Feeds

Programmes like Season of KDE (SoK) and Google Summer of Code (GSoC) provide a great opportunity for young talent to become part of the open source community and contribute to open source projects. LabPlot, and KDE in general, has a long history and experience in managing GSoC projects and has benefited from various contributions. In recent years we have taken a break from GSoC, mostly due to personal reasons and time constraints. After a successful SoK 2024 programme this year we decided to participate in GSoC2024 again.

This year we had Israel Gladima and Kuntal Bar who spent 3 months with us working on quite challenging projects aimed at addressing two major feature gaps in LabPlot, namely Python scripting and visualisation of 3D data. These two development topics had already been the subject of several discussions and even initial implementations on our part, but we never managed to finalise them and make these features available to our users. Based on the already available results of the last years’ work, we decided to re-initiate these projects and work on them during GSoC2024. Despite the technical challenges and complexity of these projects, Kuntal and Israel did a very good job this summer and delivered amazing results.

We refer you to their blog posts here and here for more details of the work that has been done. In the coming weeks and months we’ll continue to work to finalise these features and get them ready for the first release. The LabPlot team would like to thank Israel and Kuntal and we’re looking forward to your contributions in the future!

Translating a Qt application, can be a daunting task. This is an overview from Qt 5 to Qt 6 and what new functionality Qt 6.7 brings.

Continue reading Translating Qt Applications at basysKom GmbH.

During the last month we mainly focus on bug fixes, behaviour improvements of several things and speeding-up performance issues stepping forward to our next release 7.4 scheduled to the 4th of November. We also added some new features which we would like to introduce to you in this newsletter.

For an in depth overview of the Tryton issues please take a look at our issue tracker or see the issues and merge requests filtered by label.

Changes for the User Sales, Purchases and Projects

We add a new sale reporting per promotion.

We add now a relate from promotions to their sales.

We improved the exception handling wizards on sales and purchases. We added two fields to let the user explicitly fill with the records to ignore or to re-create.
Any cancelled record that is not added to one of the fields, will stay in exception state to be proceeded later. Also we changed the view between a MultiSelection to a Many2Many field depending on the number of records in the exception state.

Now, Tryton doesn’t add extra lines on sale orders for inactive products. Also Tryton does no longer recommend inactive products.

We removed the Menu: Parties → Parties → Parties Associated to Sales/Purchases entries, because the result is not limited to sales or purchases in state validated or processing. A draft, quotation or cancelled order doesn’t qualify a party as a customer or supplier. The functionality is already replaced by the reports in Menu: Sales → Reporting → Sales, Sales per Customer and Menu: Purchases → Reporting → Purchases, Purchases per Supplier which adds the ability to filter per state and per period.

Accounting, Invoicing and Payments

Now we re-launch the update of the payment customer for Stripe and Braintree in case it failed. Also the users can manually initiate the update process.

Stock, Production and Shipments

Now we round up weights and the other measurements to two decimals for the shipping carriers DPD, Sendcloud and UPS.

We make package measurements read-only once they are closed.

User Interface

We remove the favourite management from the favourite menu, because of
several issues [1] [2] and duplicated functionality.

Now we group links with a similar functional scope together.

In Menu: Administration → User Interface the entries

• View Tree Widths,
• View Tree Optionals,
• View Tree States and
• View Searches

are moved to the Open related records toolbar-menu of Menu: Administration → Models → Models.

We improve the widget for MultiSelection fields in the Tryton clients by adding checkboxes which display the selection state of the row. If the users clicks on a row, the selection state will be changed.

Now we visually remove records from Many2Many fields used in Wizard instead of greying them out.

We keep the CSV export dialogue now opened after exporting, to have a better user experience when fixing bugs, export and again fixing bugs.

Since we moved the functionality from product_price_list_dates to product_price_list, you can open price list lines in a new tab to be able to filtering, search or import import them.

