What I needed to do

I develop and maintain several Drupal websites. I do some development on a server running cPanel (in a Linux account that is totally isolated from the account running any production sites), most notably theming work.

Blog Category: Drupal Planet

CMS and Static Site Generators Gurpreet Kaur Mon, 01/18/2021 - 22:16

Websites have entered a new playing field now, at least compared to what they used to be a few decades ago. They are not one-dimensional anymore. They represent a multitude of different business agendas that are essential for growth and visibility.

Websites are not just limited to words, their world has widened progressively. From animations to social media integration, websites today can do it all. A major reason for these advancements in websites and their build is the software they are built on. And that is going to be the highlight of this blog.  

We will talk about the Content Management Systems and the Static Site Generators and shed light on their uses, their suitability and whether they can work in sync or not? So let’s begin. 

Understanding a CMS  Source: Opensource.com

Commencing with the veterans, CMS or a Content Management System have been around for almost two decades (Drupal, one of the world leaders in web content management, was initially released on 15th January 2001). Despite being that old, the conventions they are built on and the features they have been added with over the years have resulted in CMSs being as modern as modern as can be. 

From easing the workload off of the bloggers’ shoulders to making newspaper editors happy; from catering for corporations and their digital marketing team to aiding numerous government departments online and transparent, a CMS has a wide audience. 

If I had to define a CMS, I would simply call it the one-stop destination for all your website’s content needs. It manages, organises and publishes web content. What is more impressive is that content authors can create, edit, contribute and publish on their own, they do not need to be dependent on developers for that. A CMS offers a collaborative environment to build and present websites, allowing multiple users to work with it at once. Terms like Web Content Management and Digital Experience Platform are being thrown around today and they are nothing, but a modern variant of a CMS. 

Getting into the meaning of CMS a little further, you would hear two versions of it and they are essentially its break down. 

• First would be the Content Management Application. This makes marketers, merchandisers and content creators self-reliant. They can do the contextual heavy-lifting on their own with a CMA without the requirement of a code, so, none of the guys or girls from IT would be needed. 
• Next is the Content Delivery Application. This is basically the foundation for your content; the back-end aspect that placed your content into templates to be further presented as one website. So, what your audiences see is provided by the CDA. 

Both of these together make a CMS whole for your use. 

Moving further, after the meaning, it is time to get a brief understanding of the various categories of a CMS. Based upon different categorisations, there are seven in all.

Based on the CMS’ role 

Traditional 

Most often, a traditional CMS is used on really simple marketing sites. I have used the term simple to describe it because it is just that, be it the layout or general functionality. You can create and edit your content using a WYSIWYG or HTML editor and it would display the content as per the CSS you have used.

With a traditional CMS, your entire site is encompassed by one software. The frontend and the backend are closely connected through it, hence, it is also referred to as a Coupled CMS. 

Decoupled 

Unlike its traditional counterpart, the decoupled CMS separated the frontend from the backend. This means they work independent of each other and a change in the presentation layer does not necessarily affect the backend repository. Through decoupling, you get the features of more than one software to base your site’s architecture on. 

Headless 

A headless CMS is more or less similar to a decoupled one. When you take up a headless CMS, your content would always remain the same, however, each of your clients, be it an app, a device, or a browser, would be obligated for the presentation of the content. 

The code in this instance is not in the CMS, rather it is an API that is used for communication and data sharing amongst the two software. This way developers can consume content through an API and content authors can start adding content at the same time. If you are looking for the ‘one size fits all’ approach, this is where you will find your answer. 

Based on cost and ownership 

Open source 

Open source CMSs are the ones that are free of cost, at least initially. You do not need to pay for any license fee for its installation; however, there can be costs that you may incur for add-on templates and more such features. 

Open Source CMSs are pretty popular today, the reason being their thriving community of developers. This results in the veterans redistributing and modifying the code, which not only leads to perpetual software improvements, but also helps the newbies in making progress. 

Proprietary 

A proprietary CMS is the exact opposite of an open source CMS, meaning it is commercial and mandates a licensing fee along with annual or monthly payments. In return for the payments, you would get an out-of-the-box system to meet all your companies requirements, continuous support and built-in functionality.

Based on the location 

On premises 

As the name suggests, this is a CMS that has a physical presence within the company’s premises. The high degree of control it offers to its users is the reason for its popularity. However, the humongous investment and the chances of human error dampen its potential. 

Cloud-based 

The name gives it away. Such a CMS is hosted on the cloud and delivered through the web. It is essentially the combination of web hosting, web software components and technical support. It provides fast implementation and deployment along with accessibility from across the globe on any device.

Why choose a CMS? 

Moving further, let’s now delve into the multitudinal features that are packed inside a CMS making it a suitable choice for you and your organisation’s virtual needs.

If I had to broadly categorise all the features of a CMS, I would end up with three major categories, which will sum up the true potential of this software. 

Content and its production needs

Producing content is the primary reason anyone takes on a CMS. It is true if you are a blogger and it is also true if you work for an educational institution and its online persona. It is the content that speaks for itself, when it comes to your site and it needs to be pristine, for lack of a better word. And CMSs help you achieve a level of control over your content production that you desire.

• Starting with the edits, the WYSIWYG editor could be deemed as the heart and soul of a CMS. It provides you formatted text in paragraphs with quotes, superscripts, underlines as well as images and videos. Your authors would not have to work around codes for sure. 
• Focusing on the media, images are an important part of it. Every CMS has room for them, they can be uploaded directly from your computer or archives, either within the content or you can add them in the page itself. The same is true for pdfs, animations and videos. Videos also have the option of being embedded through Youtube. 
• Furthermore, CMSs also support multilingual and multi-channel sites. This eases the pressure off of the content authors and makes localised projects easy to run. 

Content and its presentation needs

Presentation is all about design, how it is done and how it would be showcased to the end user. There are a lot of design considerations that a CMS can help you with. 

• A CMS would have you sorted with the right font and its size and the right colours and contrast. 
• A CMS would have your sorted with the right responsiveness for your site. 
• A CMS would have you sorted with the right URLs and URL logic. 
• A CMS would have you sorted with the right templating tools to change your layout. 
• A CMS would have you sorted with the right hierarchy for your site as well as provide the right prominence to the aspects that need it. 
• Finally, a CMS would have your site sorted for all the right accessibility protocols to make it universally accessible. 

Content and its distribution needs

Once the content is produced, its distribution comes into play. This has a direct impact on your site's visibility. And CMSs ensure that you get the most out of it. 

• The foremost part of distribution needs is metadata. This helps in tagging, categorising and describing your content. It includes everything from keyword insertion to identifying the distribution channels and placing access restrictions on the content. 
• Secondly, CMSs also come equipped with automated marketing tools like analytics and A/B testing that help you understand user behaviour and help you capitalise it. You would just have to define the parameters and the automation would do the rest, be it publishing on your site or email marketing. 

Content and its management needs

Then comes the management of your content, it is a perpetual process that helps in providing an ease to the editors and developers that streamlines the builds and updates of a website. 

• For one, a CMS helps you plan and execute the publishing of your content. You can actually schedule when and what to post and where to post it. You can also decide when something would be available for the audience to see and when it won’t be like an events’ post. Once the event has happened, it won't need to be on your site anymore and a CMS helps with that. 
• CMSs also help you to figure out user roles and implement them. This helps in ensuring that sensitive information is only accessible to the users who have the clearance. A manager and a director are going to have different roles, so does a premium member and a regular member of your site. 
• Finally CMS helps you in avoiding instances where you delete something important and its recovery becomes impossible. Version control and revisions are a feature that has to be in your CMS, if you want the powers to bring back the lost content. 

Apart from these main categories, CMSs are also renowned for their security, their scalability and user friendliness. There is one more thing to add and that is the fact that a CMS can go above and beyond it capabilities by integrating itself to third-parties and combining their features with its own, a headless CMS is an example of the same. Drupal is one of the most popular CMSs, when it comes to going headless. Read our blog, Decoupled Drupal Architecture to know more about it.

