DrupalCon North America 2024 part 1


DrupalCon is an international educational event that brings together people who use, develop, design, and support the Drupal platform.

DrupalCon 2024 North America was held May 6 through May 9, 2024 in Portland Oregon. More than 1,400 enthusiasts who build with and benefit from Drupal gathered and shared ideas. It was a great opportunity to learn from and collaborate with others to build skills and innovate with Drupal.

University of Minnesota was represented by nine Drupal experts from different units, most of whom are developers.

Sessions and insights

DrupalCon 2024 was loaded with top-notch sessions by Drupal experts and it was hard to pick where to start. We picked three sessions to focus on for this post and will cover more of the sessions in a future blog post.

  1. Driesnote

    The creator and project lead of Drupal, Dries Buytaert, provided his keynote speech, also known as Driesnote, which unveiled the Starshot project for Drupal, drawing inspiration from JFK's moonshot. It is expected to launch at the end of 2024.

    Starshot's mission is to streamline website creation and extend a warm invitation to individuals from all backgrounds to participate in the Drupal Community. To do so, it will:

    • Leverage Drupal Core modules while operating as a distinct parallel version.
    • Incorporate a vast repository of over 50,000 modules developed over the past decade alongside the Core version to offer a user-friendly software variant that demands minimal technical expertise for setup and operation.

    When installing Drupal, a page will immediately appear presenting various "recipes" to select and enable. These recipes are designed to empower users to swiftly create and customize new pages, offering modular site-building capabilities without committing to a specific distribution. This approach allows for flexible and adaptable website development tailored to individual needs.

    Dries underscored that the platform's success critically depends on fostering collaboration among contributors and harnessing the power of a more accessible entry point for users of all backgrounds.

    Learn more about Driesnote.

  2. Drupal 11

    The alpha release of Drupal 11—set to be released either the week of July 29 or December 9, 2024—is packed with exciting features aimed at enhancing user experience and simplifying development workflows. Some standout features are:

    • WebP by default
    • Access Policy API
    • Workspaces
    • Taxonomy terms revision UI - moderation support
    • Single directory component

    The transition from Drupal 10 to Drupal 11 is expected to be smooth, much like the transitions from Drupal 9 to Drupal 10. Drupal 11 won't require a major rewrite of your code. Major version updates of dependencies in Drupal 11 include Symfony 7, jQuery 4, and PHPUnit 10 or 11.

  3. Drupal Distributions and Recipes Initiative

    Originally unveiled as "Drupal Starter Templates" during the Driesnote in Portland back in 2022, the Recipes Initiative has been a focal point for contributors ever since. This effort aims to provide ambitious site builders and distribution maintainers with prepackaged functionality, streamlining their workflow and empowering them to create remarkable digital experiences.

    In the world of Drupal, recipes serve as ready-made blueprints, offering a variety of pre-configured settings and elements. By harnessing these, developers can expedite the web development journey while adhering to industry standards and maximizing component reuse.

    In the session, the presenters shared the completion of Phase 1 of the recipe initiatives roadmap, which has now been integrated into both Drupal 10.3 and 11.

    Discover the latest updates on the Drupal Distributions and Recipes Initiative.

Resources

If you have questions, email the University Relations web team at urweb@umn.edu.
 

Topics: Web