Google Analytics is changing, and becoming more complex. Do you need GA 4? Here's a summary of the top analytics tools your nonprofit website can use to measure its performance, and how to find one that's right for you. 

UX Design is a cornerstone of building user-centric websites and applications. The demand for UX designers around the globe has significantly increased and the graph seems to climb every year. Why do you think that’s happening? It’s because building human-centric applications and websites is no longer an option. When UX design services combines with Drupal, a robust CMS, that makes it a deadly combination to make people choose your brand because of superior functionalities and user experience. But what is the exact UX design process? In the article, you will learn a simple (yet powerful) 8-step UX design process to implement in your business. What is a UX Design Process? A UX design process is a systematic approach to creating user-centered designs and building websites and applications that aligns with users’ needs and preferences. Here’s the cache: A UX design process that worked for one business may not work for another business. For example, the UX process for building a travel website is different from that of building a matrimonial app.

Adding a JavaScript library to an Emulsify component may seem daunting if you're new to the process, but it's not as complicated as it may seem. In this guide, we'll show you how to add a JavaScript library to an Emulsify component step-by-step, using the Swiper library as an example.

DrupalCon is a community event, where people from around the world can come together and share in the mission to make Drupal the most impactful DXP in the world. Even beyond that, DrupalCon is for many people the one time a year to connect in person with the people they work with every day. We are so excited to share all the places where the community can connect in June! 

Community Summit 

Join us on Thursday, 8 June at DrupalCon Pittsburgh for a full-day unconference dedicated to exploring the issues that matter most to the Drupal community. What’s an unconference, you ask? It is a loosely structured conference that emphasizes sharing information instead of following a conventionally structured schedule. Together we will select topics that matter most to attendees and have collaborative discussions throughout the day. 

RSVP

There is a lot more information about unconferences online - Here are some great tips on how to prepare to attend an unconference. Please feel free to contact the organizers if you have questions: 

• Kathryn Carruthers 
• Jordana Fung
• Joi Garrett 
• Em Nouveau

Who should attend?

You! Are you part of a Drupal community or want to start one in your city? This summit is meant to be a meeting place for all Drupalistas interested in the community. Whether you need help maintaining a long-standing camp or User Group, you’re new to the community and want to know where you can get involved, or you want to share a success story from your community, everyone is welcome.

What gets discussed?

In the morning: 

Presentations on the latest work being done from some of the Community Initiative Leads. Check out the detailed schedule page for session descriptions! 

In the afternoon: 

You decide! Topics at past events have included:

• Contributing to the community
• Organizing events
• Improving diversity
• Growing local communities
• How to prevent burnout
• How do we foster and grow mentorship programs

But it all gets decided on the day, by whoever is in the room.

The community summit isn’t all about talk, it’s about action as well. Networking is a powerful force for collaboration.

Check out the detailed schedule

Community summit success stories

Several initiatives have started as a conversation at past community summits:

• The Event Organizer Working Group
• Speaker Diversity workshops
• Internship programs

Please RSVP and let us know what you’d like to discuss!

Community Initiatives 

Come by the community booth in the expo hall to learn more about Drupal Community Initiatives and how you can get involved! 

• Event Organizers Working Group 
• Community Working Group 
• Promote Drupal Initiative 
• Drupal Diversity & Inclusion 

Social Events 

Social events are often where the magic happens at DrupalCon. Whether it’s a small group hike, coffee hang-outs, or organized parties by our amazing partners, social events help foster lifelong connections. Check out the social events page to stay up to date on what’s happening around the city during DrupalCon, and even submit one yourself! 

Social events at DrupalCon

Decompress 

The festivities at DrupalCon can be overwhelming at times, and it can be hard to find a space to be in community quietly. For a respite from the hustle and bustle, visit our Quiet Space, Non-Denominational Prayer Space, or rooftop terrace. 

Quiet Space - Room 313

This room is reserved for those who need space free from interaction with other participants in an environment where they feel free and safe to do so. The quiet rooms are free of conversation and interaction of any kind. They can be used for meditation, journaling, reading, or just silence away from the buzz of the Con. Soft seating, stimming tools, and relaxing art supplies are provided. 

Non-Denominational Prayer Space - Room 314

This room is reserved for those who wish to practice their faith in a quiet and respectful environment. Spiritual texts and prayer rugs are provided. We ask that participants use hushed voices when necessary, but practice silence as much as possible to respect other attendees who may be using the space.

Rooftop Terrace 

Relax in green space without having to leave the DLCC. The rooftop terrace overlooks the Duquesne River, and you’ll have a view of many of Pittsburgh’s bridges. Enjoy the sounds of the water below, or take a stroll along the Rooftop Boulevard, where gentle tones play from the speakers above. If you take a look at the swooping art fixture, you can also find inspiration quotes scrolling digitally. 

No matter how you like to be in community, there’s a place for you at DrupalCon. We can’t wait to share space with you! 

We are looking forward to gathering in person at DrupalCon Pittsburgh!

And current projections show that many will be gathering: registrations are up 32% over last year.

There is much work being done to make DrupalCon Pittsburgh the ultimate Drupal event in North America, one that generates excitement for Drupal and spurs the creativity that abounds within the Drupal Community.

We also recognize that we’re doing this planning work amid rapidly changing pandemic conditions. The Drupal Association has been monitoring COVID-19 trends and has seen a marked decrease in Covid-19 cases both nationally and in Pittsburgh. The CDC reports that weekly cases since January for the U.S. have dropped 67%, and for Allegheny County (which incorporates Pittsburgh), it has dropped 60%. Pittsburgh is currently rated as “low risk” by the CDC. This assessment is matched by the World Health Organization’s trends, which show a significant decline in cases in the U.S.

This is GREAT news! News that I hope makes everyone feel more comfortable in joining us in Pittsburgh.

Some have been asking if that means we are going to change our health and safety policies for this event.