Understanding a new vogue: Static Site Generators 

Before understanding a static site generator, let’s shed some light on static sites, since these are what it builds. A static site is the one that is designed in a way that it remains static, fixed and constant, during its design, its storage on a server and even upon its delivery to the user’s web browser. This is the attribute that differs it from a dynamic, it never changes, from the developers desktop to the end user’s, it remains as-is.

Coming to Static Site Generators or SSG, in the most basic of terms they apply data and content to templates and create a view of a webpage. This view is then shown to end users of a site. 

Now let’s get a little technical, you know that an SSG will only create static sites, it does so by creating a series of HTML pages that get deployed to an HTTP server. There would only be files and folders, which points to no database and no server-side rendering.

Developers using an SSG, create a static site and deploy it to the server, so when a user requests a page, all the server has to do is find the matching file and route it towards the user. 

If I talk about the difference between an SSG and a conventional web application stack or a CMS, I would say that it is in the view of webpages. While an SSG keeps all the views possibly needed for a site at hand well in advance, a traditional stack waits until a page has been requested and then generates the view.

Why did SSG come along?

Static Site Generators act differently than a CMS, they are more aligned with the needs of static sites. However, their emergence has a bigger story to tell. 

Yes, CMSs are quite popular today, yet there is a drawback to that. With the rising acclaim of CMSs, some of them have become more prone to cyberattacks. The lead in security hacks goes to WordPress, with almost 90% of all hacks being experienced by it as reported by ITPRO reports of 2020. But, Drupal is considered the most secure CMS as can be seen in Sucuri’s 2019 Website Threat Research Report.

Then there is the issue of performance. CMS sites operate mainly upon their servers, meaning they do the heavy-lifting. If a request is sent, it would mean the server taking the charge of the page assembly from templates and content every time. This also means that for every user visiting your site, the PHP code would have to be run to start up, communicate with the database, create an HTTP response based on the recovered data, send it to the server and then finally, an HTML file is returned to the user’s browser to display the content after interpretation. All of this may impede the performance of the site built on CMS when compared to the one powered by a static site generator. But, it’s not like CMSes give you low-performance websites. They do have provisions for delivering high performance websites. It depends upon which CMS you go with. If web performance is your concern, Drupal can be your go-to option.

An SSG is a solution to these two conundrums, hence, it emerged with a bang. 

What can a Static Site Generator do for you?

Static Site Generators solve a lot of the issues that a CMS cannot, consequently they can provide you a lot for your site’s well-being. 

SSG means better security 

In an SSG, the need for a server is non-existent and this is the reason it provides more security. As we have already established that an SSG is rendered well in advance and its ready-to-serve infrastructure helps remove any malicious intent upon your site. This infrastructure essentially eliminates the need for servers, they do not need to perform any logic or work. 

Apart from this, with SSG, you would not need to access databases, execute logical operations or alter resources for each independent view. As a result, there is an easy hosting infrastructure as well as an enhanced security because of the lack of physical servers required for fulfilling requests. 

SSG means elevated performance 

A website’s performance is concerned with its speed and request time, and SSG provides in this area as well. Whenever a page is requested, it involves a whole bunch of mechanism to get it displayed for the visitors. There is the distance it has to cover, the systems it has to interact with along with the work that those systems do. All of these take up time, shadowing your performance. 

Since an SSG site does not mandate such a lengthy iteration per visitor request, it reduces the travel time. This is done through delivering the work directly from a CDN, a distributed network of caches, which aids in avoiding system interaction. Resultantly, your performance soars 

SSG means higher scalability 

When an SSG builds a site, it is often considered pre-built. I mean that is what building all the views in advance of an actual request could be defined as, right? So, with a pre-built site, you have less work on your hands. For instance, a spike in traffic would not mandate you to add in more computing power to handle each additional request, since you have already done all the work beforehand. You would also be able to cache everything in the CDN and serve it directly to the user. As a result, SSG sites offer scalability by default. 

When should you choose a Static site generator?

Now that you know how an SSG can benefit you, it is time to understand the scenarios that would mandate taking up a static site generator and all its advantages. 

When building complex site is the goal 

If you want your website to deliver more complexity, in terms of the kind of features it provides, SSG becomes a good choice. There are many that come equipped to provide you client-side features that are ready to go. 

When creating and displaying content is the only goal

Here SSG is a suitable choice because it would generate pages and URLs for you. And these pages would give you a 100% control over what is being displayed, meaning the output would always be in your hands; content pages need that. 

When generating numerous pages is the goal 

A static site generator can create pages at a great speed. It might not be seconds, but it is quite fast. So, when creating websites that would need a lot of pages to be created, SSG’s speed comes in quite handy. 

When templating needs are complex as well 

An SSG is a powerful software, it has the ability to assess your site’s visual style and content along with its behaviour and functionality. This feature becomes fruitful, when building a website with diverse templating needs. Vue and React based SSGs would definitely help you get the versatility you need on your website, along with the standard use of concept of code reuse on your site. 

I would like to add just one more thing, and that is the fact that your team must be familiar with the static site generator that you are going to end up using. There are a lot in the market. If your team is familiar with .net, use and SSG powered with it. On the other hand if it finds JavaScript more familiar territory, go with an SSG based on that. Let your development team be a part of the discussion, when the suitability of a static site generator is being decided. 

Are Static Site Generators always the right option? 

Coming from the suitability, you would think that an SSG is a great choice. Don’t get me wrong, it is. However, it isn’t a universal software. There are instances when it may not be the right choice. So, let’s delve into these scenarios.

Not when you do not have development experience 

Static Site Generators become a tad bit difficult for amateur developers. Your developers ought to have experience to reap all its benefits. The building process is considered to be more difficult than that of a CMS, something that finding plugins for pre-built pages acn become a chore. Furthermore, there isn’t a huge community out there to help you in the development part, if you are a beginner. 

Not when you need a site built urgently 

You have to understand the urgency and SSGs are not the best of friends. From learning the build process to developing the template code, everything needs time. 

There are development scripts to be me made;
There is the complication of customised them;
There is the additional process of creating and setting Markdown files;

All of these account to more time requirements for the development process. Think of it like this, you are going to be doing all the grunt work beforehand, and that would necessitate more time. 

Not when you need server-side functionality 

When partnering with an SSG, you would be parting with some, if not many, interactive functions on your site. For instance, user logins would be difficult to create, so would web forms and discussion forums. However, there are certain options like lunr.js search and Disqus commenting to help you with your sites interactivity. I would say that these options are pretty limited.

Not when your site has to have hundreds of pages

You might think that I am contradicting myself, however, I am not. Static site generators can create a website with a thousand pages, yet the process can become tedious and awkward. For a thousand or so pages, the content editing and publishing would be cumbersome. Along with this real-time updates could get delayed and like I mentioned before build times rise consequently.

Not when website consistency is a priority 

Lastly, SSG sites offer a lot of flexibility. That should be a good thing, however, it does have a side effect and that is on your site’s consistency. This is because anything that is found in the Markdown files can be rendered as page content. Consequently, users get the chance to include scripts, widgets and other undesired items. 

Can a CMS and an SSG work together? 

Yes, a CMS and an SSG can work together and pretty efficiently at that. However, that partnership is only possible in a headless CMS. This is because a headless CMS gives room for other frontend technology to come and play and in this case that technology is found in static site generators. 

A headless CMS is pretty versatile, choosing a static site to go as its head could help you get most of the benefits that both, the static site and headless CMS, come along with. This partnership indeed has a lot to offer. Let’s find out what that is. 

Proffers easy deployment via APIs

SSGs are quite straightforward to use, especially with an API, which is the connecting force between the SSG and the CMS. Pulling data from an API for generating and deploying a static PWA to any web host or Content Delivery Network is a breeze. 

