

Photo: Karl Hepworth

She discovered four real problems. First, people aren't scared of AI. They're confused by it. Her solution? "Marketing AI Office Hours" every two weeks where the team could learn together and ask questions without feeling stupid.

Second problem: everyone's too busy to learn complicated new tools. Her solution? Start so small it feels silly. They added one button to their image library that says "Generate with AI" for creating image descriptions. That's it. One button. But it solved a real annoyance, and suddenly people trusted that AI could actually help.

Third problem: AI-generated content often sounds robotic. Her solution? Mix different tools and always have humans review the final result. Never just publish what AI creates without checking it.

The best part? She shows the money. Translating 100,000 words used to cost $6,000 with traditional services. With AI translation: $2.70. That's not a typo. That's a 99.95% cost savings.

Drupal AI brought 99.95% cost savings when compared with traditional services.

She also demonstrates a workflow she built in 15 minutes that automatically creates social media posts when you publish content, sends them to Slack for approval, then publishes them. No more copying and pasting between ten different tabs.

Watch this if: You've tried getting your team to use AI and it didn't stick. Her playbook shows how to make it work without forcing people into tools they hate.

Watch Lessons from Integrating AI Into Real Marketing Teams on YouTube.

Worried about security: Building AI that respects permissions "Smart Search, Safe Search: How Drupal + AI Work Together" with Sachiko Nitta

Here's a problem most companies building AI features ignore: what happens when different people should see different information?

Satanita demonstrates this beautifully with "Pillow Street," a fake company's internal website. When someone from the finance team asks the AI chatbot "What's our Q3 revenue?", the AI answers with the actual numbers. When a regular employee asks the same question, the AI says "I cannot access that information."

This works because Drupal's permission system filters what information reaches the AI before it generates any response. The AI never sees data the person asking isn't allowed to access. It's Drupal doing what it already does well, controlling who can see what, but now protecting your AI features too.

Most companies building AI chatbots or search features don't think about this until it's too late. Then someone uses a clever question to trick the AI into revealing confidential information. Satanita shows how to build it right from the start.

He walks through the actual setup using tools available today. It's not overly complicated. He built the demo in a reasonable amount of time using standard Drupal modules.

Watch this if: You're building any kind of AI feature where not everyone should see everything. This shows you how to do it without expensive custom security layers.

Watch Smart Search, Safe Search: How Drupal + AI Work Together on YouTube.

Want AI to actually do things: From simple tasks to complex workflows? "AI Agents in Drupal CMS - Create your own agent" with Vincenzo Gambino

Most AI demos show it generating text. Vincenzo shows AI making decisions and taking actions across multiple systems. His demo builds an event manager. You tell it "Create an event for DrupalCon Rome on November 25th." The AI figures out it needs to do two things: create an event post on your Drupal site AND add an entry to Google Calendar. It extracts the information from your sentence, converts the date to the right format, creates both items, then tells you it's done.

The key word is "figures out." You didn't tell it to do both those steps. It understood what an event means and what tools it has available, then decided what to do.

Vincenzo explains the difference between two approaches. Workflows are like recipes: step 1, step 2, step 3. Agents are like giving someone a goal and letting them figure out how to reach it. Workflows are more predictable. Agents are more flexible. Each has its place.

Workflows are more predictable. Agents are more flexible. Each has its place.

He also mentions something fascinating that nobody talks about: if you're building AI features in multiple languages, Japanese text costs 40% more to process than English. French costs 15% more. These aren't tiny differences. They're real budget impacts if you're serving global audiences.

Watch this if: You want AI to do more than write text. This shows how to build systems where AI coordinates multiple actions across different tools.

Watch AI Agents in Drupal CMS - Create your own agent on Youtube

If you need proof: Real companies using Drupal AI today "Epic things you built with Drupal AI" with Michael Schmid

If you're skeptical whether this AI stuff actually works in the real world, Michael rapid-fires through ten companies already using it in production.

