Planet Drupal

How the Drupal Association raises money can shape who influences the project and which work gets sustained. James Abrahams makes that tension central to his board candidacy.

A backend engineer guide to Single Directory Components in Drupal bhavinhjoshi Thu, 08/06/2026 - 17:36

Bridging the gap between custom modules and strictly typed components

Single Directory Components completely changed how we handle the frontend. But if you spend most of your time engineering the backend, SDC can feel incredibly frustrating.

You build a massive render array, pass it to the template, and the strict schema rejects it instantly. The days of dumping raw entity objects into Twig are over.

When you work with SDC, the component dictates exactly what data it accepts. This guide details the cleanest way to format your data and bridge the gap between custom backend logic and strict frontend schemas.

Implementing the Component Workflow

If your backend architecture does not format data perfectly, the system throws a fatal error. Follow these steps to ensure your data matches the strict schema requirements.

1. Define your component schema

Every component needs a YAML file. This is the contract your backend must follow. Keep your properties simple and predictable.

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Open-source code may remain available while the services, organisations, licences, and support arrangements around it change. Drupal delivery teams need accurate dependency records and workable continuity plans throughout the software’s operational life.

The European Commission wants public bodies to become stronger users and contributors to open source, supported by fairer procurement, maintenance funding, security measures and long-term stewardship.

Explore the inner workings of the AI Chatbot module to customise the chat experience via hooks.

This post is adapted from the DA Insider, the Drupal Association's monthly newsletter. Subscribe here to get it in your inbox each month.

A note from our interim CEO

Dear Drupal community,

Open source hums along on the work that just gets done. As I step into the interim CEO seat, I'm making a point to notice the sheer volume of work powering this ecosystem, from the DA and beyond. Here's some of what has come together in the past month:

• Our engineering team migrated hundreds of projects to GitLab, security issues included, and kicked off an RFP to make launching a Drupal site dead simple.
• DrupalCon Rotterdam is ready and in the homestretch.
• The DrupalCon Orlando call for speakers opened August 4. If the event converts even half the enthusiasm of the local team (or the cuteness of Bytes the Gator), it's going to be one to remember.
• We're building a new front door to introduce Drupal to new audiences and evaluators, and we're looking for help.
• The community has 14 global events dropping this August and partnership groundwork under way in Burkina Faso.
• Nominations are open for the Women in Drupal Award, an honor I was humbled to receive back in 2023.

My goal as interim CEO is straightforward: make sure the Association's foundation is resilient enough to support all this energy. The first step is helping all of us notice and appreciate the work that already "just happens."

I hope you enjoy this month's newsletter and everything everyone's been building. And one final note: board elections are open. Please vote.

Tiffany Farriss Interim CEO

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Take Away

Ajit Shinde, Sr. Drupal Developer and a longtime open source contributor, built the workspace tools in the Tool Belt module so AI agents in Drupal work under the same staging and review rules as human editors.

AI assistants can already generate content, update fields, and perform administrative tasks in Drupal. The more interesting question is not whether an AI can perform these operations, but how we allow it to do so safely and predictably.

Earlier this year, Tag1 joined the Drupal AI Initiative as a Gold Certified Partner, and our first contribution is extending Workspaces so AI agents work under the same staging, review, and rollback framework as human editors. The workspace tooling in this post is part of that governance work.

Tool API: The Foundation

To get Workspaces talking to AI agents, we built a new module called Tool Belt on top of Drupal's Tool API. The Tool API does the underlying work, so it's worth understanding first.

The Tool API provides the system that allows Drupal to expose structured, callable operations to AI agents. It defines how tools are described, how inputs are validated, and how results are returned.

In short, it turns Drupal functionality into well-defined actions that an AI can safely invoke.

Tool Belt builds on that.

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Last week, PreviousNext joined forces with fellow Drupal Certified Partners Annex, Morpht and Salsa Digital for a shared booth at the Public Sector Network's Government Innovation Showcase in NSW. We came together to show government agencies what Drupal has to offer, including Drupal CMS, AI, security, and content governance.

by griffyn.heels / 6 August 2026A joint effort, not a competition

Drupal Certified Partners don't usually share a stand, so this was something special. PreviousNext, Annex, Morpht and Salsa Digital came together to present a single message about what Drupal delivers for the public sector.

Several attendees commented on this directly, with consistent feedback on how collaborative the presence felt.

This mattered because most people in the room already knew Drupal. Thanks to OneCX's presence across the NSW government, there was no need to explain what Drupal is or how PreviousNext support it. That freed up conversations to go deeper, into real problems agencies are trying to solve and how recent innovations in Drupal can help address them.

What stood out from the sessions

The day's sessions reinforced a theme that's top of mind for many of our government clients: how to use AI responsibly without losing sight of the people doing the work.

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Why I Use OpenCode as My AI Harness Jürgen Haas Wed 5 Aug 2026 - 18:30

This article explains why I use OpenCode as the stable local harness around replaceable remote AI models. The core distinction is simple: my agents, permissions, skills, and workflow should remain mine, while model providers such as Anthropic, OpenAI, OpenRouter, or Z.ai stay external and swappable. I also describe why one-time configuration matters in practice: the same setup can be reused in the OpenCode terminal, CodeNomad, IntelliJ IDEA, PhpStorm, Zed, and Buzz through ACP. The point is not novelty. It is privacy, sovereignty, provider independence, and not rebuilding the same harness every time a new interface shows up.

Drupal’s openness is tested not only by software choices, but by who carries the maintenance burden and whether institutions support the commons they use.

An exploration of how to set up Drupal AI automators to improve the editor experience when maintaining content.

