Drupal Planet

At DrupalCon Portland 2025, the Drupal Community Working Group announced Kristen Pol as this year’s recipient of the Aaron Winborn Award. Named after long-time contributor Aaron Winborn, this award recognizes someone who embodies kindness, integrity, and an above and beyond commitment to the Drupal community.

Kristen has been a huge part of the Drupal community for years, making an impact through her work in accessibility, knowledge sharing, mentorship, and community support. She’s the track lead for the Experience Builder demo design system and helps shape how people will interact with the DrupalCMS project.

Kristen has a long history of being a proactive contributor in the community. She took on big challenges as one of the Drupal 8 Multilingual Initiative leaders, and more recently as a lead in major version contrib porting efforts (organizing data tracking and porting events) as well as in Drupal CMS (as lead of the demo design system).

If you’ve been to a Drupal event, chances are you’ve seen Kristen, either on a stage or in a hallway, always helping someone. And she does it with a level of professionalism that sets the bar for all of us. She authored the Drupal 7 multilingual book, which has helped countless people navigate one of the trickier aspects of Drupal site building.

The CWG reached out to all nominees, shared the community nominations, and thanked them for their contributions to the community.

Named in honor of Aaron Winborn, a dedicated Drupal contributor who lost his battle with ALS in 2015, this award recognizes someone who, like Aaron, has made a lasting impact on the community.

Previous winners include Cathy Theys, Gabór Hojtsy, Nikki Stevens, Kevin Thull, Leslie Glynn, Baddý Breidert, AmyJune Hineline, Angie Byron, Randy Fay, and Mike Anello. The CWG Conflict Resolution Team and past winners select the recipient based on nominations from the community. 

Nominations for next year’s Aaron Winborn Award will open in early 2026. Until then, let’s take a moment to celebrate Kristen Pol and everything she does for Drupal.

Congratulations, Kristen!

It has been over two months since Drupal 7 reached end-of-life (EOL) on 5 January 2025. Official support and security updates have ceased, yet thousands of organizations, businesses, and government agencies continue to rely on Drupal 7 to power critical websites.

For many, the transition to a newer platform has been delayed due to budget constraints, resource limitations, or the complexity of migrating custom-built Drupal 7 applications. With no further security updates, the urgency to find a solution is growing.

The end of official Drupal 7 support means:

• No more security patches – Any future vulnerabilities discovered will not be addressed by the Drupal Security Team.
• Compliance challenges – Organizations subject to HIPAA, PCI-DSS, FedRAMP, and other regulatory frameworks may struggle to maintain compliance.
• Third-party module risks – All contributed modules depended on by Drupal 7 sites are also no longer supported, increasing the potential for security gaps.

Organizations still running Drupal 7 have a few paths forward:

Migrating to Drupal 10 is the ideal long-term solution. However, for many organizations, this is a complex and time-intensive process that cannot happen overnight.

Some organizations attempt to reduce attack surfaces by limiting access to their Drupal 7 sites, disabling unnecessary features, or moving behind firewalls. However, this does not eliminate security risks, particularly for sites that remain publicly accessible.

For organizations that cannot migrate immediately but need continued security updates and compliance assurances, HeroDevs’ Drupal 7 Never-Ending Support (NES) provides an effective solution.

HeroDevs offers ongoing security updates for Drupal 7, ensuring that critical vulnerabilities are patched—even though official support has ended. With Drupal 7 NES, organizations can:

• Receive security updates for newly discovered vulnerabilities.
• Maintain compliance with security frameworks such as HIPAA and PCI-DSS.
• Avoid rushed migrations and plan transitions on their own timeline.
• Ensure stability without disrupting existing functionality.

The EOL deadline has passed, and unsupported Drupal 7 sites face growing security and compliance risks. If your organization is still running Drupal 7, it is time to take action.

HeroDevs’ Drupal 7 NES provides a seamless, secure solution while you plan your migration. Don’t leave your site vulnerable—contact us today to learn how we can help.

A year ago, Dries Buytaert set his sights on the stars — quite literally. Announcing the Starshot Initiative at DrupalCon Portland 2024, he likened the project to the historic Apollo 11 Moonshot, leaving the audience both awestruck and inspired.

Effective integration with cloud services can significantly enhance the success of your Drupal-based website. Drupal is a powerful content management system, particularly when it comes to leveraging cloud technology. 
Our Golems team can confidently say that effective and competent integration with cloud services can bring colossal success to your Drupal-based website. This powerful platform has amazing capabilities for interacting with the most popular "clouds."

Thanks to sponsorship from the TYPO3 Community Budget Ideas, DDEV now includes XHGui support for its XHProf profiling. This brings a much-improved experience with a consistent, browser-based interface.

DDEV has had XHProf profiling for some time, and many in the community have loved it, but it had a few flaws; the list of profiling runs was ugly and uncoordinated, and the list was lost on ddev restart.

However, the longstanding XHGui project was out there for years, and it made much more sense.

With XHGui, you can now track performance bottlenecks with a clean interface, persistent data, and detailed breakdowns of CPU and memory usage.

In DDEV v1.24.4+ you can switch to the XHGui profiling mode (permanently) with

Start profiling with

Visit a few pages in your app to collect profiling data, then

In general, click one of the GET or POST links and follow it in to explore detailed CPU and memory usage breakdowns.

If you have questions, join us in one of the DDEV support venues, especially Discord and we'll work it through with you.

The DDEV Docs on XHProf have some good starters, but your suggestions are welcome!

Here's a quick demonstration of using XHGui with a TYPO3 site in DDEV.

