Here is a small, very personal compilation of what will happen to our favorite CMS in 2022 and beyond.
Here’s a small and very personal compilation of what’s coming for our favorite CMS in 2022 and beyond.
Drupal 10
The latest DrupalCon took place from April 25 to 28 in Portland, the first in-person event after two years. As usual, it featured a Keynote by Drupal’s creator, full of announcements and new features. Here are the most significant ones:
The official release date for Drupal 10 is December 14, 2022!
We were used to summer releases, but that’s no longer the case.
CKEditor5’s stability as the main reason for the delay
The major new feature in Drupal 10 will be the upgrade from version 4 to 5 of CKEditor, which is a crucial point in the user experience. The Drupal community and the CKEditor team have worked closely to make it perfect.
Since CKEditor couldn’t be stable by mid-May to be included in a Drupal 10 release this summer, the launch was postponed to December.
What we gain by waiting
- The Core team will have more time to clean up obsolete code, reduce dependencies, and update to the latest versions of required JS libraries;
- Better versions of default themes for the front (Olivero) and the back office (Claro) will be developed;
- The theme generator: Starterkit (see below);
- Symfony version 6.2 instead of 6.0;
- PHP 8.1 (which will be mandatory);
- Finally, we’ll logically have until November 2023 to upgrade our Drupal 9 sites to Drupal 10!
New themes in Core!
Yes, some are already included, but they’ll be officially part of Drupal 10 (and we’ll be able to bid farewell to Bartik):
The real innovation is a theme generator: StarterKit.
Starterkit
Starterkit isn’t a new theme per se, but it lets you easily generate a sub-theme to customize.
Instead of sub-theming a base theme, Starterkit generates a starter theme for you using its latest default settings. This new theme is more like a fork and doesn’t have a runtime dependency on a central base theme.
This also means end users won’t need to worry about Drupal updates breaking their site’s themes.
CKEditor 5
A short video is worth more than a long explanation, so take a look at YouTube (in English) to see what it’s all about.
Automatic updates
Further planned in upcoming minor versions of Drupal 10 (the team doesn’t rule out having it from day one) is the possibility to update Drupal Core directly from the back office.
- This new method will be 100% compatible with updates via Composer;
- A copy of the site will be created and maintained until the update is successfully completed, otherwise it will revert.
Core cleanup
Modules such as RDF and Forum will be removed from Core to become contributed modules.
Drupal 11 and beyond
For site builders
Another key part of the keynote was devoted to Ambitious Site Builders.
This group of users, in between simple content contributors and experienced developers, is clearly the new focus of the Drupal community and fits with the current low code / no code movement.
Who are we talking about? A site builder is someone who:
- Is proficient with Drupal’s back office;
- Might know how to write some code;
- And is used to or wants to develop complex Drupal sites making the most of what Drupal’s back office allows.
When you think about it, that’s what Drupal has always enabled with its modules, Views, and Content Construction Kit included in Core for years.
But perhaps the transition from version 7 to 8 made things harder for those without deep developer skills, which in turn pushed Drupal, in users’ minds, away from easier solutions like Wordpress.
This initiative aims to fix that. Let’s see the goals.
Project Browser
The goal is to thoroughly revamp the modules section on drupal.org, modernizing it to give site builders a clearer picture of installable modules:
- module purpose;
- installations;
- stability;
- etc.
And especially with metrics more understandable to non-developers.
I think this is truly needed—and even developers would benefit. This is a section I use daily and it’s starting to look really outdated.
The community also seems to want to turn it into a marketplace (still open-source, hopefully), curating and presenting it like our favorite phones’ App Stores, featuring themed presentations, highlights, and more.
Starter Templates
Between using a basic Drupal site (contributor) and full custom development (developer), there have only been distributions as middle ground.
However, these, while useful for very specific needs, aren’t at all simple to customize.
The idea behind starter templates is to provide a set of modules and a basic configuration for more generic needs—a foundation to build upon.
We can imagine templates focused on:
- complex moderation workflows;
- creating decoupled or headless sites;
- building certain types of sites (content-heavy, e-commerce, etc.);
- and so on.
I think that’s an excellent idea too. Of course, we can expect that, unlike with distributions (where updates can be complicated), these module/configuration bundles could be updated as if you created them manually.
Small Core
This naturally follows from starter templates; the community is considering moving to a more limited initial version of Drupal (the Core) than what we know now. If templates allow you to quickly set a direction, there’s no need to include everything by default.
We could imagine, as is already the case, large sections like:
- Display (Layout Builder and similar);
- Content creation (CCK, Views);
- API;
- Moderation (workflow, revisions, etc.);
And the ability to choose what you want during installation so you have only what’s strictly necessary.
We’ll have to see if this initiative is brought to completion.
Gitlab
Finally—and this news is probably more for developers—the community plans to eventually rely solely on Gitlab for managing Core and contributed module source code, taking advantage of the platform’s native features and dropping the current hybrid system split between Gitlab for code and Drupal’s site for managing pull requests and packages.
In conclusion
We can’t wait for December to enjoy—and let you enjoy—all these advancements, not to mention those soon to follow.
Ludovic Coullet.