Drupal CMS News Digest
developments tricks, articles and reviews from Drupal specialists
Specbee: How to decide between a Drupal agency and a general web agency
The real difference between a Drupal agency and a general web agency isn’t what you think. Are you asking the right questions? Read this article to find out what you’re missing.
https://www.specbee.com/blogs/
Skiing in Saint-Gervais, France
Last week, we went on a ski trip in Saint-Gervais, France. For the first time, Axl wasn't with us. He's off at university now, and his school breaks no longer line up with Stan's. So Stan and I had a lot of father-son time on the slopes.
Our friends Alexis and Héloïse were also on the trip with us, and Alexis captured this short video one of the days. I love it. Thank you, Alexis!
https://dri.es/skiing-in-saint
Joachim's blog: Release more code: the technical stuff
Release more code: the technical stuff At LocalGov Drupal Dev Days in London earlier this month, the topic came up of releasing custom project code as contrib modules.
There were many people in the room who said they had custom code in their site codebase that they planned to release as contrib modules, but needed to find the time to get it ready. I heard people mention the work that they had left to do for this, and it sounded very familiar: generalise the functionality, remove client-specific code, remove client-specific strings.
This reminded me of a session I did at Drupal Camp London way back in 2014, on this very topic: releasing more code from your codebase, to lower the amount of custom code and share more with the community. Since then, I've gone on to release many more contrib modules, and the introduction of more powerful APIs and systems with Drupal 8 has added to what's possible, so I thought I'd revisit my thoughts on different ways to approach this. My presentation was on the 'why' as well as the 'how', but I'll assume you know that part already.
The first thing to say is that as with tests or accessibility, it's much easier to write contributable code from the start rather than rework it later.
Fundamentally though, whether to plan from the start or retrofit, the baic principle is that you want your code to be split into two layers: the contrib,...
http://www.noreiko.com/blog/re
MidCamp - Midwest Drupal Camp: MidCamp Chicago 2026 call for sessions open through Feb 26
We're excited to celebrate you -- our future speakers! If you've got an idea for a session, now's the time to get involved in MidCamp 2026, happening May 12-14 in Chicago.Call for SpeakersSince 2014, MidCamp has hosted over 300 amazing sessions, and we're ready to add your talk to that legacy. We're seeking presentations for all skill levels, from Drupal beginners to advanced users to end users and business professionals!For full submission details and guidelines, visit: midcamp.org/events/2026/how-submit-sessionKey DatesCall for Proposals Opened: February 10, 2026Proposal Deadline: February 26, 2026Speakers Notified: Week of April 2026MidCamp Sessions: May 12-13, 2026Sponsor MidCampLooking to connect with the Drupal community? Sponsoring MidCamp is the way to do it! Whether you're recruiting talent, growing your brand, or simply supporting the Drupal ecosystem, MidCamp sponsorship offers great value. Act early to maximize your exposure!Stay in the LoopJoin us on MidCamp Slack to chat and get updates.Follow us on Bluesky and Mastodon for announcements and news.Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the venue, travel options, social events, and speaker announcements.Ready to submit your session? Click away and let's make MidCamp 2026 unforgettable!
https://www.midcamp.org/events
DDEV Blog: Using WarpBuild to speed up DDEV in CI
For most developers, DDEV solves a common challenge: making sure that each developer has a consistent, stable local environment for building their web application. We had more and more success with DDEV at Lullabot, but another related issue kept coming up: how do we grow and develop our use of continuous integration and automated testing while avoiding the same challenges DDEV solved for us?
A typical CI/CD pipeline is implemented using the tools and systems provided by the CI service itself. For example, at a basic level you can place shell commands inside configuration files to run tests and tools. Running those commands locally in DDEV is possible, but it's a painful copy/paste process. If you're a back-end or DevOps engineer, odds are high you've wasted hours trying to figure out why a test you wrote locally isn't passing in CI – or vice versa!
As a first step, we used Task to improve our velocity. Having a unified task runner that works outside PHP lets us standardize CI tasks more easily. However, this still left a big surface area for differences between local and CI environments. For example, in GitHub, the shivammathur/setup-php action is used to install PHP and extensions, but the action is not identical to DDEV. Underlying system libraries and packages installed with apt-get could also be different, causing unexpected issues. Finally, there was...
https://ddev.com/blog/ddev-ci-
DrupalCon News & Updates: DrupalCon Chicago 2026: Must‑See Sessions for Seasoned Developers
Hey experienced developers! You know how to tame Drush, charm Composer, debug like a detective, juggle configs, and wrestle with tricky modules. But there’s an event that will max out your RAM with Drupal hacks, insights, and wisdom.
Chicago may be famous for deep-dish pizza, but this spring it’s serving up something even more satisfying: deep dives into Drupal. DrupalCon Chicago 2026 is the place for seasoned developers to sharpen their skills, swap stories, and maybe laugh at a few module mishaps along the way.
