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Ryan on the First Month of Advocacy

In Rotterdam, Dries asked the community to talk louder about Drupal. The response so far: 264 pieces of advocacy from nearly 150 people, in at least seven languages, on everything from Reddit threads to a major Italian daily. I spent the past week reviewing all of it, and I'm feeling incredibly optimistic about what this program can unlock.

This month's Insider leads with the full wrap-up: the numbers, the credit matrix we built along the way, and fifteen people whose work shows what the program is for. If you've been waiting to see whether the Advocacy Program is real before joining in, consider this your evidence.

Thanks for reading, and for telling Drupal's story.

Ryan Witcombe, Director, Product Marketing

The Advocacy Program by the numbers

At DrupalCon Rotterdam, Dries asked the community to talk louder about Drupal, and the Drupal Association launched the Advocacy Program to back it. The idea is simple: tell Drupal's story in your own voice, and earn contribution credits through the same system that recognizes code.

One month in, 264 pieces of advocacy have gone through review from nearly 150 contributors: blog posts, videos, conference talks, podcast episodes, Reddit replies, and press coverage, in at least seven languages. Around 2,400 contribution credits are now going out through Drupal.org.

The pattern we hoped for showed up in the data. Social posts made up more than half the volume but under a fifth of the credits, and the biggest scores went to work that travels furthest:

• A 9,000-subscriber YouTube channel that published 102 Drupal videos and livestreams this year.
• A live Drupal AI demo at MAICON, a major marketing-AI conference.
• A three-post technical deep-dive on Drupal and the Model Context Protocol.
• A first-hand write-up of a WordPress-to-Drupal CMS migration.

Read the Month 1 wrap-up for the numbers, the credit matrix, and the fifteen people and pieces we're spotlighting this month.

Want in? Anything public that shows what Drupal can do counts, and anything you've published in 2026 is eligible. Submit it through the form or in Drupal Slack, in the #promote-drupal channel. A Month 1 leaderboard is on the way, and the Drupal 12 launch in December will be the next theme.

In the Open with Tiffany Farriss

In the Open is a weekly series from Drupal Association Interim CEO Tiffany Farriss, sharing what she is hearing across the Drupal community and where the Association is headed. The first episode is out, and new episodes will be published each week. Subscribe to the Drupal Association YouTube channel to follow along. With thanks to Stephen Cross of Second Signal Media for producing the series.

A busy month for the engineering team

October's biggest engineering news came from upstream. On October 21, PHP released fixes for two critical remote code execution vulnerabilities (CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619) that affect every PHP application, Drupal included. We had been preparing, so when PHP moved the release up a day, we hardened Drupal.org's production sites hours before the fixes were public. We then briefly took Drupal.org offline to patch. For the full story, read the incident recap.

The same day, GitLab released a fix for a critical (CVSS 10.0) vulnerability, and we had git.drupalcode.org upgrading within minutes, before GitLab had even published the severity. We've also been sharing mitigation and audit guidance with Drupal Certified Partners and hosting partners. Thank you to our engineering team and our infrastructure partners at Tag1 for the late nights and early mornings, and to the community for your patience.

The regular work didn't stop:

• Canvas is now enabled on new.drupal.org with 67 design components ready for building pages.
• More than 250,000 contrib issues have migrated to GitLab.
• packages.drupal.org now publishes release times for more than 16,600 projects, so site owners can use Composer's new cooldown option to hold off on brand-new releases, an added layer of protection against compromised packages.
• New contributors see Drupal's AI contribution policy where it matters, in their welcome email and default issue template.
• We retired jobs.drupal.org and several legacy servers as we finish moving off our previous hosting.

DrupalCon Orlando 2027

Three ways to get involved:

• T-shirt design contest. Submit your design for the official DrupalCon Orlando 2027 T-shirt. The winning design will be worn by attendees across the event, and the winner also receives a complimentary ticket. Submissions close November 30, 2026, at 11:59 PM EST. Enter the contest.
• Drupal's Got Talent. The inaugural DrupalCon talent show comes to Orlando on the evening of Tuesday, March 23, 2027. You don't need to be a professional, just willing to get up on stage and show your fellow Drupalers what you've got. Sign up before February 19, 2027.
• Sponsorship opportunities. Build visibility, engage with the Drupal community, and showcase your leadership in the open web. Review the prospectus and secure your spot as a sponsor or exhibitor.

DrupalCon Europe heads to Edinburgh

DrupalCon Rotterdam is over, and we would like to thank everyone who attended, contributed, and supported the event. It was fantastic to bring the Drupal community together for another inspiring edition.

Now it's time to look ahead to 2027. DrupalCon Europe is heading to Edinburgh, a city with a rich history, creative spirit, and thriving culture of innovation, and a fitting setting for the community to connect, share knowledge, and shape what comes next. Save the date: 25 to 28 October 2027.

Drupal AI Initiative

Drupal AI 1.5: what it means for digital marketing leaders. Drupal AI 1.5 is out, built by 63 contributors from 31 organizations around the world. A new post from the Drupal AI Initiative explains what the release means for digital marketing leaders. Conversational assistants can remember context across a browsing session and draw on your own site content, streaming guardrails filter output token by token, and editorial copilots help editors refine copy and draft image alt text. Semantic search ranks results by intent, and you can choose your own AI provider. Read the post.

AI Inside Drupal Essentials course debuts in November. The official Drupal AI Initiative training program is now open for registration. The first live, online session begins November 9, with more sessions starting in January 2027. Created by Mike Anello (ultimike), a seasoned Drupal developer and trainer, AI Inside Drupal Essentials is an 18-hour curriculum delivered in 3-hour sessions on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays over two weeks. Participants get a 100+ page course guide, DrupalEasy's weekly office hours, all class recordings, and the AIDE Slack channel. The course fee is $600. Register for AIDE training.

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Adapted from the Drupal Association's monthly newsletter, the DA Insider. "The work that just happens" spotlights the behind-the-scenes effort required to keep Drupal's infrastructure, programs, and community moving forward.

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AI helped adapt the newsletter for the web, and Drupal Association staff reviewed and edited it.