Today we are talking about Maintaining NodeJS, Patternlab, Writing Books, and Open Source with guest Brian Muenzenmeyer. We’ll also cover AI Webform Generator as our module of the week.

Topics

• Brian Open Source Origins

• Pattern Lab Node Journey

• Maintaining and Moving On

• Writing Approachable Open Source

• Who the Book Is For

• Beyond Code Contributions

• All Things Open Book Signing

• Choosing Conferences to Attend

• Pitching Open Source at Work

• Misconceptions and Starting Small

• Avoiding Maintainer Burnout

• Handling AI Noise and Low Effort PRs

• DCO and Licensing Basics

• Better Communication and Reviews

• Node and Drupal Lessons

• Optimism for Open Source Future

Resources

• Brian Muenzenmeyer

  • https://brianmuenzenmeyer.com

  • https://approachableopensource.com/

  • https://bsky.app/profile/brianmuenzenmeyer.com

  • https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-muenzenmeyer-91a77554/

  • https://www.renderatl.com/schedule upcoming

  • https://nodeconf.eu/program upcoming

  • spectrum of engagement

  • https://approachableopensource.com/blog/2025-open-source-pace-layers/change in contention

  • https://brianmuenzenmeyer.com/posts/2018-i-maintainer/ burnout

  • https://approachableopensource.com/read/the_spectrum_of_engagement/

  • https://approachableopensource.com/read/the_four_files_of_any_open_source_project/ LICENSE

• Hodag

  • Cryptid

  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hodag

  • https://www.rhinelanderchamber.com/about-the-hodag/

• You should write a book

• All contributors spec

• Talk at all things apart

• DCO

  • Developer Certificate of Origin

• Open source law policy and practice

• Sustain OSS

Guests

Brian Muenzenmeyer - brianmuenzenmeyer.com

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Bernardo Martinez - bernardm28
JD Flynn - dorficus

Module of the Week

with Jacob Rockowitz - jrockowitz.com jrockowitz

AI Webform Generator (ai_webform_generator) - AI Webform Generator allows site builders and administrators to create and modify Drupal Webforms using plain English instructions.

Instead of manually building forms field-by-field, users can describe what they need (for example, “a customer feedback form with name, email, rating, and comments”), and the module uses the OpenAI API to generate a complete Webform structure automatically.

The module can also update existing Webforms using natural language instructions such as adding fields, removing fields, or modifying validation rules without recreating the form.

Upcoming Episodes

#565 That Geerling Guy with Jeff Geerling. Recording August 11.
#566 DrupalEasy: Responsible Drupal AI with Mike Anello. Recording August 18.
#567 - TBD
#568 - The PHP Foundation with Elizabeth Barron. Recording September 1.

Submit your questions on the #TalkingDrupal channel on Drupal Slack.

Contact Us

#talkingdrupal on Drupal Slack

show@talkingdrupal.com

Today we are talking about Drupito, its Business model, and Marketplaces with guest Ashraf Abed. We’ll also cover Generate (Social Media) Image as our module of the week.

Topics

• Meet Drupalito and the Mission

• Platform Layers and Roadmap

• Pricing and New Markets

• Marketplace Success Stories

• Exportability and Vendor Lock In

• Growing the Drupal Ecosystem

• Derivatives and Recurring Revenue

• Rebuilding on Drupedo

• Funding Drupal Association

• Global Community Check In

• Migrating Sites to Drupedo

• Marketplace Vision Shift

• Maintenance and Incentives

• Safe Updates Blue Green

• Testing Mindset for Templates

• Official Marketplace Collaboration

• Agency Revenue and Partnerships

• Niche Derivatives and Pricing

• Launch Plans and Vetting

Resources

• Code that ships

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Ashraf Abed - drupito.com ashrafabed
Avi Schwab - froboy.org froboy

Module of the Week

with Avi Schwab - froboy.org froboy

Generate (Social Media) Image - This module automatically replaces image styles with a tokenized text overlay like [node:title] with a node's data, such as the title, the author or creation-date of the node, which can be used as a beautiful and meaningful image for social media.

Upcoming Episodes

#564 Approachable Open Source with Brian Muenzenmeyer. Recording August 4.
#565 That Geerling Guy with Jeff Geerling. Recording August 11.
#566 DrupalEasy: Responsible Drupal AI with Mike Anello. Recording August 18.

Submit your questions on the #TalkingDrupal channel on Drupal Slack.

Contact Us

#talkingdrupal on Drupal Slack

show@talkingdrupal.com

Today we are talking about Supporting Open Source, Acquia, and The Acquia Fair Trade Initiative with guest James Sims. We’ll also cover Image Effects as our module of the week.

Topics

• Fair Trade Initiative Explained

• How the Program Started

• Why Fair Trade Matters

• Adoption and Open Framework

• Agency and Freelancer Benefits

• Partner Funded Giving

• Who Can Be Makers

• Tracking Participation

• Tax Deduction Questions

• Community Shaped Program

• Money Counts Too

• Early Challenges

• Timeline And Launch

• Sustainability Built In

• How To Get Involved

• Defining Success

• Origins Of Fair Trade

Resources

• Acquia Fair Trade Initiative

• Taste of chicago

  • Giordanos Recommended by John

  • Lou’s pizza

• Five For The Future

• Image Convolution Playground

Guests

James Sims - rcjmselp85

Hosts

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

Module of the Week

with Avi Schwab - froboy.org froboy

Image Effects - The Image Effects module provides a suite of additional image effects that can be added to image styles. Image Effects tries to support both the GD toolkit from Drupal core and the ImageMagick toolkit.

Show News

There are some changes to our show release schedule.

• Monday - TD Cafe episode released, audio (RSS) and video (YouTube); if an episode is available

• Tuesday - Talking Drupal Recording, Live Stream (YouTube/LinkedIn) at 11:45am EST. Show is available on YouTube after the live stream.

• Thursday - Talking Drupal audio (RSS) release and show notes available (TalkingDrupal.com).

• Friday - Module of the Week Video (YouTube) and Weekly Newsletter (E-Mail)

Upcoming Episodes

#563 Drupito: More Than a Marketplace with Ashraf Abed. Recording July 28.
#564 Approachable Open Source with Brian Muenzenmeyer. Recording August 4.
#565 That Geerling Guy with Jeff Geerling. Recording August 11.
#566 DrupalEasy: Responsible Drupal AI with Mike Anello. Recording August 18.

Submit your questions on the #TalkingDrupal channel on Drupal Slack.

Contact Us

#talkingdrupal on Drupal Slack

show@talkingdrupal.com

Today we are talking about Content, syndication, and Synchronization between Drupal Sites with guest Thiemo Müller. We’ll also cover Drupal core 11.4 as our module of the week.

Topics

• Origins and Use Cases

• Hub Model and Flexibility

• Media Sync and Governance

• Composable Pages Challenge

• Governance With Blocks

• Canvas And Recipes

• Real Time Syndication

• Scaling To Thousands

• GEO And AEO Explained

• GEO Audits And Loops

• ContentSync Recommendations

• Permissions And Drupal 11

• AIM Assess Improve Monitor

• Boosting Drupal AI Presence

• Ecosystem Alignment Signals

• Recency And Messaging Tips

Resources

• Content Sync

• Content Sync A-I-M

• Content Sync Drupal Module

• Deprecated extensions meta issue

• GEO

  • Generative engine optimization

• Semrush

• Peec ai

• Otterly ai

• Profound

Guests

Thiemo Müller - content-sync.io thiemo

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Ashraf Abed - drupito.com ashrafabed

Module of the Week

with Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

Drupal core 11.4

#018 - Drupal Site Templates

Join Martin, Andy and Mike as they discuss what Drupal site templates are and how they differ from Drupal’s traditionally bare-bones starting point, aiming to reduce setup effort and total cost of ownership while making Drupal competitive again for small nonprofits and smaller sites. They compare building templates versus client sites, covering the evolution from early Layout Builder/Recipes work to today’s simpler packaging via a Drush site:export workflow, plus tooling like DripYard Recipe Builder for extracting reusable “recipe” parts.

