Talking Drupal

Join us for an extraordinary celebration of Talking Drupal's 500th episode! In this milestone episode, we dive into a treasure trove of memories, insights, and updates from an array of special guests. From innovative Drupal contributions to the future of open-source technology, this episode is packed with valuable discussions. Don't miss appearances from notable guests like Dries Buytaert, Tim Doyle, Tim Lehnen, Mike Anello, and many more. Celebrate with us as we look forward to 500 more episodes!

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/500

Guests include, in order of appearance:

• Jason Pamental
• Dries Buytaert
• Tim Doyle
• Tim Lehnen
• Carlos Ospina
• Mayela Jackson
• Mike Anello
• Jonus Cuyvers
• Jacob Rockowitz
• Antonio Estevez
• Norah Medlin
• Kevin Quillen
• Chris Wells
• Steven Jones
• Jürgen Haas
• Thomas Scola
• Chad Hester
• Matt Glaman
• James Abrahams
• Avi Schwab
• Josh Mitchell
• James Shield

Road to deprecating .module files

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu Stephen Cross - stephencross

Today we are talking about The Contact Form Initiative, What it is, and how it helped Drupal with guest J. Hogue. We'll also cover Local Tasks More as our module of the week.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/499

• What is the Contact Form initiative
• What makes up the contact form recipe
• Why did you want to run this initiative
• What are the responsibilities of an initiative lead
• Were there any unexpected speed bumps
• Who was involved
• As a non-backend developer, any hesitation to lead this effort
• What was onboarding like
• What was the timeline
• Any tips for others thinking of leading an initiative

J. Hogue - oomphinc.com artinruins

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Kathy Beck - kbeck303

Jacob Rockowitz - jrockowitz.com jrockowitz

• Brief description:
  • Nodes can have too many local tasks. Only the first few, like View, Edit, Layout, Revisions, and Translate, are used daily. Would you like to hide or reorder less commonly used local tasks, which include Usage, Clone, Devel, and Convert. There is a module for that
• Local Tasks More (local_tasks_more)
• Brief history
  • How old: created on November 6th, 2024
  • Versions available: 1.0.0-beta2 r
• Maintainership
  • Actively maintained
  • No security coverage
  • Has test coverage
  • Does not require much documentation
  • No issues
• Usage stats:
  • 22 sites
• Maintainer(s):
  • jrockowitz (me)
  • Module features and usage
  • Enter the base routes that support the show more/less task link and alterations.
  • Enter the local task id and the altered title and weight. Set the local tasks to FALSE to remove it.
  • Enter the number of links to trigger show more/less tasks link/icon from primary and secondary tasks (aka tabs).

In this episode of Talking Drupal, we discuss the latest DOJ accessibility ruling and its implications for Drupal with special guest Josh Mitchell. Josh, a seasoned expert who has led teams in digital agencies, governments, and non-profits, sheds light on what the ruling means for state and local governments, the importance of accessibility, and steps to achieve compliance. We also explore the Sa11y module, a powerful tool for enhancing website accessibility, and compare it with the Editorially module. Additionally, we touch on the upcoming MID Camp 2025. Tune in for an insightful discussion on making web content more accessible for all.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/498

• Can you give us an overview of the DOJ Accessibility Ruling
• Does this apply to federal websites
• When does this go into effect
• How does this affect current sites
• Hwo is Drupal positioned against this
• Does this rule apply to all content such as PDFs
• Any tips to organizations
• JS widgets

• Announcement of the rule
• Full text of the rule - PDF
• Fact sheet for meeting the requirements of the rule
  • https://www.ada.gov/resources/2024-03-08-web-rule/
  • https://www.drupal.org/docs/getting-started/accessibility/how-to-do-an-accessibility-review
• AXE Core
• Core issue to automate accessibility tests with Nightwatch.js
• Keyboard traps
• COTS - Commercial off the shelf software
• VPATS - Voluntary product accessibility template
• Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR)
• Monsido - Acquia optimize - PDF
• Josh's blog post

