0:01
all right there we go Uh can you see my screen
0:09
yes we can Yes Excellent All right let's start Uh my
0:14
name is Vladimir I live in Brisbane I do contribute to Drupal not as often as I
0:20
want Uh I'm also organizing uh meetups and conferences as usual in Brisbane
0:28
So today the topic is um been a passion of mine for the last uh year or so Uh
0:35
contributing back to Drupal documentation Uh it's been actually a passion for longer than that because
0:41
sometimes you get to certain documentation on any project and um you get quite frustrated either there's not
0:48
enough um information there's not enough technical information there is too much
0:54
technical information and so on and so forth And Drupal is one of those examples where um we actually can uh go
1:01
to drupal.org as you can see on my screen Come
1:07
on Okay So we have all these fancy pages and we start looking for documentation
1:13
and it's actually zero uh links
1:18
here right so we can go learn about Drupal CMS But if I want to like quick
1:24
link to documentation it's actually not even here So it's no longer in the menu Well well done update I wasn't ready for
1:32
that So uh as you can see so um here's a local development guide So
1:38
the guides are actually case studies fintech So as you can see especially for
1:43
the person who is just there um first
1:49
time support Drupal uh connect uh it's quite overwhelming there's no quick link
1:56
on go documentation and uh going straight forward one of
2:01
my favorite examples is the bootstrap I know it's a framework and comparison is
2:07
kind of well but here docs is the first menu in a link and examples is the
2:13
second I find that's very good especially when we're talking about the tool that is actually there for
2:18
development and building So I think documentation should be a bit more
2:24
accessible If we'll go to an old interface the one you can see here this is my user page and I'm logged in But if
2:30
we'll look for the documentation here uh first of all on your profile you actually see how many edits you did to
2:38
documentation And then if we'll start uh ooh I became a maintainer of the
2:46
guides That's a new one as well Well we'll we'll discover what we can do uh
2:51
here as well Uh I wasn't aware of that And uh so apparently there's a project
2:57
called documentation and there is also a documentation section on the bottom That's where I wanted to get So again
3:02
you need to scroll depending on the page you need to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page um to get to Drupal
3:09
guide Drupal user guide developer documentation and API Drupal So today it would be developer
3:16
oriented talk because I'm going to talk about specific API but I'm going to show you the difference between how to contribute to the guide versus how to
3:22
contribute to developer docs And I'm doing it at talk It means a lot of things might break or not work which is
3:28
good as well because it's a experience for me Uh but I also wanted to show you a real example that we're actually going
3:35
we during this meet up we're going to contribute
3:41
So without further ado um I would recommend you to get these numbers up uh
3:48
and just go even if you don't want to contribute as a content writer you can always go and edit the
3:58
documentation So I was one day was sitting in the code and uh one of the clients uh
4:05
website had uh
4:13
at the uh rest resource and I never used rests at a
4:19
plug-in in Drupal So I decided to have a look So
4:24
what is the rest and how can you use it there are couple of examples So you can see I already did a search on rest
4:31
resource new notation for the specific plug-in in the documentation and there is only five examples
4:39
there We will get to the code a bit later but I copied the rest resource and
4:46
I went to the doctor Google not a real doctor but uh sometime it helps and um I
4:54
search rest dollars Drupal because so far that's the best results I can get
5:00
and you can see I'm getting uh first two URLs for the guides so
5:06
they're sitting under docs docs API so this is not an API documentation API documentation is link five and we'll get
5:14
to that as well But first we're going to look at those two guides and see how far
5:20
uh they getting us So the first custom rest resources and the restful web
5:26
services API So it would take you to this page restful services overview Is that the
5:35
one no I think that's the one
5:42
Yes So as you can see it's a develop Drupal API
5:47
guides restful web API resources It's actually have one page and there is a big warning here uh saying hey uh the
5:55
page is not yet reviewed by restful web services API maintainers So this
6:00
particular guide has maintainers uh which you might or might not see on the right hand side
6:08
uh at the moment I can't see anyone So if I'll click on the
6:14
guide and go to the bottom you can see there is uh one user and in most of the
6:20
cases if you want any modification done to the guide adding removing pages at