Proffers ease to the marketing team 

When you work only with an SSG, you would face difficulties as it puts a lot of boundations on the marketing team. This isn’t a problem when you partner with a CMS. 

Proffers easy editing and workflow 

Conventionally, SSGs do not have a WYSIWYG editor or workflow capabilities for the tracking and collaboration of content. You might think that it is only needed for dynamic sites, but that isn’t the case. Static sites also need that. Since CMSs have that capability, they become ideal for content before actually running the SSG; the perfect contextual partnership. 

Proffers easy updates to sites 

With a CMS, you can easily change and update the content. With an SSG, the same changes can be pulled up through the APIs and a new static site can be generated every time they are incurred. All the developers have to do is set a tool up for content pulling and generation. As a result, your site would always be up-to-date and the users would not need to be processed whenever they visit your site. 

To check out some examples of how CMS and SSG can come together, read how Drupal and Gatsby can be leveraged for developing blazing fast websites. You can also go through the benefits of going ultra-minimalistic with the combination of Metalsmith and Drupal.

Conclusion 

In the end, all I want to say is that both a CMS and an SSG have their own set of features and capabilities that make them excellent at what they do, making their users more than happy. However, when it comes to getting the best out of both of them, there is only one kind of CMS that can help you reap the benefits of this dynamic. It is up to you to decide whether you want to use them together or individually.  
 

blog banner blog image CMS Content Management System Static Site Generators Drupal Gatsby Metalsmith Blog Type Articles Is it a good read ? On

Human-centered design is a concept that gained traction in the 1990s as an approach  to developing innovative solutions based on a laser-sharp focus on human needs and human perspectives during every phase of a design or problem-solving process. Building upon the principles of human-centered design, Promet Source has served as a pioneer and leading practitioner human-centered web design. 

Drupal's Problem With Decorative Images

Decorative images are those that should not be described to assistive technology like screen readers. A simple example is a fancy image of a decorative border that you insert at the end of a news article.

20 years ago, the Drupal project started in a dorm room—today it is a billion dollar industry.

PORTLAND, Ore., U.S.A and LOCAL AREA HERE, January 15, 2021—Drupal, the world’s leading open source digital experience platform (DXP), celebrates 20 years of community-driven innovation. Since its founding 20 years ago, Drupal has touched millions of lives. One in 30 sites on the web is powered by Drupal, and that means most users of the web have experienced Drupal—even if they don't know it. 

Drupal has pioneered the evolution of content delivery across multiple channels. Whether powering conversational user interfaces (CUI) for smart devices, pushing content to digital signage for New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), or serving as the core content store for augmented reality experiences, Drupal’s sophisticated architecture and platform stand ready for the future of digital content. 

Redefining digital experiences

7 years ago—on the eve of Drupal's birthday—Drupal founder and project lead, Dries Buytaert, laid out his belief that the web was entering a new era. 

Mobile had transformed the web, but I believed this was just the beginning. The mobile web was the first example of a new web defined by digital experiences that conform to a user's context and devices,” says Buytaert. “Since then, Drupal has defined itself as the leading platform for ambitious digital experiences, and as channels and devices proliferate, Drupal will continue to lead the open source DXP market.

Powered by a global community of innovation

As part of this 20 year milestone, we celebrate our community of more than 100,000 contributors who made Drupal what it is today,” says Heather Rocker, executive director of the Drupal Association. “Success at this scale is possible because the Drupal community exemplifies the values of open source and proves that innovation is sustained by healthy communities. One of our key goals at the Drupal Association is to convene the resources necessary for continued project innovation, and we do that through the collaboration of a global community that continues to grow year after year.

In fact, Drupal contribution increased by 13% in a year when many industries contracted due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Drupal's open source model has built a robust and thriving ecosystem of individual contributors, professional service providers, and end-user organizations that is well positioned to capitalize on the next 20 years of digital innovation. 

Drupal continues to evolve, serving needs around the globe and expanding into new markets.  Future-looking priorities include a continued positive impact on the Open Web, the cultivation of a diverse and inclusive open source community, and an increased focus on editorial experience and usability—to make the power of the Drupal digital experience platform even more accessible.  

2021 will be marked with year-long celebrations happening around the world with particular focus at DrupalCon in April. Related 20th birthday events can be found on social media through the hashtag #CelebrateDrupal and at CelebrateDrupal.org.  

About Drupal and the Drupal Association

Drupal is the open source digital experience platform utilized by millions of people and organizations around the world, made possible by a community of 100,000-plus contributors and enabling more than 1.3 million users on Drupal.org. The Drupal Association is the non-profit organization focused on accelerating Drupal, fostering the growth of the Drupal community, and supporting the Project’s vision to create a safe, secure, and open web for everyone.

 
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For more information or interview requests contact Heather Rocker,  heather@association.drupal.org
 

On January 15, 2001, exactly 20 years ago, I released Drupal 1.0.0 into the world. I was a 22 years old, and just finished college. At the time, I had no idea that Drupal would someday power 1 in 35 websites, and impact so many people globally.

As with anything, there are things Drupal did right, and things we could have done differently. I recently spoke about this in my DrupalCon Europe 2020 keynote, but I'll summarize some thoughts here.

Why I'm still working on Drupal after 20 years Me, twenty years ago, in the dorm room where I started Drupal. I'd work on Drupal sitting in that chair.

I started Drupal to build something for myself. As Drupal grew, my "why", or reasons for working on Drupal, evolved. I began to care more about its impact on end users and even non-users of Drupal. Today, I care about everyone on the Open Web.

Optimizing for impact means creating software that works for everyone. In recent years, our community has prioritized accessibility for users with disabilities, and features like lazy loading of images that help users with slower internet connections. Drupal's priority is to continue to foster diversity and inclusion within our community so all voices are represented in building an Open Web.

Three birthday wishes for Drupal Me in 2004, giving my first ever Drupal presentation, wearing my first ever Drupal t-shirt.

Drupal's 20th birthday got me thinking about things I'm hoping for in the future. Here are a few of those birthday wishes.

Birthday wish 1: Never stop evolving

Only 7% of the world's population had internet access when I released Drupal 1 in 2001. Smartphones or the mobile web didn't exist. Many of the largest and most prominent internet companies were either startups (e.g. Google) or had not launched yet (e.g. Facebook, Twitter).

A list of technology events that came after Drupal, and that directly or indirectly impacted Drupal. To stay relevant, Drupal had to adjust to many of them.

Why has Drupal stayed relevant and thrived all these years?

First and foremost, we've been focused on a problem that existed 20 years ago, exists today, and will exist 20 years from now: people and organizations need to manage content. Working on a long-lasting problem certainly helps you stay relevant.

Second, we made Drupal easy to adopt (which is inherent to Open Source), and kept up with the ebbs and flows of technology trends (e.g. the mobile web, being API-first, supporting multiple channels of interaction, etc).

The great thing about Drupal is that we will never stop evolving and innovating.

Birthday wish 2: Continue our growing focus on ease-of-use

For the longest time I was focused on the technical purity of Drupal and neglected its user experience. My focus attracted more like-minded people. This resulted in Drupal's developer-heavy user experience, and poor usability for less technical people, such as content authors.

I wish I had spent more time thinking about the less technical end user from the start. Today, we've made the transition, and are much more focused on Drupal's ease-of-use, out-of-the-box experience, and more. We will continue to focus on this.

Birthday wish 3: Economic systems to sustain and scale Open Source

In the early years of the Open Source movement, commercial involvement was often frowned upon, or even banned. Today it's easy to see the positive impacts of sponsored contributions on Drupal's growth: two-thirds of all contributions come from Drupal's roughly 1,200 commercial contributors.

I believe we need to do more than just accept commercial involvement. We need to embrace it, encourage it, and promote it. As I've discussed before, we need to reward Makers to maximize contributions to Drupal. No Open Source community, Drupal included, does this really well today.