Topics

Martin Anderson-Clutz

Based in London, Ontario, Martin transitioned from graphic design to web development, ultimately specializing in Drupal in 2005. Currently working as a Product Marketing Manager at Acquia, he is Triple Certified in Drupal and UX-certified by the world-renowned Nielsen Norman Group. His key contributions include: As a speaker & writer, presenting at Drupalcamps and Drupalcons, and a published blogger across multiple platforms, including the Acquia Dev Portal and opensource.com; as a podcast host, participating in the Talking Drupal podcast, including as the “Module of the Week” correspondent; and as an open source maintainer, developing and maintaining popular Drupal contrib modules and recipes, including Smart Date and Fullcalendar.

Andy Giles

Andy is a Drupal back-end developer. In 2012, he founded Blue Oak Interactive, a development and consulting agency focused on complex Drupal site builds, particularly in e-commerce. In 2025, he partnered with Mike Herchel to launch Dripyard, a premium Drupal theme designed to reduce the cost of ownership and enhance the developer experience for modern Drupal projects.

Mike Herchel

Mike is a founder & developer at Dripyard, and is a longtime contributor to Drupal. He has played a key role in modernizing Drupal’s frontend architecture, performance, and accessibility, and is known for helping bring Drupal’s component-driven development into mainstream use. Mike has delivered projects for organizations including IBM, the U.S. Small Business Administration, and the U.S. court system. He is a frequent speaker on performance, accessibility, and modern frontend practices.

• What Are Site Templates

• Drupal CMS Template Picker

• Why Templates Matter

• Building Templates Workflow

• Recipes And Custom Tooling

• Canvas And Theme Strategy

• React Components And AI

• Drupal 11.4 Compatibility

• Canvas Patterns Explained

• Pricing Adoption And AI

• AI In Their Workflow

• Internal Templates And Wrap Up

Guests

• Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

• Andy Giles - andyg5000 Dripyard

• Mike Herchel - mherchel Dripyard

Upcoming Episodes

#561 The Aaron Winborn Award with George DeMet & April Sides. Recording July 14.
#562 Acquia Fair Trade Initiative with James Sims. Recording July 21.
#563 TBD
#564 Approachable Open Source with Brian Muenzenmeyer. Recording August 4.

Submit your questions on the #TalkingDrupal channel on Drupal Slack.

The Hidden Cost of AI: Content Governance

by Content Sync

AI accelerated content creation.
It also made governance the new bottleneck.

For many teams, this feels counterintuitive. If AI can help draft pages, summarize information, translate content, and generate ideas faster than before, then publishing should become easier too.

But in large Drupal ecosystems, writing was rarely the hardest part of the work. The harder part is keeping content accurate, consistent, approved, reusable, and up to date across many sites, teams, departments, markets, or brands.

Why does content governance still take so much time?

For most editorial teams, writing is only one part of the job. Before content is published, it needs to be reviewed, approved, translated, adapted for different audiences, and distributed to the right places. After publication, someone needs to make sure it stays accurate, update it when information changes, and check that every version remains aligned.

As Drupal ecosystems grow, these tasks become a larger part of the workload. The challenge is no longer only creating content. It is governing content consistently across dozens or even hundreds of sites, often with different teams responsible for different parts of the ecosystem.

Continue Reading at Content Sync

Vibe Coding Drupal: AI as a Reasoning Partner

by Martin Anderson-Clutz

Discover how to leverage AI as a reasoning partner in Drupal development, moving beyond coding to high-level architecture and system design.

This is the fifth installment in my series on “vibe coding” with Drupal. To set the stage:

• Part 1: My Initial Foray (Proving AI can write code)

• Part 2: The Scent of Progress (Keeping AI on track)

• Part 3: Code Directing an Accelerator for Drupal 12 (An evolving role for developers)

• Part 4: A Force Multiplier for Contrib (Using AI to accelerate Drupal contribution)

• Part 5 (This piece): AI as Thinking Partner (Proving AI can help reason through complex architecture)

Back in Part 2 of this series, I discussed some different interpretations of “vibe coding” as a term, and its applicability to my explorations of using AI with my Drupal development. More recently, someone asked about its applicability to this series from a different angle: expertise. Some use the term “vibe coding” to convey non-developers using AI to craft things they simply wouldn’t have had the ability for on their own. By that logic, given that I’m a long-time member of the Drupal community, and already know Drupal well enough to have written a number of modules on my own, is using AI to enhance my efforts truly “vibe coding”?

Continue Reading at Acquia

Contact Us

#talkingdrupal on Drupal Slack

show@talkingdrupal.com

Today we are talking about Marketing, AI, and Drupal with guest Paul Johnson. We’ll also cover Curated Colors as our module of the week.

Topics

• Paul’s Current Projects

• Enterprise AI Summit Details

• Marketing the AI Initiative

• Partnering on Event Booths

• Drupal’s Outside Perception

• What’s Working Now

• Growing the Marketing Team

• How to Contribute

• Outside In Storytelling

• Case Study Examples

• AI Initiative Impact

• Roadmap and Launch Planning

• Finding New Adopters

• Where Pros Research

• Conference Pitch Story

• Local Event Playbook

• Funnel and Webinars

• Industry Guides and Demos

• SEO and AI Search

• Why Agents Avoid Drupal

• High Leverage Contributions

• Measuring AI Mentions

• Vibe Coders to Governance

• Fixing Misconceptions

Resources

• Drupal AI Initiative home page

• Slack

  • #ai-initiative-marketing

• Enterprise AI Summit Rotterdam

• AI Dev Summit Rotterdam

• Drupal AI TV

  • We’ve curated a selection of the best presentations, workshops and demonstrations freely available to provide a practical way to stay informed about the latest innovations in Drupal AI.

• Drupal AI Webinars playlist

• Demos

• Ryan Whitcombe

• 1xINTERNET S1xSignals free AIO GEO assessment

• All things open

• World cancer day

Guests

Paul Johnson - pdjohnson

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Scott Falconer - managing-ai.com scott-falconer

Module of the Week

with Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

Curated Colors - Curated Colors replaces color select lists and free-form color pickers with a visual swatch popover backed by named, exportable palettes. Editors choose from an approved set of named colors organized into groups and see a live preview of their selection before saving.

Palettes are stored as config, so they’re exportable and tracked in git like any other configuration. The stored value is a key (brand-primary, not #0678be), keeping actual color values in your stylesheet. Brand updates become CSS changes rather than content migrations.

Show News

• No Talking Drupal recording this week. You will have a TD Cafe on Thursday: Drupal and Robots.

Upcoming Episodes

#560 Content Sync with Thiemo Müller. Recording July 7.
#561 The Aaron Winborn Award with George DeMet & April Sides. Recording July 14.
#562 Acquia Fair Trade Initiative with James Sims. Recording July 21.
#563 TBD

Submit your questions on the #TalkingDrupal channel on Drupal Slack.

Vibe Coding Drupal: A Force Multiplier for Contrib

by Martin Anderson-Clutz

Maintainer burnout threatens Drupal's 50,000+ contrib modules. How vibe coding with AI is becoming a lifeline for open source.

The Journey from Core to Contrib

Right now, somewhere on drupal.org, a module that hundreds of sites depend on hasn’t had a release in two years. The maintainer hasn’t abandoned it out of indifference; they’re burned out. They’re weighing an upstream library’s breaking changes against their available evenings, doing the math, and silently concluding it’s not worth it.

This is not a Drupal-specific problem. The 2024 Tidelift State of the Open Source Maintainer Report found that 60% of open source maintainers work completely unpaid, and 44% of those who have quit or considered quitting cite burnout as the reason. The average unpaid maintainer contributes nearly 9 hours a week to their project; for popular projects, that climbs to 20-30 hours. The gap between what the ecosystem extracts and what it gives back is enormous, and it has consequences. Drupal’s more than 50,000 contributed modules are only as healthy as the people maintaining them.

Continue Reading at Acquia.com

Contact Us

#talkingdrupal on Drupal Slack

show@talkingdrupal.com

Today we are talking about AI, Agents, and A System to manage them with guest Luke McCormick. We’ll also cover AI Auto-reference as our module of the week.