• World Cancer Day uses AI to automatically filter spam from story submissions.
• A French telecom built an image search that verifies whether they own the rights to use photos (99% accuracy). 
• A UK council converted over 2,000 old PDF documents into accessible websites 240 times faster than doing it manually.
• A shipping company reduced problem resolution from weeks to minutes.
• A European train company processes 20,000 delay compensation claims per hour and actually improved customer satisfaction with the faster service.

The pattern? Most of these aren't flashy public features. They're internal tools that make teams more efficient. That's where AI has the biggest impact right now. Not replacing people, but giving them superpowers to handle volume they couldn't before.

Michael also announced that if you've built something with Drupal AI, even just an experiment, you can get help publishing a case study quickly by contacting the Drupal AI Initiative Marketing Team. They're actively collecting stories to show what's possible.

Watch this if: You need to convince someone this is real and not just hype. These are actual companies solving actual problems today.

Watch Epic things you built with Drupal AI on YouTube.

If you work globally: Respecting culture while moving fast "The Future of Workflow Optimization with AI & Drupal Canvas" with Maggie Schroeder and Shumpei Kishi

This session includes a demo that's both entertaining and brilliant. The scenario: DrupalCon starts in two days, you need a Japanese landing page, leadership wants it today.

They use Drupal Canvas with AI to build a complete page with custom features in three minutes. But here's where it gets interesting. When they try to publish, someone says "Wait. This is for Japan. We need to do Nemawashi first."

Nemawashi is a Japanese business practice of informing key people before making announcements. Not asking permission, but showing respect by not surprising them. Normally this takes an hour: write an email summary, translate it to Japanese, figure out who should receive it, send it out.

Instead, they prompt the automation system with Drupal's ECA module: "Build a workflow when an article is published. Summarize the content in English and Japanese. Email the summary to the user named 'stakeholders'." The AI builds this workflow automatically. They publish the content, and the system handles the cultural protocol without manual work.

This demonstrates something important: AI can respect organizational and cultural requirements while still moving fast. It's not about eliminating processes. It's about automating the parts that slow you down.

The demo also shows Acquia Source Writing Assistant, which is trained specifically to write content that other AIs will cite and reference. It's not just about search engines anymore. It's about making sure ChatGPT and Claude mention your content when people ask questions.

Watch this if: You manage international teams or need to balance speed with proper organizational process.

Watch The Future of Workflow Optimization with AI & Drupal Canvas on YouTube.

If you're planning Drupal's future: Understanding the Strategic Vision "Next steps for Drupal Canvas" with Lauri Timmanee

Most Canvas presentations show you how to build pages. Lauri shows you why Canvas exists and where it's going. Essential context if you're making strategic decisions about Drupal.

The mission is clear: make Drupal the gold standard for no-code website building. But AI has fundamentally changed what "gold standard" means. Three years ago, "easy but takes weeks" was acceptable. In 2025, when tools like Lovable can build functional prototypes in minutes, Drupal needs a different approach.

Lauri demonstrates this with a live comparison: building a tour listing page in Canvas takes about 7 minutes. The AI understands your existing components, content model, and field structure, then generates a working page using your design system. Not generic output that you have to rebuild. Actual production-ready components.

Here's what makes Canvas different from pure AI builders: it's built for scale. AI tools can create one page fast, but what happens when you have 1,000 pages and need to update the navigation? Canvas combines AI speed with CMS structure. The same reason CMSs replaced Dreamweaver 15 years ago.

AI tools can create one page fast, but what happens when you have 1,000 pages and need to update the navigation? Canvas combines AI speed with CMS structure.

The roadmap for 2026 includes features that directly address AI-era needs: integrated AI context control (so AI knows your brand voice), external AI tool support (use Cursor or PHPStorm with Drupal), translation support, and the ability to edit content directly inside Canvas layouts.