Serious thanks are due to:

• The TYPO3 Organization for funding this feature integration.
• Elan Ruusamäe (glensc) for years of maintaining the XHGui project (and extreme responsiveness as we worked on this).
• DDEV community member tyler36, who created the original DDEV add-on and helped it incubate and mature over years and supported its inclusion in DDEV core.

Try it out today and let us know how it goes — your feedback helps shape the future of DDEV! Join us in the DDEV support venues if you want to talk about XHGui and profiling.

Today we are talking about Our Favorite things and The Future of Drupal with guest Jared Ponchot & Dave Hansen-Lange.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/495

• What has piqued your interest
• AI creating components
• Any other new features or demos
• What haven't you seen that you hope to
• How do you feel about the future of Drupal

• Driesnote

Dave Hansen-Lange - linkedin.com dalin Jared Ponchot - lullabot.com jponch

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu Andrew Berry - lullabot.com deviantintegral

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

Now that the lanyards are packed and the Slack threads have cooled off, it's worth asking-what actually mattered at DrupalCon Atlanta?

From a layman's point of view, one of the most practical announcements was the launch of a new desktop installer for Drupal CMS. It quietly lowers the barrier for new users by removing the friction of local setup-something long overdue. The pre-beta of Experience Builder was another key moment, revealing Drupal's low-code future. While still in early shape, it signals a shift toward visual control and editor-friendly workflows. The power of AI Agents was also showcased once more-automating tasks like site building and content migration and hinting at where productivity could be headed.

From CKEditor 5 updates to Recipe-based site building, sessions focused on simplifying what's traditionally been complex. Governance in multi-site operations and documentation initiatives also got thoughtful attention-showing how Drupal is working to scale both technically and organizationally. The conversations weren't just about code; they were about coordination.

Dries Buytaert's keynote (the DriesNote) cut to the core of the issue: power is no longer enough-Drupal has to get easier to use. The message wasn't hand-wavy optimism but grounded in the need for better onboarding, cleaner UX, and broader accessibility. Drupal CMS 2.0 and Experience Builder 1.0 are both expected by DrupalCon Vienna in October 2025, setting a clear timeline for that next step forward.

Add to that the announcement of future DrupalCons-Asia in November 2025 at Nara Japan, and North America in March 2026 at Chicago, US-and it's clear the community is thinking ahead. The roadmap isn't just about features; it's about focus. Now it's on all of us to keep that momentum moving.

• A Quick Dive into Driesnote 2025 from DrupalCon Atlanta
• The Ultimate List of Contributed Modules in Drupal CMS by Functionality
• Revision Graph Module Gets Major Upgrade
• Drupal CMS Integrates Tagify Module for Improved Content Management
• Drupal Decoupled Gets a New Landing Page
• Drupal.org Updates Release Labels and Design to Reflect Semantic Versioning

• Kicking Off DrupalCon Atlanta: Insights from the Community (Part 1)
• DrupalCon Atlanta 2025 - Attendee Insights: Part Two
• DrupalCon Atlanta 2025: What Attendees Are Taking Home - Insights from Day 3
• Drupal Events This Week (Mar 31-Apr 6, 2025)

• The Future of Drupal and the DXP Debate: Diverging Visions from Key Community Voices

• Talking Drupal to Record 500th Episode with Community Guests
• Metadrop Releases VLSuite for Low-Code Page Building in Drupal
• Specbee Releases SmartLinker AI Module for Automated Internal Linking in Drupal
• Pantheon Names 2025 Partner Summit Award Winners at DrupalCon Atlanta

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
Kazima Abbas
Sub-editor, The DropTimes.

The Content First approach comes from content strategy and UX design. It means building websites around the content they need to deliver, not around a visual design.

Instead of starting with wireframes or templates, teams begin by identifying what content users need—then create structure, layout, and code that supports it.

This approach helps avoid misalignment between content and design. It also improves usability, because content is what users come for. The design exists to support that content, not to shape it in isolation.

But in practice, applying Content First often gets blocked by basic issues—like accessing and working with the actual content on a live page. That’s where the Content First module comes in.

Content First developed as a response to design-led processes that treated content as filler.

In traditional workflows, designers would build full layouts using placeholder text (like Lorem Ipsum). Content creators would then write copy to fit those templates. This created problems:

• The content didn’t always match the layout
• Messages were shaped by design, not user needs
• Teams had to go through multiple revisions when the content didn’t fit

Content First flips this. The key…

In our previous article, I described the arguments for Drupal for business and finance. I also showed what decision-making groups can influence an organization's choice of CMS. In this post, I’ll focus on the technology and software areas. Learn thirteen reasons why IT people and developers should consider implementing Drupal. I invite you to read the article or watch an episode of the “Nowoczesny Drupal” series.

Commerce Kickstart has been the fastest way to start building on Drupal Commerce for over 13 years. We grew it from a simple installation profile aimed at developers to the most popular Drupal distribution, reaching over 12,000 sites. We rebuilt it to take full advantage of modern Drupal in 2022, and with this week's 5.0 release we've done it again, creating the first contrib site template.

Site templates were introduced by Dries Buytaert in his keynote at DrupalCon Atlanta 2025 as a combination of recipes and themes that together create an installation of Drupal tailored to a specific purpose. Drupal CMS itself is essentially a site template, using a streamlined installer that lets you toggle on certain features like a blog, events listing, or project portfolio via optional recipes.

Recipes are a relatively new concept born out of Drupal's Starshot initiative. When applied to a site, recipes may install modules, import configuration, execute config actions, and import default content. They are essentially automated tutorials, with Drupal following the steps to configure itself at the click of a button. Recipes are a key part of Starshot's strategic shift toward enabling content creators, marketers, and others to build out pages and full sites without relying on developers.