As part of the Drupal Associations ongoing mission to foster contribution in the Drupal project, we’re bringing you an experimental first edition of a new blog series - with a quarterly update on initiatives across the Drupal ecosystem, as well as calls to action highlighting where contributors are most needed. We’ve heard from many people in the Drupal community that it can still be difficult to understand the major priorities of the Drupal community, the state of current initiatives, and how to get involved. 

We hope that posts like this one provide a broad overview of current priorities in Drupal, and connect the dots to the individual mentors, initiative leads, and other community organizers who can help you get involved. 

We plan to do an update each quarter. We thank the Wordpress community for their example of a concise initiative update. Based on your feedback on this first edition, this format may evolve. 

If we missed reaching out to you, but you’d like to provide an update on an initiative you are involved in, please feel free to submit your update to this form. 

Updates

In this release, we have reports from the following initiatives and community groups.This is not a comprehensive list of all initiatives and community groups, just those who were able to provide an update in time for this post:

Active Drupal Core Initiatives

Mike Herchel updates us about Olivero - the new front-end theme

Where can we read more about your initiative?

https://www.drupal.org/about/strategic-initiatives/olivero

What have been your priorities in the last three months?

Getting into core! We’re finally in 9.1 as a beta experimental theme. Check it out!

What has been your greatest challenge in the last three months?

Getting it into core was a mad dash at the very end, but we pulled it off thanks to a lot of help from Drupal’s core contributors. Those folks are amazing! 

And what has been your greatest success in the last three months?

Getting into a beta status for core

Do you have a “call to action” you want to make to the Drupal Community?

Use it. Find and file bugs!

Jess updates us about Drupal 10 Readiness

Where can we read more about your initiative?

https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal/issues/3118143

What have been your priorities in the last three months?

  1. Ensuring that Drupal core is internally compatible with Symfony 5.0 and 5.1 (without using deprecated APIs), so that we can easily release Drupal 10 with a dependency on Symfony 6. (Done!) 
  2. Ensuring Drupal core and its upstream dependencies are fully compatible with PHP 8 as soon as possible so that Drupal 10 can set its minimum dependencies accordingly. (Done!) 
  3. Initial discovery on CKEditor 5 integration for Drupal 10 (Ongoing, challenging) 
  4. Replacing remaining forked jQuery UI code with modern alternatives (Ongoing) 
  5. Reducing jQuery use for an easier upgrade to future versions

What has been your greatest challenge in the last three months?

We have lots of JavaScript work needed, both for integrating CKEditor 5 and for reducing legacy jQuery and jQuery UI use, and few working on it these difficult problems.

And what has been your greatest success in the last three months?

Really great collaboration and problem-solving for upstream blockers to PHP 8 compatibility, and all compatibility issues with Symfony 5 are resolved, We’re now working on Symfony 6 compatibility (that is, addressing deprecations introduced in Symfony 5.1 and 5.2), which is the real goal for us for Drupal 10’s release.

Do you have a “call to action” you want to make to the Drupal Community?

Frontend contributors! We love you and we need your help!

We need help with several big changes related to core’s JavaScript: 

Furthermore, we need help from theme developers and contributors to join a new initiative to build a Starterkit Theme for Drupal core. https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal/issues/3050384 This theme starterkit will replace Classy as the best way to start building a theme for a Drupal site.

Tim Lehnen provides the latest info about Automatic Updates

Where can we read more about your initiative?

The best place to stay up to date is in the Automatic Updates issue queue, or by joining us in the #Auto-Updates channel in Drupal Slack.

What have been your priorities in the last three months?

Current Priority: Finishing our implementation of the php-tuf client and server code, so that we can move from our secure signing implementation into our actual updater code. 

Previous Priority: Over the course of the last quarter the Drupal Association hosted three contribution weeks, with Drupal initiative contributors as well as representatives from Joomla and Typo3. We used these contribution sessions to scaffold out the php-tuf library, and to align our architectural decisions in ways that will work across the php ecosystem. 

What has been your greatest challenge in the last three months?

Our update process must run the appropriate Composer updates as well, so we are currently attempting to architect a solution to account for the fact that Packagist itself does not yet have a signing solution for third party libraries. 

And what has been your greatest success in the last three months?

The Drupal Automatic Updates initiative has joined forces with both the Typo3 and Joomla communities, to share certain foundational components, like our secure signing schema. And speaking of secure signing, we are working closely with the Cloud Native Computing Foudnation’s TUF initiative for a robust and standards based signing solution. 

Do you have a “call to action” you want to make to the Drupal Community?

