Drupal Planet

Drupal is an advanced content management system that both small and large organizations use. Its popularity is due to its flexibility, security, and long-term cost-effectiveness. The decision to choose a company's technology often doesn’t belong solely to the IT department - business and financial considerations are also key. So, how do you convince the board that Drupal is the best choice? I invite you to read the article or watch an episode of the “Nowoczesny Drupal” series.

We have updated the Releases section of project pages on Drupal.org, like Webform. We are phasing out “recommended by the project’s maintainer.”  The green/yellow color scheme which had been based on that is now replaced with blue/grey. Stable releases have a blue background; alpha/beta/rc have a grey background.

This simplification results from Drupal’s move to semantic versioning and Composer. Composer has never used the “recommended” label. Drupal itself phased it out while gaining support for semantically-versioned modules and themes with Drupal 8.1. With semantic versioning, project maintainers “recommend” releases by making them stable.

With this design update, we also had an opportunity to use a little bit of Drupal.org’s new brand identity.

Follow #3509485: Remove “recommended” status for releases? for more details on the underlying changes.

The Drupal community thrives on collaboration and innovation. As DrupalCon evolves as the premier gathering for Drupalists, the Drupal Association recognized the opportunity to rebrand the DrupalCon visual identity to better reflect the energy, ambition, and future of our global community. That’s why we teamed up with SixEleven to reimagine the DrupalCon brand, delivering a new logo, city icon, brand book, and visual identity that will shape the future looks of our flagship events.

Based in Turin, Italy, SixEleven is a digital creative agency, and long time collaborator and design partner for the Drupal Association. For SixEleven, innovation comes first and that is why their methodology is based on a growth hacking approach: they always find new creative, innovative, and analytical ways to hack the system and improve brands. Since 2009, SixEleven has specialized in reimagining brands from hospitality, luxury design, institutional/non-profit, corporate, education, and Public Administration sectors.

The Opportunity for Change

The recent rebranding of DrupalCon was a monumental effort driven by staff and community, resulting in an updated logo, font, and color palette that now define DrupalCon’s visual identity and aligns with the recent Drupal rebranding. This evolution helps make sure our brand reflects not only where we are today but also where we’re headed.

A Thoughtful and Collaborative Process

Our partnership with SixEleven was anchored in a shared commitment to creativity, clarity, and community values. The process began with an in-depth exploration of what DrupalCon represents: an intersection of opportunity, innovation, and connection. Through information-gathering sessions, creative exploration, and collaborative feedback, SixEleven worked closely with our leadership team to develop concepts that better capture the spirit of DrupalCon.

The Outcome 

A refreshed DrupalCon identity that balances Drupal’s heritage with a modern, future-focused aesthetic. The new logo and visual identity are designed to be bold, flexible, and instantly recognizable, ensuring that DrupalCon continues to stand out in the open-source and tech conference landscape.

Looking Ahead

The rebrand will be unveiled in future DrupalCon, starting with Vienna 2025 and Nara 2025 with the logo debut and changes in event signage, marketing materials, and digital platforms, providing a unified and engaging experience for attendees, speakers, and sponsors alike.

The Drupal Association remains committed to evolving with our community and ensuring that our brand reflects the passion, innovation, and ambition that drive Drupal forward. We can't wait for you to see the new DrupalCon identity in action!

The Drupal community has been hard at work on Drupal CMS — a preconfigured, opinionated, and user-friendly offering that has recently been deemed stable. This comes at a time when WordPress has found itself embroiled in a bit of a soap opera. If the Drupal community plays its cards right, Drupal CMS might attract WordPress users who are fed up with the drama. But if they look closely, they may also choose Drupal CMS solely based on its merits, as it brings the full power of Drupal while providing an out-of-the-box experience more closely resembling other, less powerful CMS platforms.

Drupal CMS comes preconfigured for many use cases, sporting a much friendlier interface and a more intuitive way to install modules. As a site builder, you know Drupal has been configured with best practices in mind, and you don't need to install dozens of modules or learn configuration management to get a modern site with an advanced editorial workflow. This means Drupal CMS is much more accessible than Drupal by itself.

This relatively new concept is heavily used to bundle the configuration of several modules into single, reusable units of functionality. They automate the installation and configuration of modules, themes, and even content. By applying a recipe, you can quickly implement complex functionalities without manually configuring each component, making site development more accessible and reducing the potential for errors.

Building a website can be daunting, especially when time is limited or technical knowledge is needed. VLSuite comes to solve these difficulties, providing an easy tool that allows anyone to build quality pages within Drupal. It offers a features that streamline the process of creating web content, whether you are an experienced developer or new to website creation.

Visual Layout Builder (VLSuite) is a low-code tool that greatly improves the way Drupal websites are created.

Without requiring advanced programming skills, you can build professional-looking web pages in just minutes. It's ideal for those who want to focus on content without worrying about advanced technical setups.

