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After weeks of listening, prompting, and pattern-spotting, we’re entering a new phase. The big questions are becoming sharper. The conversation is shifting—from what might be to what must be true.

Our early exploration surfaced a wide range of motivations, risks, and hopes for a Drupal Site Template Marketplace. The signal was clear: there’s strong belief in the potential—if we build it in a way that strengthens the ecosystem, not fragments it.

As part of this shift from the breadth of exploration and to the depth of early structure, we’re moving to a biweekly share out cadence. This Share Out #5 update highlights what’s emerging from Slack Prompts #5 and #6, insights from Survey #3 on Governance and Fairness to inform first drafts of the Lean Business Model Canvas and Governance Framework—early scaffolding for what’s to come.

In design thinking, there’s a natural rhythm between divergence—where we explore widely—and convergence—where we begin to shape and prioritize. We’re now entering that second phase.

The goal is not to lock down answers prematurely, but to begin assembling the scaffolding that can support real-world testing, feedback, and evolution.

We’re asking:

• What makes a template worth trusting?
• What makes one worth paying for?
• What kinds of governance and community signals need to be in place from day one?

In response to Slack Prompt #5, contributors agreed that establishing baseline quality, accessibility, and transparency standards is essential.

Automation was broadly supported—but not blindly. There’s growing recognition that automated checks are necessary but not sufficient, especially for more nuanced requirements like semantic markup or keyboard navigation.

Most scanners will find 200 security bugs in Drupal and maybe 1 is real. Human review is still required.”

“Let’s at least show the automated results transparently and let buyers decide.”

Contributors are also thinking ahead about user expectations:

Paid listings should absolutely meet higher standards—users will expect it.”

These insights inform the governance framework’s approach to certifications, self-attestations, and recurring review cycles for paid listings.

Slack Prompt #6 helped unpack the value exchange at the heart of the Marketplace. Why would someone purchase a GPL-licensed template?

The answer: time savings, trust in the “official” source, and ease of setup.

The confidence that comes from knowing the template came from an official, trusted source like the DA is huge."

"One-click demos for themes... that’s my #1 trust signal.”

Participants also cautioned that separating the template from hosting or support could confuse non-technical buyers, especially those coming from SaaS ecosystems.

“Too many hosting choices at signup may mirror Mastodon’s ‘pick a server’ confusion.”

This feedback is pushing us to consider default hosting pathways, bundled services, and better “first-use” experiences.

Our third community survey zeroed in on values: fairness, recognition, and trust.

Contributors emphasized the importance of clear expectations and governance guardrails—especially when money enters the picture.

“Revenue must also support the ecosystem—modules, infrastructure, DA.”

Many participants supported the idea of tiered models, where certified templates provide extra confidence:

“Even free templates should meet basic accessibility and security requirements if they’re hosted on Drupal.org.”

Recognition also matters:

“Templates should be rated based on feedback… great to know why someone considers a product to be 1 or 3 stars.”

That insight is helping shape how we design review systems that are credible, transparent, and helpful—without opening the door to spam or bias.

Informed by three surveys, one RTC session, and six slack discussions worth of community research combined with competitive research and discussions with Drupal’s intellectual property attorney, the Marketplace Working Group is now in active development on two core artifacts:

• Lean Business Model Canvas
  Mapping how the Marketplace creates, delivers, and shares value—across contributors, agencies, end users, and the Drupal Association.

• Governance Framework (Draft)
  Outlining submission criteria, listing types, maintenance expectations, enforcement paths, and contributor recognition.

This scaffolding is not final—it’s a living structure meant to evolve through our continuing research, feedback and community review. Nonetheless, it does feel exciting to see it all start to take shape!

• Pilot Planning: Testing incentive and governance structures in collaboration with DCP and other agency participants in RTC #2 and beyond.

• Governance Draft: A public request for comment (RFC) on the governance framework will launch this summer.

• MVP Quality Standards: Defining a small, automatable set of checks for accessibility, security, and licensing for free templates.

💬 Join #drupal-cms-marketplace on Slack
Each week, there's a new prompt to explore a key question as we define this Marketplace.

🎧 Listen to Talking Drupal #504 
On this week's podcast, we discussed the vision, opportunities, and challenges of creating a trusted, high-quality Drupal Site Template Marketplace that supports adoption, contributor incentives, and community values without compromising open-source principles.

Thanks to all who are continuing to shape this work with insights, critiques, and care. What we build next will depend on the strength of the scaffolding—and the people who show up to co-create it.

UX as a first class citizen in Drupal core! Announcing new UX Manager role for Drupal core and Cristina Chumillas and Emma Horrell as first UX Managers: https://www.drupal.org/about/core/blog/ux-as-a-first-class-citizen-in-drupal-core

We’re excited to announce a big step forward for user experience in Drupal Core: the creation of the new UX Manager role within the core leads team. This is a foundational move toward UX-driven development, where user experience is embedded from the start, not added at the end.

Historically, UX responsibilities in Drupal Core were shared across different roles, often falling under product management. But in practice, UX input has often arrived late, focusing on small usability tweaks rather than shaping the overall experience.

By creating a dedicated UX Manager role, we’re making sure UX has a clear voice — from early feature discussions to final design decisions. This will help us build more intuitive, cohesive, and accessible experiences for everyone using Drupal. We’re also laying the groundwork for the future: supporting more UX practitioners to contribute to Drupal and from there, grow into decision-making roles, strengthening our design contributor community, establishing a stable UX testing process, and making onboarding easier for designers and researchers.

For now, this role will be co-led by Emma Horrell and myself, Cristina Chumillas.

Emma is the UX Research Lead for Drupal CMS and has shaped many aspects of the project through her work researching target audiences, testing features, and helping reduce “Drupalisms.” Her research expertise will continue to help us align Drupal with real user needs. Many thanks to the University of Edinburgh for supporting her continued contributions.

I’ve been the usability topic maintainer for years and currently serve as Product Design Lead for Drupal CMS and Drupal core Front-end Framework Manager. I’m looking forward to helping embed UX more deeply into how Drupal Core is defined, designed, and built.

This is just the beginning. If you’re interested in improving Drupal’s experience, join us in the #ux-working-group on Drupal Slack — and help us put UX at the heart of Drupal’s future.