State of Drupal Presentation  ## Metadata - Author: [[Dries Buytaert]] - Full Title: State of Drupal Presentation - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: - #drupal - #openweb - #marketing Author: Dries Buytaert Source: Blog post Reference: https://dri.es/state-of-drupal-presentation-october-2023 date created: 2025-08-23 00:00 --- # Title: State of Drupal (Oct 2023) — Driesnote Fairy Tale, Open Web, and Drupal’s Three Promises ## Table of Contents: - [🎥 Overview](#-overview) - [🏘️ A Tale of Four Cities](#-a-tale-of-four-cities) - [🧰 Easier to Start, Build, Maintain](#-easier-to-start-build-maintain) - [🧱 Next Generation Page Builder](#-next-generation-page-builder) - [🌤️ Open Web Advocacy](#-open-web-advocacy) - [🪄 Drupal Marketing Committee](#-drupal-marketing-committee) - [📣 Marketing Initiatives Ahead](#-marketing-initiatives-ahead) - [🤝 Drupal’s Three Promises](#-drupals-three-promises) - [📝 Summary](#-summary) - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) - [🗒️ Notes](#-notes) - [📖 References](#-references) - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#-paraphrase) - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) - [❓ Questions](#-questions) - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) - [💡 Implications](#-implications) - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-assessment) - [✅ Logical validity](#-logical-validity) - [🔍 SEO Evaluation](#-seo-evaluation) - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) ### References: - Dries Buytaert, “State of Drupal presentation (October 2023)” — https://dri.es/state-of-drupal-presentation-october-2023 - Video and slides linked within the article (noted as “watch video segment” throughout the post) ## 📝 Summary: Dries Buytaert’s DrupalCon Europe 2023 keynote reframes Drupal’s roadmap as a fairy tale: a journey through four “neighboring villages” (Reactopia, Contentville, Squarix, Edoby Heights) to learn from competitors, then rallying the Drupal community around three promises: improve the builder experience (easier start/build/maintain), advocate for the Open Web, and amplify Drupal’s marketing. Concrete near-term deliverables include Automatic Updates and Project Browser targeted for Drupal 10.3 (June 2024), content modeling and admin toolbar enhancements, and a new strategic initiative: Next Generation Page Builder. The post culminates with a call to action around a formal marketing function to increase Drupal’s visibility. ## 📖 Main Content: - The keynote uses an allegorical narrative to depict Drupal’s evolution and community momentum. - Competitor analysis is transformed into lessons for improving DX/UX: lowering friction to start, building faster with better tools, and making maintenance safer and easier. - Strategic initiatives: - Automatic Updates + Project Browser as foundational “starting/maintaining” improvements (aimed for Drupal 10.3). - Content modeling and admin toolbar refinements to speed builders. - A new Next Generation Page Builder to upgrade layout-building UX. - Open Web advocacy is positioned as a moral imperative against “Closed Web” forces (vendor lock-in, centralization, data misuse), inspired by Tim Berners-Lee. - A new Drupal Marketing Committee crafts Drupal’s first formal marketing strategy in 20+ years, with planned activities spanning website refresh, brand/messaging, conferences, academia outreach, and partner engagement. - The narrative ends with “three promises” anchoring the community’s direction: builder experience, Open Web advocacy, and marketing amplification. ### 🗒️ Notes - 🎥 Overview - Driesnote recap; invites readers to watch the video or download slides. - Fairy tale device frames Drupal’s strategic direction and community strengths. - 🏘️ A Tale of Four Cities - Reactopia (React): great for developers, limited for marketers. - Contentville (Contentful): easy start, vendor lock-in risks. - Squarix (Squarespace & Wix): easy, auto-updated, but limited. - Edoby Heights (Adobe): powerful yet expensive. - Takeaway: emulate strengths while avoiding lock-in, cost bloat, and constraints. - 🧰 Easier to Start, Build, Maintain - Project Browser: discover, evaluate, and install extensions easily. - Automatic Updates: reduce maintenance friction; security-conscious approach. - Target inclusion in Drupal 10.3 (June 2024); reflects a decade of work. - Content modeling improvements; faster admin toolbar UX. - 🧱 Next Generation Page Builder - Strategic initiative to enhance Layout Builder origins (from Drupal 8). - Focus: modern, intuitive page-building experience for site builders and marketers. - 🌤️ Open Web Advocacy - Closed Web clouds: vendor lock-in, centralization, data misuse. - Inspiration