We're excited to announce updates to the Drupal CMS leadership team, with the addition of Bálint Kléri as our new Frontend Lead.
Bálint Kléri named Drupal CMS Frontend LeadBálint Kléri has been named Frontend Lead, a new leadership role created to oversee the frontend architecture for Drupal CMS, Mercury and Mercury-based themes. Bálint is a full-time contributor to Drupal Canvas, leading the development of Code Components for Acquia and a key contributor to Mercury, the Drupal CMS design system.
During development of Mercury, Bálint stepped in to guide the Tailwind CSS implementation and advocate for the use of best practices. We are grateful for his contributions already, and are excited to have him formally join the team. The addition of this frontend role is critical as we refine the Drupal CMS design system, providing users with a modern and adaptable foundation for Drupal sites and site templates.
Pamela Barone promoted to Product LeadPamela Barone is now Drupal CMS Product Lead, overseeing product direction, roadmap, prioritization, and delivery. Serving as Product Owner previously, this shift recognizes the product management responsibilities that Pamela has taken on during the evolution of Drupal CMS.
She will continue to work closely with me as I lead the Drupal CMS initiative. I’ll continue to set direction, align teams, and ensure we have the support and momentum to achieve our goals.
We appreciate the ongoing support from Technocrat support in giving Pamela the time to contribute to Drupal CMS.
Tim Plunkett is stepping down as Technical LeadTim Plunkett is transitioning out of his role as Drupal CMS Technical Lead to dedicate his full focus to the development of Drupal Canvas. We thank Tim for his leadership and his employer Acquia for all of his contributions.
Adam Hoenich, Lead Architect for Drupal CMS, has been ably overseeing all things technical in the meantime and he will remain in that role. Adam's contribution to Drupal CMS is generously supported by Acquia.
Looking aheadDuring DrupalCon Chicago, our leadership team met to discuss the future of Drupal CMS. The first question we asked was 'Do we still think this initiative is important for Drupal's future?' We think it is. We're proud of what we have delivered so far in version 2, with Canvas enablement and site templates as the highlights, but we know there is a lot more to do to meet our objective: To enable marketing teams to launch fully-branded, professional websites in hours, not weeks.
The leadership team is currently working to define the product roadmap for the next 6-12 months, with a strategic focus on launching sites faster with Drupal. We'd love to see new site templates in the marketplace and want to promote easier pathways from installation to going live with a range of hosting options. Other areas we are looking to pursue are: onboarding, better AI tooling, multilingual support for Canvas and site templates, and better support for common third-party integrations.
Join us THURSDAY, April 16 at 1pm ET / 10am PT, for our regularly scheduled call to chat about all things Drupal and nonprofits. (Convert to your local time zone.)
We don't have anything specific on the agenda this month, so we'll have plenty of time to discuss anything that's on our minds at the intersection of Drupal and nonprofits. Got something specific you want to talk about? Feel free to share ahead of time in our collaborative Google document at https://nten.org/drupal/notes!
All nonprofit Drupal devs and users, regardless of experience level, are always welcome on this call.
This free call is sponsored by NTEN.org and open to everyone.
Information on joining the meeting can be found in our collaborative Google document.
In episode 548 we welcome back JD Leonard to discuss what CRMs are, what problems they solve, and which organizations benefit from them. JD explains why Drupal CRM defines CRM as "Contact Relationship Management," outlines core expectations like contact and relationship tracking and integrations, and describes Drupal CRM's Drupal-native architecture using dedicated, fieldable entity types for contacts, relationships, and contact methods. The panel compares Drupal CRM to older Drupal CRM efforts and user-based approaches, covers security considerations for PII and plans for field encryption, and highlights ecosystem projects such as CRM Email, CRM Membership (including Drupal Commerce integration), and event registration needs.
For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/548
TopicsTry the latest - https://drupal.org/project/crm Field encrypt - https://www.drupal.org/project/crm/issues/3558040 Primary entity reference - https://www.drupal.org/project/primary_entity_reference Member Platform initiative - https://www.drupal.org/project/member Financial sponsor of Steve Ayers' time working on Drupal CRM - https://www.govwebworks.com https://www.portlandwebworks.com CRM ecosystem modules - https://www.drupal.org/project/crm/ecosystem Drupal Slack #crm channel: - https://drupal.slack.com/archives/C08N90UF9TR
GuestsJD Leonard - modernbizconsulting.com jdleonard
HostsNic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu
Module of the Weekwith Martin Anderson-Clutz
Social Media Links Block and Field
The modules provides a configurable block that display links (icons) to your profiles on various popular networking sites. With this module, a website can be quickly extended with a "Follow us" functionality. Or you make the block available for your site editors, and they can configure the social networks themselves.