In January, we updated our health and safety policies prior to opening registration. This update removed a vaccine or daily testing requirement, but retained masking indoors. Let me explain why.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced the Drupal Association to implement extraordinary measures to protect our community. At the same time, we knew the situation would constantly evolve, and our response would also have to evolve. We knew we would have to closely monitor medical, scientific, and public health data and make appropriate changes to the DrupalCon Health and Safety Policies.

We decided early on that we needed a decision rooted in our values: DrupalCon should be a safe, accessible, and inclusive space for everyone in our community. It is often the most vulnerable in our community who are left behind, and so we felt it important to ensure our criteria for policy changes centered on those most at risk.

With that value at heart, we looked at the following criteria:

• Public health metrics and recommendations from International and National organizations such as the WHO and CDC, including whether these organizations have updated their designation from pandemic to endemic.
• Medical/Scientific studies being released by reputable, peer-reviewed sources.
• Comparable industry events whose values align with our own, especially other Drupal community events.
• Pragmatic and logistical constraints for us and attendees in event planning.

This last bullet is worth a bit more explanation. The Association realized a decision was needed prior to opening registration for each event and then to stick to the decision. Attendees register with the expectations presented at the time of registration and changing after the fact can make some participants feel like the rules are changing against them unfairly and cause them to question our reasoning. We have observed other conferences that changed health & safety policies mid-registration with significant consequences.. Our default position is to change policies between events’ registration periods, but not during.

So how have we used those criteria with our values so far?

In 2020, with no vaccines approved and clear national guidance and legal mandates, it was clear that both DrupalCon North America and Europe would have to become virtual events. Both were held successfully, and we even had an influx of first time attendees who would not otherwise have been able to attend.

In 2021, although the first vaccines were now available under an emergency use authorization, they would not receive full FDA approval until August of that year. At the same time, the pattern of multiple infection waves and new variants had become apparent, and vaccination rates and hospitalization levels were still very high. Both DrupalCon events would again be virtual in 2021.

In 2022, most national and regional public health recommendations began to allow for in-person events again. After a review of Oregon and Multnomah county public health mandates and metrics, it was decided that a Vaccine-or-daily-test requirement and masking was required. Metrics in Europe improved more rapidly than those in North America, and thus DrupalCon Prague did not require vaccination but did include a mask requirement.

So where does that leave us in 2023?

We are monitoring the trends but have not changed our health and safety policy for DrupalCon Pittsburgh.

We are following our default position of maintaining policies in place at registration opening. COVID-19 is still identified as a pandemic, with new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths still occurring.

But monitoring is appropriate, as is evolving. If the recent very positive trends continue, the health numbers for Covid prevalence in Pittsburgh may be very low by June. Consequently, some attendees may be frustrated by these continued safety measures and this may affect compliance at the event. A lack of compliance undermines the health benefits of our health and safety policies.

Thus, community feedback is crucial.

I invite feedback from the Drupal community on this blog post and our health and safety policies for DrupalCon Pittsburgh. How we can create an inviting and welcoming atmosphere for all community members amidst a changing world of health metrics.

If you’re so inclined, please share your thoughts with us.

Share your input

DrupalCon Lille 2023

This month has been the same time window where we have to utilize these decision making criteria to set our policies for DrupalCon Lille.

• The World Health Organization (WHO) and French national guidelines recommend but do not require masking in any setting, including hospitals and nursing homes, though it is still recommended in gatherings with vulnerable people. Vaccination and testing requirements for entry to the country have not been required for about a year.
• The entire country of France has a rate of hospital admissions and covid-related deaths comparable to just Alleghany County(where Pittsburgh is located) in the USA. The per-capita daily mortality rate due to covid in all of France is less than 10% the rate in Alleghany County.
• Regional events in Europe have almost entirely eliminated their extraordinary covid measures.

Therefore, we anticipate that DrupalCon Lille will not be requiring proof of vaccination, daily testing, or masking (though masking is still recommended).

We hope that this retrospective and more detailed explanation of our DrupalCon health and safety policy decision criteria is helpful.

I look forward to gathering with the Drupal community in Pittsburgh, meeting as many people as possible, and hearing your ideas about how we can advance Drupal.

Tim Doyle
CEO
Drupal Association

Content teams want the flexibility to publish content in a way that allows for creativity. They want landing pages to be dynamic and reflect the vision they have inside their heads. Organizations want to encourage brand and writing-style consistency (sometimes across a whole network of websites). They also want to ensure their content is maintainable and meets web accessibility and security standards.

Revolutionizing Mental Health Support: SystemSeed Named Finalists in 2023 Global Business Tech Awards

We are finalists in the Tech For Good category of the 2023 Global Business Tech Awards. The nomination recognizes our work n EQUIP, a digital training and assessment platform for mental health first-aiders in 70+ countries.

Tamsin Fox-Davies Wed, 03/29/2023 - 14:21

Are you looking for new startup ideas but not sure where to begin? Look no further than the intersection of GPT-4 and Drupal. These innovative technologies offer endless possibilities for entrepreneurs planning to start a new business. Open AI released the latest version of ChatGPT, i.e., GPT-4, a large multimodal model, on March 14th, 2023. The next day, Arun Chandrasekaran, an analyst at Gartner Research, told CNN, "The powerful language capabilities of GPT-4 will be used for everything from storyboarding, and character creation to gaming content creation." Even though the model is in its early phase and not publicly available to everyone, companies can prepare themselves for the upcoming AI wave. In the article, you will learn five startup ideas that leverage Drupal and GPT-4 integration to create innovative solutions to real-world problems.  5 Startup Ideas You Can Execute using ChatGPT (GPT-4) and Drupal To get access to OpenAI API services, you will need to obtain a license from OpenAI, the company that owns and develops language models. Before obtaining a license, reviewing their terms and conditions carefully is recommended to ensure compliance with the usage guidelines. With Drupal development expertise and a keen eye for opportunity, you can turn these startup ideas into reality and capitalize on the power of AI. 1. Content creation platform powered by GPT-4 A content creation platform powered by GPT-4 could allow users to create written content quickly and easily without spending much time researching and writing. The platform could be built using Drupal, a highly flexible and customizable content management system. The first step would be to develop an API that allows users to interact with the latest language model. 

