Drupal is now light-years ahead of its reputation

Drupal is now light-years onward of its reputation. Closing that gap is our #1 challenge, and it was the chief communication of my DrupalCon Rotterdam keynote.

Just complete two years ago, I launched Drupal Starshot. I did it since I wasn't certain we could motionless innovate akin we used to. It turns out we can.

Starshot became Drupal CMS, which brings together Site Templates, Recipes, Drupal AI, Drupal Canvas and additional to create construction websites easier.

Alongside that work, Drupal Core has rotate into a faster and improved example for developers. A stronger Drupal Core helps us build a improved Drupal CMS, during construction Drupal CMS has driven additional improvements in Drupal Core.

Unfortunately, many group exterior the Drupal community haven't seen what Drupal can do today. In Rotterdam, I showed how far we have arrive and anywhere we're going next, and we launched an assistance program to assistance additional group see how awesome Drupal has become.

If you missed the keynote, you can watch the video below or download my slides (86 MB).

§More ways to attain additional people

The archetypal part of my keynote showed improvements for multilingual sites, JavaScript front-ends, headless Canvas, and Drupal AI.

Drupal has lengthy had powerful multilingual capabilities, but Drupal Canvas, our mighty new leaf builder, didn't yet assistance multilingual sites. Not lone did we add multilingual assistance to Canvas, but we made all multilingual sites easier to set up.

React has among the world's largest developer communities. Drupal Canvas code components are written in React, and we designed the developer cognition about the tools, patterns, and workflows front-end JavaScript developers already know. They can use their preferred betterment tools, including contemporary AI-assisted workflows, without having to study Drupal-specific concepts or conventions. We've continued to create that cognition better, lowering the obstacle for a much larger community of developers to build alongside Drupal.

At DrupalCon, we extended that identical example alongside Drupal Canvas Headless. Developers can now use Drupal to oversee satisfied during construction the front-end separately alongside frameworks akin Next.js, Astro, TanStack, Angular, or Nuxt. Editors motionless get the ocular cognition of Drupal Canvas: they can build pages in Drupal and preview exactly how those pages volition appear on the front-end.

This changes an crucial trade-off. Teams no longer have to choose between a contemporary JavaScript front-end and Drupal Canvas' ocular authoring experience. They can have both. That opens Drupal to additional developers, additional front-end architectures, and additional types of projects.

Drupal AI is moving so accelerated that I could have filled a entire keynote alongside it. Instead, we launched a new Drupal AI demo anywhere group can cognition Drupal AI for themselves. It comes preconfigured, making it uncomplicated to examine what Drupal AI can do or equal display it to customers.

With the latest Drupal AI, you can ask questions and get answers restricted in your site's content. You can audit your satisfied against brand guidelines, translate content, categorize content, build pages and React components alongside AI, and more. Through MCP, AI assistants can activity alongside Drupal satisfied from exterior Drupal.

What excites me most is the basis underneath all of this. Drupal AI turns Drupal into an AI harness: organizations can nexus AI models to organized content, tools, and workflows, during keeping authority through permissions, guardrails, observability, metering, and a choice of AI models.

§Opening Drupal's capabilities to another software

The second part of my keynote looked at another crucial shift: AI assistants can provision group a new way to activity alongside Drupal.

In one demo, an publishing company merely asked an AI aide to unpublish a page. They didn't need to cognize anywhere to click or comprehend Drupal's revisions, moderation workflows, or permissions. The aide translated their intent into action, but Drupal remained in control: it checked whether the publishing company was allowed to unpublish the leaf and applied the site's publishing rules, fair as it would if they had done it by hand.

If you desire to see the demo in additional detail, Scott Falconer, who worked on it, recorded a behind-the-scenes walkthrough showing how to set it up yourself, what happens under the hood, and how to get involved.

That demo was built on the Tool module, which I accept is among the most crucial modules for Drupal developers to watch. Drupal modules already merge thousands of helpful capabilities: publishing content, managing users, handling media, changing configuration, and much more. The Tool component gives developers a norm way to disclose those capabilities so AI assistants and another application can detect and use them.

Today, exposing existing capabilities as tools can motionless necessitate too much code. My own gathering component didn't disclose tools, and making its existing capabilities accessible to an AI aide took concerning 1,000 additional lines of code.