from Tim Berners-Lee; Open Web Manifesto to unify community. - Emphasis on accessibility and inclusivity as core outcomes. - 🪄 Drupal Marketing Committee - Composed of seasoned marketers; first formal strategy in 20+ years. - Goal: “shine a light” on Drupal’s innovations and attract new adopters. - 📣 Marketing Initiatives Ahead - New website focused on evaluators. - Brand refresh and messaging to attract talent. - Stronger event presence; university engagement. - Grow Drupal Certified Partners’ participation. - 🤝 Drupal’s Three Promises - Improve builder experience. - Champion the Open Web. - Amplify marketing to expand reach and influence. ## 📖 References: - State of Drupal (Oct 2023): https://dri.es/state-of-drupal-presentation-october-2023 - Mentioned resources within the article (video segments, slides) ## 🗣️ Paraphrase: 1) Original idea: “This keynote was unlike any other… a fairy tale that explores how the Drupal community is working together to simplify the process of starting, building, and maintaining Drupal websites.” - Paraphrase: This year’s keynote took a novel approach: a fairy tale that illustrates how the Drupal community collaborates to make launching, constructing, and caring for Drupal sites far simpler. 2) Original idea: “Our goal is to include Automatic Updates and Project Browser into Drupal 10.3… I believe Drupal’s Automatic Updates and Project Browser will be both the most advanced and most security-conscious tools of their kind among all PHP applications.” - Paraphrase: The plan is to ship Automatic Updates and the Project Browser with Drupal 10.3. These features aim to set the standard for sophistication and security among PHP application tooling. ## 📰 Newsletter: This week in web wizardry: learning dev faster, shipping smarter, and keeping the Open Web open. - Learn web dev: If you’re starting with PHP/JS or leveling up your CMS chops, this is your sign to build something real. Pair a component library with a headless backend to learn modern front-end patterns—then deploy, iterate, and break things responsibly. - Drupal’s big moves: Dries unveiled a fairy-tale roadmap with very real outcomes—Automatic Updates and Project Browser (targeting Drupal 10.3), better content modeling, a speedier admin toolbar, and a Next Generation Page Builder. It’s all about making Drupal easier to start, build, and maintain. Read the recap: State of Drupal (Oct 2023). - Community highlights: A new Drupal Marketing Committee is shaping the project’s first formal marketing strategy in 20+ years, with a fresh website, brand messaging, stronger conference presence, and university outreach on the horizon. - New plugins and tooling: Keep an eye on security-conscious auto-update pipelines and safer extension discovery flows—patterns we’d love to see echoed across the WordPress ecosystem. - Open Web forever: The Open Web Manifesto vibe is strong—less lock-in, more choice, more accessibility. Let’s build toward that together. Want more? Hit reply with your favorite “DX friction” and we’ll share tips to smooth it out next issue. ## ✅ Action Items: Prompt for aligning articles with your Developer Advocate and OSPO goals: “Analyze how this article advances open-source advocacy, contributor engagement, and education in the WordPress ecosystem. Identify: - Where it reduces contributor friction (onboarding, discoverability, safe updates). - How it models sustainable funding or governance (formal marketing, partnerships, acad - Summary: During the State of Drupal presentation at DrupalCon Europe 2023, Dries gave a keynote speech in the form of a fairy tale. The speech focused on how the Drupal community is working together to simplify the process of starting, building, and maintaining Drupal websites. Drupal visited four neighboring villages and learned from their strengths and shortcomings to improve the builder experience in Drupal Village. Dries also discussed initiatives like Project Browser and Automatic Updates, improvements in content modeling features and Drupal's administration toolbar, and the Next Generation Page Builder initiative. Additionally, he highlighted the importance of advocating for an Open Web and the role of the Drupal Marketing Committee in promoting Drupal. Drupal made three promises to enhance the builder experience, advocate for an Open Web, and amplify marketing efforts. The presentation ended with gratitude for the success of DrupalCon Lille and excitement for the future of the Drupal community. - URL: https://dri.es/state-of-drupal-presentation-october-2023 DrupalCon Europe 2023 Driesnote presentation Last week, approximately 1,300 Drupal enthusiasts came together in Lille, France for DrupalCon. In good