Find out more about the European Drupalcon 2023 in Lille, sponsored by Smile. Take a look back at Dries Buytaert's inspiring Driesnote, illustrated by IA.
The European Drupalcon 2023 in Lille, sponsored by Smile, was marked by some powerful and inspiring moments, including the Driesnote by Dries Buytaert, founder of Drupal. Illustrated by AI, this keynote highlighted the future prospects and innovations of the Drupal ecosystem. This article looks at the main points made at the conference and explains how these innovations meet customer needs.
A dynamic Drupal village
The story begins in the Drupal Village, symbolising an inclusive and democratic community. Dries Buytaert recalled Drupal's eight core values: creativity, flexibility, scalability, accessibility, collaboration, empowerment, security and freedom. These values are at the heart of Drupal's commitment to its users and developers.
Travel and lessons learned
The rest of the story explores Drupal's journeys through various tools and platforms such as React, Contentful, Wix and Adobe. Dries has used savoury metaphors to analyse these tools and draw valuable lessons from them. The aim is clear: to draw on the strengths of these software tools while avoiding their weaknesses. This approach enables Drupal to remain competitive and relevant in an ever-changing technological landscape.
Simplification and accessibility
For customers, a Drupal project must be simple to set up, easy to use and light to maintain. Significant developments have been announced to simplify content editing and enhance the power of the tools available. This is the background to the Streamlined CMS, an internal initiative funded by Smile's R&D budget.
Streamlined CMS: A response to customer needs
Born of the need to offer an easy-to-use design system approach, the Streamlined CMS is based on Drupal, a market-leading open source CMS. Depending on your needs, there are several possible strategies:
- Use an existing design system :
- The Bootstrap design system
- The French government's design system
- Adapt Bootstrap's design system to your graphic charter: customisation via the back office.
- Implement your own design system: to produce cost-optimised sites.
- Create a design system with UX Republic: design experts from the Smile group, for customers who don't yet have one.
The Streamlined CMS is based on modules from the Drupal community, in particular those from the UI Suite ecosystem, guaranteeing no vendor lock-in thanks to its entirely open source and widely redistributed code.
An important element of the Streamlined CMS is that, for our customers, this is a Drupal project like any other, and as such it follows on from Dries' keynote, which confirmed that Drupal software is, and must remain, a champion of the open web.
An ongoing commitment to innovation
The Streamlined CMS presentation at Drupalcon attracted a great deal of interest. A key element of this solution is that it remains aligned with Drupal's principles, particularly in terms of open governance and contributions to the community.
The community's reaction
During the Drupalcon, a client asked us how Streamlined CMS would manage possible duplication with future native Drupal functionalities. The answer was unanimous: we advocate integrating our modules into the standard Drupal distribution. If other options are chosen, we will adapt our CMS accordingly. This perfectly illustrates the spirit of collaboration and openness of the Drupal community.
Drupal's marketing ambitions
The Driesnote concluded with marketing ambitions to promote Drupal and strengthen its market position. Efforts to improve the simplicity, flexibility and accessibility of the CMS are aimed at attracting new users while satisfying the growing expectations of existing customers.
Benefits for customers
For customers, these innovations mean a simpler, more enjoyable user experience. Users can quickly create and manage content, reducing maintenance costs and improving operational efficiency. The flexibility and scalability offered by Drupal enable businesses to adapt quickly to market developments and changing customer needs.
Contributions and collaboration
Smile actively contributes to all the modules in the UI Suite ecosystem, as demonstrated by the following projects:
These contributions guarantee continuous improvement and rapid adaptation to new user requirements, while avoiding vendor lock-in problems.
Conclusion
The European Drupalcon 2023 in Lille was a key event, highlighting the continuous evolution and innovation of Drupal. For customers, these developments mean simpler, more efficient solutions that are better adapted to their needs. Smile's Streamlined CMS, for example, represents a significant step forward in the way businesses can manage and deploy their websites.
By embracing the core values of Drupal and drawing on best practice from other tools, Smile continues to transform the mobile and user experience. To discover how these innovations can benefit your business, we invite you to download our free white paper and explore the possibilities offered by the Streamlined CMS.