Joshua "Josh" Mitchell - joshuami.com joshuami

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Kathy Beck - kbeck303

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

• Brief description:
  • Have you ever wanted your Drupal site to have a built-in accessibility tool that could identify things like potential color contrast issues? There's a module for that
• Module name/project name:
  • Sa11y
• Brief history
  • It's worth mentioning that the name is a numeronym, so spelled s-a-1-1-y, which plays off of a common way the word "accessibility" is abbreviated
• How old: created in Jan 2018 by Bryan Sharpe (b_sharpe) but the namespace was taken over in Jun 2024 by Mark Conroy (markconroy) of LocalGov Drupal, so the current 3.0.1 release, which supports Drupal 10 and 11, is a completely different module than the original 8.x-1.x branch.
• Maintainership
  • Actively maintained, in fact this module came out of the ongoing work being done on the LocalGov distribution and profile
  • Security coverage
  • Test coverage: no, but the module is effectively just a wrapper for the Sa11y library, which is CMS agnostic and used in the Wordpress and Joomla communities as well
  • The Sa11y library has its own website, which includes documentation
  • Number of open issues: 1 open issues, which isn't a bug
• Usage stats:
  • 62 sites
• Module features and usage
  • We did cover the Editoria11y accessibility checker as MOTW all the way back in episode #350, almost 3 years ago, and Sa11y was mentioned at that time. Both modules have had major releases since then, so I thought this week's episode would be a chance to do an updated comparison
  • Sa11y does include some checks that Editoria11y does not, such as color contrast checking and a readability score
  • The Editoria11y module, on the other hand, includes site-wide reporting that would be helpful for site admins, as well as a wealth of configuration options including one or more DOM elements to use as the container to check within, a list of elements to exclude, and so on. Recent versions of Editoria11y also include an option for live feedback as you edit, which should work with CKEditor 5, Paragraphs 5 or newer, and Gutenberg
  • At the end of the day, however, both projects are intended to provide your content editors with immediate feedback on the accessibility compliance of what they create. So, it's worth looking at the feedback each tool provides and deciding which one is more useful for your team in particular

Today we are talking about Drupal Forge, how it works, and why it's changing Drupal with guest Darren Oh. We'll also cover ECA VBO as our module of the week.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/497

• Elevator pitch for Drupal forge
• What is Drupal Forge built on
• What is the pricing model
• Does Drupal Forge only allow you to install Drupal CMS
• Drupal Forge and templates, was there an influence on Site Templates
• Why offer templates for Drupal Forge Camps
• Is Drupal Forge open source
• What is on the Roadmap
• How can people get involved

• Drupal Forge on Drupal.org
• Drupal Forge
• DevPanel

Darren Oh - drupalforge.org Darren Oh

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Kathy Beck - kbeck303

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

• Brief description:
  • Have you ever wanted a powerful and flexible way to create views bulk operations without writing code? There's a module for that.
• Module name/project name:
  • ECA VBO
• Brief history
  • How old: created in May 2022 by mxh, a prolific maintainer in his own right, and an active member of the group that has made the ECA ecosystem so far-reaching
  • Versions available: 1.1.1 and 2.1.1, the latter of which supports ^10.3 || ^11
• Maintainership
  • Actively maintained
  • Security coverage
  • Documentation: sort of. The README has step-by-step instructions, and the project page has links to both an example model and a tutorial video
• Number of open issues: 7 open issues, 1 of which are bugs against the current branch
• Usage stats:
  • 320 sites
• Module features and usage
  • With the module installed, your site will have a number of Events available within ECA, specifically for defining models that can perform bulk actions on the selected items in a view. In my own experience the most useful event is VBO: Execute Views bulk operation (one by one)
  • From there, you can define the logic of what needs to happen to the selected items. I've used it for fairly simple operations like changing content to a specific moderation state, but you could define complex logic that is conditional on field values, site configuration, or even global factors like the time of day
  • With one or more models defined, you can now add a field to your view for ECA bulk operations and then select which eligible models you want available in that specific view
  • It's worth adding that the ECA model can also include logic to define who should have access to perform a particular operation, which could be as simple as checking the role of the current user, but can be as complex as you need
  • I came across ECA VBO during some recent work on the Drupal Event Platform, which is already available to try out on Drupal Forge, but there should be a more formal announcement on that front soon