tradition, I delivered [my State of Drupal keynote](https://dri.es/tag/state-of-drupal), commonly referred to as the "Driesnote". You can watch the [video of my keynote](https://youtu.be/LvH-bwSaOjA) or [download my slides](https://dri.es/files/state-of-drupal-october-2023.pdf) (264 MB). This keynote was unlike any other. I narrated a fairy tale that explores how the Drupal community is working together to simplify the process of starting, building, and maintaining Drupal websites. Yes, you read that correctly – a fairy tale. However, rest assured, it's a fairy tale with a happy ending. If you're keen to experience the full magic of the Drupal fairy tale, I highly recommend [watching the video](https://youtu.be/LvH-bwSaOjA) instead of reading this blog post. And if you want to avoid any spoilers, stop reading here. ##### A tale of four cities: learning from competitors As the speaker, I took the audience on a journey that started with my discovery of a mysterious book related to Drupal. The book uses an analogy to explain Drupal as a character living in the Drupal Village. This village is full of different types of houses, from cozy cottages to grand estates. In this bustling village, [ambitious villagers](https://dri.es/drupal-is-for-ambitious-site-builders) work together to construct and take care of their homes. The Drupal villagers cherish core values such as creativity, flexibility, scalability, accessibility, collaboration, empowerment, security, and freedom. In the Drupal Village, a young builder grows frustrated with the challenges of constructing and maintaining homes. Driven by curiosity about alternative approaches, the young builder makes the bold decision to leave Drupal Village and embark on a journey to neighboring towns. Their hope was to uncover if there were superior methods for homebuilding. The Drupal character leaves on a journey to visit nearby villages. Drupal, our central character, decides to follow the young builder, embarking on a journey that takes them to four unique villages: Reactopia, Contentville, Squarix, and Edoby Heights. Along the way, Drupal gathers valuable insights from each of these unique villages. Despite uncovering some of their shortcomings, Drupal also came to understand why these villages hold allure for young builders. Summary of lessons learned from Drupal's visits to Reactopia, Contentville, Squarix, and Edoby Heights. Learning from the strengths of these four villages, the Drupal character realizes that for Drupal Village to prosper, it must offer an exceptional builder experience. Furthermore, through their visits to these four villages, our main character developed a clear idea of what an exceptional experience might look like. With a clear goal in mind, Drupal decides to simplify the process of starting, building, and maintaining homes in the Drupal Village. Drupal understands that for the Drupal Village to prosper, the builder's experience must be exceptional: it should be simpler to get started, easier to build, and effortless to maintain. Drupal brings together some of the most skilled craftspeople from the community to meet at a nearby atelier called OuiWork. Within this collaborative space, initiative leaders [Tim Plunkett](https://www.drupal.org/u/timplunkett) (Acquia), [Cristina Chumillas](https://www.drupal.org/u/ckrina) (Lullabot), and [Lauri Eskola](https://www.drupal.org/u/lauriii) (Acquia) shared valuable insights about the work they are doing. In practical terms, I discussed the significance of the [Project Browser](https://www.drupal.org/about/core/strategic-initiatives/project-browser) and [Automatic Updates Initiatives](https://www.drupal.org/about/core/strategic-initiatives/automatic-updates). These initiatives serve to streamline the process of starting and maintaining your Drupal sites. Our goal is to include Automatic Updates and Project Browser into Drupal 10.3, scheduled to be released in June 2024. Achieving this milestone will be the culmination of [over a decade of dedicated effort](https://dri.es/the-evolution-of-drupal-composability-from-the-command-line-to-the-browser). I believe Drupal's Automatic Updates and Project Browser will be both the most advanced and most security-conscious tools of their kind among all PHP applications. I also highlighted various efforts to make it easier to build with Drupal. This includes improvements in content modeling features ([watch video segment](https://youtu.be/LvH-bwSaOjA?t=1435s)) and enhancements to Drupal's administration toolbar ([watch video segment](https://youtu.be/LvH-bwSaOjA?t=1630s)). This work not only follows a design-first approach but also showcases our ability to make rapid progress, underscoring