fidzu : Drupal

18 Jun 2026 2:04pm GMT

DrupalCon Rotterdam is one of those events that naturally attracts attention across the Drupal ecosystem. Not only because it brings the community together, but because it creates a space where technology, strategy, contribution and real-world digital projects meet.

For anyone working with Drupal, open source or digital experience platforms, the question is not just "what happens at DrupalCon?", but it might be: "If you have never been before, why should this be the year to go?"

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^{Photo by Joris Vercammen}

Why Rotterdam?

Rotterdam feels like a strong fit for an event like DrupalCon. It is a city known for innovation, architecture, international connections and a forward-looking mindset - qualities that align naturally with the spirit of the Drupal community.

Bringing DrupalCon to Rotterdam creates an opportunity to connect the European Drupal community in a dynamic and accessible setting. It also gives professionals from different markets the chance to meet, exchange perspectives and discuss how Drupal continues to evolve in a fast-changing digital landscape.

Learning from real experience

One of the strongest reasons to attend DrupalCon is the quality of the knowledge shared by the community.

This is not only about product updates or technical presentations, It is about learning from people who are building, maintaining and improving digital platforms in real contexts, often with complex requirements, long-term governance needs and ambitious user experience goals.

From technical sessions to strategic case studies, DrupalCon gives attendees access to practical insight that is difficult to get from documentation alone.

Meeting the community behind Drupal

Drupal has always been more than a content management system; It is an open-source project supported by a global network of contributors, companies and professionals.

For someone who has never attended before, this is one of the most compelling reasons to go: Online discussions, issue queues and documentation are valuable, but meeting people face to face adds a different layer to the experience.

Conversations during sessions, between talks or at community events can lead to new ideas, partnerships and a better understanding of how others approach similar challenges.

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^{Photo by Matthew Saunders}

Inspiration beyond the technical track

DrupalCon is also a place to see what organisations are doing with Drupal today.

Real-world examples often show the platform's value more clearly than feature lists. They reveal how Drupal is being used to support public sector platforms, media websites, higher education, enterprise ecosystems, multilingual content, accessibility requirements and complex editorial workflows.

That is why DrupalCon is relevant beyond development, project managers, designers, UX professionals, marketers, content teams and business leaders can all find useful perspectives on delivery, governance, accessibility, platform strategy and the role of open source in long-term digital transformation.

Why attend for the first time?

Attending DrupalCon for the first time is a way to move from observing the community to being part of it.

It is an opportunity to learn from experienced professionals, understand the direction of the platform, discover practical use cases and build connections that can continue long after the event ends.

DrupalCon Rotterdam represents more than another event in the digital calendar, It is a chance to understand Drupal through the people and projects that keep it moving forward.

For a first-time attendee, that may be the strongest reason to go.

Because sometimes the best way to understand the value of a community is not to read about it from the outside. It is to be in the room where that community comes together.

See you there?
Register now!

- Article by Daniela Moreira

18 Jun 2026 5:32am GMT

17 Jun 2026 6:58pm GMT

// Only allow URL discovery from example.com.
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  '^example\.com$',
];

17 Jun 2026 6:57pm GMT

17 Jun 2026 6:57pm GMT

17 Jun 2026 6:57pm GMT

17 Jun 2026 6:56pm GMT

QED42 has opened a waitlist for EventHorizon, a Drupal-focused code-intelligence suite built on the scanning engine behind its open-source EventHorizon CLI. The CLI runs static analysis locally without AI, cloud upload, or telemetry, addressing audit environments where client code is covered by NDAs, data residency clauses, and security review. The broader suite adds visual dependency maps, code health views, and optional AI through user-controlled provider keys.

17 Jun 2026 1:07pm GMT

The Drupal marketplace is driving a shift toward high-quality, accessible, and easily maintainable templates tailored for specific industry verticals (like government, healthcare, and education).

17 Jun 2026 9:30am GMT

Good news for everyone still polishing their entry, we've extended the submission deadline for the International Splash Awards 2026 by four weeks. You now have until 16 July 2026 to submit your project.

As part of our commitment to a fair process, we want to give every Drupal community and agency ample time to put their best work forward. So we're opening the doors wider rather than closing them.

The Splash Awards celebrate the very best Drupal projects from around the world, with winners announced at DrupalCon Rotterdam 2026 (28 September - 1 October). Submitters will be notified of their status in early August.

Learn more & submit your project

Questions? Email drupal@kuonitumlare.com or reach us in #drupalcon_europe on Drupal Slack.

