Drupal Melbourne Meetup - April 2025

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