#DrupalCon: 4 Key Takeaways for Web Development in 2018

#DrupalCon: 4 Key Takeaways for Web Development in 2018

Drupal just keeps getting better.

Every year developers from all over the world gather in one spot to talk, learn and experience all things Drupal. Honestly, it's Drupal and so much more. From Symfony to React, and even WordPress, so much is covered throughout the week-long Drupal conference, or “DrupalCon” as it’s known.


We're developers. We tend to gravitate toward Back End Development, DevOps, Front End Development, PHP and User Experience sessions, but there are plenty of other topics.

DrupalCon is about more than just the sessions, though. It’s about seeing firsthand what makes Drupal great and being physically immersed in the online community we as developers interact with on a daily basis.

4 Takeaways from #DrupalCon

1. Sense of Community/Diversity

One of the biggest takeaways from DrupalCon is always just how vibrant, diverse, and welcoming the open-source community is. Many different CMS platforms have come and gone over the years, in part because they were unable to grow and strengthen their community. However, Drupal has remained. Drupal has matured. The future is bright for Drupal at this point, and a large part of that is due to the community.

2. User/Admin Experience Improvements

One feature we’ve always liked about Drupal is its highly customizable platform. Sure, you can do almost anything with the front end of any site, but Drupal, unlike others, has always put a customizable admin experience at the forefront. Drupal allows us to not forget our admin users  –  the ones who use Drupal on a daily basis.

There are also a few core initiatives working to make Drupal even better for admins, including initiatives around:

With those initiatives, we only see the Drupal admin experience getting better.

3. Performance

Drupal is big. It's scalable. It can do a lot, but performance has always been a focal point. Drupal 8 is further proof of this (think: BigPipe in core).

We know from experience. Our Drupal 8 sites are some of the best performing sites we have. With the advancement of Drupal to a modern OOP architecture, PHP 7, and various contributed modules, there's no reason your Drupal 8 site can't be super fast regardless of how big or small your site is.

4. Decoupled Drupal is Big

One of the biggest topics in Drupal right now is decoupled Drupal. Formerly called "Headless Drupal," this allows Drupal to serve as the backend for any project. A decoupled Drupal experience allows Drupal to do what it does best: manage content. 

For example, with a decoupled Drupal experience, there’s no assumption made about the front end. Whether it's an iOS app, JavaScript-based application, or any number of combinations, Drupal can manage it. Drupal already has RESTful Web Services in core. Decoupled Drupal goes a step further by removing the theming layer altogether.

Quite a few distributions are  focusing on this right now, including Contenta, Reservoir and more, and we only expect this to grow with the rise of JavaScript-based applications.

Conclusion

We're big fans of Drupal. We’ve been using it for close to ten years now, and we couldn't be happier with where it is and where it’s going. We always come back from DrupalCon energized – albeit, initially exhausted – to take what we've learned and put it into the work we do for our clients.

To learn more about the work with do with Drupal – and talk strategy on an upcoming web project – contact us. We’d love the opportunity to bring your brand to life with a fresh, new website or updates to your existing site. 

About the Author

Justin Neel

Justin Neel

Senior Web Developer, Drupalist 

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