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17 Jun 2026 8:52am GMT

An opportunity to help Web standards move in a good direction

theodore June 17, 2026

16 Jun 2026 9:00pm GMT

16 Jun 2026 8:47pm GMT

The question I get most these days is: did AI kill the CMS? Should we still invest in a CMS, switch to AI agents, or wait until the market becomes clearer?

At a friend's birthday party recently, I was talking with engineers and startup CEOs. They were all smart people, but none of them worked in the CMS industry. From where they sat, AI seemed to make the CMS obsolete.

I understand why. AI can now generate copy, design pages, write code, translate content, and assemble websites. If that is what you think a CMS is for, it does look like the CMS is in trouble.

They may be right about one part of the CMS market. But I think they are wrong about the larger picture.

To see why, it helps to separate what a content management system, or CMS, does into two planes: the control plane and the execution plane.

The control plane governs content: who can edit it, what gets approved, which version is canonical, how translations move through workflow, and where content can be used.

The execution plane creates, assembles, and delivers that content into websites, mobile apps, feeds, and other customer experiences.

AI is unbundling these two planes. It is commoditizing the execution plane while making the control plane more valuable. That is why I think AI is killing one corner of the CMS market, but making the CMS more critical everywhere else.

AI lowers the cost of creation, not the cost of trust

We have seen this pattern before. The printing press made it cheap to produce and distribute content, but it did not make editors or publishers irrelevant. It made them more important, because more content created more need for judgment, trust, and standards.

AI is doing something similar to digital content. It makes production cheaper: drafting, generating, translating, designing, assembling pages, and adapting content for different channels.

But AI should not be the final authority on what is correct, approved, compliant, or safe to publish. It can help, but people and systems still need to own those decisions. The more content AI helps produce and distribute, the more that ownership matters.

As production gets cheaper, control becomes more important, not less.

That is the real test for a CMS. Not whether AI can generate content or build a page, but whether your organization needs a control layer: roles, review, approvals, publishing states, revision history, and more.

How shared is your work?

Two simple questions can help decide how much you need a CMS:

1. How many people or agents create, review, and publish content?
2. How many systems need to use, update, or trust that content?

Put those questions on a grid, and four use cases emerge.

When one person creates and publishes content, and no other systems depend on it, you may not need a CMS. A lightweight publishing tool or AI site builder may be enough.

When multiple people or agents touch content, you need a CMS for coordination: roles, review, approvals, publishing states, and revision history. AI inside the CMS can help teams create, review, and publish faster without losing control.

When many systems touch content, you need a CMS as the trusted source for content, permissions, workflows, and publishing controls. AI around the CMS can coordinate work across tools, but it still depends on the CMS to know what content is approved, who can use it, and where it can go.

In short, when many people and many systems are involved, the CMS becomes the critical control layer for people, agents, and systems working together. It gives people and agents a safe place to create and approve content, and gives other tools a trusted system they can read from, write to, and build on.

The decision, by quadrant

1. Assist: one person, one system

This is the simplest case: one person, one system, and little coordination.

If you are creating a new website quickly, an AI site builder may be the right tool. It can turn a prompt into a working site in an afternoon. In that case, a CMS may slow you down more than it helps. This is 1a in the quadrant image: the job is to create, not to manage.

But one person does not always mean a CMS is unnecessary.

My website has been around for more than twenty years. It has more than 1,500 blog posts and 10,000 photos. That is not just a website to create; it is a body of content to manage. Drupal helps me manage that content as structured content: content types, fields, taxonomy, media, revisions, URLs, and search.

I would not move my site to a standalone AI site builder. But I do use an AI agent to work on it through Drupal: updating content, improving existing features, and building new ones. This is 1b on the chart. AI helps with the execution work, while Drupal remains the control plane. This is unbundling at the smallest scale.

So use an AI builder when speed to a new site matters most. Use a CMS when the work is about managing a large or growing body of content over time: keeping it structured, consistent, reusable, and reliable.

2. Relay: many people, one system

This is a clear case for a CMS.

When many people collaborate on one website, the work becomes a "relay": a designer uploads an image, a developer builds a component, a marketer writes the copy, an editor reviews the page, legal approves it, and someone presses publish.

AI does not remove that relay; it makes it move faster. The developer may use an AI coding agent, the marketer may use an AI writing assistant, and the editor may use an AI policy checker. More work moves through the same website, with less time between handoffs.