The conversation around AI is drifting into a familiar trap. We’re treating it as a question of alignment when it’s really a question of judgment. A recent reflection by Matthew Tift, written after DrupalCon, captures this tension well. Debates harden into sides, positions get defended, and nuance disappears. But the more useful observation is this: most of the people doing meaningful work with AI aren’t anchored to a fixed stance. They’re working through it, using principles they already trust.
That’s the part many organisations are skipping. Instead of grounding decisions in existing values, they’re reacting to the pace of change. This creates a false urgency to define a position quickly, often at the expense of clarity. In practice, that leads to inconsistent decisions. One team leans into AI for speed, another resists it for control, and neither is wrong. What’s missing is a shared framework that makes those decisions coherent over time.
At TDT, we see this as less of a technology shift and more of a decision-making test. AI doesn’t require new values as much as it exposes whether existing ones are actually being used. If your principles only show up in documentation but not in how choices are made under pressure, they’re not doing much work. The organisations that navigate this well won’t be the ones that pick a side early, but the ones that stay consistent in how they decide as the landscape keeps changing.
Discover DrupalAdditional developments from across the Drupal ecosystem were published during the week. Readers can follow The DropTimes on LinkedIn, Twitter, Bluesky, and Facebook for ongoing updates. The publication is also active on Drupal Slack in the #thedroptimes channel.
Alka Elizabeth
Sub-editor
The DropTimes
Is your website ready for AI search? Learn how AIO and GEO help your content get cited in AI-generated answers, not just ranked in search results. Discover the S1x SIGNALS framework and request a free assessment.
Building new modules using AI
I am setting up a playground to experiment with AI. My last post discussed developing and contributing a new Entity/Field Labels module to Drupal using AI. I look forward to seeing what I can create next. Before moving forward, I want to pause and explore how AI can assist me in managing and maintaining my existing contributed modules.
Maintaining my contributed modules using AI
Over the past decade, I’ve created and managed numerous contributed modules. I'm not sure how many there are, and it's been challenging to keep them all up to date. In the long run, I believe an AI agent with the right skills could help me manage my overwhelming list of modules. First, I need to clone my modules into my local development environment.
Cloning my contributed modules via Composer
It's unrealistic for me to manually clone each module's repository. Fortunately, Composer supports Git repositories. However, setting up and testing each module's Git repository using Composer can still be very time-consuming. Since AI excels at repetitive, predictable tasks, this is a perfect opportunity for me to let my AI assistant step in and make my life easier.
Using Agent skills to make things easier
Since cloning a Drupal repository for local development is quite straightforward, this presents a great opportunity to develop a custom agent skill. As with many AI-related tasks, it's best to seek help from the AI. Therefore, I prompted Claude to assist me in planning my drupalorg-project-clone skill.
Here is the front matter description of my new drupalorg-project-clone skill, which was generated by Claude Code and Codex.
Adding a dozen repositories to one's composer.json file makes it harder for humans to review dependencies....Read More
This is part three of a series of articles looking at HTMX in Drupal. Last time I looked at using HTMX to run a "load more" feature on a Drupal page. Before moving onto looking at forms I thought a final example of using HTMX and controllers to achieve an action.
One of the key examples that helped me understand HTMX was when it was used to create a tabbed interface, without reloading the page. This was quite simple to recreate in Drupal and can be done in a single controller.
In this article we will be creating a tabbed interface in Drupal, where HTMX is used to power loading the data in a tab like interface without reloading the page.
All of the code contained in this article can be found in the Drupal HTMX examples project on GitHub, but here we will go through what the code does and what actions it performs to generate content.
The first task is to create the route for our controller.
The RouteThe route we create here just points to an action in a controller.
drupal_htmx_examples_tabbed: path: '/drupal-htmx-examples/tabbed' defaults: _title: 'HTMX Tabbed' _controller: '\Drupal\drupal_htmx_examples\Controller\TabbedController::action' requirements: _permission: 'access content'When the user (assuming they have the access content permission) visits the path /drupal-htmx-examples/tabbed then they will trigger the action() method in the controller.
Let's build the controller that this route points to.
To say that there is not an agreement of using large language models (LLMs) for Drupal development would be an understatement. I've been using Claude Code for a while to assits with my Drupal development and I shared a month ago how I brought back the Drupal 7 module upgrader tool from the dead. That was a bit of an involved example, so I wanted to find a simpler one and this time rely even more on Claude.