6 steps to reduce the carbon footprint of your website mike_gifford Wed, 03/29/2023 - 03:00

Let's prioritize web sustainability and work together to create a more sustainable digital future.

According to Mozilla, Information Communications Technology (ICT) is expected to emit more carbon by 2025 than any single country besides China, India, and the United States…

The "Back to Work for Women" program is a residential training program organised by ICFOSS (International Centre for Free and Open Source Software) designed to help women who took a career break due to personal commitments to re-enter the workforce by acquiring new skills in the free software domain—the 5th edition of the program which was centred around using Drupal to develop digital experience platforms. The program was organised by ICFOSS, with support from various organisations such as Kerala Knowledge Economy Mission (KKEM), Kerala Development and Innovation Strategy Council (K-DISC), and as part of the Gender & Technology initiative by the government of Kerala. Zyxware Technologies, a leading digital transformation firm, participated in the program by providing training on Drupal technology to expand the talent pool of Drupal developers and the Drupal community in general.

Drupal Career Online Palantir.net Fellowships enrich their corporate character

When George DeMet and Tiffany Farriss brought Palantir.net into being in 1996, they sought to create an organization that strives for excellence not only in client services, but also in a collaborative, creative environment in which its staff brings out the best in each other. They also believe that the more diverse that staff, the better their corporate culture can achieve excellence on all fronts.

When you chat with George, Tiffany, or really any Palantiri, you realize these guidelines are not just words in a value statement; collaboration and creativity truly are the undercurrent of everything they do, including making sure that present and future Palantiri succeed. 

Interns are a key component of Palantir’s team, which includes senior engineers, designers, and architects who started as interns nearly 10 years ago. In addition, they are committed to growing talent in a thoughtful, inclusive way. “Some of our longest-serving team members started with us as interns out of college, and we are always looking for opportunities to help people with passion and potential to build experience and expertise by working with our team on real-life projects,” George beams. 

A few years ago, Palantir pioneered a mentoring initiative to help the Drupal Community become more diverse. In addition to contributing to the community, it also clarified for Palantir that skills training with a paid internship could really help them to achieve the best results from their efforts. “Growing and developing talent has long been a priority for us,” says George, so building out internships with a training component would enable recipients to have more confidence as they gain real-world experience and would make it easier for them to assimilate into the team.

“The other key takeaway was that we needed to have a dedicated partner to help assess whether candidates would be a good fit, provide the upfront training and continue to be available as a resource during the internship period and beyond,” George says. “Given those requirements, DrupalEasy was an obvious choice for our Fellowship program. The Drupal Career Online  curriculum provides a solid foundation for our interns, and the ongoing support provided by DrupalEasy helps them continue to grow and gain confidence as they progress on their career path.”  

Adwoa Kesse, Employee Experience Manager, is on Palantir’s hiring and operations teams and coordinates the newly revived internship program, which, for the past year, has included fellowships through DrupalEasy’s Drupal Career Online. Palantir’s Fellowship program targets those who have experienced marginalization due to racism, misogyny, transphobia, or other forms of discrimination or are members of a marginalized community that has been underrepresented in the technology sector. Several other organizations provide scholarships for the DCO as well.

The Palantir Fellowship program provides participants with underwriting for the class tuition, a laptop once they accept the fellowship (if needed,) a stipend once class starts, and hourly pay once the intern graduates from the DCO and begins working. From Adwoa’s perspective, integrating the DCO Fellowship has really enriched the program. “We really don’t have to worry about the technical side of candidates, as Mike takes care of that piece,” she explains. 

DrupalEasy’s Mike Anello interviews all prospective class applicants, including scholarship seekers, and determines if they have the prerequisites and mindset to be successful in the class.  Only applicants who are accepted to Drupal Career Online are presented to Adwoa for consideration. Often Mike provides a pre-work program that candidates can complete to get up to speed so they can continue the fellowship process and be successful in the 12-week DCO program.

This process allows Palantir to be confident that the team members they are considering have the technical aptitude to be successful in Drupal, so the hiring team can focus on whether the potential intern will be a good fit in the Palantir culture: Do they have a growth mindset? Are they curious and will they be comfortable working remotely?  All key aspects of Palantir’s hiring decisions as they continue to build and enhance the collaborative, creative environment in which everyone encourages and celebrates the best in each other.  

“Everybody has their different journeys, but we are very satisfied with what they are doing,” Adwoa explains about the Fellowship interns. “Every person is different, so each has a different ramp up, but they are all willing to learn and grow.” Positions that interns are working toward include Engineer and Front-End Developer, and each are assigned a mentor once they are awarded a Palantir Fellowship. 

The most challenging part of the program is the transition to employment and determining what each intern needs, including Drupalize.me follow-on training resources, training projects and transitioning them to roles within the team and building confidence on actual projects. 

According to George, “Fellowship program recipients have been full of curiosity, humor, and a desire to learn. We made full-time offers to all of the interns out of the first two Drupal Career Online cohorts, and we are looking forward to working with the graduates of the latest cohort.” 

He explains that they think the “key to the success of the program is the vetting process that is conducted by DrupalEasy before being accepted to Drupal Career Online, as well as the interviews our team members conduct with scholarship applicants. When combined with the ongoing progress reports we receive during the course, we have a very good picture of what a recipient’s skills and growth opportunities are before they begin their internship.”

Another ingredient of the success of the Fellowship program is that ongoing mentorship is essential not just during the Drupal Career Online course, but also during the internship period and beyond. In addition to internal mentors, Palantir engages with DrupalEasy to provide focused mentors and encourages the Fellowship participants to engage in the DrupalEasy Learning Community by attending weekly office hours, which provide a safe space for them to ask questions they may not feel as comfortable asking co-workers.