But formerly those tools were available, the value became obvious. Adding MCP assistance has already changed how I oversee the additional than 10,000 photos on my site. Tasks that used to obtain a lot of period can now be done much faster and additional accurately alongside an AI assistant, during Drupal motionless manages the content, permissions, and workflows underneath.

That cognition reinforced item I wrote concerning in AI and the awesome CMS unbundling: AI can obtain on additional of the implementation activity during Drupal remains the authority layer. I anticipate additional organizations volition desire to oversee parts of their sites through AI assistants. AI can create complex tasks much faster and easier without giving up the structure, governance, and safeguards that Drupal provides.

I accept thousands of component developers volition eventually desire to disclose their capabilities in the identical way, so I've been operating alongside Matt Glaman to create it much easier. Matt has been evolving a alter to the Tool API that lets developers disclose existing PHP methods as tools using attributes.

The idea is simple: add PHP attributes to an existing method to depict its name, purpose, inputs and outputs. In my gathering module, approximately 1,000 lines of integration code became concerning 20 attributes. My location already uses the experimental branch, and we're operating to get it merged into the Tool module proper.

And this isn't lone concerning AI. The identical tools can be called by AI assistants complete MCP, by another applications complete HTTP, or used to create schemas for JavaScript components and nexus Drupal modules to workflow systems akin ECA, FlowDrop, and Maestro. The video below shows FlowDrop using capabilities exposed by my gathering module:

§Talk louder concerning Drupal

In the final part of my keynote, I came rear to Drupal's position gap. We can create enormous advancement alongside Drupal, but that doesn't automatically alter what group or AI agents think of it. For example, an AI coding delegate I tested in June didn't equal citation Drupal CMS or Site Templates whenever it evaluated Drupal.

Over the former few years, much of my individual concentration has been on accelerating innovation in Drupal. That activity is paying off, and we have genuine merchandise momentum. I'm now shifting additional of my notice to the another flank of the equation: making certain group see what we've built, comprehend what has changed, and cognize why it matters.

So I announced the Drupal Advocacy Program, led by the Drupal Association.

Drupal already has a contribution credit system. It recognizes the group who contribute to Drupal and the organizations that assistance their work. For businesses, those credits additionally assistance decide visibility in the Drupal marketplace. Until now, we've been much improved at recognizing specialized contributions and financial assistance than assistance work.

The new Drupal Advocacy Program volition alter that. Advocacy activity can now acquire contribution credit, and activity that reaches group exterior the existing Drupal community can acquire additional weight.

If we desire to near Drupal's position gap, we can't lone conversation to group who already cognize Drupal well. We need additional talks at external events, articles in broader publications, client stories, demos, tutorials, and another activity that helps group see what Drupal can do today.

Blue Drop Labs is a fine example of what I mean. The day following the DriesNote, they published a article on building a website alongside Drupal CMS and Canvas Headless. The project itself was already live, but they quickly turned that activity into a narrative others could study from, alongside demos showing how editors and developers activity alongside Drupal today.

That is exactly what I average by "talking louder". There is already a lot of notable Drupal activity happening. We need to do a improved job of showing it to the world.

I was a small nervous concerning announcing the Advocacy Program. We've wrestled alongside Drupal's position gap for a lengthy time, and I felt we needed to do additional than acknowledge it. Using contribution credit to reward assistance was a tangible way to alter the incentives, but I wasn't certain how the community would react.

It turned out to be among the best-received announcements of the keynote. That reply gave me confidence that group were prepared to act on the position gap, not fair acknowledge it.

You can learn how to acquire Drupal assistance credit and submit your assistance work.

My ask is simple: conversation louder concerning Drupal, particularly to group exterior our community. Drupal doesn't need hype, but we do need a improved community record. We need additional group showing, alongside genuine examples, what Drupal can do today.

I desire to broaden my gratitude to everyone who contributed to making my display and demos a success. A particular appreciate you to Bálint Kléri, Christoph Breidert, Gábor Hojtsy, Lauri Timmanee, Matt Glaman, Michael Lander, Pamela Barone, Shibin Das, and the Drupal AI partners. Many others contributed indirectly to create this possible. If I've inadvertently omitted anyone, delight attain out.