Why is that important?

In many ways, Open Source has won. Open Source provides better quality software, at a lower cost, without vendor lock-in. Drupal has helped Open Source win.

That said, scaling and sustaining Open Source projects remains hard. If we want to create Open Source projects that thrive for decades to come, we need to create economic systems that support the creation, growth and sustainability of Open Source projects.

The alternative is that we are stuck in the world we live in today, where proprietary software dominates most facets of our lives.

In another decade, I predict Drupal's incentive models for Makers will be a world-class example of Open Source sustainability. We will help figure out how to make Open Source more sustainable, more fair, more egalitarian, and more cooperative. And in doing so, Drupal will help remove the last hurdle that prevents Open Source from taking over the world.

Thank you A group photo taken at DrupalCon Seattle in 2019.

Drupal wouldn't be where it is today without the Drupal community. The community and its growth continues to energize and inspire me. I'd like to thank everyone who helped improve and build Drupal over the past two decades. I continue to learn from you all. Happy 20th birthday Drupal!

During the year 2021 we will be focusing on highlighting our work at 1xINTERNET and our solutions made with Drupal. We call this series “Celebrate 20 years of Drupal” where we will highlight 20 projects through the year that we are involved in and where Drupal has been used.

Open-source has the power to change the world, but, as we depend on it for democratic innovation, open-source also depends on us to thrive. At Axelerant, we know and own this; hence we’re constantly engaging in different open web communities, including Drupal’s.

Why are we writing this? First of all, we are always keen to shine a light on our team members because our people-first culture makes Axelerant succeed. Second, in a knowledge sharing spirit, we are willing to put out what has worked for us (and what we struggle with) regarding contributing and our community involvement.

We are celebrating Drupal’s 20th Anniversary, and we are proud of being part of that history for over a decade. What better way to celebrate than recognizing and sharing the stories of the people involved, the makers that keep the ball rolling.  

Celebrating our people and the community has been among our values since the beginning. Drupal’s 20th anniversary is one of those occasions where both of these values come together in demonstrating Axelerant’s commitment to be a productive part of the amazing Drupal community through its team.

Here, we want to share a few stories from team members who recently contributed and inspired us with their Drupal journey.

It is Drupal's 20th Birthday! Akanksha Mehta Fri, 01/15/2021 - 13:16

First of all, happy twentieth birthday to Drupal. Yes, you heard that right. It is Drupal’s 20th birthday! Two decades ago, an idea was conceptualised to improve the cost efficiency of an internet connection by sharing it among a group of friends. That idea has now turned out to be one of the biggest open source projects in the entire world!

On the occasion of Drupal’s 20th birthday, let’s look back at how Drupal has evolved organically in the past two decades to become a sustainable community over the years, one that holds immense capacity to keep thriving despite all odds.

Drupal’s growth over the years

Drupal 1.0 was launched as an open source project, drop.org, in 2001. Dries based it off Slash, a modular CMS, the first version having 18 modules one could work with. Notably, there was no bar on who could contribute to the software. 

This is what it looked like -

Isn’t it substantial, how far we’ve come?

When Drupal was upgraded, Drupal 2.0 promised a feature where one could translate or overwrite their site in a different language. This laid a major mark in expanding but also bringing together the Drupal community. Other updates included user ratings, user permission system and sections for stories and user groups.

In the third major version, nodes were made the main unit of content in Drupal - in comparison to web pages, nodes provided the much needed flexibility in the Content Management System. Every category of content - whether an article, a news report or a forum - was created as a node and subsequently managed by a node module. Thus, Drupal became more convenient to use for everybody.

Drupal 4.0 was significant for the fact that it saw expansion like never before - armed with an e-commerce module in Drupal 4.4 and an WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor, the fourth version of Drupal lay all its doors open. Web writers without a coding background could now use Drupal too, explaining the following surge in its usage after the release of the complete fourth version. 

Following its popularity, the first ever Drupal Conference was held in Belgium in 2005. Here’s Dries Buytaert’s ID from the event:

Source : Dries Buytaert's blog

This is how Drupal started transitioning into a global community in the truest sense, with people from all walks of life, across the globe using and contributing to it.

By the time Drupal 5.0 was released on Drupal’s sixth birthday, the number of contributed modules had gone up to 2500 and that of contributors was 492! Version 5.0 simplified web development by incorporating jQuery, a javascript library that made HTML way easier. Also included was a provision of pre-created but customisable Drupal packages and improved CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) management for greater speed on the sites. 

The sixth version of Drupal saw a sitewide growth and expansion - 7000 contributed modules were already in place in addition to 34 core modules and 600 custom themes. Drupal 6.0 added a rewritten menu structure, a ton of drag-and-drop features, even better security etc

With Drupal 7 and 8, customisation and personalisation had come into play in the digital sphere, and Drupal adapted accordingly. Drupal 7 provided URL handling, integration with e-commerce, and custom fields that could be brought to use across content types and users. Using installation profiles, companies could now systematically distribute their website. 

This is a snapshot of Drupal 7. Drupal had now started to look like its modern day successor, hadn’t it?

Source : Drupal.org

Drupal 8 rode the personalisation tide and responded aptly to the emerging needs of its user base, adding 200 essential features, one of those being adaptability of a website to the several devices it was accessed from. Personalised feeds and suggestions also came into play as businesses started to increasingly focus on User Experience. 

Called the ‘easiest upgrade in a decade’ by Drupal, Drupal 9 hit the market in the midst of a pandemic (which started making waves soon after Drupal’s nineteenth birthday), to cater to the needs of the worldwide user base stricken by it. Drupal 9 removed deprecated code and updated third party dependencies to curate digital solutions compatible with most businesses and individuals. Well, all your burning questions about Drupal 9 answered here.

Dupal 10 is slated to release in 2022 with a bunch of new features and upgrades!

OpenSense Labs and Team love Drupal! 

We at OpenSense Labs have been working with and loving Drupal for years now. Minimal learning curve, the support of a widespread community, and customisable components are some facets of Drupal that our developers are especially fond of. As Drupal turns 20, here’s what our in house Drupalists have to say about Drupal -

Once again, a very happy 20th Birthday, Drupal! Here’s to many more years of growth and innovation!

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The curious case of human psychology in project management Shankar Fri, 01/15/2021 - 11:03

It’s true that execution translates visions of the organisations into reality. Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan’s ‘Execution: The discipline of getting things done’ corroborates the same. In the software industry, it often translates to efficacious project management. Usually, a framework and specific methodologies are followed for the successful execution of a project. While the framework and methodologies are pivotal for project management, the human aspect of it can’t be sidelined.

Think of a Drupal project that is being undertaken by a project manager. He or she has a mix of experienced and newbies in the team who would help in the speedy completion and timely launch of the Drupal website. Amongst everything else, the human factor here is very important to be considered. The psychological aspects of the individuals, both the project manager and the team members, can well be the decisive factor for a project to be a success or a failure. Their perceptions, emotions, problem-solving skills, decision-making processes among others can have an astronomical impact on the way project is being handled and executed.

Key competencies in project management Source: Project Times

Project management methodologies constitute technical and procedural factors like scoping, scheduling, budgeting, quality assurance, risk, communications and procurement. And, they all very well established frameworks. But, it’s the people who act as the core of project management. In a study titled ‘Human factor skills of project managers derived from the analysis of the project management processes’, emphasises that people, not objectives and processes, make the project successful.

Importance of project manager skills | Source: ResearchGate

Creating and managing the psychological contract between leadership and team is also a must. Project managers need a set of skills to perform at his or her best. These set of skills can be put together in the ‘Eye of Competence’ model, states the research paper titled ‘The psychological contract and project management as a core competence of the organisation’. They are:

• Technical competencies
• Behavioural competencies
• Contextual competencies

Source: ScienceDirect

All the skills needed by the project manager related to project life cycle (initiate, plan, execute control, close) comes under technical competencies. The personal competence elements of project managers like attitude, abilities and behaviour come under behavioural competencies that help in dealing with different team-related challenges during the project lifecycle. Aligning project management with the organisational aspects of the company falls into contextual competencies.