An unexpected benefit of the program, according to George, is that they are able to reuse many of the resources that were created to help on-board Fellowship recipients for other new hires who did not come through the program.  It also helps them improve support for junior-level developers. “Serving as mentors to our scholarship recipients has been a great experience for our existing team members, helping them to develop and exercise skills that are important to their own career paths at Palantir,” he adds. 

George sums it all up:, “Our partnership with DrupalEasy has enabled us to bring on new team members who not only add value to our project teams, but also contribute to the growth of Palantir’s culture.” 

If you would like to discuss how your organization might join others who participate in the Drupal Career Online Scholarship program, contact us!

Rector is a PHP tool that automates refactoring your code to take advantage of the latest language-level features in PHP or automated usages of deprecated code when upgrading your dependencies. The Drupal community has relied heavily on Rector via the drupal-rector extension to automate major version upgrade fixes. Also, Tomas Votruba, the creator of Rector, is consistently blogging and creating tooling to elevate the developer experience. Rector is a great tool, but there are a lot of consequences when using it for contributed code.

It's been a minute, but in just a few short weeks we have made a lot of progress adding features and fixing bugs in the OpenAI module for Drupal. We have just released an alpha7 preview of the module containing 3 notable changes:

How to Create Dynamic Layouts with Layout Builder, CTools, and View Modes Mustakim Farooqui 28 Mar, 2023 Subscribe to our Newsletter Now Subscribe Leave this field blank

Having an attractive and engaging website is crucial to success in today’s digital age. One way to achieve this is by using dynamic layouts that allow for flexibility and creativity in designing your website. Fortunately, Drupal provides a powerful set of tools that can help you create dynamic layouts with ease.

In this article, we will explore how to use Layout Builder, CTools, and View Modes to build custom layouts for your Drupal website. Whether you're a beginner or an experienced Drupal developer, this guide will provide you with the knowledge and skills to take your website design to the next level.

New to Layout builder? Explore more articles to gain a deeper understanding.

Leveraging Entity View Modes and CTools Module for Dynamic Design Strategies

When using the Drupal layout builder, we may develop a number of strategies to maximize its effectiveness. Contributed modules like paragraphs, views, CTools, and others can be used in conjunction with Layout builder to develop these strategies. We can also make use of the content types' entity view mode. We have discovered that employing entity view modes is an excellent strategy for sites that require the most versatility.

In this lesson, we'll discover a technique that makes use of the entity view modes and the CTools module's features. To accomplish this, a set of components will be created. It is similar to component-based design methodologies.

We'll make use of Drupal's Basic Page content type, which is available right out of the box. To render various items, we will add new view modes for the Basic page content type. Using the CTools module's capability, we will render an entity as a block in the layout builder. Using view modes, we will add a banner image to the homepage of our website.

Installing CTools module

In the Drupal framework, Chaos Tools, sometimes known as CTools, is a significant and well-liked module. It is essentially a collection of APIs and technologies that construct libraries for other modules to use and make code easily accessible to developers. Several Drupal modules rely on it in one way or another.

In order to create the view modes pattern for the Basic page content type, we will first need the Chaos tools suite (ctools) module.

Install the CTools modules by using the composer command shown below:

composer require 'drupal/ctools:^4.0'

To use the module, go to Extend and install the module.

The following command can also be used to install the module using the drush command line as an alternative:

 

drush pm:enable ctools View Modes Pattern

After installing the module, enable the layout builder under "Manage Display" for the Basic page content type.

 

We need two things in the basic page content type in order to apply the view modes pattern.

• Banner Field
• Banner View mode

Banner Field:

Add an image banner field using the setup below to the basic page content type:

Banner View mode:

To add a view mode, go to Structure > Display modes > View modes > Add view mode

 

Create a view mode called Banner Image for content entity type:

This page will now display the newly created view mode: Structure > Display Modes > View modes

 

After defining the view mode, we must enable it for our Basic page content type. To do so, navigate to the content type's "Manage Display" section and enable the view mode "Banner Image" under the "Custom display settings" section, as shown below.

 

After enabling the view mode, you'll note that our custom view mode is now accessible to use in the content type's "Manage Display" area.

Next, go to Banner Image view mode and disable all fields except the Banner field that we defined earlier.

Following this step, to add the Banner image to the homepage, overrides the default layout of the basic page content type by clicking on the Layout tab displayed in the homepage's primary tabs.

 

In the following steps, we'll add the Banner Image view mode and show the picture using the ctools block. To achieve this, click "Add Block" and a panel with a list of the available blocks and fields to add to the layout will appear on the right side of the page.

•  Choose Entity View (content) to add the view mode.

 

•  Add the block after configuring it and choosing the "Banner Image" view mode.

 

Our home page's final layout will appear as follows after adding the Banner Image view mode:

Final Thoughts

This is how you can use Drupal layout builder and CTools module to apply the view modes pattern for various use cases in accordance with your needs.  While this is a powerful approach, it can be difficult to keep track of all the changes you make and the various view modes. To facilitate better control over your view modes, consider leveraging modules like CTools Exportables or Features that enable you to export and import your view modes with ease.

From dynamic layouts to advanced functionality, we have the Drupal skills and expertise to bring your vision to life. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you build the website of your dreams.

Author: Mustakim Farooqui

Meet Mustakim Farooqui, Drupal Developer, and our own Chess master. He dreams of visiting Europe and enjoys reading novels and tech articles. When not working, you can find him with a game of chess, solving puzzles, or checking out new Linux distros. Give him a strong cup of coffee and he’ll set sail for anything!

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Today we are talking about Public Speaking with Marjorie Freeman & AmyJune Hineline.