Topics

• Introducing Agent Management

• Origin Story Claude Credits

• Scrum Meets AI Retention

• Handoff Protocol Filesystem

• Why Handoffs Work So Well

• Examples and Human Loop

• Agent Roles and Model Costs

• Choosing Models by Task

• Not Drupal Specific

• Works With Any Model

• Scrum Sprints For Agents

• Human Cognitive Overload

• Tuning Autonomy Levels

• Setup And Handoff File

• Updating Customized AMS

• Persistent Memory Artifacts

• Demand Better Summaries

• Solo Power With Agents

• Roadmap And AMS Trio

Resources

• Stanford Web Camp - Agile for Agents – Managing Robots The Way We Manage Humans.

• AMS

• Robert Douglas spec kitty

• xdebug tui

• ams-trio

Guests

Luke McCormick - cellear

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi

Module of the Week

with Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

AI Auto-reference - This module is intended to use AI to automatically suggest relationships to other content within the same website. As a site builder, you choose whether to auto-accept vs have a review step. Typically this would be automatically tagging/categorising content.

Show News

• Talking Drupal is taking a week off. There is no show recording on June 30.

Upcoming Episodes

#559 Marketing Drupal with Paul Johnson. Recording June 23.
#560 Content Sync with Thiemo Müller. Recording July 7.
#561 The Aaron Winborn Award with George DeMet & April Sides. Recording July 14.

Submit your questions on the #TalkingDrupal channel on Drupal Slack.

Easy Email: The Fast Path to Better Drupal Emails

by John Picozzi

Last week I wrote about my experience upgrading this site to Drupal 11 and why it was the upgrade experience I had been waiting for.

As part of that upgrade, I also moved my webform handling from Drupal core’s Contact module to Webforms. The migration itself went smoothly, but while testing I noticed something that had probably been true for a long time: my site was sending plain text emails, and they didn’t look particularly great.

That got me thinking about the Easy Email module. I’ve been aware of it for a while, and if you’re interested in learning more about the project, I recommend checking out Talking Drupal Episode 437, where the maintainer discusses the module and its capabilities.

Continue reading at Picozzi.com

Contact Us

#talkingdrupal on Drupal Slack

show@talkingdrupal.com

Today we are talking about Test Driven Development, ebooks, and Drupal with guest Oliver Davies. We’ll also cover Juicer Social Feed as our module of the week.

Topics

• What Is Test Driven Drupal

• Why Automated Tests Matter

• How TDD Works

• AI and Test Quality

• Balancing Test Coverage

• When to Write Tests

• Why Write the Book

• Why Write an Ebook

• From Email Course to Ebook

• Ebook vs Print Tradeoffs

• Who the Book Helps

• What You Will Learn

• Keeping Content Updated

• Publishing Tools Workflow

• Lessons and Drupal Changes

• Podcast and Future Books

• Mob Programming Explained

• Free Ebook and Wrap Up

Resources

• Juicer io

• Drupal 11: The Upgrade Experience I’ve Been Waiting For

• codethatships

• Test-Driven Drupal

• Sculpin

Guests

Oliver Davies - oliverdavies.uk opdavies

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Scott Falconer - managing-ai.com scott-falconer

Module of the Week

with Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

Juicer Social Feed - Juicer Social Feed embeds your Juicer.io aggregated social media feed into Drupal as a configurable block. Display posts from Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, X (Twitter), TikTok, Bluesky, YouTube and more - no coding required.

Upcoming Episodes

#558 Agent Management System with Luke McCormick. Recording on June 16.
#559 TBD
#560 Content Sync with Thiemo Müller. Recording July 7.
#561 Talking Drupal Off

Submit your questions on the #TalkingDrupal channel on Drupal Slack.

Drupal 11: The Upgrade Experience I’ve Been Waiting For

by John Picozzi

Recently I upgraded this site from Drupal 10 to Drupal 11. While I’ve been through my share of Drupal upgrades over the years, this one stood out for a different reason: it was surprisingly straightforward.

Like many Drupal site owners, I started with the Upgrade Status module. Before touching core, I wanted a clear picture of what needed attention. Upgrade Status did exactly what it was designed to do, identifying deprecated code and highlighting modules that weren’t quite ready for Drupal 11.

Continue Reading at picozzi.com

Vibe Coding Drupal: Code Directing an Accelerator for Drupal 12

by Martin Anderson-Clutz

Learn how "Code Directors" use AI to guide development, streamline Drupal contributions, and accelerate preparation for Drupal 12

From Art Direction to Code Direction

Before I started building websites, I was a graphic designer, eventually rising to roles like Art Director and Creative Director. I remember distinctly how expectations changed: as a designer, implementation was my responsibility; as an Art Director, my role shifted to overseeing specialists, providing a fresh set of eyes and guidance to make their work better. While the tools have evolved from QuarkXPress to Claude, the fundamental shift in authority and responsibility remains strikingly similar. As such, I’d like to propose a new term for those of us who use AI tools to soar to heights of software development we might not have thought possible: “Code Directors.”

Continue Reading at www.acquia.com

Contact Us

#talkingdrupal on Drupal Slack

show@talkingdrupal.com

Today we are talking about Drush, Core Contributions, and Drupal’s Past with guest Moshe Weitzman. We’ll also cover Cache Metrics as our module of the week.

Topics

• Moshe Updates and Clients

• Maintaining Drush Long Term

• Locale Performance Overhaul

• CLI in Core Initiative

• Which Commands Make the Cut

• Roadmap Contrib Commands

• Moving Commands Technical Hurdles

• How to Help From AI Initiative

• DDEV Add-ons for Local CI

• MySQL Toolkit Database Images

• Testing With Real Databases

• Devel Module Status

• Organic Groups Origins

• Where Ideas Come From

• Finding Drupal Early Days

• Release Cadence And Backward Compatibility

• Avoiding Maintainer Burnout

• Maintaining With AI And Xdebug

Resources

• Drush’s Final Act

• Drupal cli issue

• DDEV addons

  • https://github.com/ddev/ddev-drupal-contrib

  • https://github.com/weitzman/ddev-mtk

  • https://www.drupal.org/project/dtt

Guests

Moshe Weitzman - weitzman.github.io moshe-weitzman

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Scott Falconer - managing-ai.com scott-falconer

Module of the Week

with Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

Cache Metrics

• Logs all cache tag invalidations

• Sends cache tag invalidations to New Relic as Custom Events. Visualize and Analyze via New Relic Insights (see attached bar chart showing invalidation by tag),

• Sends cache hits/misses to New Relic as Custom Events. See the table in the image thats attached to this page.

Recipes, Site Templates, and Distributions: Modernizing the Approach to Repeatable Success with Drupal

by Martin Anderson-Clutz

Recipes and Site Templates replace Drupal's Distributions, offering a flexible, ephemeral solution for faster, more maintainable site building.

Way back in the Portland 2022 Driesnote, Drupal creator and Acquia co-founder Dries Buytaert first proposed what were then called “Starter Templates”. The vision was to make Drupal easier and faster to use, by having drop-in capabilities to address common site building needs: a staff directory, an events calendar, and so on. Drupal already had a concept of distributions and installation profiles that allowed for the creation of opinionated websites, but they had some issues.

For starters, they often became a maintenance challenge. A site based on a distribution is restricted to specific versions of Drupal core and any modules used, which means that if the distribution isn’t well maintained, you can end up with sites that aren’t up-to-date with security patches, or able to use the latest features. Also, distributions can only be used at the start of a website build, and it can be challenging to remove a distribution from a site once created. Finally, distributions aren’t composable. You can’t combine some features of the RedHen Raiser distribution, for example, with some features of the Commerce Kickstart distribution.

Continue reading at Acquia.com

Wait, When Did Everyone Start Speaking AI? A Catch-Up for the Rest of Us

Drupal AI Learners Club Event hosted by Angie Byron and John Picozzi

Friday, June 19

You blinked, and suddenly everyone’s talking about agents, prompts, RAG, and LLMs like it’s totally normal. It’s not just you — this stuff has moved fast.

In this session, we’ll be joined by John Picozzi of the Talking Drupal podacst to SLOW THE BLEEP DOWN and talk about the foundations from scratch: what do the terms actually mean, how they connect to Drupal specifically, and what you can actually do with AI today without a computer science degree. No judgment, no assumed knowledge, just honest explanations and plenty of time for “wait, can you say that again?”

Register

Contact Us

#talkingdrupal on Drupal Slack

show@talkingdrupal.com

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.