6:26
the moment there's only two pages this one and uh the one that we just landed
6:32
from Google and you already can see u there are issues here so for example
6:37
restful web services API it says here restful web services API I in Drupal 8
6:43
So this would be our first edit to documentation today So drum roll we're doing it live I click edit I can see
6:49
edit because I'm logged in into drupal.org I'm going to do a couple of
6:56
things So I'm going to remove eight because we passed that I hope hope everyone passed eight As you can see
7:01
there is description as well And I can change status to uh ah
7:08
this is actually a guide status Uh so there is no needs review So I'm
7:14
going to preview It says you need to explain your
7:20
changed changes So removed Drupal 8
7:27
reference and click
7:33
save Oh So takes a while It's going to go and
7:39
save it and hopefully we uh will see updated page So what's happening here at the
7:47
moment is there's lots of outdated uh guides there Uh and as you can see it removed
7:54
Drupal 8 So we already edited a single page right then we'll go to actually the
8:00
goal of my research which was how to use the restful services And I can see there
8:05
is already a Drupal 8 reference here talking slowly or if you want you can do
8:11
it later once I finish the talk or go and start editing it So I would start
8:17
reading stuff in and you can see there is specific version references like the
8:22
reference in.2 uh it might can be rephrased because we
8:27
don't need to say um 8.2 into really or
8:33
have some historical reference So I need to go and read through that whole
8:39
thing So I was skimming through and saying uh customize a rest resource format So basically this plug-in creates
8:45
a rest resource rest API that we can actually go and um uh hit on our website
8:54
and it actually goes and says so here's how to do it Here's things to go It
8:59
explains URL passes how to do stuff in there So you can actually we can
9:04
actually go and start editing So if any of you wants to go and read it and see
9:10
if it actually makes sense it's um it's a good idea just to go and uh rere uh re
9:17
reread it and see if it makes sense There are there can be spelling mistakes There are no spelling mistakes Sometimes
9:23
the sentences are outdated as I said or might not even uh
9:29
be up to date Come on go away Sorry I cannot click on another tab
9:37
because of this guy Because of the zoom thing we
9:43
can't see this guy So I already got rid of it So imagine I'm just fighting flies
9:48
or something So the second guide was uh
9:54
restful API resources overview That's the same
10:03
one Custom resources So ah okay So that's an
10:10
interesting bit You can see I couldn't find the page because the the guide only contains two pages In fact it actually
10:16
contains more you as a creator can go and add new pages to the guide but the
10:22
users won't see them in the menu because it's uh it needs a maintainer to go and
10:28
place this page And this page was created uh you can see last updated on 26th of January We can see the uh we can
10:36
see the history there if we want to But the it it actually warns you now this page has not been reviewed by maintainer
10:43
and added to the menu So now it gives you a nice warning The second one it says the documentation needs review So
10:50
it means someone wrote it and I usually write it and say need review So you can
10:56
see uh the whole discussion uh you can see the whole discussion uh
11:03
there that goes throughout past since 2016 So that's
11:08
when the page was uh first created and edited and
11:15
to that So what uh here it's a custom rest resources So how to create a custom
11:20
endpoint in Drupal using the proper plug-in and again here if you'll start
11:26
skimming through this particular page uh you would notice that for example things like core uh are no longer there It
11:35
actually uh requires core version maintainability to create So they create
11:40
the dear rest API module but documentation is already outdated This is a Drupal 8 Drupal 9 notation right
11:48
there So and I'm sure if you read through more stuff you'll see um the different examples However if you
11:57
look at the rest definition it's actually a modern Drupal 10.3 10.4 and
12:04
Drupal 11 notation rather than the one that sits inside the uh sits inside the
12:11
comment So it's interesting some bits of documentation are up to date and updated and it's great and uh here's another
12:18
rest with a modern definition but some of the bits like here this one won't work in fact it would actually I think
12:25
give you a warning if you put a core uh there so we can update that update this
12:30
piece of code by clicking edit on this custom rest
12:35
resource go and uh open some module
12:44
So I'm opening
12:49
info.y address info.l So these days we actually put a core version
12:55
requirement there rather than rather than core um CK editor
13:02
inside the documentation pages has nice um code editing
13:09
