Today we are talking about Our Favorite things and The Future of Drupal with guest Jared Ponchot & Dave Hansen-Lange.

For show notes visit:
https://www.talkingDrupal.com/495

Topics

• What has piqued your interest
• AI creating components
• Any other new features or demos
• What haven't you seen that you hope to
• How do you feel about the future of Drupal

Resources

• Driesnote

Guests

Dave Hansen-Lange - linkedin.com dalin
Jared Ponchot - lullabot.com jponch

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu
Andrew Berry - lullabot.com deviantintegral

Today we are talking about AI in EDU, how it can provide efficiencies, and how you might start using it today with guests Brian Piper & Mike Miles . We’ll also cover External Entities as our module of the week.

For show notes visit:
https://www.talkingDrupal.com/494

Topics

• How are you using AI with your team at Rochester
• How are you using AI with your team at MIT
• What are the AI policies at your institutions
• On the ingestion side how do you manage consumption
• Tips and tricks to incorporate AI into your work
• Can you talk more about using AI to distribute content outside the web
• Do you have tips for managers
• How have you seen EDUs using AI other than as assistive technology
• What are your favorite tools
• Have you done adversarial testing
• How does AI in Drupal impact EDU
• Where do you see AI in EDU in the future

Resources

• Crawler rate limit
• Externalizing costs
• AI for U
• MidCamp 2024 session about YaleSites
• Tools
  • Element 451
  • Builder io
  • Deque Axe Devtools
  • Descript
  • Opus clips
  • Kapwing
  • HeyGen
  • Synthesia
  • Text to video
    • Sora
    • Veo

Guests

Brian Piper - brianwpiper.com
Mike Miles - Mike-miles.com mikemiles86

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Andrew Berry - lullabot.com deviantintegral

MOTW

Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

• Brief description:
  • Have you ever wanted to connect your Drupal website to an external data source, to include their datasets into the presentation of your Drupal-managed content? There’s a module for that
• Module name/project name:
  • External Entities
• Brief history
  • How old: created in May 2015 by attiks, though the most recent release is by Colan Schwartz (colan), a fellow Canadian
  • Versions available: 8.x-2.0-beta1 and 3.0.0-beta4, the latter of which supports Drupal 10 and 11
• Maintainership
  • Actively maintained, latest release was less than a month ago
  • Security coverage (though technically needs a stable release
  • Test coverage
  • Documentation: user guide
  • Number of open issues: 77 open issues, 3 of which are bugs against the 3.x branch, though one is marked fixed now
• Usage stats:
  • 679 sites
• Module features and usage
  • The External Entities module lets you map fields from external data sources to fields on a “virtual” entity in Drupal. This allows for external data to be used with Drupal’s powerful features like Views, Entity Queries, or Search API as well as use your local Drupal site’s theme to theme data from an external source
  • The module does provide a time-based caching layer for external entities, but you can also implement a more custom cache expiration logic through custom code
  • External entities can also have annotations, essentially Drupal-managed information that will be associated with the external entity, and accessed as a normal field through all Drupal field operations. This could allow you to have Drupal-based comments on information from a different website, for example
  • There is a sizeable ecosystem of companion modules, to help you connect to different kinds of external storage, as to help you aggregate data from multiple sources
  • In my Drupal career I’ve worked on a number of higher ed websites, and the ability to display externally-managed data is a pretty common requirement, either from an HRIS system to show staff and faculty data, or a courseware solution like Banner. I thought this would be an interesting tangent to today’s topic

Today we are talking about The Drupal Developer Survey, Last year's results, and How it helps Drupal with guest Mike Richardson. We’ll also cover HTMX as our module of the week.

For show notes visit:
https://www.talkingDrupal.com/493

Topics

• What is the Drupal Developer Survey
• How often does it come out
• How did it come to be
• What type of information does it collect
• Do you look at other surveys
• What were some of the most interesting stats last year
• Core contributors
• How do you expect last year to compare to this year
• Do you think the outlook will be more positive with Drupal CMS
• Drop off in Drupal 7
• Home users
• DDEV usage
• AI questions
• Security questions

Resources

• Drupal Developer Survey 2024 Results
• 2025 Drupal Developer Survey
• HTMX Sucks

Guests

Mike Richardson - Ironstar Dev Survey richo_au

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Andrew Berry - lullabot.com deviantintegral

MOTW

Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

• Brief description:
  • Have you ever wanted to replace Drupal’s AJAX capabilities with a lightweight library that has no additional dependencies? There’s a module for that.
• Module name/project name:
  • HTMX
• Brief history
  • How old: created in May 2023 by wouters_f though recent releases are by fathershawn of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
  • Versions available: 1.3.5 and 1.4.0, both of which support Drupal 10.3 and 11
• Maintainership
  • Actively maintained, latest release less than a month ago
  • Security coverage
  • Test coverage
  • Documentation included in the repo as well as online
  • Number of open issues: 3 open issues, 1 of which is a bug
• Usage stats:
  • 92 sites
• Module features and usage
  • To use HTMX, you need to attach the library to the render array of one or more elements where you want to use it, and then add data attributes to your render array that indicate how you want HTMX to react to user behaviour
  • HTMX can help make your Drupal sites more interactive by dynamically loading or reloading parts of a page, giving it a more “application-like” user experience
  • There is a planning issue to discuss gradually replace Drupal’s current AJAX system with HTMX, and a related Proof Of Concept showing how that could work with an existing Drupal admin form
  • A number of elements in the current AJAX system also rely on jQuery, so adopting HTMX would also help to phase out jQuery in core. HTMX is also significantly more lightweight than JS frameworks like React
  • HTMX is really a developer-oriented project, which is why I thought it would be appropriate for this week’s episode

Today we are talking about Pantheon Content Publisher, How it brings Google Docs to Drupal, and why you might want to use it with guests Chris Reynolds & John Money. We’ll also cover QR Code Fields as our module of the week.