Today we are talking about Drupal Basics, Why we got away from them, and what we do to bring them back with guest Mike Anello. We'll also cover Entity Reference Override as our module of the week.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/496

• Where did this idea come from
• Why do you feel more basic content is necessary
• How did Drupal get away from the basics
• How can we get more basic talks into Drupal events
• How do we balance basic content with new topics like recipes or Drupal CMS
• How do we entice speakers to take these talks
• Could this adversely affect attendance
• Question from Stephen: How do we address virtual events and that they are preferred by a younger crowd
• Will Florida Drupal Camp have a track

Mike Anello - drupaleasy.com ultimike

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Kathy Beck - kbeck303

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

• Brief description:
  • Have you ever wanted to replace a text field on entities you reference in your Drupal site? There's a module for that.
• Module name/project name:
  • Entity Reference Override
• Brief history
  • How old: created in Sep 2016 by Jeff Eaton, though recent releases are by Benjamin Melançon (mlncn) of Agaric
  • Versions available: 2.0.0-beta3 which works with Drupal 10.1 or 11
• Maintainership
  • Actively maintained
  • Security coverage, yes but needs a stable release
  • Test coverage
  • Documentation - user guide
  • Number of open issues: 13 open issues, 2 of which are bugs against the 2.0.x branch
• Usage stats:
  • 2,004 sites
• Module features and usage
  • The module defines a new field type, with associated widgets and formatters.
  • Your site editors will see a normal entity reference field (autocomplete or select) with an additional text field. Text provided in that additional field can be used to override a specific field in the referenced entity's display, or add a class to its rendered markup.
  • This could be handy in use cases like showing people with project-specific roles, or showing related articles with the summary tweaked to be more relevant to the main content being viewed.
  • It's not a super-common need, but if you need this capability, it can save having to set up a more complicated content architecture with some kind of intermediary entity
  • I thought this module would be interesting because today's guest, Mike Anello, is listed as one of the maintainers. Mike, what can you tell us about your history with the module and how you've used it?

Today we are talking about Our Favorite things and The Future of Drupal with guest Jared Ponchot & Dave Hansen-Lange.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/495

• What has piqued your interest
• AI creating components
• Any other new features or demos
• What haven't you seen that you hope to
• How do you feel about the future of Drupal

• Driesnote

Dave Hansen-Lange - linkedin.com dalin Jared Ponchot - lullabot.com jponch

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu Andrew Berry - lullabot.com deviantintegral

Today we are talking about AI in EDU, how it can provide efficiencies, and how you might start using it today with guests Brian Piper & Mike Miles . We'll also cover External Entities as our module of the week.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/494

• How are you using AI with your team at Rochester
• How are you using AI with your team at MIT
• What are the AI policies at your institutions
• On the ingestion side how do you manage consumption
• Tips and tricks to incorporate AI into your work
• Can you talk more about using AI to distribute content outside the web
• Do you have tips for managers
• How have you seen EDUs using AI other than as assistive technology
• What are your favorite tools
• Have you done adversarial testing
• How does AI in Drupal impact EDU
• Where do you see AI in EDU in the future

• Crawler rate limit
• Externalizing costs
• AI for U
• MidCamp 2024 session about YaleSites
• Tools
  • Element 451
  • Builder io
  • Deque Axe Devtools
  • Descript
  • Opus clips
  • Kapwing
  • HeyGen
  • Synthesia
  • Text to video
    • Sora
    • Veo

Brian Piper - brianwpiper.com Mike Miles - Mike-miles.com mikemiles86

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Andrew Berry - lullabot.com deviantintegral