If you’re interested in the problem-space of securely signing software, consider contributing to the php-tuf project. If you’re more interested in understanding the update process itself, please join us in the Drupal Slack channel! 

The Decoupled Menus Initiative is getting organized

Where can we read more about your initiative?

The Decoupled Menus Initiative is in the process of organizing the official initiative team. Regular meetings are happening in the #decoupled-menus-initiative in Drupal Slack.

What have been your priorities in the last three months?

The main priority for the initiative has been gathering the initial group of contributors and getting organized. There is a clear path for understanding what a javascript menu component looks like, but there are much more challenging questions to be resolved about how to integrate non-php components into the Drupal core process. 

What has been your greatest challenge in the last three months?

This initiative is in the first stages of getting organized and up to speed. In addition, understanding how to work on non-php for Drupal core is a major challenge. 

And what has been your greatest success in the last three months?

Just launching this initiative as an official goal is greatly important. There has been very active conversation between initiative team members, core maintainers, and the drupal association as the organization kicks off. 

Do you have a “call to action” you want to make to the Drupal Community?

If you are an expert in using a javascript front-end for a Decoupled Drupal solution, if you are familiar with open source contribution in the javascript ecosystem, or if you are a competent project manager your insight would be valuable. Please join the initiative’s slack channel and regular meetings.

Additional Core Initiatives, Community Initiatives, and Community Group Updates

Jennifer Hodgdon updates us about Documentation and Help

Where can we read more about your initiative?

User Guide: https://www.drupal.org/project/user_guide; Contributor Guide: https://www.drupal.org/community/about/getting-involved-guide-becoming-contributor-guide; Help Topics: https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal/issues/3027054

What have been your priorities in the last three months?

User guide: minor updates and supporting groups making translations. There has been a lot of progress lately on German and French! Help topics: mostly writing new topics, and some progress on other Roadmap issues. 

Contributor Guide: Migrating content from the old Getting Involved Guide.

What has been your greatest challenge in the last three months?

Getting other contributors to review and commit patches, and to provide feedback on plans.

And what has been your greatest success in the last three months?

Migrating most of the content in the Getting Involved Guide to make several new and better-organized areas, such as the Issues documentation at https://www.drupal.org/docs/develop/issues and the Git documentation at https://www.drupal.org/docs/develop/git

Do you have a “call to action” you want to make to the Drupal Community?

You can help with curating and migrating older documentation into the newer documentation content types, or into the new Contributor Guide. Join the #documentation channel in Drupal Slack and another contributor can help you find a place to get involved. 

Elli Ludwigson updates us about Contribution Mentoring

Where can we read more about your initiative?

https://www.drupal.org/community/mentoring

What have been your priorities in the last three months?

Getting ready for DrupalCon Europe, updating documentation and materials

What has been your greatest challenge in the last three months?

Engagement. It’s been difficult to demonstrate value and a clear path to success for contributors and mentors. Also everyone seems a little low on energy lately and we could use more fresh folks coming into leadership roles.

And what has been your greatest success in the last three months?

Updating the contributor guide! http://drupal.org/community/contributor-guide

Jennifer Hodgdon and others have reorganized and made everything much more logical. AmyJune continues to do an amazing amount of work at many many virtual events, giving contributors a place to get started with Drupal.
Prior to the last three months Rachel Lawson did a lot to rethink the contribution and mentoring process with the portal we used at DrupalCon Global. Matthew Radcliffe and Gábor Hojtsy did a lot of work on that as well. And Randy Fay is often on hand to help with any and all local development environments and general Drupal troubleshooting.

Do you have a “call to action” you want to make to the Drupal Community?

Without creating any new projects, I’d say we could use an enthusiastic and experienced person to help clean up old issues and polish the documentation work. We could also use more mentors on hand in general for virtual events across various time zones, especially outside the Americas. 

Tim Lehnen reports back from the Contribution Recognition Committee

Where can we read more about your initiative?

The history and current membership of the Contribution Recognition Committee is summarized on Drupal.org. You can also reach out to contact the committee at crc@association.drupal.org

What have been your priorities in the last three months?

The major priority for the CRC has been to engage with the Drupal community at large, and gather feedback from all stakeholders about how contribution to Drupal should be recognized, recorded, and rewarded. 

The committee’s primary deliverable is to present a set of recommendations to the Drupal Association for the next generation of the contribution credit system. 

What has been your greatest challenge in the last three months?

Internal scheduling challenges due to COVID disruption have been the largest barrier to progress for the committee in recent months. Like many other volunteer committees, the CRC has had significant disruptions in the personal and professional space. However, the committee is making progress, and is nearly ready to present initial recommendations. 

