Drupal 8 UNWRAPPED WWW.ONE-AGENCY.BE Copyright 2015, ONE Agency België
This year, in all probability, the Drupal community will be making the move from the current Drupal 7 to the new Drupal 8. One of the world s most popular Content Management Systems will then undergo a number of fundamental changes. Wondering what the main differences will be and what this will mean for your business or organisation? ONE Agency thought it was time to take stock, and has come up with the following overview
Open source content management THE DRUPAL COMMUNITY numbers 136,828 Drupallers in 229 Countries and speaks 180 Languages www.drupal.org
Drupal? Drupal is a Content Management System (CMS) framework used for constructing websites that can then be managed in a very simple and user-friendly way. Adjustments to content are easy to make and require little or no technical expertise on the part of the author or webmaster. Drupal differs from other frameworks in the fact that it is disseminated free of any commercial licence: the software is freely available and no licence costs are linked to its use. This is because Drupal is open source: the code is the property of everyone working together on it, not just one business or individual. This does not mean that Drupal is not a stable or mature product - quite the contrary. The knowledge and ingenuity of the thousands of developers working together on Drupal is difficult for its (commercial) counterparts to match. It is no coincidence that Drupal is used by such organisations as Médecins sans Frontières, Peugeot, National Geographic, the European Commission, Oxfam, Danone, the White House, Tesla, The Economist and many others.
There s a new Drupal in town After a four-year wait, the new version of Drupal is about to arrive. The reason for the long wait has to do with the radical technical and architectural changes associated with this version. Drupal 8 will have all sorts of adjustments in store for everyone. For developers, the development of a website will be faster, more efficient and more standardised. For webmasters and content editors, site management will be simpler and more userfriendly. In a word, Drupal 8 will in many respects be a more modern and more professional CMS than its predecessor. 200+ improvements 2000+ core contributors
Drupal 8 will be more maintainable, more modular, and more accessible to non- Drupal developers. The result is that Drupal 8 should help us attract new people to Drupal in a way Drupal 7 didn t. - Dries Buytaert Founder of Drupal Griet Dekoninck
Fundamental changes Below we present an overview of the most fundamental changes in Drupal 8. What these will mean in practice for developers and webmasters will be discussed further on. Mobile first Drupal 8 will be fully responsive. Content changes are as easy to make from a smartphone or tablet as they are from a desktop, as the web interface adjusts to the user s device. In addition there will be a screen compatibility feature offering previews of how content is displayed on different screen formats. Object-oriented programming Unlike Drupal 7, in which programming is procedural, Drupal 8 will be object-oriented. This will allow web developers to create more interactive relationships between objects, so that content can be presented more dynamically. Symfony components The steep learning curve of Drupal 7 will be more gentle in Drupal 8 thanks to the integration of standardised components from the Symfony framework. Drupal will be more accessible, even for developers who have not worked with it before, and so will be supported by an even larger community. The integration of Symfony components will also provide a more professional and tried-and-tested approach, enabling developers to create even better customised results.
PSR (PHP Specification Request) standards In the context of this standardisation PSR-4 standards are respected: both Symfony and Drupal now make use of this, which means that integration and cooperation between the two sorts of software will run much more smoothly. RESTful API Drupal 8 is equipped with a built-in API, greatly facilitating communication with (and integration of) external systems. Thus websites can very easily communicate with other websites, mobile apps, social media, external databanks and blogs. A website will no longer be a self-contained, isolated collection of information. HTML5 compatibility Like the rest of the web Drupal 8 is also making the move to HTML5. Faster, stronger, better With better caching, Drupal 8 websites will be faster and better-performing than their predecessors. Multilingual The option of making websites multilingual has been greatly enhanced thanks to the new language maintenance tools that are integrated in Drupal 8. Multilingual websites required extra modules in Drupal 7. These are now a standard feature of Drupal 8. New release cycle Not unimportantly, with Drupal 8 a new release will come out every six months. Drupal will thus provide more frequent (security) updates and at the same time ensure that old or outdated versions are supported for longer. This will result in more secure and stable websites.
What will these changes mean for webmasters? Drupal 8 will make life considerably easier for webmasters and editors. Both the management and the creation of customised content will be simpler. Content management The essence of Drupal is and remains the fast and user-friendly management of content. That has not changed with Drupal 8. With the implementation of in-line editing, you as an editor will be able to adjust content directly at the front-end. That means no more unnecessary excursions to the back-end of the website for each minor modification. In addition, the built-in WYSIWYG editor will ensure that as you make adjustments to the content you will already be able to see how they will translate visually into the final format. And because Drupal 8 will be fully responsive, all the adjustments can be made from a smartphone or tablet, too. Drupal 8 will also introduce a practical toolbar that will simplify navigation through the back-end of the website. The toolbar, which is also fully responsive, can be regarded as the replacement for the admin-menu module and will contain top-level items such as Home, Menu, Shortcuts and Users.