It’s a code playground with a side of professional growth — sessions designed to challenge, inspire, and connect. Ready to level up your craft and enjoy a few geeky chuckles? The program is packed with standout sessions, but here are a few you absolutely won’t want to miss.
Top DrupalCon Chicago 2026 Sessions for Experienced Developers
“The state of JavaScript Code Components in Drupal Canvas” — by Bálint Kléri
Drupal Canvas, the new-generation page builder, offers multiple ways to create pages for different audiences. Non-tech users will enjoy intuitive drag-and-drop tools, ready-made components, and even building pages from a prompt to an AI agent. But what’s in it for developers? First of all, it’s Code Components.
JavaScript in Drupal keeps evolving, and Code Components in Drupal Canvas are the latest twist worth watching. First unveiled at DrupalCon Atlanta, they...
https://events.drupal.org/chic
Talking Drupal: Talking Drupal #541 - Mautic
Today we are talking about Mautic, marketing automation, and its history with Drupal with guest Ruth Cheesley. We'll also cover Mautic ECA as our module of the week. For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/541 Topics What Is Mautic? Self-Hosting and Data Ownership Who Uses Mautic + Personalization Mautic's History with Drupal How Drupal Integrate Mautic Orchestration in Mautic Privacy & Compliance: GDPR Tools, Consent, and Do-Not-Contact Controls Hosting Options Advanced Segmentation Points-Based Lead Scoring Validating Segments Using Points to Boost Common Mautic Adoption Pitfalls Getting Support The Future with AI AI and Open Source Maintenance Mautic Sustainability & Fundraising How to Contribute Resources Mautic Mautic Integration Advanced Mautic Integration Talking Drupal #343 - Marketing Automation with Mautic Managed hosting, 40% goes to the community Mautic/Drupal case study and presentation on that from our conference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0SkfeHTLK8 https://mautic.org/case-study/inagro/ GDPR cleanup jobs to remove old data Anonymization tasks to comply with specific laws (eg CCPA) Anonymize IP setting Proposal to overhaul all things privacy and streamline experience for marketers - currently seeking funding, planning to ship in Mautic 9 Mautic contribution docs Testing PRs: inlcuding local setup guide Low/no-code tasks board...
https://sacstudio.libsyn.com/t
Mike Herchel's Blog: Fun, dancing, and contribution at Florida DrupalCamp (photos included)!
Fun, dancing, and contribution at Florida DrupalCamp (photos included)!
mherchel
Mon, 02/23/2026 - 13:32
https://herchel.com/articles/f
The Drop Times: Architecture Before Alchemy
Every technology cycle has its buzzwords. This one has AI stamped on every roadmap, budget request, and vendor pitch deck. As Nitish Chopra argues, the rush to “integrate AI” into content management systems feels less like strategy and more like panic. Organizations are bolting large language models onto legacy stacks without confronting a harder truth: most digital architectures were never designed to support structured, machine-readable intelligence.The pattern is becoming predictable across the CMS landscape. Some teams chase quick wins through plugin overload and surface-level integrations. Others pay enterprise premiums for repackaged APIs marketed as innovation. A third group disappears into technical rabbit holes, overengineering AI experiments that never survive contact with production realities. In each case, the failure is architectural. AI is treated as a feature to be installed, not a capability that depends on disciplined data modeling, governance, and system design.This is where the Drupal ecosystem enters the conversation. For years, Drupal’s insistence on entities, fields, taxonomies, and structured content was criticized as overly complex. Yet those very foundations align with what AI systems require: clean schemas, reusable content objects, and predictable relationships. What once felt rigid now looks intentional. What was labeled pedantic now resembles...
https://www.thedroptimes.com/n
Jacob Rockowitz: Coding Drupal with AI
IntroductionThere is a subtle bait-and-switch here: I am going to talk about my experience coding with AI in Python, but the lessons learned apply to Drupal and the broader challenges developers face when coding with AI.Over the past few months, AIs have begun to understand and write code for Drupal, and I want to understand how AI can help me with my Drupal projects. I would be the first to say “Vibe Coding” sounds like something invented in a hipster cafe, but it is here to stay, just like the Frappuccino.As a Drupal Developer who has written a lot of PHP code over the years, I welcome the opportunity to write less and think more. Call me old-fashioned, but I am a self-taught developer who learned by reading books, even though AI moves so fast that books on the topic are out of date within a year. I decided to look for a book to help with this journey.A search for “Coding Drupal with AI” yields very few results, yet it is notable that a post titled “Claude Code meets Drupal” by Dries Buytaert, the creator of Drupal, appears on the first screen of results. Sometimes, when learning something new or facing a new challenge, I like to work around the challenge.For example, when I first started learning Drupal 8 as an experienced Drupal 6/7 developer, I was stumped by Symfony and the OOP patterns being introduced into Drupal, so I spent a few weeks building a Symfony application...
https://www.jrockowitz.com/blo
UI Suite Initiative website: Live show - Display Builder demo on Talk On My Machine (TOMM)
Overall summarySparkFabrik continues to be a welcoming hub for the Drupal community, and this session was a great example of that. As part of their ongoing "Talk on My Machine" series, SparkFabrik hosted Michaël Fanini to present Display Builder — the latest addition to the UI Suite ecosystem, designed to simplify and unify the display-building experience in Drupal.
https://uisuite.net/live-show-
My Web3 site survived four years of neglect
Four years ago, I published my first Web3 webpage using IPFS and ENS. I uploaded a simple "Hello World" HTML file, pointed dries.eth at it, and left it there. Two years later, I found it still running.