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

• Brief description:
  • Have you ever wanted to connect your Drupal website to an external data source, to include their datasets into the presentation of your Drupal-managed content? There's a module for that
• Module name/project name:
  • External Entities
• Brief history
  • How old: created in May 2015 by attiks, though the most recent release is by Colan Schwartz (colan), a fellow Canadian
  • Versions available: 8.x-2.0-beta1 and 3.0.0-beta4, the latter of which supports Drupal 10 and 11
• Maintainership
  • Actively maintained, latest release was less than a month ago
  • Security coverage (though technically needs a stable release
  • Test coverage
  • Documentation: user guide
  • Number of open issues: 77 open issues, 3 of which are bugs against the 3.x branch, though one is marked fixed now
• Usage stats:
  • 679 sites
• Module features and usage
  • The External Entities module lets you map fields from external data sources to fields on a "virtual" entity in Drupal. This allows for external data to be used with Drupal's powerful features like Views, Entity Queries, or Search API as well as use your local Drupal site's theme to theme data from an external source
  • The module does provide a time-based caching layer for external entities, but you can also implement a more custom cache expiration logic through custom code
  • External entities can also have annotations, essentially Drupal-managed information that will be associated with the external entity, and accessed as a normal field through all Drupal field operations. This could allow you to have Drupal-based comments on information from a different website, for example
  • There is a sizeable ecosystem of companion modules, to help you connect to different kinds of external storage, as to help you aggregate data from multiple sources
  • In my Drupal career I've worked on a number of higher ed websites, and the ability to display externally-managed data is a pretty common requirement, either from an HRIS system to show staff and faculty data, or a courseware solution like Banner. I thought this would be an interesting tangent to today's topic

Today we are talking about The Drupal Developer Survey, Last year's results, and How it helps Drupal with guest Mike Richardson. We'll also cover HTMX as our module of the week.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/493

• What is the Drupal Developer Survey
• How often does it come out
• How did it come to be
• What type of information does it collect
• Do you look at other surveys
• What were some of the most interesting stats last year
• Core contributors
• How do you expect last year to compare to this year
• Do you think the outlook will be more positive with Drupal CMS
• Drop off in Drupal 7
• Home users
• DDEV usage
• AI questions
• Security questions

• Drupal Developer Survey 2024 Results
• 2025 Drupal Developer Survey
• HTMX Sucks

Mike Richardson - Ironstar Dev Survey richo_au

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Andrew Berry - lullabot.com deviantintegral

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

• Brief description:
  • Have you ever wanted to replace Drupal's AJAX capabilities with a lightweight library that has no additional dependencies? There's a module for that.
• Module name/project name:
  • HTMX
• Brief history
  • How old: created in May 2023 by wouters_f though recent releases are by fathershawn of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
  • Versions available: 1.3.5 and 1.4.0, both of which support Drupal 10.3 and 11
• Maintainership
  • Actively maintained, latest release less than a month ago
  • Security coverage
  • Test coverage
  • Documentation included in the repo as well as online
  • Number of open issues: 3 open issues, 1 of which is a bug
• Usage stats:
  • 92 sites
• Module features and usage
  • To use HTMX, you need to attach the library to the render array of one or more elements where you want to use it, and then add data attributes to your render array that indicate how you want HTMX to react to user behaviour
  • HTMX can help make your Drupal sites more interactive by dynamically loading or reloading parts of a page, giving it a more "application-like" user experience
  • There is a planning issue to discuss gradually replace Drupal's current AJAX system with HTMX, and a related Proof Of Concept showing how that could work with an existing Drupal admin form
  • A number of elements in the current AJAX system also rely on jQuery, so adopting HTMX would also help to phase out jQuery in core. HTMX is also significantly more lightweight than JS frameworks like React
  • HTMX is really a developer-oriented project, which is why I thought it would be appropriate for this week's episode

Today we are talking about Pantheon Content Publisher, How it brings Google Docs to Drupal, and why you might want to use it with guests Chris Reynolds & John Money. We'll also cover QR Code Fields as our module of the week.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/492

• What is Pantheon Content Publisher
• Why was Pantheon Content Publisher created
• How does it work with Google docs
  • How do you handle revisions
  • How do you target environments
  • Can you do structured content
  • How do reference existing content
  • How does this use GraphQL
• What are some of the use cases you are seeing
• Who should not use Pantheon Content Publisher
• Can I develop the SDCs locally with Pantheon Content Publisher
• What is the ingestion layer like
• AI layer
• Talking Drupal workflow
• Do you have a process for bulk publishing
• How does startup look
• Is it PCC or PCP
• Can Pantheon Content Publisher customers push their own non google content
• Is Pantheon Content Publisher open source
• Is there a cost
• Can you translate content

