Unveiling Drupal’s Competitive Edge: Insights from DrupalCon Lille 2023 for Decision-Makers

Much like a time-honored tradition at every DrupalCon Europe, the recent event in Lille, France witnessed the delivery of the highly anticipated State-of-Drupal keynote by Dries Buytaert (Creator and Project Lead of Drupal and Acquia’s Cofounder, Chief Technology Officer, and Chief Strategy Officer)—popularly known as "Driesnote". However, this year's Driesnote came with a delightful twist, showcasing the cherished tradition with a fresh and imaginative approach, where Drupal is personified as a character living in 'Drupal Village'. The keynote was transformed into an engaging story, highlighting how the Drupal community collaborates to simplify website creation and management. A "fairytale" indeed that carries promising messages. Continue reading to explore the three major sections that dissected the keynote, each offering valuable insights into Drupal's journey so far and its future direction.

Part 1: Drupal’s Quest Beyond Borders

Drupal's journey beyond the borders is marked by several key points that define his quest for innovation and continuous improvement. Let’s breakdown this section and explain his quest for improvement through five defining components:

1. Addressing challenges

The Drupal community valued attributes like creativity, flexibility, freedom, scalability, accessibility, collaboration, etc. And while the village prospered—owing to its diverse residents who brought distinct and innovative concepts to the forefront—it had its own share of challenges to deal with. Discontent among villagers grew stronger as they found that the complex tools and the rising demands of upkeep were hindering them from realizing their dreams. Drupal recognized its improvement efforts fell short as young builders left the community. This prompted his visit to the neighboring villages, exploring their true potential, seeking solutions and fresh perspectives.

2. Learning from the competitors

Curiosity led Drupal to explore the four neighboring villages, one after the other:

• Reactopia (The incognito title for React)

Pros: The houses were attractive and had stunning details on the outside. The inhabitants quickly embraced whatever was in fashion.

Cons: Inside, the houses were quite simple and lacked many modern conveniences. A great deal of manual labor was required to deal with the everyday functionalities, making it inconvenient for less technical users.

Insights drawn: Drupal had already solved many of the issues Reactopia was still dealing with.

• ConTentville (A covert name for Contentful)

Pros: It promised simplicity, quick and easy setup, easy-to-use tools, and a starter kit.

Cons: The inhabitants were faced with the challenges of proprietary vendor-lock-in and couldn’t leave even when there was a price hike.

Insights drawn: To make Drupal user-friendly and ensure that the inhabitants can come and leave at their own convenience.

• Squarix (The incognito title for Squarespace/ Wix)

Pros: It struck Drupal as something easier to get started with and already had all the required amenities. The best things about Squarix were their magical maintenance and automatic update features.

Cons: all the houses looked exactly the same and lacked variation of any kind.

Insights drawn: Drupal found the concept of maintenance assistance intriguing.

• Edoby Heights (A covert name for Adobe)

Pros: It was a grand and luxurious gated community that looked powerful from the outside.

Cons: It was very expensive and the building process was very slow where many of the houses remained unfinished.

Insights drawn: Each village had its own pros and cons

3. Openness to adapt

Drupal's proactive approach in studying its competitors showcases its adaptive nature. As it explores each of these villages, it gains valuable insights from their successful strategies as well as mistakes. This kind of adaptive learning process allows Drupal to stay at the forefront of innovation, and stay well-prepared for challenges and opportunities in this dynamic digital landscape.

4. Collaborative efforts

Based on the insights Drupal acquired during his visits to the neighboring villages, he now aims at enhancing the builder experience by streamlining the process of starting, building, and maintaining the houses within the Drupal community. This process mirrors the challenges faced in creating, developing, and maintaining websites. It emphasizes on empowering every Drupal development company to provide simpler, more efficient solutions to address these common concerns.

5. Innovative spirit

Drupal embraced an innovative spirit during his visits to the other villages. This helped him identify and implement promising solutions for the inhabitants that made Drupal support and maintenance easier than before:

• Simplifying the initial setup through Project Browser, which is scheduled for release in summer 2024 alongside Drupal 10.3
• Developing user-friendly tools, empowering villagers with intuitive instruments, which resulted in:
• Conceptualizing  seamless use of content modeling (Field UI) through modals rephrasing.
• Making Drupal’s administrative navigation easier to use with the help of new sets of toolbars. How? by moving most of the admin navigation functionality to the left vertical sidebar and a possible top bar with contextual tools.
• Drupal entrusted Lauri Eskola (Drupal Core Product Manager) to directly engage with the Drupal users and agencies and conduct census surveys to improve Drupal’s page building experience and launched next generation page builder.

Efforts to reduce the manual workload and maintenance have been initiated. This includes the introduction of a new release and innovative model, automatic code fixes, and upcoming automatic updates—all with a specific focus on Drupal 10.3.

As Drupal 9 nears its end-of-life & with 97% of the modules already being Drupal 10 compatible, Dries encourages users to Upgrade their sites to Drupal 10! Still on Drupal 7 and feeling stuck? It’s the perfect time to leap forward with Srijan’s Drupal consulting services now!

Part 2: Protecting the Village from Looming Shadows: Drupal as the Champion of the Open Web

Drupal continues to stand against the proponents of the closed web by defending the community against issues like vendor lock-in, data misuse, proprietary software, data misuse, etc., promising open and accessible web to all. The commitment lies in ensuring an open and accessible web for everyone, aligning with Acquia's Open Web Manifesto. Rooted in freedom, decentralization, inclusivity, and empowerment, the manifesto promotes data protection, innovation, and equitable digital future. Dries also mentioned three strategic investment initiatives that emphasized Drupal’s commitment to championing the open web, which includes:

• Continuous Innovation - aims to stay ahead in open-source solutions
• Marketing - to spread the benefits of open-source platforms
• Philanthropy -to foster community support

Part 3: Pushing the Storyline: Conclusion

Dries emphasized on the importance of collaboration in shaping the future of Drupal. Wrapping it up, Drupal’s journey has unveiled three impactful promises:

• Improved builder and editor experience to meet the evolving needs of the developer and end-user experience
• Pledged support to open web
• Spreading the benefits of open-source platforms and reinforcing Drupal's stand against closed, proprietary systems

The story continues as Drupal continues to evolve and bring a brighter digital future for all.