For show notes visit: www.talkingDrupal.com/392

Topics

• Why Public Speaking is important
• Why people are afraid of Public Speaking
• Tips to overcome
• Imposter Syndrome
• What makes a good experience
• Never do’s
• Favorite Public Speakers
• Alternatives
• Podcasting as Public Speaking
• Writing Workshop
• How to get started

Resources

• Diverse Speaker Training Group Handbook (Jill Binder)
• SFDUG Writer’s Workshop
• Drupal Camp Asheville Neurodiversity Initiative
• A11yTalks
• SFDUG is looking for speakers
• Dak Prescott Walter Peyton acceptance speech
• Pedro Pascal monologue
• Matt Kleve
• opensource.com
• Enable architect

Guests

Marjorie Freeman - @the_mjfreeman AmyJune Hineline - @volkswagenchick

Hosts

Nic Laflin - www.nLighteneddevelopment.com @nicxvan John Picozzi - www.epam.com @johnpicozzi Kat Shaw - drupal.org/u/katannshaw @katannshaw

MOTW Correspondent

Stephen Cross @stephencross Environment Indicator Adds visual indicator to identify which admin environment is being accessed.

To demonstrate the best content authoring and administration user experience, I created a dedicated Schema.org Blueprints Demo module. The Schema.org Blueprints Demo module does a lot more than content modeling. For example, the demo switches Drupal's admin and site theme to the Gin Admin Theme with Dashboards. The Schema.org Blueprints Demo module provides a fully progressive decoupled working instance of Drupal. To build this demo, I examined a few popular decoupled Drupal distributions for ideas and inspiration.

Distributions

I refrain from using distributions because they can become challenging to maintain and manage. At the same time, distributions are invaluable learning resources for understanding the modules and custom code required to build a fully working instance of Drupal. I am looking forward to Drupal's Recipes initiative, which will be a modernization of Drupal's distribution system to allow site builders to assemble Drupal site features and functionality for their specific needs.

To build my Schema.org Blueprints demo, I spent hours reviewing different distribution's module selections and custom code. I am sharing what I found when comparing two very popular headless/decoupled distributions.

Contenta

Contenta was first released in 2017. Contenta is a fully decoupled implementation for Drupal. It is a community maintained distribution supporting several front-end starter kits, including Gatsby, Next.js, and Vue. Contenta CMS is a fork & go solution, which means the installation profile enables some modules with default configuration; from there, the site developers are responsible for maintaining the site.

Pros

• Minimal...Read More

Sometime during the mid-90s, I remember attending a media camp organized for journalism aspirants. A speaker, whom I don’t recall, talked to us about writing newspaper columns. One piece of advice still lingers is that the note should always begin with a pleasant tone and end with a satisfying élan. But what will one do when the heart is heavy, and the news is unpleasant? 

“In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing.
About the dark times.”

—wrote Bertolt Brecht. 

I don’t want to paint the times dark. I do not think any particular time is darker than the darkest. But unforeseen things happen all the time, and some of them might be unsettling to us. 

For the team-TDT, Jayesh’s demise was such a moment. We lost a brother. I take this moment to offer condolences to his grieving family. Every death gives rise to a new carbon cycle. Let the wheels of life roll. 

I need to break this grimace. So let us talk about new product announcements. Pantheon has published 2023 first-quarter updates. It includes front-end sites update, support for PHP 8.2 and Drupal 10, and performance improvement in the site listing page. They have also announced EOL for their built-in LocalDev feature. 

Hinto group is conducting a webinar on April 4 to popularise a new module incorporating OpenAI functionality with CKEditor5, providing users with a powerful and user-friendly editing experience. It would make content editing more fun and more powerful. 

In April, many major camps are happening. We had earlier updated about us being an In-Kind sponsor for MidCamp. Apart from that, both Drupal South and DrupalCamp Poland have added us as their media partners. 

DrupalCamp Colorado, scheduled for August, has called for speakers. The 8th edition of Backdrop Live happened the last weekend, and the subsequent unconference-style Backdrop Live conversations in 3-hour blocks of interactions are tentatively scheduled for the 48-hour course on September 22 and 23, enabling anyone at any timezone to attend at least one of the sessions. 

You could register for the Open-Source North conference in Minnesota at a 20% reduced price until April 7. Early bird pricing for DrupalCon North America, happening in Pittsburgh on June 5 to 8, 2023, will end at 23:59 UTC on April 2, 2023. From April 3, you may have to purchase regular tickets. DrupalCon Europe, happening in Lille, France, from October 17 to 20, 2023, has launched sponsorship sales. Drupal Developer Days 2023, happening in Vienna, Austria, from July 19 to 22, 2023, has started an early bird ticket sale at €60 but will be available only for the first 100 registrants. The regular price is €132. 

A11yTalks announced their next meetup on April 12 at 6:00 pm EDT. Hidde de Vries would discuss “Shifting Left: How CMS Accessibility Can Help.” On March 22, Black Girls Code and VMWare came together to host their monthly speaking series with the topic, “See It, Be It – A Black Unicorn’s Journey.” The Brisbane Meetup to learn, share and explore WordPress and Drupal together will happen on April 7. Pune Drupal Meetup will occur on April 14. 

We had published the news about ICFOSS partnering with Zyxware to impart Drupal training for women who needs to rejoin their careers after a break. Von Eaton, director of programs at Drupal Association, had addressed the students. The training ended on March 19. Zyxware has released Von’s presentation at the event as a YouTube video. 

Evolving Web is celebrating Women’s History Month in March. Droptica will publish the first live stream of Droptica Webinars on Thursday, April 13, at 3:00 pm CEST. On blogs, Opensource.com has published an article busting the myths surrounding Open-Source CMS.

There end the week’s updates. Thank you. 

Sincerely,
Sebin A. Jacob
Editor-in-Chief 

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There are plenty of options when picking a content management system for a development project. Depending on how advanced you need the CMS to be, what language it's built in, and who is going to be using it, it can be a nightmare trying to find the "perfect" CMS for a project.

However, some examples of CMSs (or content management systems) have a slight edge over the rest of the competition because of the usability of the software. Some are just easier to install, use, and extend, thanks to some thoughtful planning by the lead developers.