capabilities So it's actually YAML file not PHP file So here I'll just leave
13:17
11 place it and uh here I go yl change it to yl say
13:23
okay and we change it to a new
13:29
version explain your changes I'll keep it in needs review because it needs more review but if any of you wants to jump
13:35
on this page review it and say uh needs work uh no more problems or duplicate it
13:41
you definitely can do that So replaced
13:47
more with coercion requirement right and this is
13:54
the in a nutshell how you update guides There's plenty of guides not only
14:00
technical one I picked up this um rest because I'm at the moment investigating it and I never used it I thought it
14:07
would be good Um then if you want you can try to go to
14:12
the beginning of this guide and contact the maintainer say saying hey there is this page it's it's very useful it's
14:20
still up to date I'm still reviewing it but can you add it to the guide I found the Slack is the best way to contact the
14:26
maintainers and uh if they're still with Drupal or still on Slack um they usually
14:33
will reply um again depending on maintain depend how busy people are
14:38
That's why I would like to see probably two or three maintainers per guide Uh and I'm not sure as a guide maintainer
14:44
because I just realized I'm I've been made maintainer of the guide just recently Um although I requested it
14:50
couple of years back Uh I don't know if I'm getting any notification for the particular guide But what's going to
14:56
happen from here on is you actually in your uh user profile So when you go to
15:02
your dashboard every page you do you update it you will start getting notification
15:08
uh not via email but via your posts So every time the page in a guide that you
15:14
update it as you can see here now every time those two pages were going to be updated I will get the post I think you
15:21
can click on the page and can unsubscribe from it can you uh following
15:40
So I'm not sure what's this I haven't seen that before Is that uh Can anyone
15:45
see this icon with a pencil or is it just me again in the zoom
15:52
okay that's it's the zoom It's the annotate the screen pencil Yeah Okay cool Everyone can see it on their own
16:00
machine but not on yours I think Okay excellent Now how do I do it
16:08
got it Okay zoom thing Uh can anyone see the red thing can I delete it
16:14
we can see the red thing Yes Oh well let it be there just for fun
16:21
It's It's going to be watermarkked Anyway this is the guide to editing the uh restful u editing the
16:29
guides The problem with uh drupal.org at the moment here once you go and learn
16:35
about Drupal CMS and actually get to Drupal CMS you cannot edit the uh pages
16:41
You actually need to create a task to edit the pages Last time I checked couple of months ago so that's also
16:47
probably going to be a big barrier So it will be good to rethink how to do the documentation I always like
16:53
documentation to be bundled with the application but it means people need to go to g to read it or something like
16:59
that Now anyway uh this is this is guides so this is
17:07
u providing help for the guides Now I'll go back to my
17:13
account and I go to the core So I contributed number of wish issues to
17:19
Drupal core
17:25
and couple of them actually are related to documentation So I want to show you a couple of uh issues and how to see them
17:32
So uh so there is a three so there's entity
17:38
access check contains incorrect errors Uh once you go to the API I'll guess
17:43
I'll explain the API documentation and then we'll show you this particular thing So if you want to get a
17:49
contribution credit on something like a core um it's a good idea to start
17:54
uh updating the API documentation And if we go back to our
17:59
search I mentioned before the class restore API documentation here is uh
18:05
API.rupal.org Let's open it up And it actually takes us to the API
18:12
Another issue with the API portal is that it actually takes you to either Drupal 8 or Drupal 9 I guess the one
18:18
that was most hit So there are a couple of um a couple of ways to go to this URL
18:27
uh to this particular API in the latest version which is 11 which we're looking
18:33
for Click here click version 11 and then search for it or uh the quick hack I
18:40
found this one is 8.9 but since then now we'll have like
18:46
11.x so if you change 11.x text and end of URL It will take you to um 11
18:54
version as you can see uh just a couple of differences here and here you don't
19:01
see much difference So the the help wasn't updated and this help for API
19:06
derived directly from u der directly from
19:13
uh files So class files has the definition and to prove that I'll
19:19
actually go define a rest resource annotation object So if I open Drupal
19:27
core and search for it you'll find this exact documentation So you can see from here these three
19:33
lines were extracted and put in documentation So technically we can put
19:39
more stuff here including the examples It actually says here for working example C uh DB log resource which is