But the most interesting part? Lauri's honest about what they're still figuring out. How do you enable vertical markets? If Drupal wanted to dominate healthcare next year, what modules and improvements would make that happen? These questions are still open, which means this is the right time to influence the direction.

Watch this if: You're making long-term decisions about Drupal adoption, or you want to understand how Drupal is positioning itself against pure AI site builders.

Watch Next steps for Drupal Canvas on YouTube.

Why these sessions are different

Most AI presentations either promise magic that doesn't exist or show toy examples that don't translate to real work. DrupalCon Nara's sessions were different because they addressed real problems.

A pattern emerged across multiple sessions: AI gets you 80% of the way there, humans do the final 20%. This explains why so many AI projects fail. They aim for 100% automation when 80/20 is the sustainable approach. Keep humans involved for review, refinement, and final decisions.

Another theme: Drupal's permission system becomes your AI's security system. Whether it's search, content generation, or workflow automation, Drupal makes sure AI respects who should see what. Most AI vendors either skip this entirely or charge extra to build it custom.

Finally: everything is moving toward components. Think of components like LEGO blocks. Standardized pieces that fit together in predictable ways. AI is much better at understanding and using structured components than random layouts. Drupal is all-in on this approach.

The Bottom Line

The real story from DrupalCon Nara isn't about fancy features. It's about how Drupal is positioning itself for the AI era. Not by bolting on AI features, but by being the platform that combines AI's speed with the reliability, security, and structure that real organizations need.

Tools like Lovable can build things fast, but they can't manage thousands of pages, respect permissions, or handle complex organizational workflows. Traditional systems have those capabilities but can't match AI's speed. Drupal is finding the middle ground: fast enough to compete with AI tools, robust enough to actually run a business on.

These sessions are now live on the Drupal Association YouTube channel. Watch them because they show solutions to problems you're probably dealing with right now. Whether you're losing deals to trendier-sounding competitors, trying to get your team on board with AI, building systems that handle sensitive data, or just trying to automate the boring parts of your job, someone at DrupalCon Nara showed how they solved it.

And that's what makes these sessions valuable.
 

Last week I wrote that a blog is a biography. But sometimes our most advanced technology is also our most fragile. With my blog turning twenty years old in fifteen days, I have been thinking a lot about digital preservation.

The question I keep coming back to is simple: how do you preserve a website for hundreds of years?

I don't have the answer yet, but it's something I plan to slowly work on over the next 10 years. What I'm describing here is a first step.

Humans have been trying to preserve their words since we learned to write. Medieval monks hand-copied manuscripts that survived centuries. Clay tablets from ancient Mesopotamia still tell us about daily life from 5,000 years ago. They worked because they asked very little of the future. A clay tablet basically just sits there.

In contrast, websites require continuous maintenance and recurring payments. Miss either, and they quietly disappear. That makes it hard for websites to survive for hundreds of years.

Traditional backups may help content survive, but they only work if someone knows they exist and what to do with them. Not a safe bet over hundreds of years.

So I am trying something different. I exported my blog as Markdown files and put them on GitHub. Nearly twenty years of posts are now in a public repository at github.com/dbuytaert/website-content.

I'm essentially making two bets. First, GitHub does not need me to keep paying bills or renewing domains. Second, a public Git repository can be cloned. Each clone becomes an independent copy that does not depend on me.

If you use a static site generator like Jekyll or Hugo, you are probably thinking: "Welcome to 2010!". Fair enough. You have been storing content as Markdown in Git since before my kids could walk. The difference is that most people keep their Git repositories private. I am making mine public.

To be clear, my site still runs on Drupal, and that is not changing. No need to panic. I just made my Drupal site export its content as Markdown.

For the past two weeks, my site has been auto-committing to GitHub daily. Admittedly, it feels a bit strange to share everything like this. New blog posts show up automatically, but so does everything else: tag maintenance, even deleted posts I decided were not worth keeping.

My blog has a publish button, an edit button, and a delete button. In my view, they are all equally legitimate. Now you can see me use all three. Git hides nothing.