Topics

• What Is AI Learners Club

• Amber Defines the Club

• Origin Story and DrupalCon

• AI Debate and Community Tensions

• Issue Queue Conduct and Moderation

• Thread Tone vs Substance

• AI Adoption Outside Drupal

• Conflict Mediation Playbook

• Maintainer Burnout and Flood

• Safe Space Learners Club

• How the Club Started

• Picking Topics and Demos

• AI Taking Our Jobs

• Future of Learners Club

Resources

• Context Control Center

• AI Learners Club

  • Initiative page

  • Event calendar

  • YouTube Playlist

  • Session Recaps

  • Next session (Claude Design)

  • Slack: #ai-learners

  • Most wanted topics

• What Angie’s working on these days

• Spectrum of AI phases

Guests

Amber Matz - tugboatqa.com amber-himes-matz
Angie Byron - ai_best_practices webchick

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Scott Falconer - managing-ai.com scott-falconer

Module of the Week

with Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

AI Best Practices for Drupal - This project attempts to provide a CANONICAL place to put opinionated Drupal best practice guidance for AI agents (and their humans!).

“Best practices” in the name of the project is doing double-duty:

1) Imparting Drupal best practices as it relates to things like API usage, specific quirks of our particular flavour of PHP, etc. to help agents do less dumb things.

2) Doing this in a way that utilizes AI Engineering best practices, so that when someone experienced in AI-driven development uses Drupal for the first time, it feels natural to them.

Upcoming Episodes

#556 A Chat with Moshe with Moshe Weitzman. Recording June 2.
#557 Test-Driven Drupal eBook with Oliver Davies. Recording on June 9.

Submit your questions on the #TalkingDrupal channel on Drupal Slack.

Heart-Shaped Software Bottlenecks

What does it mean when we hesitate to respond to big fancy AI-assisted code contributions? It means we're human.

by Amber Matz

It’s the first night of DrupalCon Chicago, and I’m mingling. I’m not expecting to have a deep, meaningful conversation. But that’s exactly what I got.

I’m standing somewhat rudely in the middle of the aisle in the hotel bar, and I can feel the long-suffering glare of the server who has to maneuver around us. It’s crowded. And loud. We’ve just finished dinner, and after a long day of travel, I’m more than ready to sneak up to my room. But there’s a human traffic jam of wonderful people, including one of my faves, Randy Fay. We were on the same trivia team last year, and we commiserated our loss, as one does.

Continue reading at ambermatz.com

The Two Speeds of the Agentic Web: Pragmatism and Community-driven Acceleration

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

by Martin Anderson-Clutz

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.

Continue reading at Acquia.com

Event: PHPverse 2026

A free online event for PHP developers worldwide

Bringing the PHP community together - June 9

For one day, the PHPverse comes into focus – bringing together developers, ideas, and energy from across the ecosystem.

Step in, connect, and experience the community at its fullest.

Learn More and Register

Wait, When Did Everyone Start Speaking AI? A Catch-Up for the Rest of Us

Drupal AI Learners Club Event hosted by Angie Byron and John Picozzi

You blinked, and suddenly everyone's talking about agents, prompts, RAG, and LLMs like it's totally normal. It's not just you — this stuff has moved fast.

In this session, we'll be joined by John Picozzi of the Talking Drupal podacst to SLOW THE BLEEP DOWN and talk about the foundations from scratch: what do the terms actually mean, how they connect to Drupal specifically, and what you can actually do with AI today without a computer science degree. No judgment, no assumed knowledge, just honest explanations and plenty of time for "wait, can you say that again?"

Register

Contact Us

#talkingdrupal on Drupal Slack

show@talkingdrupal.com

Today we are talking about Web Education, Level up Tutorials, and life after Drupal with guest Scott Tolinski. We’ll also cover Views Row SDC as our module of the week.

Topics

• Scott Origin Story

• Level Up Tutorials Era

• Syntax Podcast Beginnings

• Growing The Audience

• Web Components Debate

• Leaving Drupal Behind

• What Drupal Still Nails

• Agency Project Highlights

• Booking Podcast Guests

• Scott Work Week Setup

• Running Syntax Team

• Canvas HTML Experiments

• Livestream Tools Challenges

• Funding Via Sentry

• Project Ideas Process

• Conference Speaking Journey

• Speaking Logistics Family

• Content Focus Passion

• Drupal Influence Today

• Mad CSS Tournament

• AI Coding Workflow

• What Excites Him Now

Resources

• Scott Tolinski’s Website

• Levelup tutorials

• 1000th episode

• Web awesome

• Talk in Amsterdam - React summit

  • This component could have been a class

• Sigraph conference site

• Too fast too furious learning things quickly

• JSNation

• Scratch

• Css tricks

• MadCss Championship

• State of ai survey

• Jazz.tools

• 0sync

• Graffiti

Guests

Scott Tolinski - tolin.ski stolinski

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Bernardo Martinez - bernardm28

Module of the Week

with Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

Views Row SDC - Provides an easy way to display the output of a view using a single directory component. Select a component and connect View fields to props and slots. No need for complicated template files.

Show News

Show Schedule - As you know, 10 weeks ago, we started live-streaming episodes. We are still working through the learning curve of using new tools and adapting to changes in our workflow. For audio listeners, nothing has changed; audio is released on Mondays at 2 pm Eastern. For video folks, episodes are available when they’re recorded, Tuesdays at 11:45 am Eastern. Episode show notes and the weekly newsletter are still released on Mondays.

For Patrons, thank you for your continued support, and stay tuned for new content coming your way.

Upcoming Episodes

#555 AI Learners Club with Angie Byron & Amber Matz. Recording May 26.
#556 A Chat with Moshe with Moshe Weitzman. Recording June 2.

Submit your questions on the #TalkingDrupal channel on Drupal Slack.

5 Questions with Bernardo Martinez

Bernardo Martinez is Chattanooga-based front-end Drupal developer, who shares a passion for both HigherEd and Government sectors. He’s been active in the Drupal community since 2018 and actively contributes through mentoring, module support, theme work, and speaking at Tech Conferences.

What was your first Drupal website?
My first Drupal site was one that I put together for ENACTUS, which is a nonprofit club at the school of business where I was pursuing my MBA. Pantheon even gave us free hosting on their community server, so it was great for me to learn the tech and for the club to have a better site at that time. Since then, the site has been rebuilt many times in many other technologies, but back in 2018, it was a key piece of my portfolio for my first Drupal job.

Which website build are you most proud to have been involved with?
UTC.edu, not because it’s perfect, but because it was my first challenge of its size to overcome. A website that had not changed much in like 8 years, which made it easier to improve the design, but harder to redefine and fix its use cases. The main site had been abused in the past. The older CMS made it so that the site was used as a CMS, but also as a Google Drive (DAM) and many other niche things. In addition, management rotated faster than expected, so one had just enough time to get buy-in and implement a policy change before a new person came in. For reference, the older CMS was a modern campus, which is basically an SSG (static site generated) that runs PHP as the backend. Has some perks with it, but it couldn’t apply global templates outside of global regions. If you changed a landing page design, you had to go page by page, updating said design and no API endpoints on anything, so on content was saved on the page, and that was it. This created lots of duplicate content and many of the well-known higher-ed link farm pages.

What career advice do you have for a younger you?
Try to network with as many tech communities as possible. Opportunities are out there; the trick is finding which one has little to no lines on it. Some languages and technologies are overlooked, and those are gems for those who don’t give up.
Outside of Drupal, what hobbies do you have?
I usually run and do CrossFit. CrossFit helps me overcome the dread of certain workout movements, plus you get to share the pain with others. So it’s easier when you see that happen. Besides that, I would say snowboarding in the winter and whitewater kayaking in the summer.

What is your favorite movie franchise?
Back to the future. All their movies are such classics and something easy to rewatch if needed. I don’t usually rewatch movies, but those used to come around on cable TV quite often, so I’ve seen them quite a few times.

Bernardo can be contacted at Drupal.org or LinkedIn

Contact Us

#talkingdrupal on Drupal Slack

show@talkingdrupal.com

Today we are talking about The Open Web, What it means, and Why it’s important with guest Alex Moreno. We’ll also cover AI Schema.org JSON-LD as our module of the week.