And what has been your greatest success in the last three months?

The committees’ largest accomplishment has been a very robust round of stakeholder conversations with people throughout the community - so that we have a fair and broad spread of perspectives informing our work. 

Do you have a “call to action” you want to make to the Drupal Community?

We’d love to hear from you if you have thoughts or ideas about the contribution credit system. You can contact the committee at crc@association.drupal.org

Kaleem Clarkson updates us about Event Organizers Working Group

Where can we read more about your initiative?

https://www.drupal.org/community/event-organizers

What have been your priorities in the last three months?

Over the last three months we have mostly focused on finalizing what initiatives we should start with in 2021. 

What has been your greatest challenge in the last three months?

Our greatest challenge has been attracting more global representation at our monthly community meetings. At the beginning of this year, our group made an intentional effort in attracting more global participation. Through our efforts, we were able to recruit two new board members representing India and Ukraine. Another strategy was to change our meeting times to UTC format and alternate between 12pm and 12 am UTC. We are hoping that in 2021 we can increase the number of global camps represented in our open meetings. 

And what has been your greatest success in the last three months?

I think our biggest accomplishment has been confirming our four major initiatives that our group will focus on in 2021. These initiatives will be:

  • Onboarding At DrupalCon Community at Events, 
  • Event Organizers Website Starter Kit
  • Marketing the Events Organizer Group
  • Events Database Website on Drupal.org. 

Each initiative will have committees made up of one Event Organizer’s Working Group board member and volunteers from the Drupal community. For so many reasons, we are all looking forward to working in concert with event organizer volunteers from around the world.

Do you have a “call to action” you want to make to the Drupal Community?

We need all Drupal event volunteers to help spread the word about the Drupal Events Working Group. 

We will be looking for volunteers to serve on the committees of each of our four major initiatives and we can’t do it without you. 

Andrii Podanenko and Alla Petrovska update us about Drupal Virtual Cafe Ukraine and the Drupal Ukraine Community

Where can we read more about your initiative?

https://www.facebook.com/groups/drupal.ua

https://www.facebook.com/drupalcampkyiv-

https://drupalcampkyiv.org/

What have been your priorities in the last three months?

Supporting the Ukraine Drupal community during the pandemic

What has been your greatest challenge in the last three months?

Finding the available speakers for Drupal Virtual Cafes

And what has been your greatest success in the last three months?

We have organized three Drupal Virtual Cafes.3 online events, 2 speakers per each event, 60+attendees at each event from Europe and North America 

Do you have a “call to action” you want to make to the Drupal Community?

To connect the Ukraine Drupal Community and everyone interested abroad with the speakers by organizing the Drupal Virtual Cafe monthly. We have the capacity to organize, the issue is to find available speakers. 

We need to have more information about bottlenecks for organizing virtual DrupalCamps. We have planned DrupalCamp Kyiv 2021, but unsure about the details.

Jess Snyder updates us about Nonprofits

Where can we read more about your initiative?

https://www.drupal.org/community/nonprofit-drupal

What have been your priorities in the last three months?

Our top priority continues to be to provide a welcoming place for nonprofit Drupalists to get advice, share knowledge, and discuss the issues we’re all facing in this challenging time.

What has been your greatest challenge in the last three months?

Aside from dealing with the curveballs the past several months have thrown at all of us, nonprofits continue to struggle with the changes in Drupal requirements that have increased the expertise and costs required to build and maintain Drupal sites.

And what has been your greatest success in the last three months?

Aside from seeing new faces on our monthly calls, which we’re always thrilled about, we’re also proud of how our community is encouraging nonprofit orgs to try new features, like Layout Builder, while also discussing the challenges that come with trying new features that are still in flux.

Do you have a “call to action” you want to make to the Drupal Community?

Come and join our monthly call! Held on the third Thursday of the month at 1pm ET/10am PT, it’s free of charge, beginner-friendly, and open to anybody working for or with nonprofits and Drupal. 

Call-in info can be found on our community page (https://www.drupal.org/community/nonprofit-drupal) or in our collaborative notes document (https://nten.org/drupal/notes).

Nico Grienauer updates us about Drupical

Where can we read more about your initiative?

What have been your priorities in the last three months?

Getting the new drupical 2.0 ready for launch

What has been your greatest challenge in the last three months?

Finding time beside the global covid problems 

And what has been your greatest success in the last three months?

  • Getting finally access to drupal.org/community/events
  • Finalising the first version of the new drupical fronten now in vue.
  • Getting work done on the new drupal 8/9 drupical backend – found a possible solution, to also display online events on a map :)
  • Getting a link from the drupal main menu to drupical. 