19:46
another example of core resource or database
19:52
logs So when we go in Drupal 11 you can see there is only one line and hierarchy
19:59
of the object But if we'll go back to Drupal 8 and click on DB log
20:06
resort it actually had a bit more information on how to do stuff So
20:11
actually looks like a plug-in annotation Uh this particular documentation Drupal
20:17
8.9 had a bit more um information and more
20:24
help So how does a good looking um help
20:30
example in an API would look like to a developer
20:37
well let's go and now back to my tasks whatever they are here
20:52
So I uh I think I contributed to this file system interface.copy documentation
20:58
is inaccurate And if we'll go all the way to the bottom and click on the latest
21:08
commit you can see that uh this particular documentation for file system
21:15
interface.php was actually changed um and
21:21
extended adding the parameters Adding an example of code So this is an example of
21:28
how to contribute to code here and um yeah and uh how to add references and
21:36
stuff like that If you want to see how it looks in the API we can again uh copy
21:42
the name of the class go to
21:50
Google file system interface Uh the now it takes took us to
21:55
Drupal 10 As you can see Drupal 10 doesn't have it So let's try
22:15
11 So this is one
22:23
Oh can't see the the computation with an example of just copy
22:32
Maybe just the copy Oh here we go Here's our example So it was just specific for copy
22:39
uh that help was updated for the copy uh function of this file interface So that's why it was pulled here So if we
22:47
compare it to 10 or
22:52
9 as you can see 10 had a bit of spill here with no example And then we created
23:00
open the task and uh contributed code including the
23:07
example here right here How to use it which make makes it easier for developers to actually read for this
23:14
particular copy command and also copy the example if we want
23:20
to Uh yeah So if we look at this particular
23:25
task again it was open for Drupal core
23:33
project as you can see and the component is documentation So you can go into the
23:40
issues if uh you can search for the documentation issues here See if you
23:46
want to uh see if you want to contribute to
23:52
currently active one or less active one or want to help review the documentation
23:57
And if not you can create a new issue and from here select the component of
24:03
documentation here and uh create a new task and um try
24:11
to add the example For example we don't have a good rest uh reser
24:19
example So we can either go to the core or to one of the modules and uh find rest example
24:30
here Rest resource rest So that's one one one of the things to go and check how you can
24:36
do it Uh you can copy it from the guide as well I found that if we copy the
24:42
stuff from the guide and API and a guide seems very similar That's very good um
24:48
thing so it's consistent Or of course you can go to our favorite um generative
24:53
tools Here I ask uh chat GPT uh I need some help with creating example Drupal
25:00
API It gave me some guides and said I want example of how to use restra plugin
25:06
in Drupal 11 and obviously be cautious you need to understand what this thing
25:12
produces and be able to review it for example here as you can see it did
25:17
create it uh proper info.yml file as an example
25:23
but probably if you know your info.yaml you can see that the format of the
25:29
dependencies is incorrect So that needs to be fixed Same goes here It actually
25:34
created a custom message resource file But as you can see it was trained on the
25:40
old style notations The one that sits inside the comment rather than the ones
25:47
that I showed you before that sits outside the
25:52
comment whatever they are here So
26:00
rests So be careful with generative tools but again they're good to give you
26:06
an example and you can copy paste this example to the guide or to the
26:13
um documentation API and contribute it as a code
26:18
Now you can actually go and copy paste the example straight into the
26:25
code like um in one of those
26:32
issues actually here you can create a fork in active issue uh click edit you
26:39
can do it all in the browser because documentation again you don't need to run it through just need to make sure it's uh properly formatted and you don't
26:47
even need to have an ID in order to contribute to the branch Again this is a
26:52
very specific example of specific API for both guides and for
26:59
the API documentation inside the code but you can do it with pretty much any
27:04
other guide as well So if you want to contribute to documentation and I really
27:09
recommend you to do that just go and uh read couple of issues on drupal.org or
27:15
go read couple of guide pages something that relates to your job today It's um
27:20
good start That's what I do Again rest basically came from u exactly
27:27
that And see what Google searches gives you Find those pages that maybe link
