We are in the middle of September and that means it’s time for our regular update on what’s going on with the Drupal CMS. Let’s check out what’s new!
Documentation
The Drupal Association is on a mission to bring world-class documentation and maintenance software for Drupal CMS launch and beyond. In order to achieve that, we teamed up with Drupalize.me. Our common goal is to make sure that by the time when Drupal CMS hits the market we have an easy to follow user guide suitable for our target audience. Also we prepared an announcement that will be revealed at DrupalCon Barcelona. Stay tuned for the details!
Contact Form
We are happy to announce that we found a track lead for the Contact form! J. Hogue from Oomph joined the team very recently but has already managed to show progress: he and his team are getting busy with the research and MVP mapping. It’s great to have you with us!
Blog
As per the most recent update from Laurens Van Damme and his team, The MVP version has been set up and now the team is busy with the research on how to align with Drupal CMS standards.
Events
While Martin Anderson-Clutz and his team are considering expanding functionality with the options that will not be applied by default, they are working on a different calendar solution that would have more community support, as well as UX improvement for the date widget. We can’t wait to see the result of their work!
Data Privacy / Compliance
Jürgen Haas tells us that information research and framing the scope of the track has been completed and the team agreed on the documentation. Therefore, the following 3 action items has been set as immediate next priorities:
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continue documentation
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break down existing feature list into deliverables/recipes and prioritise them
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define components for the “Compliance Audit” module as an additional deliverable
Trial experience for Starshot
Some exciting news is coming from Matt Glaman: the trial now displays an interactive installer of Drupal CMS. Meanwhile, the work on styling so the trial would look like the Drupal CMS installer while it is being set up, is full steam on.
Dashboard
The team, lead by Christian López Espínola and Matthew Tift has got the wireframes they can rely on hence now it’s time to get things rolling! They are busy looking deeper into the Gin theme, in particular – config actions for adding blocks to the dashboards from other recipes. There is a decision to be made on whether the right sidebar should consist of shortcuts or individual blocks. At the same time, planning for the upcoming activities is in progress and we are waiting patiently to see more details on what’s ahead.
SEO
Great news from Jim Birch and John Doyle with the SEO track team: Basic and Advanced SEO Recipes have been committed to the repository. Next priority is to continue the iteration process on the recipes, documentation, and guidelines for other tracks.
Content Publishing Workflows
We are most excited to announce that we’ve got one more valuable addition to the team – Mohammed Razem from Vardot is joining the Drupal CMS crew as a track lead of the Content Publishing Workflows track. Welcome on board!
Advanced Search
The 1xINTERNET team has been busy finalising the first version of the concept. The next target for them is to get insights from the survey asking Drupalers what they prefer to use in order to confirm earlier findings from the specification.
Media Management
Tony Barker informs that the Media Track team is researching the features of content management systems identified in the Strategy document as well as working through the information and ideas from the earlier released questionnaire. They keep experimenting with modules and configuration to make necessary choices, with the focus on features that can make it into early recipes over the coming weeks.
Accessibility Tools
From Gareth Alexander we learn the following: as the discovery process and gathering insight on common practices has been finalised, the team has published a survey and is now busy reviewing the results. As review of the current module availability has been completed the list has been simmered down to the ones now being reviewed for feasibility.
This will lead to a proposal for the features and recipes for Accessibility Tools to be considered for inclusion in early versions of Drupal CMS.
Proposal creation is underway and the next steps are being generated.
Analytics
Dharizza Espinach meanwhile shares that the team has finished the market research, and is currently wrapping up the work on a comparison with other tools. The selected tools are to be included in the recipes. Another objective the track team is busy with is preparing the list of recommendations for features that should be included later in the project. The proposal document is underway and iterating over a first version of the basic recipe will be the next step.
AI
Jamie Abrahams is working on something very special that will be released during DrupalCon Barcelona. So I will keep the intrigue and will allow you to discover the details for yourself in just 1 week!
New Track Announcement!
As we make progress with the already defined deliverables, we keep discovering the missing parts of the puzzle. In order to close those gaps, we are excited to announce 2 new tracks we not only set up but managed to get staffed as well:
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NavigationMatthew Oliveira, Pablo López Escobés from Lullabot. >
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Gin admin theme track – Known by many, a long time maintainer of the Gin, Sascha Eggenberger became track lead for this milestone.
Our heartfelt welcome to all of the newly acquired Drupal CMS track leads – we are excited to have you and looking forward to all the expertise you are bringing along!
I truly hope you find the news outlined above as exciting as we do and look forward to sharing even more at DrupalCon Barcelona. So if you somehow didn’t get your ticket yet – better hurry up!