The psychology of project leadership Helping shoppers actually helps in developing great facilitation skills | Source: UXmatters

Brett Harned, Author of ‘Project management for humans’, in one of the chapters, recalls his own experience of working in retail. As the salesman, he was incented to make sales for a commission. He recounts a particular incident when a couple came into the store and were looking for buying a gift for a family member. They started off with five pairs of sunglasses and zeroed in on two of them.  Because Brett wanted to make the sale but didn’t know the person who was to receive the gift, he shared everything he knew about the sunglasses ranging from facts about the glasses to a lot of ridiculous questions.

Eventually, they decided to buy the one they both agreed upon and were satisfied with it. They thanked him for helping them with the decision-making. This incident helped Brett understand what actually helped customers to make a purchasing decision. More importantly, experiences like this helped him understand the importance of ‘human factor’ behind the success of organisations. In organisations, it’s the people who can make projects difficult and it’s the people themselves who can make projects easier. More often than not, a project manager’s role becomes that of a facilitator because part of keeping a project on track is keeping the people on track.

Mental decision process | Source: ResearchGate

The proper analysis of the human factor in project management can be done if we know how the decision-making process is actually taking place.

To start off with the psychology of project leadership, look for the objective measurement of skills and knowledge, abilities, attitudes, personality traits and educational achievements using psychometric analysis. To do this, Myers Briggs or an assessment tool from McQuaig Institute can be helpful.

Emotional intelligence (EI) is also an important element to be considered for project managers. It is basically the ability to recognise one’s own and other people’s emotions. HBR defines it as:

“From a scientific (rather than a popular) standpoint, emotional intelligence is the ability to accurately perceive your own and others’ emotions; to understand the signals that emotions send about relationships; and to manage your own and others’ emotions. It doesn’t necessarily include the qualities (like optimism, initiative, and self-confidence) that some popular definitions ascribe to it.”

Source: Harvard Business Review

Daniel Goleman, Author and Psychologist, states that there are five important components of EI:

• Self-awareness
• Self-regulation
• Motivation
• Empathy for others
• Social skills

In the conference paper, Complex project management: towards a theory of cognition for ill-structured tasks, Michael Kilpatrick says that the hurdles encountered by project managers tend to be ill-defined and open to several interpretations. The project managers have to understand the internal dynamics of the team and stakeholders.

Moreover, we need to understand that project management is both cognitive conscious (planned forms of activity) and cognitive unconscious (critical thinking skills). So, project managers need analytical, organisational, interpersonal and intrapersonal skills.

Source: ResearchGateThe human side of team members and project managers

Consider the following pointers to get the highest level of productivity out of your team members in addition to making sure of their mental and physical well-being:

As a project manager, eliminate the usage of the term ‘resources’

Calling team members as ‘resources’ is the worst you can do as project managers. Because it’s not about using people to just get things done. It’s more about asking them to solve problems that are presented in your projects.

While talking to Project Managers and Scrum Masters at OpenSense Labs about this subject, I understood why the term ‘resource’ occurs in the first place. They observed that with mutiple projects, both small-scale and large-scale, being undertaken by the organisation, they, as project managers, have to be on their toes to ensure proper team effort and timely deliveries. Juggling between a multitude of projects and focussing an awful lot on deadlines, they have shown proclivity to see their team members as so-called resources. With so much going on, they agree that it does get tough sometimes to see the emotional side of a team member, but they know it themselves when things get too hectic and it’s time to put a personal touch so that everyone is at ease and takes it upon himself/herself to finish the tasks.

As a team member, choose product thinking over project thinking

One of the toughest challenges that project managers (or organisations for that matter) face is to try and elevate thinking and culture from a project level to a product level. The focus of project thinking is delivery. This could be specific features of a web application or revamp of an entire website. In contrast, product thinking enables you to focus on outcome rather than on output.

Instead of focusing on timelines and dates, there is an emphasis on the goal you want to achieve or the job to be done. So, it becomes much more difficult to put time constraints around the delivery, at least up front. Regardless of how we try and get there, we ensure that we get to the outcome more efficiently.

The project managers at OpenSense Labs encourage their team members to leverage product mindset instead of project mindset. They have observed it’s practically not possible to do micro-management of team members when involved in multiple projects. So, they expect them to show maturity and act on the tasks at hand with the product thinking approach. Because if they just focus on deliverables and finish off the tasks assigned to them, it becomes tougher and tougher for the project managers too to ensure the best result. They would rather want their team members to proactively work on tasks and come up with their own unique solution too. And, when the project managers look stressed when the deadline approaches, just hearing ‘We will take care of it, mate’ from at least one of their team members puts their mind at ease knowing that there’s a collective effort going on and it’s not just the project manager who is dedicated and concerned.

Make sure that the team is not overbooked and prevent developer burnout

Keeping your team members busy and working on tasks is a tricky thing. You need to create a balance in the amount of work that is being undertaken by your team members. This will enable you to confidently commit to deadlines on projects knowing that your team is actually available to do the related work.

Communicate about staffing as much as you can. In an organisation that is continuously handling change, you will know that it’s a tough target to hit. Nevertheless, make sure to stay ahead of the resource crunch. Your team will be appreciative of your efforts in protecting their work-life balance and work-life harmony.

Well, our project managers have always seen that the mental well-being of team members plays a crucial role for long-term planning. Constant communication and transparency in discussions with each and every member about how he or she is feeling mentally helps them understand whether or not a person is feeling overworked or overbooked. They have encouraged them to take a half day leave or even a full day leave when they are feeling low on spirits for whatever reason it can be. They have also focussed on assigning less critical tasks to less experienced members before moving on to give them the more important and complex tasks. This has helped in making a team member progress through the ranks, learn at his or her own pace and finally working on business-critical tasks when they themselves feel confident about it.

Connect with your team

Matching skills to your projects is a whole new task in itself. Connecting with your team and understanding what motivates them is crucial. Find out what your team members’ interests are. Get to know each and every team member’s work. With changing project schedules, plan how you will fill someone’s time with other work. Asking people to plan holidays and vacations in advance would help you plan ahead. Humans are hale and hearty one day and bedridden the next. So, you have got to be ready with a back-up plan.

Covid-19 pandemic affected OpenSense Labs in different ways and we found ways to cope with it. We made sure open-ended leaves are given to ones who contracted coronavirus for them to recover and be back at work when they feel completely okay. A lot of elders especially were more vulnerable during these times. And, one of our team members looked very worried about his father’s deteriorating health, so we made sure he is given some time to be with his father and the financial benefits are provided without any deductions in monthly income for his long absence from work. We have also seen that reallocating tasks to certain individuals have helped them in their learning process. For instance, we have assigned more HTML and CSS related tasks to the guys who wanted to learn frontend development. We have also ensured that we do not shout at anyone or humiliate anyone in a group call for lack of productivity. One-on-one conversations have helped us to communicate things in a proper way, understand someone’s personal setback or realise how someone’s not happy about his or her marriage-related discussions happening within the family. And, sometimes project managers, involved in several projects simultaneously, have to deal with upset clients for different reasons and our team members understand that. When the PM isn't able to join a meeting with a client, one of the team members gives assurance for filling in for him or her.

Here's how OpenSense Labs shifted to remote working environments during Covid-19 pandemic.

Consider the stakeholders as decision-makers

It’s of utmost importance to understand that no one gets trained formally or is taught at some place to be a good client, stakeholder or project sponsor. But it’s not like they don’t know how to. They do know the fact that they have to be polite and nice to a project manager. It doesn’t have to be drilled into their heads by some means. What matters the most is that they are also, at the end of the day, humans and show their emotions while working on several projects with several people at one time. Life as a client can be difficult. As a project manager, you have to help them plan their time appropriately and communicate properly.