For show notes visit:
https://www.talkingDrupal.com/492

Topics

• What is Pantheon Content Publisher
• Why was Pantheon Content Publisher created
• How does it work with Google docs
  • How do you handle revisions
  • How do you target environments
  • Can you do structured content
  • How do reference existing content
  • How does this use GraphQL
• What are some of the use cases you are seeing
• Who should not use Pantheon Content Publisher
• Can I develop the SDCs locally with Pantheon Content Publisher
• What is the ingestion layer like
• AI layer
• Talking Drupal workflow
• Do you have a process for bulk publishing
• How does startup look
• Is it PCC or PCP
• Can Pantheon Content Publisher customers push their own non google content
• Is Pantheon Content Publisher open source
• Is there a cost
• Can you translate content

Resources

• Pantheon Content Publisher docs
• Pantheon Content Publisher module
• Pantheon Content Publisher Roadmap

Guests

Chris Reynolds - jazzsequence.com jazzsequence
John Money - john.money

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Andrew Berry - lullabot.com deviantintegral

MOTW

Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

• Brief description:
  • Have you ever wanted your Drupal site to generate various kinds of QR codes? There’s a module for that.
• Module name/project name:
  • QR Code Fields
• Brief history
  • How old: created in Nov 2023 by Sujan Shrestha of Nepal
  • Versions available: 1.1.1 and 2.1.3, the latter of which works with Drupal 10 and 11
• Maintainership
  • Actively maintained
  • Number of open issues: 4 open issues, none of which are bugs
• Usage stats:
  • 134 sites
• Module features and usage
  • This module defines not just one but 9 new fields for generating QR codes, including for URLs, vCards, MeCards, Events, and more
  • Each field QR accepts inputs based on the associated information that should be exposed. So a URL QR Code field only accepts an input for the URL destination, while an Event QR Code has inputs for a summary, description, location, start, and end.
  • The module also provides a custom block plugin for each type of QR code, to make it easier to display your QR codes wherever you need for your specific use case
  • The QR Code Fields module also defines a service for generating QR code images, which could also be useful for more custom implementations.

Today we are talking about OpenY, a distribution for YMCAs, why it was created, and how it’s used today with guests Avi Schwab and Brent Wilker. We’ll also cover AI Media Image as our module of the week.

For show notes visit:
https://www.talkingDrupal.com/491

Topics

• What is OpenY
• Why is it important to the YMCA
• How many Y's use it
• Is each Y independent technologically
• Why doesn't the Y create a platform as a service
• How do you get the message out about OpenY
• What does a Y pay for and how do they pay
• What is the governance layer like
• Any thoughts on recipes
• How does theming work
• New features to come
• How does ImageX support OpenY

Resources

• MOTW
  • FLDC session: From Chatbots to Content Magic: The AI-Driven Future of Drupal
• YMCA Website Services (OpenY) Glossary
• YMCA Sandboxes
  • https://sandboxes.y.org/
  • https://sandbox-carnation-std.y.org/
• Get in touch with ImageX about Open Y
• Avi’s sourdough recipe base and flour
  • https://tartinebakery.com/stories/country-bread
  • https://www.janiesmill.com/

Guests

Brent Wilker - ImageX.co brent.wilker

Hosts

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

MOTW

Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

• • Brief description:
    • Have you ever wanted to use AI to generate images, and save them directly into the Drupal media library once you have the result you want? There’s a module for that.
  • Module name/project name:
    • AI Media Image
  • Brief history
    • How old: created in Feb 2025 by coffeymachine
    • Versions available: 1.0.0-alpha2
  • Maintainership
    • Actively maintained
    • Security coverage: technically, but needs a stable release
    • Number of open issues: 2 open issues, neither of which are bugs
  • Usage stats:
    • 9 sites
  • Module features and usage
    • We have talked before on the podcast about a couple of ways you could use AI to generate images directly within a Drupal website. One used all the latest OpenAI APIs and the other had media library integration, though it only worked through its own admin form. Both were built to specifically DALL•E, OpenAI’s image generation service.
    • This new module is a big leap forward because it’s based on Drupal’s powerful and rapidly innovating AI module, so it can work with multiple AI image generation services.
    • What’s more, AI Media Image plugs into the Drupal core media system, so you can use the tool to generate images directly within the media library, including when you open it up in a modal to populate an entity reference field. This makes it significantly more intuitive to use this capability as part of a normal content creation flow.
    • There are a couple of things that may not be intuitive when you first start using AI Media Image. For example, by default it uses the prompt you used to create the image as the alt text that will be saved to the media library. That seems unexpected to me, but if the prompt exceeds the max alt text length of 255 characters then it will throw an error and then you can overwrite the value of the prompt field to contain proper alt text before saving the image to the media library. This is one of the open issues mentioned earlier and resolving it would really improving the experience of using this module
    • I got to play around with this module while preparing a demo for a session about AI I delivered with Mike Anello at Florida Drupalcamp on the weekend, so we’ll try to include a link in the notes so you can also watch for that recording and see this module in action