Looking for web content management system examples? We have a number of themes and resources to support these top content management systems. If you're looking for WordPress themes, Drupal themes, or Joomla themes, we have you covered on Envato Market.

We also support additional popular CMS systems, CMS tools and a variety of WordPress plugins, Drupal plugins, Joomla plugins, and more. Visit our ThemeForest or CodeCanyon marketplaces to browse through a ton of professional options.

Here are the most usable CMSs on the web, so you can choose the one that fits your needs best.

1. WordPress

What is left to say about WordPress that hasn't already been said? The PHP blogging platform is far and away the most popular CMS for blogging, and probably the most popular CMS overall. It's a great platform for beginners, thanks to its excellent documentation and super-quick installation wizard. Five minutes to a running CMS is pretty good. Not to mention the fact that the newest versions auto-update the core and plugins from within the back end, without having to download a single file.

For those users not familiar with HTML or other markup languages, a WYSIWYG editor is provided straight out of the box. The back-end layout is streamlined and intuitive, and a new user should be able to easily find their way around the administration section. WordPress also comes with built-in image and multimedia uploading support.

For developers, the theming language and the Plugin API are fairly simple and straightforward.

The WordPress Community is a faithful and zealous bunch. WordPress probably has the widest base of plugins and themes to choose from. We also have thousands of professional WordPress themes and WordPress plugins available for sale on Envato Market, with a full suite of styles and options to choose from.

A great thing about the WordPress community is the amount of help and documentation online you can find on nearly every aspect of customizing WordPress. If you can dream it, chances are it's already been done with WordPress and documented somewhere.

2. Drupal

Drupal is another CMS that has a very large, active community. Instead of focusing on blogging as a platform, Drupal is more of a pure CMS. A plain installation comes with a ton of optional modules that can add lots of interesting features like forums, user blogs, OpenID, profiles, and more. It's easy to create a site with social features with a simple install of Drupal, and it offers some useful third-party modules.

One of Drupal's most popular features is the Taxonomy module, a feature that allows for multiple levels and types of categories for content types. And you can find plenty of professional Drupal themes, which are ready to be customized and worked with. You can also grab Drupal plugins.

Drupal also has a very active community powering it, and has excellent support for plugins and other general questions.

3. Joomla!

Joomla is a very advanced CMS in terms of functionality. That said, getting started with Joomla is fairly easy, thanks to its installer. Joomla's installer is meant to work on common shared hosting packages and is very straightforward considering how configurable the software is.

Joomla is very similar to Drupal in that it's a complete CMS, and it might be a bit much for a simple portfolio site. It comes with an attractive administration interface, complete with intuitive drop-down menus and other features. The CMS also has great support for access control protocols like LDAP, OpenID, and even Gmail.

The Joomla site hosts more than 3,200 extensions, so you know the developer community behind the popular CMS is alive and kicking. Like WordPress, you can add just about any needed functionality with an extension. However, the Joomla theme and extension community relies more on paid resources, so if you're looking for customizations, be ready to pull out your wallet. You can also grab Joomla plugins.

4. Shopify

You can use the Shopify eCommerce software to create a great website design and add products with images, titles, and descriptions. You can also set up a full checkout functionality, where customers can pay for your products.

Shopify has a great free store theme that you can use to customize your website images, fonts, and colors to your satisfaction with no design skills required, and the themes are fully responsive. With Shopify, you manage your products, inventory, payments, and shipping, and you can also sell your products on the web, mobile, social media, and marketplaces.

One of the unique features of Shopify is that you can accept credit cards instantly, without third-party accounts.

When dealing with other CMS systems, you'll have to upgrade your tool to the current version to obtain new features, but Shopify is cloud-based and hosted, so you won't have to worry about software or web servers being upgraded or maintained. This allows you to access and manage your business from practically any location, even on your mobile device.

5. Wix

Wix is a cloud-based content management system with web hosting and design capabilities. Wix makes it simple for users to create websites without needing to pay web experts or have specialized knowledge. Wix sites are mobile-friendly and can be quickly constructed, maintained, and managed through the Wix website. It also allows you complete control over how you create, design, manage, and develop your online presence.

Wix's distinguishing feature is its drag-and-drop editor, which allows you to create a great website without knowing a single line of code. Wix is perfect for anything from online personal portfolios to small company websites, and it is completely scalable.

6. Magento

Magento is an open-source content management system that includes all of the essential eCommerce features and allows users to create a one-of-a-kind online store from the ground up. Magento Open Source is a free version that you may download and install on your web hosting account.

There are so many reasons Magento is ideal:

• It is very easy to maintain and upgrade your site.
• Payment is easy and secure.
• It has a reliable and supportive community.
• Magento is very flexible and offers free services for users.
• You can easily integrate the Google Analytics service into your site, which will provide you with multiple reports.

7. Webflow

You have complete design freedom when using Webflow. It's a flexible content management system for building custom blogs, portfolios, and eCommerce stores. Webflow allows you to complete projects more quickly.

• For web design, Webflow offers a drag-and-drop page builder.
• It features a good, clean code quality that allows you to make changes on the page.

8. WooCommerce

WooCommerce is one of the best eCommerce platforms, and it's built on WordPress. It is a free tool for you to start up your eCommerce store. WooCommerce is flexible and easy to manage. However, it isn't quite a content management system (CMS). It is a WordPress plugin that runs on your site, so you'll have to integrate it into your WordPress site.

WooCommerce is by far the most popular eCommerce plugin for WordPress.

9. Ghost

Modern businesses want an eye-catching website that makes an impression on their target audience. Ghost helps you achieve that. It's a content management system (CMS) for blogging that comes in both self-hosted and hosted versions.

Ghost is used to power a wide range of websites, from individual bloggers just getting started to massive groups of editors and writers at some of the world's largest companies.

Ghost CMS is ideal for blogs that only require the publication and management of posts and pages. It can also effectively handle membership sites.