Exporting my content to GitHub is my first bet, not my last. My plan is to build toward something like "RAID 5 for public content", spreading copies across multiple systems. I will explain what I mean tomorrow, and share how I set this up technically.

Solving Common Drupal Workspaces Problems for Content Editors

Here's a response video to some issues reported by Royal Borough of Greenwich during their presentation of using Workspaces.

markconroy 15th Dec 2025

For Drupal to remain relevant, expanding its reach to new developers and organizations has become a strategic priority. The platform itself is mature, stable, and feature-rich, but adoption today is influenced less by technical capability and more by how easily people can learn, evaluate, and begin using it. As a result, education, onboarding, and developer experience now play a central role in Drupal’s long-term sustainability.

At a global level, Drupal benefits from an extensive body of documentation, tutorials, and community knowledge. However, much of this material is concentrated in English and delivered through formats that require significant time and effort to produce and maintain. This creates uneven access to learning, particularly in regions where strong engineering communities exist but localized educational resources are limited. Japan illustrates this imbalance clearly: there is technical interest and capacity, yet the lack of approachable, Japanese-language tutorials continues to slow entry into the ecosystem and restrict community growth.

This edition highlights an initiative that approaches this challenge from a different angle. Rather than treating localization as a manual translation problem, it reframes Drupal education as a scalability problem. By using multimodal AI to automate the creation of structured, high-quality video tutorials, it becomes possible to produce consistent learning materials with far less overhead. Led by Shumpei Kishi, this work demonstrates how combining thoughtful system design with AI can make Drupal education more accessible, repeatable, and sustainable, offering a model that could support community growth in Japan and other regions facing similar constraints. We have included that story as the parting link in this week's Editor's Pick. Back to the week's highlights: 

DISCOVER DRUPAL

• 10 AI-Powered Translation Modules for Drupal
• Droptica Releases AGENTS.md Tool to Improve AI Context in Drupal Projects
• Factorial’s FlowDrop Fixes AI Hallucinations and Reduces Workflow Costs
• James Abrahams Shares Drupal AI Roadmap and No-Code Agent Training Update

NOTABLE BLOGS

• AI Refactors Drupal Module: Claude Revives Media Spotify Integration
• Matt Glaman Automates Drupal Release Notes in Dependabot PRs with GitHub Action

SECURITY

• Drupal Security Advisories Now Integrated with OSV Database

CASE STUDY

• How Tag1 Improved Performance and Reliability for the Greater London Authority's Drupal Platform

EVENTS

• Digital Circus Sparks Regional Momentum with DrupalCon Nara Sponsorship
• Call for Breakout Leaders at 2026 DrupalCon Nonprofit Summit

ORGANIZATION NEWS

• Drupal Association Pilots Privacy‑First Telemetry with Piwik PRO
• Drupal Center of Excellence Rebrands as Digital Center of Excellence After Trademark Notice
• Dripyard Achieves Silver Tier in Drupal Certified Partner Program
• NTEN Opens 2026 Pizzigati Prize for Open Source Impact Software

TRAINING

• Addison Berry Offers Free Coaching Sessions to Drupal Contributors

TUTORIAL

• Shumpei Kishi Pioneers AI-Powered Tutorial Workflow to Expand Drupal Adoption in Japan

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

Thank you.

Alka Elizabeth
Sub-editor
The DropTimes

Advent Calendar day 15 – Drupal CMS Launch Party james Mon, 12/15/2025 - 09:00

For today’s door, we are taking you back to the very start of the year, as it’s the 11 month anniversary of the launch of Drupal CMS 1.0.

We’re taking you back to the launch party, which was a live event held on the 24th birthday of Drupal.

The event was hosted by Tim Lehnen, chief technology officer of the Drupal Association.

With hundreds of people contributing to the Drupal CMS project, and lots of them were featured during the event, talking about what the project means for Drupal as a whole, and for them individually.

