Michael G

Dries talked about our vision and strategy for Drupal 11 in DrupalCon Portland 2022. The vision Dries laid out was that we want to make Drupal the tool of choice for ambitious site builders on the open web. In order for us to accomplish this goal, we believe that Drupal needs to provide:

• Easy-to-use tools that guide site builders on the right path
• Site building tools for providing an enjoyable experience for content editors
• An inexpensive, easy, and secure way to maintain digital experiences over time

New features will be built in the current major version of Drupal. This means that components of this plan will be released gradually in Drupal core minor releases, not in a big bang with Drupal 11.

Ongoing efforts

We have several ongoing initiatives, but we are doubling down our efforts on these three tracks:

Reduce the time it takes for site builders to become proficient with Drupal

Drupal is the most powerful digital experience platform when it is well-configured. We want more people to be able to leverage the power of Drupal. Therefore, our goal is to reduce the time and steps it takes to realize the full potential of Drupal.

We are working on:

• A simplified way to assess and install modules with the Project Browser
• Tooling to deliver Drupal starter kits without locking sites into specific distributions (known as ‘Recipes’)
• Improvements to the user experience for Drupal’s administrative user interface, including content modeling enhancements (Field UI) and administrative navigation

Empowering site builders to deliver engaging editorial experience

Our goal is to make it easier for site builders to meet the requirements of content editors, who are accustomed to using flexible and easy-to-navigate tools. We will also evolve Drupal into the top choice for ambitious site builders and content creators who need advanced layout or landing page building features.

We are working on:

• Improvements to Layout Builder that makes creating and editing pages easier
• A modernized page building experience that combines the strengths of structured content with modern page building tools

Reduce the cost of keeping Drupal applications secure

Keeping Drupal 10 sites up-to-date can be labor-intensive and require specialized knowledge to assess security releases and potential regressions caused by updates. Our commitment is to make the upkeep of Drupal and its modules less complex, risk-free, and affordable.

We are working on:

• Automatic application of security and patch updates for core and contributed modules via an ‘Automatic Updates’ feature
• Improvements to our contributed module tooling, processes and documentation to address known friction points that site administrators are facing in the update process

Moreover, we recognize that a significant number of Drupal sites are still on Drupal 7. The upgrade to Drupal 10 can be labor-intensive and requires specialized expertise.

We are working on:

• Documentation and tooling to make migrating from Drupal 7 easier

Let’s build together!

We are excited about the road ahead as we are making Drupal the tool of choice for ambitious site builders on the open web. We invite you to join us on this journey, where your expertise, insights, and contributions are invaluable in shaping the future of Drupal.

Thank you to Gábor Hojtsy, catch, xjm, yoroy, Dries, and effulgentsia for their feedback on this post.