27:32
talk to uh guide maintainers maybe request to become a guide maintainer although there's not clear
27:39
path And um I think that's it from me So hope you enjoyed quick introduction on
27:46
contributing to documentation in Drupal and I hope we actually will have less
27:51
barriers uh and uh more well written
27:57
documentation Any questions uh there are a couple of questions in the chat
28:03
Vladimir uh Ivan is asking how would you identify documentation that needs attention
28:10
m it's when uh you copy well I I found it
28:16
two kind of two guys first of all you copy the example and doesn't work single directory components I still think has
28:23
an example that doesn't work and I uh ran a few bells but I literally never
28:30
develop with single directory components um to the point where I can actually spend enough time to documentation So
28:38
what I do uh how I narrow it down is I would go and check out documentation for
28:44
something I'm currently working or something I'm currently teaching So luckily I was a teacher for
28:52
a couple of years so there was plenty of material to give to the students and I want to make sure and it's not just the
28:58
college students it's also private companies and government organizations who want to learn Drupal
29:05
So I was like I want to be able to pass the guide page
29:10
to upcoming developers or upcoming managers of Drupal and they should be
29:15
able to follow it up and understand it And that's kind of my gap If I can't follow it up and understand it then it
29:21
means the documentation not worth sharing So rather than creating a custom guide I would rather go and improve the
29:28
documentation Again um regardless if it's development not developer documentation works the same way Yeah
29:35
there's another cheeky question from KL Is there an open issue for the fact that the Drupal homepage doesn't have an
29:42
obvious link to documentation oh I didn't know that until today cuz I
29:47
don't use the new page I always go to my profile So I actually use the old page
29:53
And today when I was preparing I click um Apple F and could find the documentation menu So it was surprise
29:59
for me that there's no documentation Uh there there's a learn about Drupal CMS
30:05
I'm not sure if it's confusing or not but yeah I think it's um there's a link
30:11
to it in the develop in the develop dropown menu There's a link to all documentation but but how does person
30:18
supposed to know that when they come first time to the drupal.org
30:26
that develop includes documentation i don't know I guess that's a UX question
30:33
because it's not just develop it's um maintainers and administrators guides
30:40
uh I assume somewhere else So if person wants to learn Drupal
30:46
from maintainer or uh administrator perspective that's why I like docs Do we
30:53
have docs on that yeah Yeah we do have bunch of guides on that plenty
30:59
Yeah there's plenty of guides on uh man administration and content
31:06
editing My one of the first uh guide updates were on uh switching removing
31:12
all the images of CK editor 4 and putting all the images and GS and videos
31:18
for CK editor 5 That was fun And that's I think two years after
31:23
we replaced the CK editor to switch to CK ed 5 there was still plenty of C4
31:29
images but uh that's how I learned So yeah images just screenshots of the
31:35
standalone Drupal was um how I learn how to contribute to a lot of
31:40
guides If you don't like writing or reading you can do images
31:47
Uh any more question for Vladimir uh yes a question from my side uh for
31:53
module development So you've got a contract module Um how deep does your documentation needs to be on that um
32:00
because you do have your readme in your code but documentation from the site Um how far do you need to go with that yeah
32:08
specifically didn't touch on um uh on modules because it's I think we can go for another half an hour just talking
32:15
about modules Uh my preference is have a readme documentation readme.md
32:21
uh copy it into the if you can because you not always have permissions uh copy
32:27
it to the description of your module or theme if you can and there's also ability to add the guide for a specific
32:34
module and specific u so I think if those three are consistent
32:39
uh if you need one page you don't probably need a guide uh if you need more than one page Um a lot of big
32:47
themes need more than one page on how to modify them I think then create a guide Otherwise make sure that your readmi MD
32:55
is up to date with a module If you're co- maintainer and cannot edit the
33:00
description of the module or page it's a bummer I know a couple of modules like that where I'm co- maintainer I cannot
33:07
edit the description They still have a lot of Drupal 7 references and I think it's going to bite us But it's basically
33:13
you know one-on-one conversation with maintainers saying "Can you update the
33:19
homepage here's readme.md It's all there Can you update it?" So create a task At