Hopefully it will all be released in time for DrupalCon Europe!

Do you have a “call to action” you want to make to the Drupal Community?

stay healthy, stay at home and see you at one of the next virtual Drupal events!

Chris Teitzel updates us about Privacy

Where can we read more about your initiative?

https://www.drupal.org/project/ideas/issues/3009356

What have been your priorities in the last three months?

We are continuing to work with the community and project stakeholders to come to a plan for a privacy initiative and/or team that can be involved in core conversations to ensure privacy is taken into account with core features and initiatives. 

What has been your greatest challenge in the last three months?

Funding of the initiative is the next hurdle to jump after receiving confirmation from Dries that he still desires it to be an initiative.

And what has been your greatest success in the last three months?

Receiving confirmation from Dries that he still desires it to be an initiative!

Do you have a “call to action” you want to make to the Drupal Community?

Continued support and talking to maintainers about the need for a formal privacy team/initiative within the community. Sponsorships as well, any individual or organization can be involved.

Tara King updates us about Drupal Diversity & Inclusion

Where can we read more about your initiative?

https://www.drupaldiversity.com/

What have been your priorities in the last three months?

Drupal Diversity & Inclusion has been working on: 

  • Defining our roles & responsibilities: https://www.drupaldiversity.com/docs/roles-and-responsibilities
  • Recruiting new leaders to our leadership team
  • Holding space for our community to discuss diversity & justice
  • Planning social events for marginalized individuals
  • Developing talks & booth activities for Drupal events (most recently BADCamp)

What has been your greatest challenge in the last three months?

2020 has been our greatest challenge. :)

We have struggled with volunteer burnout, due to both COVID-19 and the US election cycle. Many folks have very limited time to give and even less energy, so we have focused on activities that support folks rather than new programming. 

And what has been your greatest success in the last three months?

We are thrilled to have three new individuals on our leadership team: Tearyne Almendariz as Careers Lead (https://www.drupal.org/u/ninelivesblackcat), Monica Flores as Resources Contributor (https://www.drupal.org/u/monicadear) and Esaya Jokonya as Booth Contributor (https://www.drupal.org/u/esayaj). 

Do you have a “call to action” you want to make to the Drupal Community?

Please join our meetings! We are making 2021 plans, and focusing on careers & job hunting for marginalized folks. We’d love to have more hiring managers and HR professionals involved in that work. Bring your ideas and we can work together to make the Drupal community more diverse & inclusive.

Alex Moreno-Lopez updates us about Drupal Swag Shop working group

Where can we read more about your initiative?

https://www.drupal.org/project/swagshop and, of course, visit the Swag Shop itself, at https://www.drupal.org/swag

What have been your priorities in the last three months?

On one hand, helping local DrupalCamps and DrupalCon to collaborate with the shop. On the other hand we’ve been trying to make sure the products available were event specific.

What has been your greatest challenge in the last three months?

Coordinating information and people, and particularly everything related to vouchers, discount codes has been particularly challenging

And what has been your greatest success in the last three months?

Watching other Drupal camps getting interested in using the swag shop and discovering that it gives them a good value as well. For example, NedCamp: https://nedcamp.org/

Do you have a “call to action” you want to make to the Drupal Community?

We need more people to talk about the initiative, and if you know a local camp, encourage the organisers to join the initiative.

Rain Breaw Michaels updates us about Accessibility

Where can we read more about your initiative?

https://www.drupal.org/docs/accessibility

What have been your priorities in the last three months?

Our main priority has been helping the Claro and Olivero themes reach a high enough accessibility standard to make it into core. We believe that these two projects will have a significant impact on enhancing Drupal’s position as an accessible authoring platform out of the box. 

A secondary priority has been increasing community involvement, and this is where we will focus our principal efforts over the next three months.

What has been your greatest challenge in the last three months?

Our greatest challenge is limited time and resources, largely due to the additional strain that COVID lockdowns and distance learning/remote working has put on our maintainers. 

An additional challenge is that our documentation is woefully out of date. This makes it more difficult for us to easily onboard potential contributors.

And what has been your greatest success in the last three months?

We held a public review of Olivero with the National Federation of the Blind (NFB). This is the start of what we hope may be a long standing relationship, as well as a new process for evaluating the accessibility of core contributions. We also added a new provisional topic maintainer, Ben Mullins!

Do you have a “call to action” you want to make to the Drupal Community?

Yes! Please review issues tagged with #accessibility, and find ones to fix, or that you would like to bring to our monthly office hours! You don’t have to be an expert. 