The live party centered on “Launch Control” in Boston, where Tim Doyle and…

Tags

• Advent Calendar 2025
• Drupal CMS
• Launch Party

As we wrap up 2025, there's much to celebrate and some important news to share. The DDEV Foundation has reached a governance milestone, and we're looking ahead to 2026 with both gratitude and a call to action.

What's New

• DDEV Foundation Board of Directors Established → The DDEV Foundation now has a formal Board of Directors, including Mike Anello, Jen Lampton, Benni Mack, Andrew Berry, and Randy Fay. Read more↗
• Upsun Sponsorship Changes → Upsun remains a supporter, but is lowering their sponsorship level starting in January, leaving a critical gap we need you to fill. Read more↗
• Power Through Blackouts → Stas Zhuk shares how DDEV community support helped him continue maintaining DDEV during wartime blackouts in Ukraine. Read more↗
• Fritz!Box Routers and DDEV → Solving DNS Rebinding issues with Fritz!Box routers. Read more↗

Coming Soon: v1.25.0

We're preparing for the upcoming v1.25.0 major release in January. Here are some things to know:

• New defaults for new projects — New projects will get updated default settings. PHP 8.4, Node.js 24, MariaDB 11.8 become defaults for new projects (existing projects are not affected).
• Some exotic Dockerfiles may need adjustments — If you have custom Dockerfiles with unusual configurations there may be complications because of the new base image. We'll be happy to help solve them.

Watch for announcements everywhere.

New Add-ons

Several new official add-ons have been added to the registry:

• ddev-nvm — NVM (Node Version Manager) integration for DDEV (replaces the native ddev nvm, which has been removed from upcoming v1.25.0)
• ddev-frankenphp — FrankenPHP server for PHP built on top of Caddy
• ddev-redis-insight — Redis Insight Web UI for use with DDEV Redis service
• ddev-python2 — Python 2 for npm builds and similar that still require it

Community Highlights

• OpenCode DDEV Plugin: Justin Vogt created a plugin for OpenCode AI that automatically detects DDEV and wraps commands to execute inside containers View on GitHub↗
• ddev-deploy by Code Enigma: New add-on for deployment workflows View on GitLab↗ • LinkedIn post↗
• Setting Up WeeklyDrupal.com with DDEV: Saroj Kunwar shares the journey of setting up a local dev environment for a Drupal 10 platform Read on LinkedIn↗

Community Video Tutorials

• DrupalEasy Show & Tell: DDEV Q&A with Randy Fay: Covers Solr integration, custom commands, ngrok/Cloudflared sharing, and more Watch on DrupalEasy↗
• DrupalEasy Show & Tell: DDEV + Ubuntu + Visual Studio Code debugging with Randy Fay: This Show & Tell is a tour-de-force of DDEV Xdebug debugging and will likely be useful for anyone having issues getting DDEV + Xdebug + Visual Studio Code working. During the Show & Tell, Randy stressed the importance of debugging from a known, standard state. Watch on DrupalEasy↗
• WebWash: Getting Started with Search API in Drupal: Ivan Zugec covers setting up Drupal's Search API module Watch on YouTube↗
• WebWash: Getting Started with DDEV for Drupal Development: Ivan Zugec walks through DDEV setup for Drupal projects Watch on YouTube↗

Help Us Out: Use HEAD

Want to help DDEV development? Consider testing with the HEAD version of DDEV. This helps us catch issues early. We think some advanced users with complex Dockerfiles may have hiccups with upcoming v1.25.0. It's easy, See the docs↗ for instructions.

DDEV Training Continues

Join us for upcoming training sessions for contributors and users.