But the moment several people and several agents are working on the same website, you need a control layer to manage roles, permissions, approvals, revision history, and one source of truth.

A CMS lets teams move at AI speed without losing track of who changed what, which version is approved, and what is safe to publish.

3. Delegate: one person, many systems

Here the logic changes. You are still one person, so there is little coordination with other people. But the work now spans many systems: a CMS, an email marketing platform, a commerce system, a CRM, and a planning tool.

When one person spans many systems, no single product sees the whole job. The center of gravity moves to the coordinator: an automation tool that connects your systems, or an AI agent that works across their APIs.

That is why this quadrant is debatable. For a short-lived campaign, you may not need a traditional CMS. You might use an AI builder for the site and an automation tool or agent to coordinate the rest.

But that only works while the content is small, short-lived, and easy to manage by hand. Once the content has to be structured, reused, updated, approved, or kept consistent across systems, you need a trusted source for it.

4. Orchestrate: many people, many systems

This is the most complex environment, and the clearest case for a CMS.

A company campaign can involve many people and many systems at once: a marketer plans the campaign, a designer reviews the creative, legal approves the content, an editor publishes the page, marketing operations builds the email, and a commerce manager checks the discount. Every person has a role, and every system has a workflow.

AI can remove much of the coordination work: reminders, status updates, handoffs, and manual routing. But coordination is not control. Someone still has to approve the content, approve the promotion, and answer for the campaign's effectiveness.

In this quadrant, the CMS has two jobs. First, it has to govern and accelerate the work that happens inside the CMS. Second, it has to make that work usable by the broader digital ecosystem.

The CMS is not necessarily the orchestrator of that ecosystem. It is the governed workspace where people and agents can work safely, and the trusted source that other systems and agents can read from, write to, and build on.

At this scale, and at AI speed, a weak content foundation becomes expensive fast. A strong CMS is not optional.

From unbundling to rebundling

One thing the grid does not show is where the market is moving the fastest. Right now, most of the visible energy is on the bottom row of Assist and Delegate, sections 1a and 3a, where no control plane is needed: one person using AI to create and coordinate faster.

In Assist, that means AI site builders that turn an idea into a working website. In Delegate, it means agents and automation for single-person workflows across different systems.

Lovable reportedly reached roughly $400 million in annual recurring revenue less than two years after launch. n8n raised $180 million at a $2.5 billion valuation in 2025.

But once many people are involved, individual productivity is no longer enough. Organizations need productivity, coordination, and control.

The current wave of AI site builders is mostly making one person faster. The next wave has to make organizations faster without losing trust.

AI is unbundling creation from the CMS and driving its cost toward zero. But once creation becomes cheap and abundant, the value shifts to control.

That is where rebundling starts. The next generation of products will combine AI-powered creation with a trusted control plane.

So, is the CMS dead? No. Its role is changing.

The more AI you use to create, translate, update, and publish content, the more you need a system that keeps that work structured, approved, reusable, and safe.

That means that a CMS is not a competing line item to your AI budget. It is what makes that budget pay off.

And the real risk is not that AI replaces your CMS. It is running AI without one.

AI gives you speed. A CMS gives you control at speed.

16 Jun 2026 6:42pm GMT

Maintainers of ECA, FlowDrop, and Maestro are discussing whether Drupal automation tools can share backend contracts without merging their interfaces or use cases. Based on details Shibin Das shared with The DropTimes, the planning-stage work focuses on common graph models, shared language, and reusable processor patterns. The discussion matters for developers who now rebuild similar automation logic across different Drupal workflow systems and for teams that need governance, permissions, and observability to remain close to Drupal.

16 Jun 2026 3:38pm GMT

Working with larger organizations, it's common to want to split off a section of content into its own smaller site.

A city may want a separate site for a particular construction project, or a university may want one for a capital campaign. Marketing teams often need smaller, dedicated sites for communication and promotion.

They're usually not complex. Often it's a matter of a different navigation, some different branding, and a unique URL. But they still need to be designed, built, hosted, and managed - somewhere. And they're usually needed quickly (like, now).

Whether you're launching your first or looking for a better way to manage the ones you have, let's explore these "mini-websites" and the best options for your organization.

16 Jun 2026 1:06pm GMT

Going AI on Drupal? Here's a practical guide about 8 Drupal AI modules worth using in 2026 - what each one does, who it's built for, and where the rough edges are.

16 Jun 2026 12:01pm GMT