Planet Drupal

For years, prefetching made me uneasy. It can make websites feel faster, but it also asks visitors to spend bandwidth, CPU, memory, and battery on pages they may never open. That always felt a little wasteful, and maybe even a little disrespectful.

A couple months ago, while updating my HTTP header analyzer, I added support for the Speculation-Rules HTTP header. Learning about the Speculation Rules API inspired me to try it on my own blog.

The idea is simple: a page can give the browser a small JSON rule set that says which links are safe to prefetch, and when. Those rules can live directly in the HTML using <script type="speculationrules">, or in an external file referenced by the Speculation-Rules HTTP header.

For my blog, I added the rules directly to the HTML of every anonymous page request:

<script type="speculationrules">
{
  "prefetch": [{
    "where": {
      "and": [
        { "href_matches": "/*" },
        { "not": { "href_matches": "/search*" } }
      ]
    },
    "eagerness": "conservative"
  }]
}
</script>

The rule tells browsers that any same-origin link is safe to prefetch, except for paths under /search*.

The eagerness: conservative setting fires the prefetch on pointerdown or touchstart, meaning the browser only starts prefetching once the user begins to click or tap a link. There are more aggressive options, such as prefetching when a link becomes visible or when a user hovers over it.

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For organisations still running Drupal 7, the challenge is often less about whether to upgrade and more about how to modernise without disrupting critical business operations. Niels de Feyter, founder and lead developer of CodeLift, argues that successful upgrades depend on preserving a system's observable behaviour while modernising its underlying platform. In this interview with The Drop Times, he discusses verification, migration complexity, ageing infrastructure, AI-assisted development, and the risks organisations face as legacy systems grow older.

Explore the future of enterprise AI at The AI Summit London 2026. See how open-source architecture is becoming the foundation for secure, scalable, and future-ready enterprise AI.

Drupal 11.4 is the next minor release in the 11.x branch, with a stable launch planned for the week starting June 22, 2026. It doesn't break backward compatibility for public APIs, but it brings plenty of concrete improvements: PHP attribute routing, a new bootstrap based on Symfony Runtime, Brotli compression for assets, SEO-oriented robots.txt changes, and a whole list of deprecations worth handling in custom modules. Below I walk through what actually changes compared to Drupal 11.3.

The New Workflow Modeler: Revolutionary, Not Just Improved Jürgen Haas Thu 4 Jun 2026 - 13:45

The new Workflow Modeler is a from-scratch implementation built in six weeks: React 18 + TypeScript, infinite canvas, execution replay, live testing, four export formats (Recipe/Archive/JSON/SVG), and a standalone embeddable viewer. Around 87,000 lines, more than 3,400 test cases, about 2.1x as much test code as production code. Features include context-aware quick-add with dependency filtering, token inspection during replay, WCAG AA accessibility, dark mode, full keyboard navigation, and six granular permissions. Built as a Modeler API plugin - coexists with BPMN.iO. Models are portable between modelers via operations dropdown ("Edit" uses last modeler; "Edit with..." switches modelers). Same-modeler editing preserves layout; cross-modeler switches apply auto-layout while preserving workflow logic. Production-ready and shipped.

Mike Anello and Rod Martin discuss the sharp decline in demand for beginner Drupal training. Drawing on data from their businesses, events, and other training providers, they explore factors including AI-driven self-service learning, Drupal's growing complexity for newcomers, and limited community-wide marketing. They also discuss how initiatives like Drupal AI and broader promotion efforts could help attract and support the next generation of Drupal users.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/cafe017

Topics Mike Anello

Mike, widely recognized by his Drupal.org username "ultimike," is a prominent figure in the Drupal community with over 20 years of experience as a developer, educator, and community leader. As the co-founder and vice president of DrupalEasy, a Florida-based training and consulting firm, he has been instrumental in shaping the careers of countless Drupal professionals through comprehensive programs like Drupal Career Online and Professional Module Development. Mike's contributions extend beyond education. He has been deeply involved in the Drupal ecosystem, previously serving as a core contributor to the Migrate module, co-maintaining several contributed modules, and actively participating in issue queues and documentation efforts. His leadership roles include membership in the Drupal Community Working Group and the Conflict Resolution Team, as well as organizing the Florida Drupal Users' Group and Florida DrupalCamp for over a decade. As the host of the long-running DrupalEasy Podcast, MIke provides insights into Drupal development, community news, and interviews with key contributors, fostering a sense of connection and ongoing learning within the community (DrupalEasy). His dedication to mentoring and community building has made him a respected and influential voice in the Drupal world.