• January 22, 2026 at 10:00 US ET / 16:00 CET — Mutagen, syncing, problems, upload_dirs for direct bind mounts Add to Google Calendar • Download .ics

• February 26, 2026 at 10:00 US ET / 16:00 CET — Git bisect for fun and profit Add to Google Calendar • Download .ics

• March 26, 2026 at 10:00 US ET / 15:00 CET — Using git worktree with DDEV projects and with DDEV itself Add to Google Calendar • Download .ics

• April 23, 2026 at 10:00 US ET / 16:00 CEST — Creating, maintaining and testing add-ons 2026-updated version of our popular add-on training. Previous session recording↗ Add to Google Calendar • Download .ics

Zoom Join Info: Link: Join Zoom Meeting Passcode: 12345

Governance and Planning

• Annual Advisory Group and Board Meeting — Join us for our annual extended advisory group and board meeting (public; all are welcome):

  January 14, 2026 at 8:00 AM US Mountain Time / 4:00 PM CET — DDEV Extended Advisory Group and Board Meeting Annual 2-hour review of 2025 and plans for 2026 Discussion details↗ • Add to Google Calendar • Download .ics

Sponsorship Update: Your Help is Needed

With Upsun lowering their sponsorship in January, we'll drop from 70% to about 58% of our sponsorship goal. That's a significant gap.

Previous status: $8,376/month (70% of goal)

After January: ~$6,964/month (58% of goal)

If DDEV has helped your team, now is the time to give back. Whether you're an individual developer, an agency, or an organization — your contribution makes a difference. → Become a sponsor↗

Contact us to discuss sponsorship options that work for your organization.

Stay in the Loop—Follow Us and Join the Conversation

• Blog↗
• LinkedIn↗
• Mastodon↗
• Bluesky↗
• Discord↗

Compiled and edited with assistance from Claude Code.

Day 14 - Info and Relationships Dec 14, 2025 0

You can make text look like a heading with CSS - increase the font size, make it bold, add some spacing. Visually, it looks perfect. But to a screen reader, it's just regular text. The structure and meaning that's obvious to sighted users is completely lost.

This is the essence of WCAG 1.3.1: information, structure, and relationships that are conveyed through visual presentation must also be available programmatically - in the code itself.

Read More

Advent Calendar day 14 – Brilliant, But Doubting james Sun, 12/14/2025 - 09:00

Today we are talking about a topic close to my heart: imposter syndrome. I have experienced it both in my Drupal activities and in other pursuits. But as a guy, I get that it tends to affect women much more than men in the tech industry. That’s why I was captivated by this talk from DrupalCon Nara:

Brilliant, But Doubting: Imposter Syndrome and the Experience of Women in Tech

Suchi Garg and Julia Topliss talk about their personal experiences, from their family lives, their careers in tech generally and in Drupal, and how they overcame the challenges to achieve success in their careers.

They also…

Tags

• Advent Calendar 2025

Day 13 - Avoid "Accessibility Widgets" Dec 13, 2025 0

You've probably seen them: that little circular icon in the bottom corner of a website that opens a menu promising to make the site accessible. Install one line of JavaScript, and your site becomes "100% ADA compliant" and "protected from lawsuits." It sounds too good to be true.

That's because it is.

Read More

Advent Calendar day 13 – If you Give a Member Platform a Cookie… james Sat, 12/13/2025 - 09:00

Today we are looking at Member Platform, a community initiative to develop a general Drupal-based solution for membership organisations.

If you Give a Member Platform a Cookie - Lessons Learned Creating a Drupal Product for Member Orgs

The initiative’s instigator and lead, JD Leonard, gave a talk at DrupalCon Atlanta back in April.

JD talked about some of the challenges facing organisations dealing with members, highlighting his efforts to modernise his local neighbourhood organisation.

He discussed the kinds of organisation that would benefit from Member Platform, including clubs and sports teams…

Tags

• Member Platform
• members

Day 12 - Audio Description (Prerecorded) Dec 12, 2025 0

I'll be honest: before researching this post, audio description was the accessibility standard I knew the least about. I understood captions for deaf users - that's straightforward. But audio description? I knew it existed, but had never actually implemented it or really understood when it was necessary.