Benefits of Using Ghost

• It has a lot of SEO (search engine optimization) help built-in. This can be delivered without the need for any plugins.
• It features a variety of themes that are both responsive and attractive. They're simple and designed to keep you focused on your reading.
• It is very easy to create your theme in Ghost CMS, and these themes use handlebars to insert data, which is very easy to learn.

10. BigCommerce

BigCommerce is the most flexible and open SaaS platform, and it is leading a new era of eCommerce platforms. It not only hosts your site, but also provides the CMS platform. It also takes care of your security and backups.

It is one of the most popular eCommerce platforms and offers a high level of scalability for online shops. It has more sales tools built in than any of its competitors, and it combines these features with smart SEO and fantastic multi-channel connectivity.

11. PrestaShop

PrestaShop is a powerful and innovative eCommerce platform that includes all of the tools you'll need to set up an online store and expand your business. And you can also install it on any web hosting platform that supports it.

Why you should use PrestaShop:

• You can easily develop SEO-friendly URLs.
• With PrestaShop CMS, you can fully customize your online store.
• PrestaShop has different modules which provide security to your sites.
• You can manage your products, orders, and statistics.

12. Blogger

Blogger is a CMS platform that’s specifically geared up for blogging. It’s a free service provided by Google. You can use it to create and publish a blog, and you can get a free domain or buy your domain name. The platform is beginner-friendly, and you can earn money from the platform by using Google AdSense.

13. HubSpot CMS

So many marketers and business owners use HubSpot CMS because it provides metrics on your current content marketing strategy and where improvements can be made, such as indicating the need for more internal links, calls to action, or landing pages. With HubSpot CMS, you can track relevant traffic, page performance, and significant impact, among other things.

Why HubSpot?

• It aids businesses in attracting visitors.
• For each visitor, you may quickly develop and personalize your website pages.
• You can keep track of all of your stuff in one spot.
• You can create a site that is unified without having to worry about inappropriate designs, logos, or navigation.

14. TYPO3 CMS

The TYPO3 CMS is an open-source content management system with a big global community, backed by the TYPO3 Association's approximately 900 members. It combines open-source code, dependability, and genuine scalability in a single package.

This professional CMS offers services and solutions for the whole team across industries, organization sizes, and use cases.

Typo3 is excellent because it is powerful and has a lot of potential to fill in the gaps left by many other products. Because of its flexibility, TYPO3 is ideal for quickly producing online content across a wide range of formats. It can also be used for assistance, marketing, and in-house projects.

15. ExpressionEngine

ExpressionEngine (EE) is an elegant, flexible CMS solution for any type of project. Designed to be extensible and easy to modify, EE sets itself apart in how clean and intuitive its user administration area is. It takes only a matter of minutes to understand the layout of the back end and to start creating content or modifying the look. It's fantastic for creating websites for less-than-savvy clients who need to use the back end without getting confused.

ExpressionEngine is packed with helpful features like the ability to have multiple sites with one installation of software. For designers, EE has a powerful templating engine that has custom global variables, custom SQL queries, and a built-in versioning system. Template caching, query caching, and tag caching keep the site running quickly too.

One of my favorite features of EE is the global search and replace functionality. Anyone who's ever managed a site or blog knows how useful it is to change lots of data without having to manually search and open each page or post to modify it.

16. Textpattern

Textpattern is a popular choice for designers because of its simple elegance. Textpattern isn't a CMS that throws in every feature it can think of. The code base is svelte and minimal. The main goal of Textpattern is to provide an excellent CMS that creates well-structured, standards-compliant pages. Instead of providing a WYSIWYG editor, Textpattern uses textile markup in the text areas to create HTML elements within the pages. The pages that are generated are extremely lightweight and fast-loading.

Even though Textpattern is deliberately simple in design, the back end is surprisingly intuitive and easy to use. New users should be able to find their way around the administration section easily.

While Textpattern may be very minimal at the core level, you can always extend the functionality by using third-party extensions, mods, or plugins. Textpattern has an active developer community, with lots of help and resources at the Textpattern.org site.

17. Radiant CMS

The content management systems that we've listed so far are all PHP programs. PHP is the most popular language for web development, but that doesn't mean we should overlook other popular web languages like Ruby.

Radiant CMS is a fast, minimal CMS that might be compared to Textpattern. Radiant is built on the popular Ruby framework Rails, and the developers behind Radiant have done their best to make the software as simple and elegant as possible, with just the right amount of functionality. Like Textpattern, Radiant doesn't come with a WYSIWYG editor and relies on Textile markup to create rich HTML. To make it easier to create templates intuitively, Radiant also has its own templating language, Radius, which is very similar to HTML.

18. Cushy CMS

Cushy CMS is a different type of CMS altogether. Sure, it has all the basic functionality of a regular content management system, but it doesn't rely on a specific language. In fact, the CMS is a hosted solution. There are no downloads or future upgrades to worry about.

Cushy works by taking FTP info and uploading content to the server. The developer or the designer can then modify the layout, as well as the posting fields in the back end, just by changing the classes of the styles. Very, very simple.

Cushy CMS is free for anyone, even for professional use. There is an option to upgrade to a pro account to use your own logo and color scheme, as well as other fine-grain customizations in the way Cushy CMS functions.

19. SilverStripe

SilverStripe is another PHP CMS that behaves much like WordPress, except that it has many more configurable options and is tailored towards content management, not blogging. SilverStripe is unique because it was built upon its very own PHP framework, Saphire. It also provides its own templating language to help with the design process.

SilverStripe has some interesting features built into the base, like content version control and native SEO support. What's really unique with SilverStripe is that developers and designers can customize the administration area for their clients, if need be. While the development community isn't as large as other projects, there are some modules, themes, and widgets to add functionality. Also, you'll want to modify the theme for each site, as SilverStripe doesn't provide much in terms of style, to give the designer more freedom.