I haven't touched it since. Today, on the experiment's four-year anniversary, I checked again. It's still up at dries.eth.limo. Four years of total neglect, and the page loads just fine.
When I checked two years ago, every service I used was still operational. I called that "really encouraging". That optimism aged poorly.
Today, half the services have shut down, restricted access, or pivoted entirely:
Fleek, a platform I used to pin my content, shut down its hosting service on January 31, 2026. They pivoted to AI.
Infura was acquired by MetaMask and closed its IPFS service to new users.
Web3.storage rebranded to Storacha, and dropped IPFS pinning altogether.
Cloudflare sunset its public IPFS gateways.
Scaleway shut down its IPFS pinning service.
Of the original services, Pinata is still focused on IPFS. I logged in and my "Hello World" HTML file is still there. And eth.limo, the ENS gateway that lets anyone access .eth sites in a normal browser, still works.
Technically robust, commercially fragile
IPFS content exists only as long as someone chooses to host it. In 2022, my HTML file was pinned on Fleek, Pinata, Infura, and a friend's...
https://dri.es/my-web3-site-su
The Drop Times: The Work Behind the Workflow: Stas Zhuk and the Future of DDEV
As a maintainer of DDEV, Stas Zhuk works behind the scenes to ensure thousands of developers rarely have to think about their local environments. In this interview with The DropTimes, he reflects on reliability, open source responsibility, AI-assisted development, and what it takes to keep critical infrastructure stable even during power blackouts in Ukraine.
https://www.thedroptimes.com/i
Très Bien Blog: Dig for gold in Drupal Contrib code
Dig for gold in Drupal Contrib code Fixing the contrib code search problem. theodore
February 20, 2026
https://tresbien.tech/blog/dig
Dries Buytaert: A better way to follow Drupal development
I've been reading Drupal Core commits for more than 15 years. My workflow hasn't changed much over time. I subscribe to the Drupal Core commits RSS feed, and every morning, over coffee, I scan the new entries. For many of them, I click through to the issue on Drupal.org and read the summary and comments.
That workflow served me well for a long time. But when Drupal Starshot expanded my focus beyond Drupal Core to include Drupal CMS, Drupal Canvas, and the Drupal AI initiative, it became much harder to keep track of everything. All of this work happens in the open, but that doesn't make it easy to follow.
So I built a small tool I'm calling Drupal Digests. It watches the Drupal.org issue queues for Drupal Core, Drupal CMS, Drupal Canvas, and the Drupal AI initiative. When something noteworthy gets committed, it feeds the discussion and diff to AI, which writes me a summary: what changed, why it matters, and whether you need to do anything. You can see an example summary to get a feel for the format.
Each issue summary currently lives as its own Markdown file in a GitHub repository. Since I still like my morning coffee and RSS routine, I also generate RSS feeds that you can subscribe to in your favorite reader.
I built this to scratch my own itch, but realized it could help with something bigger. Staying informed is one of the hardest parts of contributing to a large Open...
https://dri.es/a-better-way-to
A better way to follow Drupal development
I've been reading Drupal Core commits for more than 15 years. My workflow hasn't changed much over time. I subscribe to the Drupal Core commits RSS feed, and every morning, over coffee, I scan the new entries. For many of them, I click through to the issue on Drupal.org and read the summary and comments.
That workflow served me well for a long time. But when Drupal Starshot expanded my focus beyond Drupal Core to include Drupal CMS, Drupal Canvas, and the Drupal AI initiative, it became much harder to keep track of everything. All of this work happens in the open, but that doesn't make it easy to follow.
So I built a small tool I'm calling Drupal Digests. It watches the Drupal.org issue queues for Drupal Core, Drupal CMS, Drupal Canvas, and the Drupal AI initiative. When something noteworthy gets committed, it feeds the discussion and diff to AI, which writes me a summary: what changed, why it matters, and whether you need to do anything. You can see an example summary to get a feel for the format.
Each issue summary currently lives as its own Markdown file in a GitHub repository. Since I still like my morning coffee and RSS routine, I also generate RSS feeds that you can subscribe to in your favorite reader.
I built this to scratch my own itch, but realized it could help with something bigger. Staying informed is one of the hardest parts of contributing to a large Open...
https://dri.es/a-better-way-to