A/B Testing in Drupal Without the Enterprise Price Tag: A Practical Guide Using the A/B Test JS Module Joel Steidl Tue, 08/04/2026 - 16:56 Drupal

Many organizations want to run A/B tests but either don’t know where to start or are discouraged by the high cost of enterprise-grade experimentation platforms like Optimizely or VWO. The good news: if your website runs on Drupal, there’s an approachable, flexible, and cost-effective alternative that can be built right into your existing Drupal instance.

But first—what is an A/B test?

A/B testing is a method for comparing two or more versions of a webpage or user experience to determine which performs better. Visitors are randomly assigned to different versions (variants), and their behavior is tracked to measure effectiveness against a goal; such as conversions, engagement, or navigation success.

In this post, I’ll share how we implemented A/B testing for Oberlin College & Conservatory to test two versions of a homepage design using the community-contributed A/B Test JS module and why it’s a powerful approach for teams that want accurate testing without engaging with another vendor or purchasing software.

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Cost anxiety

Last month, on a client project, I ran out of my monthly 10,000 Copilot Credits allotment (which costs approximately $100 USD). Limiting developers to 10,000 Copilot Credits per month is probably not enough for enterprise development, yet these limitations forced me to think about how best to use my tokens, specifically which models to use them with.

Token anxiety

Watching these credits being consumed was anxiety-provoking, especially as the context window filled up quickly while I desperately tried to get the AI to fix the creation of the Drupal model that had skidded off the rails. In just 2 hours, I consumed 2,000 credits, which forced me to research how best to get the most out of my credits/tokens. The most immediate mistake I made was spending 2 hours in one session, which created a huge context window that was being compacted as more and more tokens were consumed with each request and response. The biggest mistake I made was choosing the wrong model to begin with and, more specifically, using only one model and only one tier.

Choosing a model

The big three LLMs that I use are: Claude from Anthropic, GPT from OpenAI, and Gemini from Google.

Since Claude Code was the first coding harness to produce acceptable code, it is the default for many developers, but damn, Claude is expensive.

Gemini is said to be the cheapest model, but frankly, my one-off experiment didn't generate acceptable code. Simply put, I can live with an LLM getting a method's parameter order or data typing wrong, but when they start inventing nonexistent methods, I am out.

GPT has become my go-to model because the code is decent, readable, and refactorable.

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Data can remain in one jurisdiction while account ownership, administrator access, software dependencies, and exit control sit elsewhere.

Search is no longer just about rankings. This blog breaks down how AI, AEO, and GEO are changing SEO and what you need to do to stay ahead.

AI may accelerate output, but the featured speakers are looking at the content structures, application design, development processes, and working conditions that surround its use.

When I took on the role of Interim CEO, I committed to being direct about our finances and noted that our earlier audits already told much of the story. The board has now released our 2025 audit report, which was provided to the Board of Directors of the Drupal Association on 8 July 2026 and approved on 25 July 2026. It provides additional context and detail, but does not change the overall picture or our path forward. 

To be clear, nothing in this audit means any of the services the project depends on are at risk. What this audit does is help us to understand the status quo so that we can take appropriate action moving forward.

The DA Has Been Operating With a Structural Deficit 

The DA spent about $451,000 more on operations than we brought in last year (2025), and that followed a larger shortfall the year before ($923,000). 

Those two years are not cleanly comparable, because the 2025 audit also restates our previously audited 2024 results. Our auditors determined that about $353,000 of membership revenue had been recognized in 2024 that should instead have been allocated to 2025, when it was actually earned. This was a non-cash correction to our books: no money changed hands, and nothing was lost or misspent.

Together, 2024 and 2025 produced a combined shortfall of about $1.15M, which averages roughly $573,000 a year. Our current forecast puts 2026 on the same path.

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A First Look at the DrupalCon Orlando Venue mherchel Mon, 08/03/2026 - 16:00

Public software is easiest to celebrate at launch, when a service is delivered, a repository is published, and an institution can point to visible progress. Its harder test begins after the original contract ends. Security response, documentation, upgrades, knowledge transfer and operational ownership must continue even when the delivery team or supplier changes. The EU Open Source Strategy, published by the European Commission on 3 June 2026, treats procurement, deployment, maintenance and governance as parts of the same software lifecycle.

Public procurement should therefore test continuity rather than initial delivery alone. Buyers need to know whether data, configuration and documentation can be transferred; whether another supplier can operate the service; whether publicly funded improvements can be reused; who will handle vulnerabilities and dependency updates; and how long transition support will remain available. An open licence can widen the range of possible suppliers, but that choice remains theoretical when system knowledge, access procedures or maintenance budgets stay with the incumbent. Avoiding lock-in requires both legal permission and the practical capacity to act on it.

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Author: Will Huggins

In our previous blog posts, we’ve talked about how our growing ecosystem — now backed by 32 global partner organisations and a dedicated delivery team — is structured to build a secure, stable, and highly integrable AI-native digital experience platform.

So what does this mean for your day-to-day digital communications and marketing operations? How do you translate this into improved experiences for your audience, higher conversion rates, and reduced cost?

To win in the age of AI, digital leaders don’t just need faster ways to generate content or build great digital experiences. They need a platform that helps them move at maximum speed, while still maintaining the highest quality and content standards.

Here is an inside look at the key features on the Drupal AI 2026 roadmap, focused on the outcomes that matter most to digital communications and marketing teams: speed, brand safety, and measurable ROI.

"Prompt-to-Published" Page Building (Using Your Real Design System)

Many AI-powered page builders on the market suffer from what digital leaders call "AI Slop": random, messy, raw HTML blocks based on generic AI models. These pages can break your site's layout, look wildly off-brand, fail accessibility standards, and create the dreaded ‘technical debt’ for your developers to clean up.

Drupal AI’s upcoming Canvas AI Page Builder operates under a completely different paradigm. It is natively component-aware.

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