Today we are talking about Webhaven.io, What it is, and How it helps build Drupal faster with guest Fons Vandamme. We’ll also cover Metatag Simple Widget as our module of the week.

For show notes visit:
https://www.talkingDrupal.com/534

Topics

• What is Web Haven
• Web Haven's Technical Insights and Future Plans
• Developer's Perspective on Recipe Upgrades
• Documentation vs. Automatic Updates
• Module Management Concerns
• Drupal Canvas
• Challenges with Drupal Canvas Integration
• Web Haven's Future with Drupal Canvas
• Exploring Headless Architecture with Web Haven
• Business Plan and Roadmap for Web Haven
• AI Integration in Web Haven
• Creating and Testing Recipes

Resources

• Webhaven.io
• Accelerating AI-Powered Chatbots in Drupal
• Ratatouille

Guests

Fons Vandamme - webhaven.io f0ns

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

MOTW

Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

• Brief description:
  • Have you ever wanted a simplified widget for managing meta tags in your Drupal content? There’s a module for that.
• Module name/project name:
  • Metatag Simple Widget
• Brief history
  • How old: created in Jul 2025 by Jim Vomero (njim) of Four Kitchens
  • Versions available: 1.0.0 and 1.1.0, the latter of which works with Drupal core 10 and 11
• Maintainership
  • Actively maintained
  • Security coverage
  • No open issues
• Usage stats:
  • 1 site
• Module features and usage
  • With this module installed, in the form configuration for your content types, you’ll see a new "Simplified meta tags form" widget for metatag fields
  • It’s designed to provide a dramatically streamlined input for metatags, focused on only exposing the most commonly used tags, the title and description
  • As a configuration option, you can have the widget hide default values, which for metatag fields often contain tokens, which could be confusing for Drupal neophytes
  • The module was nominated by Dave Hansen-Lange (dalin), also of Four Kitchens, and a co-maintainer, as well as a fellow Canadian

I also wanted to give a shout out to the Drupal.org Infrastructure Working Group. In the lead-up to this recording there was a media server failure that brought down the entire site. They worked as furiously as Santa’s elves and were able to quickly get the site back up. It was a reminder for me of how much we all (and this segment in particular) depend on the tireless work they do. In this season of giving please consider supporting the Drupal Association, and if you already do, maybe see if you could give a little more.

Today we are talking about The Drupal At-Large Board Seat, What the job entails, and some common misconceptions with guest Fei Lauren. We’ll also cover Token Browser as our module of the week.

For show notes visit:
https://www.talkingDrupal.com/533

Topics

• Understanding the Drupal Association at Large Board Seat
• Responsibilities and Experiences of a Board Member
• Challenges and Insights from Serving on the Board
• Community Representation and Accountability
• Skills and Qualities for Aspiring Board Members
• Navigating Board Member Responsibilities
• Community Perception and Board Care
• Global Community Engagement
• Challenges and Impact of Board Decisions
• Encouraging Non-Technical Contributions
• Reflections and Future Plans
• Election Process and Imposter Syndrome

Resources

• Board of directors working groups
• Board of directors

Guests

Fei Lauren - feilauren

Hosts

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu
Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan

MOTW

Correspondent

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan

• Brief description:
  • Have you ever wanted an improved token browser that loads quickly and doesn’t have a depth limit? There’s a module for that.
• Module name/project name:
  • Token Browser
• Brief history
  • How old: created in Nov 2025 by Andy Marquis (apmsooner)
  • https://talkingdrupal.com/505
  • Versions available: 1.0.0 which works with Drupal core 11.3 or newer
• Maintainership
  • Actively maintained
  • Security coverage
  • Test coverage
  • Number of open issues: 2 open issues, 1 of which is a bug
• Usage stats:
  • 3 sites
• Module features and usage
  • The Token Browser module provides a rebuilt version of the standard token browser. Notably, it only renders the first level during the initial request, and then requests deeper levels as needed using all the latest HTMX improvements in Drupal core 11.3
  • It’s worth noting that the initial version requires an alternative theme function be attached to form elements where you want to use the new Token Browser, so it doesn’t actually replace the standard version
  • Also, there seems to be an issue where the HTMX library doesn’t load on cached pages, which is the one open issue. I pinged Andy about it and it sounds like he has a fix in the works.
  • Finally, this module is similar to an older module called Fast Token Browser, but that module was never updated to work with versions of Drupal newer than 7, and relied on jQuery for its AJAX functionality

Today we are talking about AI Marketing,Marketing Trends, and The caber toss with guest Hayden Baillio. We’ll also cover Drupal core 11.3 as our module of the week.

For show notes visit:
https://www.talkingDrupal.com/532

Topics

• AI in Marketing: Hayden's Insights
• The Role of AI in Content Creation
• Challenges and Ethical Considerations of AI
• AI Training Data and Bias
• AI in Security Testing
• AI Replacing Jobs
• The Future of Marketing with AI
• Highland Games and Personal Hobbies