A lot of the times our project managers would have to deal with frustrated clients not because of any kind of problems with our work but because of his or her own boss putting some pressure on them to get things done and asking for an update on some of the crucial tasks. Our PMs have to understand their emotions and communicate things in a way that there is a mutual understanding of each other’s emotional well-being. We have also put a particular emphasis on finishing off different tasks much earlier than deadlines for the client’s satisfaction even if it was not that urgent. And, there was an instance where one of our new guys couldn’t deliver any task for over a month. But our project manager communicated with the clients accordingly as he saw that the guy showed intent and gave enough time and space to prove that he can start delivering. His daily tasks were internally supervised and managed and it worked eventually. Sometimes, we have to deal with a situation where a guy, who has worked late hours and has given his everything to the project’s success, has to suddenly attend to his family crisis when the project is nearing deadline. We have always strived to show sympathy in such situations and provide any help to our guys we can. Our project managers have amicably discussed such situations with clients to figure out pushing the deadline to a different date or trying out another guy in place of him.

Once you have understood the importance of human factor in project management, it's time to start your next Drupal development project the right way, learn how to handle complex Drupal projects and why choose Drupal for a smooth web development experience.

Conclusion

Technology will always keep evolving and change the methods by which projects are completed. Projects themselves will keep changing in nature and scope. What doesn’t change? Human factor. Ethical behaviour, consideration of others, principles of communication and a quest for knowledge and excellence are some of the examples of those invariable elements. It’s important to learn and practice ways of optimising human interaction, to build trust and confidence and to efficaciously interact with team members, internal and external stakeholders, individual in positions of authority. All these considerations will ultimately pave the way for efficient project management.

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Decoupled Drupal and frontend technologies Shalini Rawat Fri, 01/15/2021 - 10:16

If we travel back to the time, we can assuredly see Drupal as a common factor in every other website. That is to say, websites that were built in the past used Drupal as an end solution to create, store, and display content in a seamless manner for end-user consumption. However, things are not the same as they used to be a few years back. 

Now, coming back to the present, the world we live in is encountering a significant growth in APIs and interfaces demand. As a result, agile organizations are constantly striving for a fantastically positioned CMS that can manage structured content across different presentation layers, that too in a consistent manner. 

Did we just hear a fantastically positioned CMS? Well, the only answer that we could think of is decoupled Drupal and we believe most of you would agree with that. 

Decoupled Drupal holds an innovative ability to deliver an outstanding digital experience to Drupal users worldwide. Furthermore, there is no doubt that Drupal has emerged as a true winner in this deep, enduring, and dynamic digital world. However, the ruling question here is - which is the right front-end technology that you may need in order to support the next phase of web development and further dominate the modern digital landscape. This particular question is worth noting as choosing the best front-end technology will help your organization to be the dominant force powering the development of all kinds of web applications.  

Continuing with that, if you want to catch up on some really important front-end technologies that can offer top-notch results, then this blog is a treat for you. This blog will introduce you to some best front-end technologies that you may need to look out for to rule the digital market space. 

If you are looking for the right front-end technologies, we assume that you have a decent understanding of what they are. Still, we are here to give you a bit of context as it won’t harm you. 

Front-end technologies “Just like shop fronts, front-end technologies draw your attention and compel you to engage with the site.’’ 

Starting off with the statement while walking around cityscapes, the first thing that you probably see is the shop front that is shiny enough to captivate you and draw you inside. The front-end does the same job as shop fronts. That is to say while surfing the web you get to see plenty of sites but there is one site that attracts you the most and you end up opening that site. This is nothing but simply the magic that the front-end does to the website to allure the audience. 

In the software development world, whatsoever is built falls under two categories: everything that is seen by the user and the processes that are happening in the background. In this blog, we will dive deep into the front-end part only.

Front-end technologies are everything that users see on the site and they interact with. You may have the most structured back-end programming to strengthen your application, but the front-end is what users see and mostly care about. In other words, the front-end plays a pivotal role when it comes to engaging users and encouraging them to take action. It is none other than front-end technology that works in a seamless manner to help you retain customers. Therefore, businesses that value their customers cannot afford to ignore the importance of front-end technologies.

Furthermore, speaking of the thousands of front-end technologies available in the market, the choice to choose a perfect one becomes tougher. To help you out, we have created a consolidated list of front-end technologies that can surely turn the tables in your favor. 

Ready to unveil the front-end technologies list? Yes? Let’s get started! 

Javascript

Be it a small scale enterprise or a large scale enterprise, Javascript is present everywhere and is well suited for everything. As a matter of fact, Javascripts frameworks are an important part of modern front-end development that has been widely used to build a dynamic modern application, real-time chat, eCommerce, inventory, processing, and much more. Javascript frameworks have been gaining a massive legion of followers for almost 2 decades. Consequently, there are many modern companies out there that make optimal use of these frameworks.  

Since every JS framework comes with its unique forte and shortcomings, choosing the best for your requirement is by no means an easy task. Therefore, we have listed down the top 3 JavaScript Frameworks that currently dominate the market in terms of popularity and are highly used to build web applications.

React

Reactjs is an open-source JavaScript library that is widely known and accepted for creating dynamic and highly responsive UI. Due to its component-based architecture, React is considered an efficient solution for developing fast & scalable front-end for the web as well as mobile applications. The primary focus of Reactjs is to build natural, interactive, and appealing applications with minimal coding. In addition to this, this front-end tool uses Virtual DOM in order to deliver blazing-fast rendering.

Features

Apparently, ReactJS is gaining quick popularity as the best JavaScript framework in the front-end ecosystem. The important features of ReactJS include the following-

• Unlike other large monolithic frameworks, React js is different and has a modular structure which makes its code flexible and easy to maintain. 
• Since React follows a unidirectional data flow, it becomes easier for developers to debug errors and know where a problem occurs in an application.
• React js is well known for creating interactive and dynamic user interfaces for websites as well as mobile applications.

Usage Statistics

React has seemed to position itself as one of the leading content management frameworks in terms of usage as shown in the graph below. 

Source: BuiltWith

When it comes to high traffic sites, React has seemed to perform better than other content management frameworks as represented in the graph below-

Source: W3Techs

Why pair with Drupal?

It is often believed that Drupal for the backend and React for the front-end can help you get the best of both worlds to build and maintain your websites. Well, this could happen for a number of reasons. Some of the common reasons include-

Websites with plenty of dynamic page elements and a huge amount of constantly-changing data cannot be more advantageous from this combination. 

Using React to deal with the UX complexities while relying on Drupal for handling the content can be used to offer a best in class UI experience.

Integrating Drupal with a modern library like React provides all the necessary modern mechanisms that can help you build seamless and a rich user experience. 

Angular

Next on the list is Angular. Originally designed by Google, Angular JS is a powerful and efficient open-source typescript based framework which is highly used to build client-side single-page web applications. Angular Js took inspiration from React, undergone drastic changes, and has come to the force as one of the most secure front-end JS frameworks for building enterprise-scale applications out of the box. In today’s contemporary era, more than a million websites are using Angular, including some global media giants like Google, Forbes, IBM, Microsoft, etc.

Features

Being an important part of the JavaScript frameworks, Angular is one of the most popular and powerful front-end development tools. Let’s discuss some features of this widely accepted front end framework-

• Angular intuitive API allows you to create high-performance, complex choreographies, and animation timelines with very little code.
• It has a client-side nature which certainly helps your website to keep cyberattacks at bay. 
• Using the Angular methods, it becomes easy to build desktop-installed applications across Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Usage Statistics

The graph below shows the market report of Angular in terms of its usage, which very evidently has seemed to receive a positive response from its users.

Source: BuiltWith

Angular has been powering some high traffic websites with its prowess as shown in the graph below-

Source: W3Techs

Why pair with Drupal?