From web visit to web experience With the expanded technical capabilities, websites can be adapted more easily to the requirements of a particular application. As Drupal 8 is fully HTML5 compatible, the potential for customised work is greater. Content can be presented in a more visual, interactive and customised way, resulting in a true digital experience for end-users, rather than a passive surfing experience. It is important to note at this point that older browsers, such as Internet Explorer 8 (and older) are not compatible with HTML5, and so Drupal 8 no longer supports them. To ugrade or not to upgrade? The crucial question for many website managers is whether they should immediately jump aboard the Drupal 8 boat. People who have just had a Drupal 7 website built might wonder whether it would not have been better to wait a little longer, and others will wonder whether investing in a new Drupal 7 site will be worthwhile. Well, let s be clear that Drupal 7 is a particularly high-performance, stable and mature framework, one which will still be supported even after the release of Drupal 9 and will remain an extremely suitable solution for many projects, certainly for the near future. Not every web project will immediately need the innovative technological, interactive and graphic capabilities of Drupal 8. So the question whether at this point it would be better to wait for Drupal 8 depends entirely on the kind of project and its time framework. As Drupal 8 is so fundamentally different from its predecessor at its core, it will not be possible simply to dress a 7-site in an 8-coat. However, for migration of content and many settings (variables, block settings ), migration tools are provided. These will simplify the transition from a Drupal 6 or 7 website to a Drupal 8 type, but there still has to be an existing 8-website. There is no simple upgrade button.
What will these changes mean for developers? More standardisation As a result of the architectural changes, programming with Drupal 8 will be more standardised. For (PHP) developers without Drupal experience this will make familiarisation easier and will ensure that the whole Drupal community will be speaking the same language. Projects will be more readable and transferable, benefiting business continuity. Programming facilitated Integration: At present, the content of a website is not only visited by means of a browser, in the classical way, but is often integrated in mobile applications or social media. Thanks to the RESTful API module in the core of Drupal 8 it will be even easier to move information and data in and out of a website. Testing: Through the use of Object Oriented programming the capability of testing certain functionality automatically with Unit tests or Behat tests will become easier. Thus the code will be better and more high-performance, and errors in the logic or syntax will be easier to resolve. Autoloading: Thanks to PSR-4 autoloading, classes are organised in a standardised way in files and folders. Classes no longer have to be inserted separately at the beginning of each script and code is easier to interpret and share.
New way of theming/front-ending: The development of the front-end of a website will come as a huge relief to developers by comparison with Drupal 7. The PHPTemplate theme engine is replaced in Drupal 8 by the Twig templating system, which is much more secure, faster and less complex. Back to school Developers used to programming in Drupal 7 will have quite a number of changes to contend with beginning with an entirely new coding methodology and the introduction of components from a new framework. Those who want to get the most out of Drupal will need to come to terms with the new way of working. The advantage of this new approach is that developers who are new to Drupal will find it easier to familiarise themselves and will no longer have to work through a long learning process to get to know numerous Drupal 7 modules. Developers who can t wait to get on with Drupal 8 right away should certainly take a look at Acquia Cloud Free. Drupal 8 has something for everyone to love. For me personally: Twig. - Sander Tirez Front-end developer, ONE Agency
When is Drupal 8 expected? As Drupal is open source software and is being developed on a voluntary basis, no one can say precisely when 8 will be released. There is no set deadline, only a community of committed developers who want to get cracking with their product as soon as possible. At the moment Drupal 8 is in the beta phase. This will only be left when no more critical issues are being found. Only then will a release candidate be created, and only when no more errors crop up in that will Drupal 8.0.0 be released. January 2001 Dries Buyaert issues DRUPAL 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 March 2001 DRUPAL 2 January 2007 DRUPAL 5 January 2011 DRUPAL 7 August 2001 DRUPAL 3 February 2008 DRUPAL 6 June 2002 DRUPAL 4 2015 DRUPAL 8
The community s estimate for this lies somewhere between summer 2015 and early 2016. On www.drupal.org/drupal-8.0/get-involved you can follow how close Drupal 8 is to its release. In the sidebar you can see how many critical issues still have to be resolved. Want to read more about Drupal 8? Take a look at The Ultimate Guide to Drupal 8 by Acquia s Angie Byron. Drupal 8 is more in line with the web landscape of today, with its mobile-first approach Drupal and revamped 8 will be more front-end. maintainable, All around, Drupal more modular, 8 is a more powerful release and more accessible to with capabilities for content non-drupal developers. The authors, site builders, developers, result and designers is that Drupal 8. alike. - Dries Buytaert, Drupal founder - Angie Byron (Web Chick) Drupal core contributor Kris Krüg
LISSA project Although Drupal 8 is still under construction, we at ONE Agency couldn t resist having a first go with it. Under the project name LISSA ( Live Interactive Second Screen Application ) our team developed a second screen application that can be used by media companies to send live notifications of highlights to mobile devices during sporting events. LISSA makes use of powerful Drupal 8 content management features such as content types and custom fields to send out, via a streaming API, notifications that can be simultaneously received. The streaming function is scalable, so that it can also be reliably used during large live events. As team lead of the LISSA project I had frontrow experience of the capabilities Drupal 8 will be offering in the future. The new coding methodology, Drupal 8 will be more maintainable, more modular, and more accessible to non-drupal developers. The result is that Drupal 8. standard REST API and mobile-first approach open doors that were closed to previous versions of Drupal - Klaas Van Waesberghe Project team lead, ONE Agency - Dries Buytaert, Drupal founder
This paper is based on the information available today, April 2015. Drupal 8 is feature frozen, which means that the lines of the project are fixed. As the software is still in the process of development, however, it is possible that some details in this paper will change in the run-up to the release.
Drupal expert since 2006 ONE Agency has been an established force in the web (application) development world since 2006. As Drupal experts with references that include Médecins sans Frontières, the European Commission, Knauf Insulation and Mobistar, we are impatiently awaiting the newest edition of our favourite CMS. ONE Agency is a certified Acquia partner. Acquia is the commercial supplier of supporting services and products for Drupal and was founded by Dries Buytaert.
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