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A proposal to introduce “Module Families” on Drupal.org aims to help users compare contributed modules that solve similar problems through structured comparison pages and ecosystem signals. The proposal argues that Drupal’s challenge is not excessive choice but insufficient context, an issue that becomes more important as Drupal CMS introduces curated module selections and opinionated workflows.

With the Commerce Recurring module, any Drupal Commerce website can create recurring orders that users can manage directly in Drupal. This is useful for donations, subscriptions, and memberships, especially for selling access to content. We created the module well before payment gateways like Stripe had robust recurring solutions in place with full webhook support.

However, the market has now evolved, partly because of the SaaS explosion. If you’re looking for a solution to recurring payments, you have many options to implement them reliably beyond Commerce Recurring.

While before we would always lean toward using a native Drupal solution for recurring billing, now the answer is more nuanced. How should you implement recurring payments in Drupal Commerce?

Start by ruling out what you don't need

Before diving into frameworks and modules, it's worth asking whether you actually need Drupal Commerce at all for your subscription use case.

If your requirements are straightforward, like selling access to a user role that unlocks gated content, you could implement that with nothing more than Stripe Checkout and a webhook listener. A customer hits Stripe's hosted checkout page, subscribes, and your Drupal site receives a webhook notification. You grant the role. When Stripe tells you the subscription was canceled or a payment failed, you revoke it. No shopping cart, no checkout flow, no Commerce module required.

Some use cases genuinely are that simple, and adding unnecessary complexity doesn't serve anyone.

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"Argo-nizing" Our Platform for AI Development John Locke Tue, 06/02/2026 - 10:00 How grouping related repos into a single parent directory made AI coding assistants significantly more useful Dev Corner

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Our automated tests for a Drupal 11 upgrade failed with a cryptic error: Recursive router rebuild detected. A bit like when cron warns about it already running, this meant something had started a router rebuild, but without finishing successfully, before another rebuild of routing information was triggered. My solution was pretty specific to our context - but what might be interesting here is how I identified what had led to this problem.

The context

We run automated functional tests on this client project as regression tests, to show that various bespoke functionality still works, as changes are introduced. These are run in a DDEV instance inside a github action, via phpunit (and the DDEV Selenium Standalone Chrome add-on). To keep the maintenance of these tests easy and as portable as possible, we just use core's existing phpunit.xml.dist file as their configuration. The tests install a fresh Drupal site, importing our project's ordinary configuration along the way, and then perform actions in a headless browser, clicking on elements just like a site visitor would, etc. During work to upgrade from Drupal 10 to 11, tests started failing whilst just installing Drupal. Nothing to do with our custom functionality. What gives?!

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Author and photos: Martin Anderson-Clutz
Originally posted on Acquia.com blog

Enterprise AI is about cost management; Drupal's AI Summit shows community-driven acceleration. Drupal: the best CMS for the agentic web.

Attending a massive tech gathering like apidays New York 2026 provides a fascinating macro-lens view of where our industry is heading. With ten co-located conferences happening simultaneously, the event served as a perfect melting pot for the cross-pollination of ideas across different sectors of software architecture. Yet, while APIs served as the undeniable common thread weaving through nearly every presentation, stepping between the mainstream enterprise tracks and the co-located Drupal AI Summit felt like walking into two entirely different worlds.

The contrast highlighted a critical tension in technology today: the corporate race to manage costs and practical enterprise constraints, versus an open-source community’s agile, collaborative push toward a truly agentic web.

The Enterprise Reality Check: APIs as the New Agent UX

In the main apidays sessions, the initial euphoric hype around generative AI has clearly given way to hard-nosed engineering pragmatism. The prevailing sentiment among enterprise builders boiled down to two foundational rules:

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Attending Drupal Dev Days Athens as both a participant and first-time international speaker gave Francesco Maria Battaglia a new perspective on the Drupal ecosystem. Reflecting on the experience, he writes about mentorship, community support, volunteer contributions, and the sense of belonging that continues to draw people into open source communities.

The Drupal Association is responsible for the massive infrastructure that keeps the Drupal ecosystem moving forward. From protecting and upgrading Drupal.org to coordinating global events, managing community programs, and providing resources to our vital Security Team, our work requires reliable funding.