Topics

• Defining the Open Web

• Drupal in a Bubble

• Marketing and PR Challenges

• AI Bias Against Drupal

• Why AI Won’t Recommend Drupal

• Is Drupal AI Native

• Marketing Against Giants

• Local Evangelism Push

• Funding Outreach Trips

• Drupal CMS PR Gap

• Templates Lower Barriers

• Need a Drupal Onramp

• Speaking Beyond Drupal

• Web Summit Lessons

• Sell Problems Not Drupal

• Rethinking DrupalCon

• Camps and New Audiences

• Marketplace Ecosystem Idea

• Wrap Up and Contacts

Resources

• Drupalcamp Grenoble 2026 - Bursting the bubble

• Drupal Iberia keynote

• Schema dot org

• Drupal is Great! Its Perception Might Not be

• TD Cafe - Caching

Guests

Alex Moreno - alexmoreno

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Bernardo Martinez - bernardm28

Module of the Week

with Jacob Rockowitz - jrockowitz.com jrockowitz

AI Schema.org JSON-LD - The AI Schema.org JSON-LD module provides a straightforward way to send a prompt that includes a webpage’s content and data, along with instructions and requirements, to an AI provider and to receive a valid Schema.org JSON-LD response for saving and embedding in a webpage.

This AI Schema.org JSON-LD module is a “glue module” that combines AI Automators, Field Widget Actions, and JSON Field to create an AI-powered ‘Schema.org JSON-LD’ field for content entities.

Upcoming Episodes

#554 Hey! Scott Tolinski! with Scott Tolinski. Recording May 19.
#555 AI Learners Club with Angie Byron & Amber Matz. Recording May 26.

Submit your questions on the #TalkingDrupal channel on Drupal Slack.

Support Alanna’s Cremation and Legacy

Alanna Burke passed away suddenly in her sleep. We are raising funds for her cremation and moving her personal effects to storage so we can properly sort the items and donate them to causes she supported

Go Fund Me

Vibe Coding Drupal: the Scent of Progress

by Martin Anderson-Clutz

AI wrote a Drupal module. Discover why "directed coding," using IDE tools, and human oversight are essential to avoid the "scent of progress" trap.

In SEO circles, people used to talk about the "scent of information", the subtle cues that tell users they're navigating toward what they want, encouraging them to keep clicking. I kept thinking about that phrase while spending a few days building a Drupal module almost entirely through AI tools, because the experience has its own version: a scent of progress. The model writes confidently. The diffs look clean. Each turn feels like forward motion. The trick is that sometimes the motion is real, and sometimes you're just spinning your wheels, changing code without getting closer to solving your problem.

Continue reading at Acquia.com

Contact Us

#talkingdrupal on Drupal Slack

show@talkingdrupal.com

Today we are talking about The Midwest Open Source Alliance, What they do, and How they support Drupal with guests April Sides & Tearyne Almendariz. We’ll also cover Canvas Field Component as our module of the week.

Topics

• Congratulations to April as the 2026 Aaron Winborn award!

• What is MOSA, and what gap in the Drupal ecosystem was it created to fill?

• How did MOSA get started, and who were the key people behind its formation?

• MOSA acts as a fiscal sponsor—what does that actually mean in practice for Drupal events and initiatives?

• What are some of the projects or camps MOSA currently supports?

• How does MOSA help sustain and grow regional Drupal communities over time?

• What does membership in MOSA look like, and who should consider getting involved?

• How does MOSA balance local community focus with broader, national or global Drupal efforts?

• What are the biggest challenges MOSA faces as a nonprofit supporting open source communities?

• How has MOSA evolved in recent years, and what’s different today compared to when it launched?

• Looking ahead, what’s the long-term vision for MOSA and its role in the Drupal ecosystem?

Resources

• MOSA Website

• MOSA Drupal Project

• Aaron Winborn

• Handbook

• Moline, Illinois

Guests

Tearyne Almendariz - nlbcworks.com NineLivesBlackCat
April Sides - weekbeforenext

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi

Module of the Week

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

Canvas Field Component - This module allows fields to be placed into Drupal Canvas templates. This allows any field to be used in a Drupal Canvas template, without having to be mapped to a compatible component property. As such, it allows for a simpler modification of node templates, similar to how Layout Builder works, but also allowing the deeper customization of mapping field values to component properties where needed (and where the necessary mappings exist).

That means your Canvas layouts can include values from fields that don’t yet
have a mapping to a Canvas component property yet, such as Smart Date
fields. It also means you can take advantage of Drupal’s advanced rendering
capabilities for things like image styles or responsive image styles, and
show the full content of multivalue entity reference fields.

TD Cafe #016 - Understanding Drupal Caching with Matt and Nic

Nic Laflin and Matt Glaman sit down to discuss Drupal caching and Matt’s new Leanpub book, Understanding Drupal: A Complete Guide to Caching Layers.

Topics

• New Book on Caching

• Why Drupal Caching Shines

• Cache Tags Explained

• Cache Context Variations

• What Caching Really Is

• Invalidation Across the Stack

• NGINX Layer Pitfalls

• What Drupal Can Cache

• Writing Cacheable Render Arrays

• Debugging Metadata Issues

• Testing Caching Strategies

• Researching the Book

• Variation Cache Deep Dive

• Access Policy and Performance

• Permissions Caching and Disk IO

• Extension Discovery Tangent

• File Cache Explained

• Clearing File Cache in Tests

• Updating the Book Over Time

• Leanpub Pricing and Royalties

• Publishing Workflow and Tools

• Writing Process and Editing

Matt Glaman

Matt Glaman is an experienced software engineer and a prominent member of the Drupal community. With over a decade of experience in web development, he has developed a wealth of knowledge and expertise. He is the author of several books, including “Drupal 8 Development Cookbook” and “Drupal 10 Development Cookbook,” which provide a comprehensive guide to building and customizing Drupal sites. And recently, the book Understanding Drupal: A Complete Guide to Caching Layers.

Nic Laflin

Nic Laflin is an accomplished Drupal architect and the founder of nLightened Development LLC, a web development and design firm established in 2008 that leverages highly extensible CMS frameworks to solve complex business challenges.
They’ve been working with Drupal since late 2008, delivering creative solutions for a diverse roster of clients—from government agencies and e-commerce platforms to higher-education institutions and HIPAA-compliant medical services. Recently, Nic has focused on Native Web Components for platform-agnostic design, and has deep experience integrating AWS and building mobile application back ends.
A recognized Drupal guru, Nic speaks regularly at regional Drupal camps and co-hosts the Talking Drupal podcast, where they share best practices and innovations with the community.
Outside of technology, Nic enjoys building with LEGO, experimenting in the kitchen, and designing home automation projects. You can learn more at www.nlightened.net.

Resources

Understanding Drupal: A Complete Guide to Caching Layers
https://mglaman.dev/blog/leveraging-list-cache-tag-entity-types
If you’re using a reverse proxy then disable the internal page cache
https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal/issues/3414825

Guests

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan

Matt Glaman - mglaman.dev mglaman

Upcoming Episodes

#553 Saving The Open Web with Alex Moreno Lopez. Recording May 12.
#554 Hey! Scott Tolinski! with Scott Tolinski. Recording May 19.
#545 AI Learners Club with Angie Byron & Amber Matz. Recording May 26.

Submit your questions on the #TalkingDrupal channel on Drupal Slack.

Vibe Coding Drupal: My Initial Foray

by Martin Anderson-Clutz

Insights on AI's potential for Drupal: How AI tools like Claude and Codex accelerated the creation of a new Drupal module, "Canvas Field Component."

It would be an understatement to say that the use of AI in the Drupal community was a hot topic at recent events like DrupalCamp Florida, DrupalCon Chicago, and Drupal Dev Days in Athens. There have been many passionate conversations on the topic, but thankfully many of them were thoughtful and considered, too.

Artificial intelligence has its boosters and its skeptics, but particularly in light of the significantly more capable models released in recent months, many who have been waiting on the sidelines are interested in exploring how AI tools might make their lives easier.

Continue reading at Acquia.com

Why Restream Fits Talking Drupal

by Stephen Cross

While switching to live streaming for Talking Drupal, we evaluated several tools. Like most software decisions, the question is rarely “What is the best software?” Instead, it’s “Which software best meets our most important requirements?”

TL;DR: For Talking Drupal, Restream is the right choice at this point in time.