• Pantheon Content Publisher docs
• Pantheon Content Publisher module
• Pantheon Content Publisher Roadmap

Chris Reynolds - jazzsequence.com jazzsequence John Money - john.money

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Andrew Berry - lullabot.com deviantintegral

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

• Brief description:
  • Have you ever wanted your Drupal site to generate various kinds of QR codes? There's a module for that.
• Module name/project name:
  • QR Code Fields
• Brief history
  • How old: created in Nov 2023 by Sujan Shrestha of Nepal
  • Versions available: 1.1.1 and 2.1.3, the latter of which works with Drupal 10 and 11
• Maintainership
  • Actively maintained
  • Number of open issues: 4 open issues, none of which are bugs
• Usage stats:
  • 134 sites
• Module features and usage
  • This module defines not just one but 9 new fields for generating QR codes, including for URLs, vCards, MeCards, Events, and more
  • Each field QR accepts inputs based on the associated information that should be exposed. So a URL QR Code field only accepts an input for the URL destination, while an Event QR Code has inputs for a summary, description, location, start, and end.
  • The module also provides a custom block plugin for each type of QR code, to make it easier to display your QR codes wherever you need for your specific use case
  • The QR Code Fields module also defines a service for generating QR code images, which could also be useful for more custom implementations.

Today we are talking about OpenY, a distribution for YMCAs, why it was created, and how it's used today with guests Avi Schwab and Brent Wilker. We'll also cover AI Media Image as our module of the week.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/491

• What is OpenY
• Why is it important to the YMCA
• How many Y's use it
• Is each Y independent technologically
• Why doesn't the Y create a platform as a service
• How do you get the message out about OpenY
• What does a Y pay for and how do they pay
• What is the governance layer like
• Any thoughts on recipes
• How does theming work
• New features to come
• How does ImageX support OpenY

• MOTW
  • FLDC session: From Chatbots to Content Magic: The AI-Driven Future of Drupal
• YMCA Website Services (OpenY) Glossary
• YMCA Sandboxes
  • https://sandboxes.y.org/
  • https://sandbox-carnation-std.y.org/
• Get in touch with ImageX about Open Y
• Avi's sourdough recipe base and flour
  • https://tartinebakery.com/stories/country-bread
  • https://www.janiesmill.com/

Brent Wilker - ImageX.co brent.wilker

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Avi Schwab - froboy.org froboy

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

• • Brief description:
    • Have you ever wanted to use AI to generate images, and save them directly into the Drupal media library once you have the result you want? There's a module for that.
  • Module name/project name:
    • AI Media Image
  • Brief history
    • How old: created in Feb 2025 by coffeymachine
    • Versions available: 1.0.0-alpha2
  • Maintainership
    • Actively maintained
    • Security coverage: technically, but needs a stable release
    • Number of open issues: 2 open issues, neither of which are bugs
  • Usage stats:
    • 9 sites
  • Module features and usage
    • We have talked before on the podcast about a couple of ways you could use AI to generate images directly within a Drupal website. One used all the latest OpenAI APIs and the other had media library integration, though it only worked through its own admin form. Both were built to specifically DALL•E, OpenAI's image generation service.
    • This new module is a big leap forward because it's based on Drupal's powerful and rapidly innovating AI module, so it can work with multiple AI image generation services.
    • What's more, AI Media Image plugs into the Drupal core media system, so you can use the tool to generate images directly within the media library, including when you open it up in a modal to populate an entity reference field. This makes it significantly more intuitive to use this capability as part of a normal content creation flow.
    • There are a couple of things that may not be intuitive when you first start using AI Media Image. For example, by default it uses the prompt you used to create the image as the alt text that will be saved to the media library. That seems unexpected to me, but if the prompt exceeds the max alt text length of 255 characters then it will throw an error and then you can overwrite the value of the prompt field to contain proper alt text before saving the image to the media library. This is one of the open issues mentioned earlier and resolving it would really improving the experience of using this module
    • I got to play around with this module while preparing a demo for a session about AI I delivered with Mike Anello at Florida Drupalcamp on the weekend, so we'll try to include a link in the notes so you can also watch for that recording and see this module in action