33:25
least there would be some sort of a conversation But uh it's a it's a slow process but if we won't do anything
33:32
about it in 5 years time we would still have Drupal 7 references all over the place
33:38
Uh Janna is asking "Doesn't Drupal CMS supposed to be less development more config build?" Um I assume so but again
33:46
I'm not a user never used Drupal CMS in my life Uh how quickly to find out what
33:52
to do Is there a guide is a tutorial is uh I think it should be like first thing
33:58
there [Music] Yeah putting docs under development hides it
34:05
from site builders designers editors Totally agree with that Um then Pamela
34:11
the Drupal CMS docs are not in that section They're linked from the Drupal CMS page Okay
34:17
There are tools just to comment on the putting the into the code hides it Uh there are tools like uh something book
34:25
uh to generate PDFs and generate HTML pages uh from um static uh bootstrap
34:31
does that So all the docs are generated from I think using jackal static site
34:37
build generator uh and uh they are in code So all this documentation is in
34:43
code and then when they deploy the new version of the website on a bootstrap it gets compiled into static
34:50
pages Um so there are tools there uh we we can leverage them They've been there for a decade It just uh for some reason
34:57
we can't get a modern tool like a static site generator and app apply it to drupal.org
35:06
Okay Um thanks a lot for this Vladimir It was really helpful Thank you
35:12
All right The now we have Pamela from Technocrat and she'll wants to have a
35:19
discussion around the marketplace initiative So marketplace initiative was something Greece announced recently and
35:26
over to Pamela Um yeah I just thought it might be interesting to chat about I don't know
35:33
what people think about it if they have any questions or thoughts or major objections or um or yeah just other
35:41
comments There's been a lot of commentary so far Um so yeah if you don't know what we're talking about Dre
35:47
announced in the Atlanta keynote that uh the Drupal Association is exploring
35:52
developing a marketplace for Drupal site templates which are
35:58
essentially composer package composer create project packages that um will
36:04
include a custom theme well a theme and uh some additional feature sets So via
36:11
recipes adding content types and um some additional functionality and that those
36:17
would potentially be available for purchase So not just um not just open
36:22
source but also potentially looking at being able to buy and sell templates on that marketplace
36:30
Has anyone actually heard about this initiative if you have any comments what
36:36
do you feel about it by the way on the on Drupal Slack there
36:42
is actually a channel for this It's called Drupal CMS Marketplace I can put
36:47
a link to that here
36:52
Would our responses uh impact the initiative in any way
37:00
well the DA is doing a whole process to seek feedback from the community So yes
37:06
I think so I mean obviously there are a lot of opinions so I can't say how much one single opinion weighs but um
37:15
yeah that's exactly right that's what I thought well to me uh this whole marketplace is not nothing new if you
37:22
look at Jumbla marketplace if you look at WordPress there is a lot of um
37:28
packages plugins models you can purchase outright uh to get some functionality
37:36
uh Like to me personally I believe in open source and I would be it would be
37:43
very sad to see this initiative going forward but that's just my personal opinion and I'm not sure I think it
37:51
needs some sort of plan Uh certainly we will make a plan I would
37:57
say also so Jana's asked how are we going to avoid WordPress model where modules have two versions free and paid
38:03
Dice has said categorically modules will never be paid So modules will not be for
38:08
sale That's that's not what this is about This is about selling a theme potentially um or theme assets or it's
38:14
it's really about the um display element of the site and how that's licensed We still don't know There might be certain
38:20
components of the site template that are licensable and certain that are not But one 100% confirmed we will not have paid
38:27
modules So um no need to worry about what will happen there because it's not possible Okay thank you But also if
38:34
you're talking about paid themes again that's not quite new Uh you could have
38:39
purchased the themes for Drupal since Drupal 6 at least from my memory But
38:45
because of the way Drupal is built they were pretty clunky And so if you bought a theme you generally needed a database
38:51
dump in order to get the correct content structure to match your theme And so the big the big difference with experience
38:57
builder now is that you can essentially develop a theme just with SDC's that doesn't really require that same level
39:03
of plus recipes allow you to easily generate the config that you need in order for a theme to work properly So we
39:11