Live Streaming

As we shifted our workflow from Record → Edit → Publish to Live Stream = Publish, strong live-streaming capabilities became essential.

Founded in 2015, Restream was originally built to stream to multiple platforms simultaneously. Its cloud-based service allows creators to send a single stream to Restream, which then distributes it to platforms such as YouTube, Twitch, and Facebook.

Continue reading at Second Signal Media

Contact Us

#talkingdrupal on Drupal Slack

show@talkingdrupal.com

Topics

• Module of the Week TFA

• Why Recording Matters

• Early Events and Growing Pains

• Post Production and Gear Limits

• Recording DrupalCon vs Camps

• Costs and Value Breakdown

• Pittsburgh Turning Point

• Hubs and Mentoring New Recordists

• Beyond Drupal Events

• Hands Off Goals

• Impact and Adoption

• Workflow Pain Points

• Content First Recording

• Maintainers and Volunteers

• Volunteer Stress Factors

• Funding and Platforms

• Drupal TV Origins

• Roadmap and Growth

• Wrap Up and Contacts

Resources

• MOTW - Two-factor Authentication (TFA) - https://www.drupal.org/project/tfa

• TFA Email OTP Plugin - https://www.drupal.org/project/tfa_email_otp

• National Institute for Standards and Technology’s Special Publication 800-63B section 3.1.1.2 “Password Verifiers” - https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-4/sp800-63b.html#passwordver

• Drupal Recording Initiative - https://www.drupal.org/project/dri

• DrupalCon Chicago Playlist - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpeDXSh4nHjQpb2cHv9rgQv4lvq1-ZkC3

Guests

Kevin Thull - Drupal Recording Initiative kthull

Guest Host

Bernardo Martinez - bernardm28

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan

Avi Schwab - froboy.org froboy

Module of the Week

with Avi Schwab- froboy.org froboy

Two Factor Authentication - Two-factor authentication for Drupal sites. Drupal provides authentication via something you know – a username and password while TFA module adds a second step of authentication with a check for something you have – such as a code sent to (or generated by) your mobile phone.

TFA is a base module for providing two-factor authentication for your Drupal site. As a base module, TFA handles the work of integrating with Drupal, providing flexible and well tested interfaces to enable your choice of various two-factor authentication solutions like Time-based One-Time Passwords (TOTP), SMS-delivered codes, pre-generated codes, or integrations with third-party services like Authy, Duo and others.

Upcoming Episodes

#552 MOSA with April Sides & Tearyne D. Almendariz. Recording May 5.
#553 Saving The Open Web with Alex Moreno Lopez. Recording May 12.
#554 Hey! Scott Tolinski! with Scott Tolinski. Recording May 19.
#545 AI Learners Club with Angie Byron & Amber Matz. Recording May 26.

Submit your questions on the #TalkingDrupal channel on Drupal Slack.

Why I’m Bringing Talking Drupal Back to Live Streaming

by Stephen Cross

After 13 years, I’m bringing Talking Drupal back to its roots.

When I founded the show in 2013, the first 125 episodes were recorded using Google Hangouts On Air, which was discontinued in August 2019. It was simple: start a video call, broadcast it live to YouTube, and that was the episode.

At the time, production quality, layout, video, and audio weren’t the priority. The goal was to get conversations out into the Drupal community.

After those early episodes, we transitioned to an audio-only format for a period of time. But recently, I revisited the idea of going live again. After a lot of discussion with the team, and a six-episode test run (#546–#551), the decision is clear:

Live streaming is here to stay.

Continue reading at Second Signal Media

DrupalCon Chicago 2026 Playlist

All DrupalCon sessions are now available on YouTube.

AI: Drupal’s Prometheus or Pandora? Defining the Future of the Community

by Martin-Anderson Clutz

AI is a Prometheus of efficiency and a Pandora of risks for Drupal. A keynote from Drupal Dev Days explores its potential and how we can manage risks.

The story of the Greek titan Prometheus is one of radical disruption: he stole fire from Mount Olympus, a domain inaccessible to mortals, and brought it down to humankind. This act broke the monopoly of the gods and ushered in a new age of technology and craftsmanship. For the Drupal community, the introduction of AI presents a similar inflection point, a potent technology whose ultimate role—whether a gift of democratization or a box of new digital plagues—is still being defined.

Continue reading at Acquia.com

Contact Us

#talkingdrupal on Drupal Slack

show@talkingdrupal.com

In episode 550 of Talking Drupal, Rod Martin joins us to discuss how Drupal site builders are defined, how their role has changed across Drupal versions, and what the future may look like with Drupal CMS, Canvas, and Drupal AI. The show’s module of the week is Password Policy, presented by Avi Schwab, covering customizable password constraints and password expiration/reset features, along with supporting modules Password Policy Extras and Password Policy Pwned, which checks passwords against the Have I Been Pwned database. The conversation also explores the challenges site builders face around layout, theming, and configuration management, and the need for better templates, workflows, and guardrails as AI-assisted site building evolves.

Topics

• Module of the Week: Password Policy

• MidCamp 2026 Promo

• Defining Drupal Site Builders

• Rod’s Training Background

• Site Builder Role and Skills

• Comparing Drupal WordPress Joomla

• Editors vs Site Builders

• Site Building Changing in Drupal

• Layout Builder Fallout

• Canvas and AI Promise

• Barriers and Bulk Fields

• Prompt Built Architecture

• Guardrails and Nuance

• Playbooks and Context

• Drupal Must Shift

• Templates Over CMS

• Dev and Builder Handoff

• Two Paths Forward

• Recipes Upgrade Gotchas

• Closing and Contacts

Resources

• NIST Password Guidelines - https://specopssoft.com/blog/nist-password-guidelines/

• Password Recipe - https://www.drupal.org/project/password_policy/issues/1592202

• Emdash - https://blog.cloudflare.com/emdash-wordpress/

• Talking Drupal #122 - Taxonomy or Entity Reference
  https://talkingdrupal.com/122

Guests

Rod Martin - DrupalHelps.com imrodmartin

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
Avi Schwab- froboy.org froboy

Module of the Week

with Avi Schwab- froboy.org froboy

Password Policy - A password policy can be defined with a set of constraints which must be met before a user password change will be accepted. Each constraint has a parameter allowing for the minimum number of valid conditions which must be met before the constraint is satisfied.

Upcoming Episodes

#551 Drupal Recording Initiative with Kevin Thull. Recording April 28.
#552 MOSA with April Sides & Tearyne D. Almendariz. Recording May 5.
#553 Saving The Open Web with Alex Moreno Lopez. Recording May 12.
#554 Hey! Scott Tolinski! with Scott Tolinski. Recording May 19.

Submit your questions on the #TalkingDrupal channel on Drupal Slack.

Contact Us

#talkingdrupal on Drupal Slack

show@talkingdrupal.com

In Episode 549, Randy Fay and Stas Zhuk join us to discuss what DDEV is, recent improvements, and where it’s headed. Module of the week is the DDEV Drupal Contrib add-on. Randy and Stas discuss priorities like reliability, consistent UX, add-ons discoverability, and new features including revamped ddev share with Cloudflare and rootless Podman support. They also cover coder.ddev.com, a cloud-based DDEV environment built on coder.com for easier onboarding and contribution, plus sustainability, community support, and challenges such as AI-driven PR volume and Stas’s development constraints in Ukraine.