changes in the way we work and collaborate. Next Generation Page Builder Lastly, I introduced a new strategic initiative aimed at improving the user experience for building pages with Drupal ([watch video segment](https://youtu.be/LvH-bwSaOjA?t=1832)). The initiative is called [Next Generation Page Builder](https://www.drupal.org/project/ideas/issues/3375371) and focuses on improving Drupal's layout builder, which was first introduced in Drupal 8. ##### Beyond the dark clouds: advocating for an Open Web Closed Web proponents After working on improving the builder experience, the Drupal character returns home to discover Drupal Village shrouded in dark clouds. These ominous clouds are the work of the Closed Web advocates, sinister figures in the story. Hope arrives in the form of a visit from Fairy Godfather [Tim Berners-Lee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee). The visit inspires Drupal to become an unwavering promoter and protector of the [Open Web](https://dri.es/tag/open-web). In the morning, the Drupal character takes it upon themselves to write the [Open Web Manifesto](https://dri.es/drupal-open-web-manifesto). This seminal document binds the entire community to a shared commitment: the creation of a digital future that is more accessible and inclusive for all. ##### Shining a light on Drupal: the role of Drupal marketing Three sorcerers Sadly, the Open Web Manifesto alone can't clear away the dark clouds created by the Closed Web advocates. As the dark clouds creep closer and obscure the village, Drupal seeks help from three powerful sorcerers. The sorcerers use their magic to dispel the dark clouds, unveiling the remarkable work occurring in Drupal Village to the entire world. In reality, the "sorcerers" are the Drupal Marketing Committee. Their mission is to shine a light on Drupal, promoting it to showcase the impressive work being done. The goal is to encourage more individuals to consider Drupal over closed web solutions, who often have significant resources for marketing themselves. The Drupal Association launched a Drupal Marketing Committee after [DrupalCon Pittsburgh](https://dri.es/state-of-drupal-presentation-june-2023). Comprising seasoned marketing professionals like [Lynne Capozzi](https://www.linkedin.com/in/lynnecapozzi/) (former Acquia CMO), [Suzanne Dergacheva](https://www.drupal.org/u/pixelite) (Evolving Web), [Nikhil Deshpande](https://www.drupal.org/u/nikhildeshpande) (State of Georgia), and more, this committee is developing a marketing strategy for Drupal – a first in Drupal's 20+ year history. I had the honor of conducting an on-stage interview with them during my keynote ([watch video segment](https://youtu.be/LvH-bwSaOjA?t=2604s)), where they discussed the importance of marketing for Drupal and how it might impact the Drupal community. We're committed to investing in Drupal's marketing efforts in the next few years. While the full marketing plan will be unveiled towards the end of this year, expect to see things like: * A new website launch, with more focus on outsiders and evaluators. * Refreshing the Drupal brand, with focused messaging aimed at attracting fresh talent. * Improving Drupal's visibility and presence at conferences. * Increase presence and engagement with universities. * Grow the involvement of [Drupal Certified Partners](https://www.drupal.org/association/become-a-drupal-certified-partner). The Drupal Marketing Committee welcomes all Drupal community members to [participate in our marketing efforts](https://www.drupal.org/community/agency-marketing/promotedrupal). ##### Drupal's three promises In the end, our main character, Drupal, commits to three important promises: 1. Enhance the builder experience to make it easier to start, build, and maintain Drupal sites. 2. Advocate for an Open Web, championing a more inclusive and accessible digital future. 3. Amplify our marketing efforts to highlight the outstanding work happening in Drupal, and to expand Drupal's reach and influence in the market. With these promises in motion, the dark clouds fade. As they clear, the village's future sparkles with newfound hope, and the eager young builder returns home. The most exciting place for ambitious villagers ##### Thank you Last but not least, I want to thank everyone who made DrupalCon Lille a tremendous success. I always come away inspired and full of ideas, and this year is no exception. Here is to a long and prosperous future for Drupal Village and all of its ambitious villagers! I look forward to sharing future chapters of the fairy tale as we continue to grow our community and software together!, State of Drupal Presentation, Dries Buytaert, 01hdk5dt63q3s40xvseb87wbp3.