Gábor Hojtsy Fri, 04/10/2026 - 12:20We’re excited to announce the release of LocalGov Bus Data — a new Drupal module built with and for councils, now available for the entire local government community to use.
markconroy 10th Apr 2026Managing a council website is a high-stakes balancing act where a single accidental “publish“ can impact public trust. Learn more about how LocalGov Drupal solves this problem for councils.
Drupal site-builders rejoice! We currently have two major page building projects approaching production-maturity: Drupal Canvas and Display Builder. In this article series, I compare the two projects by implementing real world use cases from the perspective of a site-builder.
Discover how 1xINTERNET and UICC apply responsible AI to real-world digital experiences. Webinar and podcast recordings are ready to watch!
A personal, powerful Driesnote shows how Drupal’s community, AI innovation, and leadership shape the future of digital experiences.
Are you a Drupal enthusiast who’s ever thought, “I’m not expert enough to speak at DrupalCon”? You’re not alone. Imposter syndrome can affect even the most experienced developers, designers, and site builders. But here’s the truth: real-world experience matters far more than textbook expertise. Your lessons learned, project insights, and practical workflows are exactly what the community wants to hear.
Speaking at DrupalCon isn’t just about sharing knowledge. It’s a chance to grow personally and professionally. You’ll gain visibility in the Drupal community, advance your career through skill development and recognition, and connect with peers, mentors, and potential collaborators.
Don’t let self-doubt hold you back. If you’ve tackled real Drupal challenges, you already have a story worth sharing.
Photo by PdJohnson
What Makes a Great DrupalCon Talk ProposalWhen reviewers look at submissions, they’re seeking talks that are educational, clear, and actionable, not sales pitches. Here’s what makes a proposal stand out:
Need inspiration? Here are some trending topics that resonate with the community and demonstrate thought leadership:
Your unique experience in these areas could spark the next great DrupalCon session.
ImagePhoto by PdJohnson
From Submission to Stage: How to Get SelectedWondering how your proposal moves from idea to spotlight? Here’s a peek behind the curtain:
Remember, clarity and relevance are key. The more concrete your examples and lessons, the stronger your submission.
Call for Papers: Key Dates & How to SubmitDon’t miss your chance to speak at DrupalCon Rotterdam 2026!
Deadline: 13 April 2026
Tracks:
Formats: Sessions (45 or 20 minutes), workshops (45 or 2x45 minutes), panels (45 minutes)
How to submit:
Whether you’re a first-time speaker or a seasoned presenter, DrupalCon is the perfect platform to share your story, contribute to the community, and grow your career. Your insights matter, so step up to the mic and make your mark!
Drupal's config schema YAML supports dynamic expressions inside square brackets that resolve to values from the surrounding configuration data at runtime. Most developers have seen them — [%parent.type] in field formatter schema is a classic example — but few understand exactly how they work or when to use them.
I found a Todoist task from December 4th, 2024: \Drupal\Core\Config\TypedConfigManager::replaceVariable blog post. (Yeah, you do not want to see my "Overdue" list.) I have no memory of what I was working on that day or why I went deep on this. But past-me clearly thought it was worth documenting, so here we are. If you've ever stared at [%parent.type] in a schema file and just accepted it as magic — this one's for you.
In episode #547, guest JD Flynn joins us to discuss why developers don't choose Drupal, focusing on Drupal adoption, discoverability, and outdated perceptions from Drupal 6/7. JD cites survey data showing low interest among non-Drupal developers, arguing Drupal's biggest problem is invisibility and that developers often pre-filter it due to PHP stigma and friction getting started.
For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/547
TopicsWhy Developers Don't Choose Drupal (And What We Can Do About It) - https://www.fldrupal.camp/session/why-developers-dont-choose-drupal-and-what-we-can-do-about-it JD's stream - http://twitch.tv/jddoesdev Drupal is Great! Its Perception Might Not be. -https://picozzi.com/notebook/2025/jan/drupal-great-its-perception-might-not-be Drupal Forge - https://www.drupalforge.org/
Guests HostsNic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Rod Martin - DrupalHelps.com imrodmartin
Module of the Week CorrespondentMartin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu
Native Observability brings real observability into Drupal. Trace requests, inspect execution, analyze performance, and explore runtime behavior — directly inside your application.
No core patches. No external dependencies required to get started. Just install, enable, and start seeing what actually happens inside your system.