Acquia’s Fair Trade Initiative changes the paradigm by embedding funding directly into the transactional deal flow of the new Acquia Partner Program. When an Acquia partner closes an eligible Drupal deal, 2% of that transaction is automatically directed to the Drupal Association to support our core mission. This ensures a sustainable model that aligns Drupal’s commercial growth with continued investment in its underlying infrastructure.

What makes this model truly exceptional is how it aligns incentives across the board:

• Funded Completely by Acquia: The 2% contribution is funded entirely out of Acquia’s margin. It costs the end-customer nothing extra, and it does not reduce partner revenue or incentives.
   
• Partners Earn Capital Contribution Credit: The funding is publicly tracked and credited in the partner's name within the Acquia Partner Portal. This financial support directly counts toward the partner’s standing in the Drupal Association’s Certified Partner Program.
   
• Predictable Scaling for Drupal: As the Drupal economy grows and partners close more business, funding for the Drupal Association automatically scales alongside it.

We want to extend a massive #DrupalThanks to Acquia for their visionary leadership, and to all the Acquia partners who are now automatically driving the future of the Drupal project with every deal they close.

Together, we aren't just building digital experiences; we are building a sustainable, open web for everyone.

Slow Drupal site costing you rankings? Learn some impactful fixes that work - caching, images, hosting, and the Drupal 11.3 improvements worth knowing about. Included is a real case study going from a performance score of 65 to 98!

This morning, Salesforce announced its plan to acquire Contentful.

Congratulations to Sascha Konietzke, Paolo Negri, and the whole Contentful team. They spent 13 years building Contentful into one of Europe's most visible enterprise software companies. Salesforce buying Contentful is real validation of the product, customers, and team they built.

The deal makes sense for both Salesforce and Contentful. Salesforce has long had a CMS-shaped hole in its product offering, and Contentful fills it with a mature, enterprise-ready SaaS product.

To me, the more important question isn't whether the acquisition makes strategic sense, but what it means for digital sovereignty. It's a textbook example of why "Buy European" isn't enough.

Before I go further, let me be clear about where I'm coming from. I founded Drupal and still lead the project, and I co-founded Acquia, the company built around Drupal, where I'm Executive Chair. So when I argue that this deal exposes a problem, you should factor in that Open Source is both my life's work and my livelihood.

Contentful is a German company, Contentful GmbH, registered in Berlin. For over a decade it has been a flagship European software company.

If the acquisition closes, it becomes part of Salesforce, a US corporation, and falls under US law.

For many of Contentful's customers, this acquisition will be a non-event. For governments, public institutions, and regulated industries, it exposes a harder truth: a vendor being European today is no guarantee it stays European tomorrow.

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Today we are talking about AI, How to stay up to date with it, and if it will really take our jobs with guests Angie Byron & Amber Matz. We'll also cover AI Best Practices for Drupal as our module of the week.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/555

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Addresses and other contact details are among the most familiar pieces of information we encounter online. They guide deliveries, define locations, and connect digital content to the real world. The way they are structured and displayed quietly shapes how useful and reliable they become. 

Drupal 12 is still months away, but readiness work is already becoming visible in contributed projects. One recent example comes from Scheduled Transitions 2.9.0-beta4, which declares compatibility with Drupal ^11.3 || ^12. The release itself is modest, but it serves as an early reminder for teams beginning to review upgrade paths and dependency inventories ahead of the next major Drupal release.

Scheduled Transitions is an editorial workflow module that allows content revisions to move automatically between moderation states at scheduled times. While the module itself may not be widely discussed, it represents the kind of workflow dependency that organisations often rely on for day-to-day publishing operations.

That makes its Drupal 12 compatibility declaration noteworthy. Upgrade planning should not stop at Drupal core. Teams also need visibility into the contributed modules that support moderation, scheduling, revisions, translations, layout management, search, and editorial access. Early compatibility signals help identify which parts of a publishing stack are already preparing for the next release cycle.

According to the Drupal core release schedule, Drupal 12.0.0-beta1 is planned for the week of 14 September 2026, with Drupal 12.0.0 scheduled for the week of 7 December 2026. Drupal 10 is also expected to reach end of life on 9 December 2026, giving site owners a practical reason to begin evaluating dependencies before the final quarter of the year.

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Drupal is moving through one of the most exciting periods in its recent history.

We have Drupal CMS, Drupal AI, Recipes, and the upcoming Experience Builder all pushing Drupal toward a more approachable, modern, and ambitious future.