Become accessibility champions for initiatives that interest you and start conversations with us early so that we can help you find the right resources for evaluation and feedback. 

Finally, our documentation needs to be brought up to date, and your help would be welcome. 

Kay VanValkenburgh updates us about DrupalLadder

Where can we read more about your initiative?

https://www.drupal.org/project/drupalladder and https://drupalladder.org

What have been your priorities in the last three months?

Feature development focused on

  1. usability for learners and
  2. connecting Ladder info to corresponding official docs

What has been your greatest challenge in the last three months?

User experience design of the website

And what has been your greatest success in the last three months?

Seeing the value of the broad concepts and fitting together some of the major features

Do you have a “call to action” you want to make to the Drupal Community?

Help us by sharing information about how you work effectively - reach back to the people following in your footsteps and give them clear, adaptable paths to success

Drupal participation in Google Summer of Code

Where can we read more about your initiative?

https://groups.drupal.org/google-summer-code – our community collaboration location  https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/ – Google’s official program website  https://www.drupal.org/node/2415225 – where to get started for students (good read for potential mentors too). Read the 12 steps to help any student can get started on their own @ https://groups.drupal.org/node/535795

What have been your priorities in the last three months?

Google Summer of Code? an annual program for university students organized by Google with projects managed by open source organization mentors such as us (Drupal!). GSoC takes place during “summertime in North America” and wrapped up October with a very successful project. 

As a community, our initiative’s team of volunteers and mentors priority was supporting our student Vishal contributing to Drupal for several months. It was our responsibility to help the student learn more than writing code for a module. As mentors, we helped the student learn project management tools with professionally managed issue queues and techniques such as SCRUM. e reviewed code and tested modules with feedback helping a student who didn’t have a background in Drupal. As a community of volunteers, we made it a priority to ensure that our selected student would be as successful as possible.

What has been your greatest challenge in the last three months?

Finding mentors and projects ideas. If you’re interested in mentoring, please realize that we pair each student with on average 3-5 mentors per project. Mentoring is not a full time gig and can be accomplished with a few hours per week. Even if you simply have an idea for a project without becoming a mentor, please contact us at @ https://groups.drupal.org/node/536212

And what has been your greatest success in the last three months?

Vishal Chaudhary ( https://www.drupal.org/u/vishalghyv ) was Drupal’s Google Summer of Code 2020 student and obviously our greatest success in the last year. The fact that Drupal continues to find at least one student every year who becomes a truly amazing member of our community provides evidence GSoC was a success in 2020. 

Find Vishal’s code below and read about his journey through his @vishal38785">weekly GSoC blog and review his work on the Commerce Fraud project page. 

We also conducted an interview with Vishal, one of his mentors, and the creator of Drupal Commerce:

{{insert Youtube video here}}

Do you have a “call to action” you want to make to the Drupal Community?

Do you have a project idea and/or want to be a mentor? Please edit our 2021 project idea page @ https://groups.drupal.org/node/536212 with your idea. Even a few sentences or a link to an existing module page that can be ported to D8/9 works.

George DeMet updates us about the Drupal Community Working Group

Where can we read more about your initiative?

https://www.drupal.org/community/cwg

What have been your priorities in the last three months?

  1. The Community Health Team has been developing “nudge” templates to be used in issue queues to encourage all participants to engage in positive discourse: https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal_cwg/issues/3129687
  2. Offering discounted Code of Conduct enforcement training for Encouraging representatives from DrupalCamps and other events: https://www.drupal.org/community/cwg/blog/a-different-kind-of-contribution-become-a-trained-drupal-event-code-of-conduct
  3. Offering discounted Mental Health First Aid training for Drupal community members: https://www.drupal.org/community/cwg/blog/online-mental-health-first-aid-workshop-october-27-2020

Do you have a “call to action” you want to make to the Drupal Community?

Come to our session at DrupalCon Europe to learn more about what we’re doing and how you can get involved! https://events.drupal.org/europe2020/sessions/how-community-working-group-helping-make-healthier-community-panel

We want your feedback!

We hope that this first edition of our quarterly update has been useful. Because this first edition is an experiment, we’d very much like your feedback as a contributor or potential contributor to Drupal. 

  • What do you think about the length? 
  • Would it be more helpful to organize by code and non-code initiatives, or by some other method? 
  • Does quarterly seem like the right cadence? 
  • What would make the calls to action more clear for how to get involved?

Please let us know any ideas you have to help keep the community more informed and able to understand how to get involved.

https://www.drupal.org/community/blog/drupal-quarterly-initiative-update-q4-2020