Combining Drupal and Angular together can serve as a general picture of what awesome websites/applications may look like. Let’s take a look at the numerous possibilities this combination can lead to-

• Two is always better than one. That is to say, putting together two open-source frameworks like Drupal and Angular, we can only think of the extensibility and customizability these two can provide.  
• Security concerns have always been the top-most priority of any website. The powerful combination of Drupal and Angular does nothing but adds an additional layer of security which makes it difficult for hackers to inject malicious code into databases.
• Connecting AngularJS with Drupal allows you to move display logic to the client-side and streamline your backend, thereby boosting the performance of your Drupal website.  

Vue

Inspired by Angular, Vue is an open-source lightweight front-end Js framework that helps you build creative user interfaces and high-performance single page web applications. It is important to note here that Vue.js has adopted most of its features from famous front-end technologies like React and Angular with the view to deliver a better, easy to use, and secure framework. This aforesaid approach adopted by Vue can be understood by the fact that Vue provides a 2-way data binding as seen in Angular and ‘Virtual DOM’ as seen in React. Not to mention, the principal key advantage that Vue holds over other technologies is its simpler, uncomplicated, unrestrictive, and progressive nature. 

Features

Vue has encountered a massive explosion in popularity over the last 2 decades, owing to some of the most important features. Let’s take a glimpse of these features-

• Vue is flexible in nature which allows users to write the template in HTML file, JavaScript file, and pure JavaScript file using virtual nodes. 
• It offers different methods to apply a transition to HTML elements when added, updated, or removed from the DOM. 
• Vue.js avoids complexity and therefore allows simpler API and design which is highly demanded by web developers who wish to build simple applications.

Usage Statistics

The usage statistics of Vue have shown a historical trend and received a tremendous rise since 2014.

Source: BuiltWith

Vue has seemed to top the chart when it comes to high traffic websites, thereby gaining a competitive advantage over other frameworks as shown in the graph below-

Source: W3Techs

Why pair with Drupal?

The idea to take advantage of the best end-user experience calls out for the integration of Vue js with Drupal. Having said so, let’s take a closer look at the impact of this combination in the digital world-

• Using Drupal and Vue as a combination can help developers to enrich Drupal interfaces with reactive features with no jQuery, use ready Vue components, or build single-page applications that consume Drupal 8 data.
• The combination of Vue with Drupal makes Drupal competent to exhibit its magic at the back-end while the compelling features of the Vue handle the client-side.
• When combined together, developers can request and store Drupal content as data objects by simply using the official Vue-Resource plugin.

Static Site Generators

To begin with, static sites aren’t something new. They have always been here and the roots of the web are embedded in static sites only. What’s new are static site generators that are an alternative to database-driven CMS that focuses on one main task i.e., generate a complete static HTML-based site that does not depend on databases or external data sources, thereby avoiding server-side processing when accessing your website.

Improved performance and security are just a few reasons that static site generators have exploded in popularity in recent years. Choosing the best options from a wide range of considerations can be difficult. Therefore, we have rounded up the top 3 static site generators that you can use to build your website. Let’s give them a detailed look.

Gatsby

Based on React and GraphQL, Gatsby is the most talked-about static generator that leverages the power of GraphQL in order to utilize data from different sources in your project. Gatsby is a solid choice for sites that specializes in taking advantage of pre-fetched resources for other pages and only loading the parts of a website that are needed at any given moment. Gatsby is well-known for its speed, thus by using Gatsby, you can build fast loading and fully interactive Jamstack sites. 

Features

Gatsby provides some really powerful features that can improve developer experience, site performance, and overall shipping velocity. Let’s have a look at some of those powerful features-

• Gatsby is built with performance in mind. In other words, you can build sites with Gatsby that are 2-3 times faster and gives you fantastic performance out-of-the-box than similar types of sites. 
• One of the greatest strengths of Gatsby lies in its open-source community. That is to say, a solid collection of API hooks allows developers to customize Gatsby at every step of the build process.
• Built on some pretty popular technologies, Gatsby exempts you from the grueling learning process which means you don’t have to start everything from starch.

Usage Statistics

The usage of Gatsby has shown a tremendous rise over the period of time as represented in the graph below:

Source: BuiltWith

Gatsby shows a high market position when it comes to high traffic websites. Gatsby has clearly dominated the entire market in terms of popularity and traffic compared to other popular CMS as represented in the graph below-

Source: W3Techs

Why pair with Drupal?

Combing powers of Gatsby and Drupal are well capable of creating something truly amazing for the organizations. Sounds interesting? Let’s take a look at why pair Gatsby with Drupal.

• Using Drupal with Gatsby is a great approach for organizations who wish to build an enterprise-quality CMS for free, paired with a great modern development experience.  
• Pairing Drupal with Gatsby help you reap all the benefits of the JAMstack, which includes performance, scalability, and security.
• Static site generators like Gatsby are used in combination with Drupal to build a simple website solution that offers minimal server setup and a low maintenance cost. 

Metalsmith

Simply put, Metalsmith is extremely simple which is a collection of user-defined plugins. It is worth noting that in Metalsmith, all of the logic is handled by plugins and you simply chain them together. Because of all this, Metalsmith can build anything, from blogs to documentation to web apps and just about anything that falls in between. If you are looking for a tool that can be infinitely flexible, then Metalsmith is all you need to assist you. Metalsmith collects all the information from the source files from a source directory and further writes the manipulated information to files in the destination directory. Not to mention, all manipulations are left exclusively to plugins.

Features

The developer community loves Metalsmith for its robust features. Some of the Reactjs features that distinguish it from the rest are:

• Metalsmith owns a simple and quick configuration which means it includes plugins to generate the output as per the requirement of the source files. It generally exposes two ways to write generator configuration, including JavaScript and JSON.
• Metalsmith API is quite small in size including only 11 methods, wherein all transformations are done with plugins. 
• Unlike other CSS or JavaScript frameworks providing their own set of rules, Metalsmith gives you the entire freedom to decide where to store files, what we can implement, and how to implement.

Why pair with Drupal?

Combing Metalsmith with Drupal looks like an ideal choice to JS developers. There is surely more that you can obtain from this combination. Some of the notable improvements you may encounter are-

• A combination of Metalsmith’s exceptional capabilities as a static site generator along with Drupal’s spectacular backend can be used to serve data to all kinds of clients.
• Server data can be easily leveraged for building pages dynamically at build time using Metalsmith as a static site generator and the Nunjucks template engine.

Tome

Built-in Drupal 8, Tome is a static site generator and a static storage system for content. When Tome is enabled in Drupal, any changes to config, content, or files are automatically synced to your local filesystem. These exports can be used to fully rebuild- the site from scratch, which removes the need for a persistent SQL database or filesystem. Later on, when you feel you are all set to push to production, you can use Tome to generate a static HTML version of your site.

To simply put, everything is embedded in one repository and Drupal only runs on your local machine.

Features

If you are a fan of Drupal or are interested in working with structured content, then you must have a look at the following features offered by Tome.

• The tome is well-capable of generating a static site only using Drupal (no JavaScript required).
• Content is stored in Git and only uses Drupal when you need it.
• Static build sites are always partial and cached by default.
• Both views pagers and Media OEmbeds function out of the box

Conclusion

To sum it up, it feels great to see Drupal uniting with other front-end technologies in order to render excellent digital opportunities which is surely a pressing priority in today’s era. Moreover, we would also like to lay special emphasis on the fact that decoupled Drupal is the new innovation that companies across the world are going over. 