Resources

• Drupal core 11.3 release highlights
• Carsinisation

Guests

Hayden Baillio - hounder.co hgbaillio

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Fei Lauren - feilauren

MOTW

Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

• Brief description:
  • Have you been wanting a version of Drupal core that moves away from the hooks system, has PHP 8.5 support, or has better support for asynchronous queries? The newly released Drupal core 11.3 has all these and more.
• Module name/project name:
  • Drupal core 11.3
• Brief history
  • Created in the last few days (hopefully) by the time this episode is released
• Changes
  • Performance improvements
  • New MYSQLi database driver. In combination with the PHP Fibers support added in Drupal 10.2, this should allow Drupal sites to run much faster. Not all hosting environments will have PHP configured to work with the new driver, so for now the new driver is in an experimental core module you will need to install to try the new driver
  • Drupal can now lazy load multiple entities at a time using Fibers
  • PHP 8.5 support should also improve performance, as will a number of caching improvements
  • Some early testing in the community indicates some significant improvements for pages loaded from cold cache, anywhere from 30 to 40% fewer queries
  • One of the significant changes in Drupal core 11.2 was the addition of HTMX as the intended successor to Drupal’s older AJAX system. Drupal core 11.3 includes some significant steps on the path to replacing all the places that AJAX system in core
  • There’s a new HTMX factory object with methods to abstract the specifics of the attributes and headers needed to implement HTMX
  • HTMX is now used for the Form Builder and ConfigSingleExportForm
  • BigPipe no longer uses the older AJAX API, which itself uses jQuery
  • New Workspace Provider concept, will be interesting to see what new possibilities this creates
  • New administer node published status permission, previously required the much broader "administer nodes" permission
  • Drupal core 11.3 also includes some capabilities that previously required contrib modules
  • Links created within CKEditor5 now dynamically link to the entity and when rendered will automatically point to the most recent alias. Previously Drupal sites needed the Linkit module, which has been part of Drupal CMS since its release at the start of the year
  • Drupal CMS is also heavily based on Drupal’s recipe system, which includes the ability to automatically import content included within a recipe. Until now you still needed the default_content module to export content as YAML for inclusion in a recipe. With Drupal 11.3 you can export all entities of a particular type, optionally filtered by bundle, and optionally including all dependencies
  • Many of Drupal’s remaining hooks, particularly those for themes, now have OOP class replacements, so we’re now very close to being able to deprecate .module and .theme files
  • Listeners may remember that the Navigation module was added as an experimental module in Drupal core 10.3. In 11.3, the module is now officially stable, so the rethought admin menu that originally debuted as part of the Gin admin theme is now fully realized in Drupal core
  • SDCs can now be marked to be excluded from the UI, for example if they are meant to only be nested within other components
  • Drupal core 11.3 also introduces some new deprecations:
  • Migrate Drupal and Migrate Drupal UI officially deprecated now that Drupal 7 is EOL
  • Also field_layout, which was ultimately superseded by Layout Builder
  • Promoted and Sticky fields are now hidden by default (an issue created more than 20 years ago! A five digit issue ID) - the user who created it had a drop.org username lol
  • Another issue that sets the "Promoted" default value to FALSE for new content types was also resolved, but only 15 years old. It had a six-digit issue ID - barely!
  • Theme engines have been deprecated!
  • This may be the last feature release of Drupal core before version 12, which could drop as early as June 2026
  • We’ll include a link to the release highlights, but by the time you hear this there should also be an official announcement from Gabor and the DA with additional details

Today we are talking about Drupal for Applications, Types of Applications Drupal can build, and How we change our thinking of Drupal with guests Alexander Varwijk (far-vag) & Jürgen Haas. We’ll also cover Drupal Remote Dashboard as our module of the week.

For show notes visit:
https://www.talkingDrupal.com/531

Topics

• Drupal as an Application Framework
• Challenges with Drupal for Real-Time Applications
• Exciting Prospects with AI and Drupal
• Showcasing Successful Drupal Implementations
• Batch Processing and Worker Improvements
• Orchestration and Integration with External Platforms
• Future of Drupal as an Application Framework

Resources

• Drupal Advent Calendar
• Proposal: Restructuring Drupal Internals by Alexander Varwijk
• Introducing Symfony/Runtime in Drupal
• Maestro

Guests

Alexander Varwijk - alexandervarwijk.com/ Kingdutch
Jürgen Haas - lakedrops.com jurgenhaas

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Fei Lauren - feilauren

MOTW

Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

• Brief description:
  • Have you ever wanted to manage and monitor a portfolio of Drupal sites from a single interface? There’s a module for that.
• Module name/project name:
  • Drupal Remote Dashboard (DRD)
• Brief history
  • How old: created in Jan 2010 by Jürgen Haas (jurgenhaas) of LakeDrops
  • Versions available: 4.1.7 which works with Drupal 10 and 11
• Maintainership
  • Actively maintained
  • Security coverage
  • Full Documentation Guide
  • Number of open issues: 22 open issues, 3 of which are bugs against the current branch
• Usage stats:
  • 126 sites
• Module features and usage
  • With the module enabled, for each monitored site you’ll be able to review information like the version of core, modules, and themes, as well as the status report. Note that the dashboard and monitored sites do NOT need to be on the same major version of core.
  • You can also collect any block from a remote site to include on your dashboard, or access the error logs to review them in the dashboard
  • You can execute maintenance tasks like taking sites in or out of maintenance mode, running cron or update.php, as well as flushing cache
  • The dashboard will also allow you to rebuild job schedulers, update translations from drupal.org, change user credentials, or execute arbitrary PHP code, so you’ll definitely want to be selective about who will have access
  • From the collected status information you can show a status widget for each domain to display grouped traffic light status levels for security, health, tuning, seo and others. You can also create aggregate status widgets, for example to show the composite health of all sites in a multisite installation.
  • Internally DRD is built around a number of entities, and the documentation includes an architecture page with an Entity Relationship Diagram, while the glossary page includes a description for each of the entities and what Drupal site information they map to. Obviously security for this kind of setup is paramount, and there’s a documentation page that details the encryption and authentication methods that are supported
  • Sites that you want to monitor will need to have the DRD Agent module installed, which provides a simple wrapper to receive, route, handle and respond to requests from authorised Drupal Remote Dashboards. It’s worth pointing out that the RDR Agent module is in use by 3,152 sites according to drupal.org, so there may be a small number of sites acting as dashboards, but on average each of them is monitoring 25 sites.