Topics

• Module of the Week - DDEV Drupal Contrib

• DDev Drupal Contri Overview

• Contrib Workflow Q&A

• Drush in Core Debate

• Add-on Registry and Contact

• Drupal AI Summit Plug

• What Is DDev

• Stas Origin Story

• Recent Releases and Priorities

• DDev Share and Podman

• Developer Experience Changes

• Database Upgrade Pain Points

• Coder DDev Cloud IDE

• Cloud DDEV Basics

• VS Code Remote Workflow

• Pair Programming Training Wins

• Docker Desktop Alternatives

• Onboarding Teams Faster

• Windows Support Reality

• Building Through War

• Roadmap Env File Fixes

• Beyond Drupal Adoption

• Addons Discovery Tools

• Funding Community Health

• AI Pull Requests Pressure

• AI Agents MCP Plans

• How To Get Involved

Resources

• DDEV - https://ddev.com/

• DDEV Add-on Registry - https://addons.ddev.com/

• Introducing coder.ddev.com: DDEV in the Cloud - https://ddev.com/blog/coder-ddev-com-announcement/

• About Stas Zhuk - https://ddev.com/blog/introducing-maintainer-stas/

• Power Through Blackouts: How DDEV Community Helped Me in Ukraine - https://ddev.com/blog/power-through-blackouts-ddev-community-support/

• Drush command in core - https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal/issues/3453474

• Drush’s Final Act - https://weitzman.github.io/blog/drush-final-act

• coder.com - https://coder.com/

• Service hosting coder.ddev.com - https://www.hetzner.com/

• Funding DDEV - https://ddev.com/blog/sustainability-for-ddev/

• Gen AI DDEV newsletter note - https://ddev.com/blog/ddev-march-2026-newsletter/

• Sharing Coder.ddev.com workspaces - https://github.com/ddev/coder-ddev/issues/80

Guests

Stas Zhuk - stasadev
Randy Fay - ddev.com rfay

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Rod Martin - DrupalHelps.com imrodmartin

Module of the Week

with Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

DDEV Drupal Contrib - DDEV integration for developing Drupal contrib projects. As a general philosophy, your contributed module/theme is the center of the universe.

Upcoming Episodes

#550 The Future of Site Builders with Rod Martin. Recording April 21.
#551 Drupal Recording Initiative with Kevin Thull. Recording April 28.
#552 MOSA with April Sides & Tearyne D. Almendariz

Submit your questions on the #TalkingDrupal channel on Drupal Slack.

Sound Your Best on Zoom Calls and Videos, Part 1: the Technology

by Martin Anderson-Clutz

The Voice of the Driesnote Demos

For a couple of years now, I’ve been fortunate to help produce the demo videos in Driesnote presentations, often one of the more anticipated parts of each DrupalCon. Sometimes people assume that because they can hear my voice, I am responsible for the compelling story these videos tell. That’s flattering, but the truth is that each time there is a team of people whose combined efforts come together to produce what can be seen in the videos.

Continue reading at www.mandclu.com

Contact Us

#talkingdrupal on Drupal Slack

show@talkingdrupal.com

In episode #548 we welcome back JD Leonard to discuss what CRMs are, what problems they solve, and which organizations benefit from them. JD explains why Drupal CRM defines CRM as “Contact Relationship Management,” outlines core expectations like contact and relationship tracking and integrations, and describes Drupal CRM’s Drupal-native architecture using dedicated, fieldable entity types for contacts, relationships, and contact methods. The panel compares Drupal CRM to older Drupal CRM efforts and user-based approaches, covers security considerations for PII and plans for field encryption, and highlights ecosystem projects such as CRM Email, CRM Membership (including Drupal Commerce integration), and event registration needs.

Topics

• Module of the Week: Module of the Week: Social Media Links Block and Fields

• Use Cases and Discussion

• How to Suggest Modules

• What Is a CRM

• CRM Hats and Naming

• Core CRM Features and Users

• Why Drupal CRM Exists

• Drupal CRM Architecture Deep Dive

• Demos and Legacy Alternatives

• Project Origins and Community

• Out of the Box Features

• Security and PII Considerations

• Field Encryption Limits

• Core First Drupal Native

• Search Deprecation Drupal 12

• Choosing Contrib Integrations

• Ecosystem Modules Upstream

• Getting Started

• Evaluating CRM Options

• Common CRM Pitfalls

• Community Sustainability Vision

• Funding Volunteers Sponsors

• Roadmap Toward 1.0

• Ecosystem Membership Events

Resources

• Try the latest - https://drupal.org/project/crm

• Field encrypt - https://www.drupal.org/project/crm/issues/3558040

• Primary entity reference - https://www.drupal.org/project/primary_entity_reference

• Member Platform initiative - https://www.drupal.org/project/member

• Financial sponsor of Steve Ayers’ time working on Drupal CRM - https://www.govwebworks.com, https://www.portlandwebworks.com

• CRM ecosystem modules - https://www.drupal.org/project/crm/ecosystem

• Drupal Slack #crm channel: - https://drupal.slack.com/archives/C08N90UF9TR

Guests

JD Leonard - modernbizconsulting.com jdleonard

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

Module of the Week

with Martin Anderson-Clutz

Social Media Links Block and Field

The modules provides a configurable block that display links (icons) to your profiles on various popular networking sites.
With this module, a website can be quickly extended with a “Follow us” functionality. Or you make the block available for your site editors, and they can configure the social networks themselves.

Show News

• Talking Drupal is now live-streaming on YouTube and LinkedIn on Tuesdays at 11:45 Eastern.

Upcoming Episodes

#549 A DDev Update with Randy Fay & Stas Zhuk. Recording April 14.
#550 TBD
#551 Drupal Recording Initiative with Kevin Thull. Recording April 28.
#552 MOSA with April Sides & Tearyne D. Almendariz

Submit your questions on the #TalkingDrupal channel on Drupal Slack.

The Talent Base Is the Roadmap: Teaching the First Drupal in a Day in North America

by Martin Anderson-Clutz

AI won't be a platform differentiator. Drupal's long-term strength is its growing, diverse community. Drupal in a Day is building that talent base.

"Experiences like this go beyond just learning a platform — they shape how I think about technology as a whole."
— Mustafa Hasan, Drupal in a Day Chicago 2026 attendee

That's a student speaking after spending one day with Drupal for the first time. He didn't say "I learned a new tool." He said his thinking changed. That distinction is worth sitting with, because it points directly at the strategic question every organization that builds on open source should be asking right now.

Continue reading at Acquia.com.

Thoughts on Episode #547 - Why Developers Don’t Choose Drupal

by Jürgen Haas (via Slack)

I've listened to episode #547 this morning. Great show and good conclusions. This is so close to my heart; I want to provide some thoughts on two topics and post them individually so that others can comment in separate threads.

1. Something I learned a while back: never use PHP and "dead" or "dies" in the same sentence, even if you want to say that PHP is not dead. This is because the human brain works in a way that it may just remember PHP is dead. Also, search engines and AI bots may draw their own conclusion from the 2 words. If we intend to talk about PHP being alive and doing well, let's just do that and not about what's not the case ;)

2. The Drupal Community has always been great at talking about Drupal's weaknesses and those things that haven't been accomplished yet. To the extent that we started believing those stories ourselves, i.e., that Drupal isn't great. Therefore, talking about the great things Drupal is what we should focus on. That's what everybody outside wants to hear to consider joining us, either as a developer or a customer.

And to be clear, TalkingDrupal is certainly NOT the place where those habits can be watched regularly; that’s happening in other channels.

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#talkingdrupal on Drupal Slack

show@talkingdrupal.com

In episode #547, guest JD Flynn joins us to discuss why developers don’t choose Drupal, focusing on Drupal adoption, discoverability, and outdated perceptions from Drupal 6/7. JD cites survey data showing low interest among non-Drupal developers, arguing Drupal’s biggest problem is invisibility and that developers often pre-filter it due to PHP stigma and friction getting started.

Topics

• Welcome to Talking Drupal

• Meet JD Flynn

• Co Hosts Introductions

• Module of the Week: Native Observability

• Production Overhead Debate

• AI Patches and Etiquette

• Live Stream and Topic Setup

• Why Developers Skip Drupal

• Invisibility and Discovery

• Perception and Onboarding Friction

• Composer and Leaving the Island

• Perception Gap and PHP Stigma

• PHP Perception Versus Reality

• Why Developers Avoid Drupal

• Selling Drupal to Clients

• Instant Demos With Drupal Forge

• Discoverability in the AI Era

• Content Strategy Beyond Drupal

• PHP Stigma and Performance

• Community Effort and Live Streaming

• Marketing Drupal Out of the Box

• Wrap Up and Where to Connect

Resources

• Why Developers Don’t Choose Drupal (And What We Can Do About It) - https://www.fldrupal.camp/session/why-developers-dont-choose-drupal-and-what-we-can-do-about-it

• JD’s stream - http://twitch.tv/jddoesdev

• Drupal is Great! Its Perception Might Not be. -https://picozzi.com/notebook/2025/jan/drupal-great-its-perception-might-not-be

• Drupal Forge - https://www.drupalforge.org/

Guests

JD Flynn - Crepdrop dorficus

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Rod Martin - DrupalHelps.com imrodmartin

Module of the Week

Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

Native Observability brings real observability into Drupal. Trace requests, inspect execution, analyze performance, and explore runtime behavior — directly inside your application.

