Talking Drupal #421 - The Future of Drupal

October 23, 2023
Today we are talking about The Future of Drupal article, What Challenges Drupal may have, and How we can overcome them together! with guest Ricardo Marcelino.

Listen:

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Topics

  • Can you describe the article this topic is based on
  • Module percentages
  • Drupal’s challenges
  • Drupal’s unique selling proposition
  • How can Drupal expand relevance
  • Why is relevance important
  • How does Drupal move forward
  • What’s next for Drupal
  • Do you think this is a natural change for a project like Drupal
  • How do we ensure the future of Drupal

 

Resources

 

Module of the Week

Next.js
  • Brief description:
    • Have you ever wanted to build a website with a React-based front end, but with lots of the robust and mature CMS capabilities that Drupal provides? There’s a module for that.
  • Brief history
    • How old: created in Jan 2021 by shadcn, who continues to support it, including in the #nextjs channel in Drupal slack
  • Versions available:
    • 1.6.3 for Drupal 9 & 10
  • Maintainership
    • Actively maintained, though it uses a Github repo as its place for collaboration, including issues
  • Number of open issues:
    • 135 open, 12 of them bugs
  • Test coverage? Y
  • Usage stats:
    • 1,249 sites
  • Maintainer(s):
    • shadcdn, who continues to support it, including in the #nextjs channel in Drupal slack
  • Module features and usage:
    • For anyone not familiar with Next.js, it’s a React framework for building front-end applications that gives developers a number a number of useful capabilities, such as dynamic routing, performance optimizations, integrations, and more
    • The Next.js module for Drupal optimizes your Drupal backend for use as the content repository for a Next.js front end
    • It add functionality like headless preview of unpublished content, even across multiple front end apps
    • It also supports Incremental Site Regeneration, a best practice to ensure your front end site can serve static pages for the fastest possible delivery, but without the risk of serving stale content
    • Works with the JSON:API Menu Items and JSON:API Views Drupal modules to allow even more of your front end site to be managed within your Drupal backend
    • There’s even a Next.js Webform module that allows your Drupal site builder to create webforms, and have the React forms automatically created
    • There is also a specialized version of Next.js, a “next-drupal-basic-starter”, also maintained by shadcn, that helps to get your Next.js front end working with Drupal more quickly