think that those two things combined create a landscape where it's a totally different proposition
39:18
um from like say doing it even even doing it now is not really that easy It's not going to be feasible until
39:24
experience builder is ready J how are we going to avoid WordPress
39:33
model y gap okay but developers will want to get paid designers will get
39:44
paid thought about this Hello Yep So yeah there's a uh resource called
39:52
theme forest and um I already looked into this um there are thousands of
39:59
sales of different themes on it for Drupal particularly So uh I think that's a good
40:05
initiative and uh there is a marketplace for them for the themes but the main
40:12
advantage of uh like own marketplace could be a usage of issues So if we do
40:18
this in a Drupal way so that users of this thing could create issues and
40:25
probably funding could be spread among other developers Probably that's a
40:30
really good idea to have this um share of the market
40:36
Yeah I think the the key benefit that we see in addition to potentially drawing in new users is that it could
40:42
potentially create a revenue stream for the Drupal association which um as lab noted you know tools like um
40:48
documentation in code and even the GitLab migration which has been going on for like three years now and isn't done still The drupal.org redesign all of
40:54
these projects that we would as a community benefit from they're not able to complete and and um dedicate
41:00
resources to because they have such a small team and so such limited funding So um when it comes to sort of the
41:06
actual payment I think yeah to your to your question around developers wanting to get paid I see it as a much bigger
41:11
problem that companies like mine and and other large companies are building
41:17
really large Drupal websites using modules and not contributing anything back Um my company does contribute quite
41:23
a bit back and I know um many of the people here do as well So Salsa for example and obviously Vlad you guys too
41:29
But I think um I think it's I think it's maybe a little bit of a distraction to
41:35
focus on a really low end of that market by saying a designer who develops a um
41:40
beautiful theme and include say the the web form module to add a feature that
41:46
that person should give some small percentage of the small amount of money that they're charging to the web form
41:51
developer when actually the people that we should be trying to get revenue from are the ones that
41:57
are seeing like millions and millions millions of dollars come through their agency in a year So I I get that it's a visibility thing that if we're selling
42:04
something in a marketplace you can see it you can see the transaction you can see the price but we have a huge
42:09
monetization problem in Drupal now And what this would do is potentially give
42:15
the Drupal Association a piece of the revenue that they're not getting right now So they're getting nothing right now
42:20
and this would at least see them getting something I think So I I I understand that it's not ideal but I think um
42:28
there's just no way to I mean I think we can all agree we don't want to have modules be bought and sold And so short
42:35
of that I think my ideal scenario is there's beautiful designs we increase the Drupal user base um the Drupal
42:43
association is properly funded and can continue to innovate and um you know
42:48
just kind of properly support the the community you know Drupal itself
42:54
has been innovating so much and were able to move so quickly Like if you look what happened with Drupal CMS and um the community comes together and companies
43:01
contribute and it's all great but then when it comes to the DA they're just completely falling behind because their
43:06
revenue is actually shrinking And um I think if if anybody's like wondering
43:11
more about that um you know the Drupal Association is a nonprofit that's most of their funding actually comes from Drupal Con in North America every year
43:18
which is I think kind of a shocking thing And um the rest just comes from either essentially donations um Drupal
43:26
certified partner memberships and very very small and and kind of continuously
43:32
uh requiring you know business development things These are not these are not just like passive income options
43:38
that um that they have at their disposal So I think their annual revenue is about $3 million Um and when you factor in
43:45
that a bunch of that has to go toward actually running the Drupal con event that really leaves very little for the
43:51
rest of it which is the stuff that we all care about You know the the um the infrastructure and um and the supporting
43:58
tools So in my mind it would be great if if for module developers those tools actually existed and were being
44:04
maintained and being developed Um that's the sort of I think that's the reward that um that's the reward that I think
44:11
we can realistically expect Sales and technocrats are building their
44:17