No core patches. No external dependencies required to get started.
Just install, enable, and start seeing what actually happens inside your system.

Upcoming Episodes

#548 CRM with JD Leonard. Recording April 7.
#549 A DDev Update with Randy Fay & Stas Zhuk. Recording April 14.
#550 TBD
#551 Drupal Recording Initiative with Kevin Thull. Recording April 28.

Submit your questions on the #TalkingDrupal channel on Drupal Slack.

5 Questions with Steve Wirt

Being a Developer and Tech Lead at CivicActions has exposed Steve to the experience of working on some of the largest government websites in the United States. A passion for opensourcing as much as possible has lead him to develop a growing number of modules, with two addressing accessibility (Alt Text Validation & Node Link Report)

What is your first memory of technology that impacted you?

When I was a kid my older brother bought a Timex Sinclair computer and I learned a bit about how to program in Basic. It was a pain to type on, but I think it definitely had an impact on my career arc in later years.

Which website build are you most proud to have been involved with?

There are a few Federal Gov’t sites that I am proud of, but I am not allowed to discuss them publicly. I am proud to have worked on the website for the NY State Task Force on Quality Inclusive Schooling. It was a NY State project to unite all the Schools of Education and have them focus on how to foster inclusive classrooms. It was cool to be a part of something good and among colleges and universities that would normally be competing but who chose to work together. It had a lot in common with the Drupal community.

What was your career before Drupal?

I was a high school physics teacher in Ithaca NY.

Outside of Drupal, what hobbies do you have?

Since I was a kid I have always enjoyed woodworking. I really enjoy hand tool woodworking which means I use tools that are old-school and try to avoid noisy electric tools. I often take furniture all the way from tree (milling my own lumber) to furniture. I blog about my adventures here http://www.timberframe-tools.com/

A few years back I got hooked on shooting sporting clays, it’s like golf, only actually fun. So my son and I shoot sporting clays at least once a month.

Plain or peanut M&M?
Definitely peanut, by a long shot.

Steve can be contacted at Drupal.org

Contact Us

#talkingdrupal on Drupal Slack

show@talkingdrupal.com

Live from DrupalCon Chicago, Nic Laflin is joined by Tim Plunkett, Steve Wirt, Martin Anderson-Clutz, and John Picozzi to discuss the event’s tone, Dries Notes and key themes including Drupal Canvas, Drupal AI, and new site templates/marketplace progress and more.

Topics

• Reconnecting With Community

• Must See Sessions

• Vibe And Starshot

• Attendance And Venue

• Community Party Returns

• Dries Note and AI Debate

• Roadmap And Templates

• Recipes And Exports

• AI In Engineering Workflows

• Keynote Style Takeaways

• Dries Note Takeaways

• Canvas Content Templates

• View Modes Roadmap

• Translation Plans Explained

• Gala Highlights

• Commemorative Tokens

• Future Excitement Roundtable

• DrupalCon Orlando Tease

• Wrap Up and Contacts

Guests

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi

Tim Plunkett - timplunkett

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan

Steve Wirt - civicactions.com Swirt

Show News

• Live Stream - We are moving to a Live Stream format for each episode. On Tuesdays at 11:45 Eastern, our usual recording time, we will stream on YouTube and LinkedIn. Audience comments and questions will be incorporated into the show. This is a significant change to our pre-production, post-production, and workflow. We are looking forward to the change and potential it brings. Join us on Tuesday on YouTube or LinkedIn.

Upcoming Episodes

#547 Why Developers Don’t Choose Drupal with J.D. Flynn. Recording March 31.
#548 CRM with JD Leonard. Recording April 7.
#549 A DDev Update with Randy Fay & Stas Zhuk. Recording April 14.
#550 TBD

Submit your questions on the #TalkingDrupal channel on Drupal Slack.

Contact Us

#talkingdrupal on Drupal Slack

show@talkingdrupal.com

Today we are talking about the open data platform DKAN, what it’s used for, and how it applies to Drupal with guests Liz Tupper & Dan Feder. We’ll also cover Modern Drupal Dashboard as our module of the week.

Topics

• What Is DKAN

• Who Uses Open Data

• 20:08 DKAN Origin Story

• Why Drupal Fits DKAN

• From Distribution to Module

• DKAN 2 Rebuild and JSON Shift

• Async Jobs and API First

• How Teams Publish Data

• What a Dataset Really Is

• Metadata vs Data Access

• Why DKAN Left Drupal Org

• Migration Path to DKAN Four

• Harvesting and Data Store ETL

• APIs Visualizations and Bots

• Roadmap Data Store and AI

• Contributing and Where to File Issues

Resources

• DKAN

• DKAN Drupal Module

• DKAN on GitHub

• Public sites using DKAN 2

• DKAN channel on Drupal Slack

• JSON Form Widget

Guests

Liz Tupper - civicactions.com etupper
Dan Feder - getdkan.org dafederNic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Steve Wirt - civicactions.com Swirt

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Module of the Week

with Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

Modern Drupal Dashboard - Modern Drupal Dashboard provides a clean, React-powered administrative dashboard for Drupal 11. It replaces the traditional admin landing experience with a fast, widget-based interface that surfaces key site metrics,
system health, and operational insights all in one place.

Show News

We are live-streaming the recording of #546 DrupalCon Chicago to YouTube and LinkedIn. Join Us on Wednesday at 8am EDT on YouTube or LinkedIn .

Upcoming Episodes

#546 DrupalCon Chicago. Recording March 25.
#547 Why Developers Don’t Choose Drupal with J.D. Flynn. Recording March 31.
#548 CRM with JD Leonard. Recording April 7.
#549 A DDev Update with Randy Fay & Stas Zhuk. Recording April 14.

Submit your questions on the #TalkingDrupal channel on Drupal Slack.

Contact Us

#talkingdrupal on Drupal Slack

show@talkingdrupal.com

Today we are talking about World Cancer Day, how they use Drupal, and why Drupal was the right choice with our guests Charles Andrew Revkin & Diego Costa. We’ll also cover PDFa11y as our module of the week.

Topics

• What Is World Cancer Day

• Why UICC Uses Drupal

• Diego Joins the Project

• Multilingual Strategy at Scale

• Drupal Architecture and AI Tools

• Vetting AI Moderation and Summaries

• AI Disclosure and Review

• Traffic Spikes and Scaling

• Drupal Stack and React Apps

• Campaign Theme United by Unique

• Yearly Content and Three Year Cycle

• Drupal Community and Open Access

• Custom AI Modules and Azure

• Future Improvements and AI Tagging

• Story Submission Formats

• Prevention PSA and Wrap Up

Resources

• World Cancer Day

• Union for International Cancer Control

Guests

Diego Costa - 1xinternet.com diegofcosta
Charles Andrew Revkin - worldcancerday.org revkin

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Steve Wirt - civicactions.com Swirt

Module of the Week

with Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

PDFa11y - PDFa11y automatically checks uploaded PDF files for accessibility issues, helping content editors ensure their documents are usable by people with disabilities who rely on screen readers and other assistive technologies.

It’s not comprehensive and should be paired with content editor training on best practices for creating accessible PDFs.

AI disclosure: much of this module was initially stubbed out with AI. While the maintainer has taken steps to review the code, added automated tests, and manually tested the features of PDFa11y, the project should be considered a proof of concept under development that is not for use in production sites (yet).

Upcoming Episodes

#545 DKAN with Dan Feder & Liz Tupper. Recording March 17.
#546 DrupalCon Chicago. Recording March 24.
#547 Why Developers Don’t Choose Drupal with J.D. Flynn. Recording March 31.
#548 CRM with JD Leonard. Recording April 7.

Submit your questions on the #TalkingDrupal channel on Drupal Slack.

New Book: Understanding Drupal: A Complete Guide to Caching Layers

by Matt Glaman

Drupal's caching system is powerful only when you understand how its layers connect. This book walks you through cacheable metadata, render caching, HTTP headers, and reverse proxy configuration; the complete stack from page assembly to CDN edge. Available now.

Buy Now

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#talkingdrupal on Drupal Slack

show@talkingdrupal.com