Using VLSuite, each content block is fully customisable, which means that adjusting colours, columns, and layout is…

Today we are talking about AI in EDU, how it can provide efficiencies, and how you might start using it today with guests Brian Piper & Mike Miles . We’ll also cover External Entities as our module of the week.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/494

• How are you using AI with your team at Rochester
• How are you using AI with your team at MIT
• What are the AI policies at your institutions
• On the ingestion side how do you manage consumption
• Tips and tricks to incorporate AI into your work
• Can you talk more about using AI to distribute content outside the web
• Do you have tips for managers
• How have you seen EDUs using AI other than as assistive technology
• What are your favorite tools
• Have you done adversarial testing
• How does AI in Drupal impact EDU
• Where do you see AI in EDU in the future

• Crawler rate limit
• Externalizing costs
• AI for U
• MidCamp 2024 session about YaleSites
• Tools
  • Element 451
  • Builder io
  • Deque Axe Devtools
  • Descript
  • Opus clips
  • Kapwing
  • HeyGen
  • Synthesia
  • Text to video
    • Sora
    • Veo

Brian Piper - brianwpiper.com Mike Miles - Mike-miles.com mikemiles86

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Andrew Berry - lullabot.com deviantintegral

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

• Brief description:
  • Have you ever wanted to connect your Drupal website to an external data source, to include their datasets into the presentation of your Drupal-managed content? There’s a module for that
• Module name/project name:
  • External Entities
• Brief history
  • How old: created in May 2015 by attiks, though the most recent release is by Colan Schwartz (colan), a fellow Canadian
  • Versions available: 8.x-2.0-beta1 and 3.0.0-beta4, the latter of which supports Drupal 10 and 11
• Maintainership
  • Actively maintained, latest release was less than a month ago
  • Security coverage (though technically needs a stable release
  • Test coverage
  • Documentation: user guide
  • Number of open issues: 77 open issues, 3 of which are bugs against the 3.x branch, though one is marked fixed now
• Usage stats:
  • 679 sites
• Module features and usage
  • The External Entities module lets you map fields from external data sources to fields on a “virtual” entity in Drupal. This allows for external data to be used with Drupal’s powerful features like Views, Entity Queries, or Search API as well as use your local Drupal site’s theme to theme data from an external source
  • The module does provide a time-based caching layer for external entities, but you can also implement a more custom cache expiration logic through custom code
  • External entities can also have annotations, essentially Drupal-managed information that will be associated with the external entity, and accessed as a normal field through all Drupal field operations. This could allow you to have Drupal-based comments on information from a different website, for example
  • There is a sizeable ecosystem of companion modules, to help you connect to different kinds of external storage, as to help you aggregate data from multiple sources
  • In my Drupal career I’ve worked on a number of higher ed websites, and the ability to display externally-managed data is a pretty common requirement, either from an HRIS system to show staff and faculty data, or a courseware solution like Banner. I thought this would be an interesting tangent to today’s topic

If AI can write, design, and optimize content—what’s left for CMS platforms to do?

That’s the question Dries Buytaert tackled in How AI could reshape CMS platforms. As the founder of Drupal, he knows how content systems evolve—and he believes AI won’t replace CMS platforms but will become a core layer within them.

“I believe the future of CMS platforms is not about replacing humans, but about augmenting them with intelligent capabilities.” 

In platforms like Drupal, these changes are already taking shape. The OpenAI module allows editors to generate summaries, titles, and full paragraphs right inside the CMS, speeding up content creation. AI models are also being used to scan content and generate metadata—like taxonomy terms, alt text, or suggested categories—automating tasks that once took manual effort. Large language models are beginning to improve search by understanding context, not just keywords. AI-powered personalization is helping tailor content based on user behaviour, similar to how recommendation engines work on streaming platforms.

These are powerful tools. But here’s the catch: most of these tasks can be done by humans—just not as quickly.

And sometimes, speed isn’t the point.

An AI can write a product description or suggest metadata, but it might miss nuance, voice, or the context behind a piece of content. That’s where human editors still hold the line—especially when it comes to brand consistency, editorial judgment, and ethical decision-making.

Joshua Mitchell echoed this balance in his response post, Some Thoughts About How AI Could Reshape CMS Platforms:

“AI and human editors will increasingly work in parallel, requiring more sophisticated versioning for both content and configuration.”

This is a real technical concern. If AI is generating drafts or modifying layouts, we need version control systems that treat AI edits like any other pull request: trackable, reversible, and reviewed.

Stephen Reny, President and CEO of Acquia, pointed out that the pace of this shift is fast:

“Much of this change will happen in a timeframe that will seem like warp speed compared to prior evolutions. The future is now...”

Michael Anello added another layer: governance.

“Drupal should work to position itself as a leader in AI governance. I’m only comfortable offering AI functionality to clients that keeps a human in the loop (before any 'save' happens.)”

That’s where I agree most. AI is essential—it can handle routine, repetitive tasks in a CMS. But leaning too hard on it means risking quality, trust, and control. We shouldn’t treat AI as a shortcut to replace thinking. Instead, treat it as a power tool: use it with care, skill, and oversight.

Some tasks—like idea generation, auto-tagging, or suggesting layouts—are ideal for AI support. But final content approval, editorial tone, ethical considerations, and big-picture planning? Still best left to humans.

With that, let's move on to the important stories from the past week.

• Superhumans Leading Loudly in a Quietly Biased Industry

• AI-Powered IACK Module Automates Drupal Information Architecture

• Keshav Patel Releases Entity Usage Explorer for Accurate Entity Tracking

• 2025 Drupal Developer Survey Open for Global Participation

• AI, Nix, and Next-Gen Navigation: What to Expect at DrupalCon Atlanta 2025

• Events of the Week: March 24 - 30, 2025

• Drupal Camp Asheville 2025 Now Accepting Session Proposals

• Acquia to Host Community Bullseye Bash at DrupalCon Atlanta 2025

• Drupal Dev Days 2025 Sees High Demand; Ticket Prices Increase Today

• Sponsors Powering the Drupal Community at DrupalCon Atlanta 2025

• Is it Time for DXP to Rest in Peace? Dominique De Cooman Thinks Otherwise

• Prateek Jain Challenges the "DXP is Obsolete" Claims

• amazee.io at DrupalCon Atlanta 2025: Talks, AI, and Exclusive Insights

• Aten Design Group Gears Up for DrupalCon Atlanta 2025 with Talks, Tools, and Community Spirit

• How Content Cloud is Changing Headless Drupal Development

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.