It is important to note here that moving from Drupal to headless/decoupled Drupal requires coordination as well as a balance between two main components i.e, front-end and back-end in order to build outstanding software and web application. Choosing the right front-end technology is quite challenging as there are chances that you get easily overwhelmed by the sheer number of technologies available. So, make sure you take out time to research and go with the one that suits you best.

blog banner blog image Decoupled Drupal Frontend Headless Drupal Headless CMS Decoupled CMS Blog Type Articles Is it a good read ? On

Last year, Mariano had a proposal: let’s try to automatically deploy after successful testing on Travis. We never had anything like that before, all we had is a bunch of shell scripts that assisted the process. TL;DR: upgrading to CD level was easier than we thought, and we have introduced it for more and more client projects. This is a deep dive into the journey we had, and where we are now.

Today, just 20 years ago, the first version of Drupal, Drupal 1, was released. Many technologies have emerged in these 20 years, became relevant, lost their relevance again and disappeared. But not Drupal. We join in a loud (and somewhat off-key) "Happy Birthday" in our minds for its 20th birthday. Great that Drupal and its wonderful community have been part of the web world for so long!

Today, on Drupal's 20th birthday, we are kicking off celebrations that will last throughout 2021. Together, let’s celebrate 20 years of Drupal and our Community - the inspired makers that keep Drupal innovative. 

As part of this 20-year milestone, we celebrate our community of more than 100,000 contributors who made Drupal what it is today,” says Heather Rocker, executive director of the Drupal Association. “Success at this scale is possible because the Drupal community exemplifies the values of open source and proves that innovation is sustained by healthy communities.”

To kick things off, we have a few ways for you to get involved:

• Promote the official Press Release of Drupal's 20th birthday to your local tech media
• Submit your Drupal birthday celebration to Community Events 
• Post a selfie of your celebration on Celebrate Drupal
• Submit Drupal milestones to the 20 Years of Drupal History timeline
• Share your excitement and what you’re doing to celebrate on social media - and be sure to add the hashtag #CelebrateDrupal
• Participate in our 'Drupal Doodle' event - where we're looking for celebratory banners to feature on Drupal.org
• Propose content for DrupalCon North America 2021 that showcase the ambitious digital experiences you’ve created with Drupal
• Register for DrupalCon

With so much to celebrate, today's activities are only the beginning. Keep an eye on this blog, the @drupalassoc on Twitter, and Drupal Association on Linked In for more activities throughout 2021. 

Drupal and Flutter: native mobile app experiences for your audience Editor Thu, 01/14/2021 - 23:41 Drupal and Flutter: adding native mobile app experiences to Drupal

Even if your Drupal website is doing great, its audience engagement and user experiences can always reach new heights — the heights at which you can almost hear the fluttering of the wings!

It’s the Flutter framework that will be the main topic of this blog post from the Golems Drupal team. We will discuss what Flutter is, how it works, what benefits and features make it the solution of choice for more and more developers, and how Drupal and Flutter are combined for creating native mobile app experiences.

What is Flutter? Brief introduction and overview of benefits

Flutter is a free and open-source cross-platform UI toolkit or framework that helps developers quickly and easily build beautiful apps for mobile, web, and desktop. The applications are natively compiled from a single codebase.

Serving on the Drupal Community Working Group has been one of the most fulfilling experiences of my career in open source. Since 2013, I’ve had both the honor and the privilege to work alongside some of the most thoughtful, patient, and devoted members of our community to help develop processes and structures for community governance, resolve conflicts, and help make the Drupal project and community a more friendly and welcoming place for everyone. That work has at times been challenging, but it has also provided many opportunities for learning and growth.

All good things must come to an end, however, and as announced at DrupalCon Europe last month, I’ve been working with the other members of the CWG over the last year on a plan to step down from my current position on the Conflict Resolution Team and make way for fresh talent and leadership. 

As our Code of Conduct states, “When somebody leaves or disengages from the project, in whole or in part, we ask that they do so in a way that minimizes disruption to the project. This means they should tell people they are leaving and take the proper steps to ensure that others can pick up where they left off.”

In my case, this means that while I will no longer be one of the people responsible for fielding incident reports or acting as a facilitator to help community members resolve conflicts, I will continue to be available to the current members of the team on an as-needed basis to help provide background and context for past issues. I will also continue to serve as a member of the CWG’s Community Health Team, working on projects to proactively improve community health, such as updating our Community Code of Conduct. I also plan to spend more time advocating within the broader open source community for improved community management structures and processes.

With this transition comes an opening within the Conflict Resolution Team, who is currently engaged in a search for new members, which is being led by Tara King (sparklingrobots). You can learn more about the kinds of folks we are looking for in our last call for members from 2018; additionally, all members are expected to abide by the CWG’s Code of Ethics.  

As per the CWG's charter, new members of the CWG’s Conflict Resolution Team are appointed to up to two 3-year terms by the group’s Review Panel, which consists of the two community-elected Drupal Association board members, plus an independent representative appointed by the board as a whole.

If you are interested in being considered, please reach out to Tara or email drupal-cwg@drupal.org. In addition to the openings on the Conflict Resolution Team, we are looking to fill several roles on our Community Health Team for people looking to help make a positive difference in our community.

In closing, I want to thank all of my past colleagues on the CWG: Donna, Angie, Roel, Adam, Mike, Emma, Rachel, Jordana, and Alex, as well as the countless community members who have helped us out in various ways over the years. Drupal is better because of you and your contributions.

I once sat on a mountain and deeply contemplated the mysteries of Drupal development. Actually, I live on a mountain, so I do this every day, and the title of this post isn't a Zen revelation, I stole that from Elon Musk.

I'm not trying to build rockets and send humans to Mars, and I don't want to draw too many parallels between what I do and the complexity of that enterprise, but we do solve some complex problems of critical importance to our clients. Every efficiency we can gain improves outcomes.

Explore a brief tour of Acquia Site Studio and learn why it could be a solid fit for your next project.

What browsers are Drupal sites tested on in 2021?

Internet Explorer is still relevant to a minority of respondents. Unfortunately for DXPR, this number was three times higher in the separate survey that we sent to our clients. Internet Explorer was not only relevant to 60% of our clients... it was relevant to all our "Enterprise" clients which means we cannot drop IE in QA testing our Drupal Layout Builder, even in 2021. 

Safari is becoming less relevant, with 1 out of 4 respondents giving a pass on QA testing in this browser. Edge is still at 75%, but with Edge being based on Chromium I wouldn't be surprised if this number will be lower next year unless they start developing a lot of new features that are not found in Chrome.

What devices are Drupal sites tested on in 2021?

Desktop is still number one but there is only one respondent who does not test on mobile. I wonder if there is a future where Desktop will become less relevant than other device types for Drupal "applications". Maybe the question should be "when" and not "if".

What version(s) of Drupal are we using in 2021?

No surprise that Drupal 9 has the highest score, because all new projects should be starting on Drupal 9. the majority of Drupal sites currently online runs Drupal 7, according to data that depends on the "update module" being turned on, so it's no surprise to see that over half of the respondents are still working on Drupal 7 in 2021.

The same data I linked above, together with the data from this survey, suggests that the upgrade from Drupal 8 to 9 is not really as trivial as advertised.

Bonus question: What Drupal hosting platforms are you working with, in 2021?

It's no surprise to me that Pantheon.io is the most popular choice here, and I'm also happy to see they are getting more competition. Amazee.io with their Lagoon platform is a (relative) newcomer to the Drupal platforms market and they are getting traction.

I had not heard about OpenShift before. Apparently, it's an on-premise cloud platform. An interesting concept considering increased pressure on data security and end-user privacy. 

Who filled out this survey?

This survey was mostly filled out by agency-side Drupal professionals. 14% of respondents are client-side, i.e. working at a company that uses Drupal. 

Thank you

Thank you for helping us and our readers make better decisions about what Drupal environments to support!

Put Drupal glasses or masks on any image using the rokka.io image service:
https://rokka-fun.liip.to/drupal

Make sure to share using twitter using the #CelebrateDrupal hashtag.

Thanks to Christian Stocker for swiftly implementing the idea on rokka.io and Nico Grienauer for providing the gimmicks.