Read More

More than 120 attendees explored emerging AI capabilities at the Drupal AI Summit 2025 in Paris. Check out the conference highlights!

DrupalCon Chicago is coming up March 23–26, 2026, and this year feels bigger, clearer, and more community-charged than ever. 

Every DrupalCon has its own rhythm, but Chicago 2026 already feels like it has momentum. Early bird tickets are currently open, the community is sketching t-shirt ideas, teams are planning their meetups, and first-time attendees are eyeing Drupal in a Day. It’s that stage where everything is still taking shape. And it’s the best time to get involved!

If you already know you’re going, GREAT! Book it now. If you’re still on the fence, let’s walk through what’s happening this year because there’s a lot you’ll want to plug into.

Early Bird Tickets Are Live… 

..And they disappear on January 5th! Early bird pricing is the one thing people always think they’ll get to… and then forget until the price jumps. Don’t do that to yourself. Early bird tickets get you the full DrupalCon experience, like sessions, keynotes, community events, Expo Hall, networking, meals, coffee, the whole rhythm of the event, at the absolute lowest rate.

Why bother booking early?

• You save real money! Now you just get to decide what to do with the extra $125.
• You commit to going instead of “thinking about it.”
• You secure your spot for certain limited-capacity activities before they fill up.

DrupalCon only happens once a year in North America. Missing it usually comes with a weird mix of regret and FOMO when the photos start rolling in. If you know you want to grow, connect, or contribute this year, lock in the ticket before January 5, 2026, 7:59 am CST!

The DrupalCon Chicago T-Shirt Contest Is Open (Your Design Could Be Everywhere!)

Every conference has a shirt. DrupalCon shirts, though, tend to take on a life of their own. They show up at Meetups, at Camps, in airport lounges, and at offices years later. They become little time capsules of a moment in the community.

This contest is your chance to shape that moment.

What’s the reason to enter?

It’s one of the few ways to contribute to DrupalCon that blends creativity, culture, and community identity. You’re designing the shirt that thousands of people will wear, remember, and probably argue about (in a friendly way, of course) long after the event.

If your design is selected:

• It becomes the official DrupalCon Chicago 2026 t-shirt.
• You get attendee bragging rights for the next decade.
• You get a complimentary DrupalCon ticket.
• And four finalists get spotlighted for a community vote (which is always lively).

It’s open to everyone: designers, hobbyists, devs who doodle in meetings, anyone with an idea that captures the spirit of Drupal. The deadline is December 21, 2025, so if inspiration strikes, don’t wait! Find out more here.

Drupal in a Day -  A Free, Hands-On Way to Learn Drupal

On March 26, the last day of the conference, Drupal in a Day returns after a very successful event at DrupalCon Vienna. It’s a free, practical workshop where attendees build a fully working Drupal site from scratch with guidance from people who build and teach Drupal for a living.

What are your key takeaways from this workshop?

• Get a simple, hands-on intro to one of the world’s most trusted CMS platforms
• Pick up the core ideas and basics of Drupal at a comfortable pace
• Build a fully working Drupal site right from your laptop
• Walk away with an official participation certificate (always nice to have)
• Meet the community, make connections, and join in during Contribution Day

You need to register for the workshop, and spots are limited. It fills quickly because it’s genuinely hands-on, not a lecture. 

This All Adds Up to One Thing

DrupalCon Chicago is the annual reset button for the Drupal community. It’s a time where people reconnect, compare notes, learn what’s coming next, and remember why this whole open-source thing works in the first place.

So, before everything fills up, expires, or slips your mind (because it always does), here’s your early heads-up:

• The early bird ticket deadline is coming up fast - before Jan 5, 2026, 7:59 am CST.

• The t-shirt contest is already underway - by Dec 21, 2025.

• Drupal in a Day will fill up soon.

If you’re planning to be part of it, now’s the moment to commit.

 

Authored By: Shefali Shetty, DrupalCon Chicago 2026 Marketing & Outreach Committee Member