own themes Yeah we wouldn't use the marketplace ourselves Like we wouldn't we wouldn't be buying themes We probably wouldn't be selling themes either So the
44:23
idea would be to sell themes to people that currently can't build a Drupal site because they don't know how to to
44:29
develop a custom theme I mean if we if we get experience builder working perfectly and if we smash Drupal CMS out
44:35
of the park um it's still not going to be accessible to people who don't know how to write PHP or Twig And so we need
44:43
to solve that problem Otherwise we're not going to reach the audience that we are hoping to reach which is the WordPress audience All we all we want to
44:50
do is be in a position to say to the smaller end of the market um hey you're
44:55
building that website with with WordPress Would you consider using Drupal and we can't do that right now We just can't We know that So
45:06
will the marketplace also be coupled and decoupled as well
45:12
um do you mean like will there be decoupled site templates yes
45:18
Sure I guess I don't know I don't see why not
45:24
Yeah If you go to that Slack channel that I posted there's a lot of conversation happening there There are a
45:29
lot of surveys also happening there So it would be great if you know whoever is interested goes there and actually fills
45:35
out surveys and asks questions there Um Ki is saying we are we are not the
45:41
target audience It would be amazing for independent people using a SAS platform such as Drupal Okay Yeah I mean the SAS
45:48
platform is a is a whole other aspect where I do think we probably need SAS hosting options to make this viable Um I
45:55
am not going to take that up but I sure hope somebody does There actually is a company called Dupedo that's uh that's
46:03
in the process of launching It's drupi and they are planning to develop a SAS
46:08
platform for Drupal C It's already in it's already live
46:13
Uh the site is live but I don't think you can you actually sign up and buy it i think
46:20
so because I saw there's a couple of weeks
46:25
back Let me find a link for that I suspect there's quite a few more players to come into this space in the next
46:32
couple of years I sure hope so I really do Um Jana asked "How much would you
46:38
charge for a theme?" I don't know I think it's probably up to the developer um of the theme Well WordPress is super
46:44
cheap It's like $5 per month I don't know where you're finding $5 per month hosting I um even the cheapest hosts are
46:50
are like round about sort of 12 to 15 US dollars in my experience but um there's no reason that you shouldn't be able to
46:56
run Drupal on that kind of hosting It's the same it's the same tech stack So uh we don't see why you shouldn't be able
47:02
to run Drupal on A2 hosting In fact I have a Drupal CMS site on AT that we usually that that we're using to test um
47:08
automatic updates and project browser to try to make sure that those tools will work in the cheap hosting options because they're really the only place
47:14
that it does work because you have to have a writable file system in order to use those tools So um obviously we
47:20
prefer for our purposes we prefer proper Drupal hosting with dev tools and things like that but for somebody that's just
47:25
trying to build a site via the UI there's no problem with um with that And it's actually a throwback to the days of
47:30
Drupal 7 when that was not only feasible but it was super common to to build a site on um on cheap hosting And you know
47:38
there was even even I think until Drupal 9 there was the um the page that let you
47:44
add a module via FTP So you could actually upload a module via zip file I think it was you download the zip file
47:50
and then upload the zip file So it's kind of trying to take us back to those days but uh a little more properly I
47:56
guess a little more sophisticated better user experience
48:02
Kyle I think everybody has started on C panel at one point of time Um but I
48:07
Drupito is um if you go annually it's $9.99 per month There you go Yeah So
48:15
which is very interesting Uh you can have custom content types upload files
48:21
install and configure a specific set of module themes and recipes but it's Drupal CMS website that
48:28
you'll get All right any other questions any
48:34
other comments around marketplace and as I was saying please go to that Slack channel There's a lot of conversation
48:40
happening and the page that I linked that also has um you can become a
48:46
volunteer if you want to who want to for this marketplace
48:55
initiative All right thanks a lot Pamela Um is there anything that we want to
49:01
discuss today anything else we want to discuss just a heads up that Drupal Asia is
49:08
still looking for volunteers and we'll soon be looking for speakers So now is the time to plan that if you're
49:14
interested I have already applied for being a volunteer
49:20
So all righty Thanks everyone for joining and see you next month Bye
49:28
Thanks Suchi Bye Thank you Bye
Reviewed 09 June 2025