20. Contao

Contao seems to have the perfect balance of features built into the CMS. In terms of functionality, Contao ranks with Drupal and ExpressionEngine, and it even offers some unique bundled modules like newsletters and calendars. Developers can save time with the built-in CSS generator, and there are plenty of resources for learning more about the CMS.

If there is a downside to Contao, it's that it has so many features and configurable options. Even though the back end is thoughtfully organized, there are still a lot of options to consider. But if you want to build a site with advanced functionality and little extra programming, Contao could be a great fit.

Learn More

Now you've got enough CMS examples, types of CMSs, different CMS systems and CMS tools to get you started. If you want to expand your knowledge on content management system list or explore more examples of CMS, check out some related tutorials: 

• WooCommerce vs. Shopify: Which One Is Right for You? Monty Shokeen 25 Feb 2022
• 33 Best WooCommerce Plugins (Free and Paid) Franc Lucas 29 Apr 2022
• 9 Best PHP Blog Scripts and Blogging Platforms Franc Lucas 11 Jul 2022
• Installing and Using PHPMyAdmin With WordPress Jeff Reifman 18 Jul 2022

Editorial Note: This post has been updated with contributions from Janila Castañeda. Janila is a staff writer with Envato Tuts+.

What You'll Be Creating

If you want an easy way to create engaging, content-driven websites for you and your customers, you should give Drupal 8 a try. And Drupal modules allow you to take things a step further and create highly customized functionality for your site. 

In our new course, Code a Custom Drupal Module, Envato Tuts+ instructor Derek Jensen will get you up and running with modules in no time. You'll build a simple calculator module, and along the way you'll learn about creating routes, controllers, parameters, and more.

You can take our new course straight away with a subscription to Envato Elements. For a single low monthly fee, you get access not only to this course, but also to our growing library of over 1,000 video courses and industry-leading eBooks on Envato Tuts+. 

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Looking for a shortcut? Try downloading some of the ready-made Drupal themes on Envato Market.

Do you want to learn more about asynchronous Android programming? How about the Ionic framework, or JavaScript design patterns? Our latest batch of eBooks will teach you all you need to know about these topics and more.

Our Latest Selection of eBooks

This month we’ve made eight new eBooks available for Envato Tuts+ subscribers to download. Here’s a summary of those books and what you can learn from them.

• Xamarin: Cross-Platform Mobile Application Development

  Developing a mobile application for just one platform is becoming a thing of the past. Companies expect their apps to be supported on iOS, Android and Windows Phone, while leveraging the best native features on all three platforms. Xamarin's tools help ease this problem by giving developers a single toolset to target all three platforms. The main goal of this book is to equip you with knowledge to successfully analyze, develop, and manage Xamarin cross-platform projects using the most efficient, robust, and scalable implementation patterns.
  

• Drupal 8 Theming With Twig
  

  Drupal 8 is an open-source content management system and powerful framework that helps deliver great websites to individuals and organizations, including non-profits, commercial, and government around the globe. Starting from the bottom up, in this eBook you will learn to install, set up, and configure Drupal 8. You'll get a walk-through of a real-world project to create a Twig theme from concept to completion while adopting best practices to implement CSS frameworks and JavaScript libraries. You will see just how quick and easy it is to create beautiful, responsive Drupal 8 websites while avoiding the common mistakes that many front-end developers make.

• Asynchronous Android Programming: Second Edition
  

  Asynchronous programming has acquired immense importance in Android programming, especially when we want to make use of the number of independent processing units (cores) available on the most recent Android devices. With this guide in your hands, you’ll be able to bring the power of asynchronous programming to your own projects, and make your Android apps more powerful than ever before!

• Ionic Framework by Example
  

  With Ionic, mobile development has never been so simple, so elegant and obvious. By helping developers to harness AngularJS and HTML5 for mobile development, it’s the perfect framework for anyone obsessed with performance, and anyone that understands just how important a great user experience really is. This book shows you how to get started with Ionic framework immediately. But it doesn’t just give you instructions and then expect you to follow them. Instead it demonstrates what Ionic is capable of through three practical projects you can follow and build yourself.

• Sass and Compass Designer's Cookbook
  

  Sass and Compass Designer's Cookbook helps you to get most out of CSS3 and harness its benefits to create engaging and receptive applications. This book will help you develop faster and reduce the maintenance time for your web development projects by using Sass and Compass. You will learn how to use with CSS frameworks such as Bootstrap and Foundation and understand how to use other libraries of pre-built mixins. You will also learn setting up a development environment with Gulp.

• Android Sensor Programming by Example
  

  Android phones available in today’s market have a wide variety of powerful and highly precise sensors. This book will give you the skills required to use sensors in your Android applications. It will walk you through all the fundamentals of sensors and will provide a thorough understanding of the Android Sensor Framework. By the end of the book, you will be well versed in the use of Android sensors and programming to build interactive applications.

• Mastering Yii
  

  The successor of Yii Framework 1.1, Yii2 is a complete rewrite of Yii Framework, one of the most popular PHP 5 frameworks for making modern web applications. This book has been written to enhance your skills and knowledge with Yii Framework 2. Starting with configuration and how to initialize new projects, you’ll learn how to configure, manage, and use every aspect of Yii2 from Gii, DAO, Query Builder, Active Record, and migrations, to asset manager. With this book by your side, you’ll have all the skills you need to quickly create rich modern web and console applications with Yii2.

• Mastering JavaScript Design Patterns: Second Edition
  

  In this book, you will explore how design patterns can help you improve and organize your JavaScript code. You’ll get to grips with creational, structural and behavioral patterns as you discover how to put them to work in different scenarios. Then, you'll get a deeper look at patterns used in functional programming, as well as model view patterns and patterns to build web applications. By the end of the book, you'll be saved of a lot of trial and error and developmental headaches, and you will be on the road to becoming a JavaScript expert.

Start Learning With a Yearly Subscription

Subscribe to Envato Tuts+ for access to our library of hundreds of eBooks. With a Yearly subscription, you can download up to five eBooks per month, while the Yearly Pro subscription gives you unlimited access.

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