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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…