New Documentation or Naming

We improved and unified the stock action naming and re-worked documentation:

• Rename “Product Quantities By Warehouse” into “Stock Quantities By Warehouse.”
• Remove “Lots By Warehouse” relate as the same view can be opened from the stock location relate.
• Rename prefix “Locations Quantity” to “Stock Locations”.
• Document viewing stock levels of lots.
• Rename “Products by Locations” into “Products”, as the locations are added to the tab name, there is no need to specify.

New Releases

We released bug fixes for the currently maintained long term support series
7.0 and 6.0, and for the penultimate series 7.2.

Security

Please update your systems to take care of a security related bug we found last month: trytond allows to execute reports for records for which the user has no read access and also for reports limited to a set of groups that the user is not member of.

Changes for the System Administrator

Now we use a random value for cron next call field when no value is defined.

Now we log the last cron scheduler runs and their durations. A new cron task periodically cleans the log entries. The new cron-section configuration variable clean_days (default 30) sets this period.

Changes for Implementers and Developers

The Tryton view-tests now check for some more attributes like sequence and on_write in tree-views or dtstart and dtend in calendar-views.

Now we unify the term “email”, as it is now the most common and recommended form.

We add to all “cost”-terms a “sale”-suffix in sale shipment cost fields to improve the naming convention and to avoid collisions or misinterpretations.

Authors: @dave @pokoli @udono

1 post - 1 participant

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"Teamwork makes the dream work" – and that’s especially true for marketing, sales, and operations. When these teams are aligned, you deliver consistent messaging and improve customer experience. The result? Faster conversions and greater efficiency. How do you make this happen? By integrating your CMS with your CRM! So if you have a Drupal website and you use a CRM like Salesforce, you must bring them together. With this integration you can connect your website with your favorite CRM and share customer data across teams. Marketing knows what leads are coming in, sales can act on them quickly, and operations ensure a flawless delivery. Everyone's on the same page, and things move faster! If you’re looking to sync data with your Salesforce instance automatically, this blog is the perfect starting point for you. We will be using the Salesforce Suite module to help you understand the integration in this blogpost. But first, let us give a brief overview of Salesforce integration and its benefits. What is Salesforce Salesforce is a leading cloud-based enterprise customer relationship management system. It makes it easy for businesses to track customer activity which helps effectively manage sales, analytics, customer service, marketing automation, and many more. Salesforce-Drupal integration use cases Drupal websites have the advantage of integrating seamlessly with third-party systems. In fact, Drupal offers several modules to make these integrations smooth. The main goal of a CRM system integration with Drupal is to have seamless data transfer between the systems and make some meaningful decisions using the data from both ends. Now, let us see where and what are the specific use cases in the business this integration is required: User activities tracking: The activities such as page views, interactions, downloads, etc. can be captured and analyzed by the CRM to create personalized user segments. Lead Generation: You can have lead generation forms, for example, contact forms and webforms to send the user information to the CRM that can be analyzed. Commerce Sites: The user's order history, account information, and product interaction can be displayed in a dashboard. Product Suggestions: Personalized recommendations can be created on the website based on the user activities on the CRM Sales Opportunities: Lead generation forms can be converted into sales or business opportunities. Consolidated data: You can have sync user profiles between the CRM and CMS for a more complete view. Benefits of integrating Salesforce and Drupal Integrating Drupal with Salesforce brings a lot of benefits. Here are a few: Enhanced customer engagement: With data synchronization, the customer data is regularly updated, providing timely information on user actions and preferences. We can have faster issue resolution processes, and better custom responses, and as a result, we will have improved customer service. Easier data management: With the integration, there is no need to transfer customer data between CMS and CRM, which otherwise happens by copying and pasting the data. All relevant data is readily available to businesses to make decisions. Collaboration between departments: Thanks to the CRM integration, accurate, comprehensive, and timely data is shared among various departments, minimizing the risk of data discrepancies. The communication within the departments will be better and communication of all the departments with the customers will be more consistent and aligned. Actionable insights: With the consolidated data present in the CRM and website, the business has a comprehensive understanding of customers' needs and preferences. This gives valuable insights for personalized and targeted marketing campaigns. The Salesforce Suite Drupal module This module is the most robust and reliable tool for integrating Drupal with Salesforce CRM, making it an ideal starting point for your integration. The module created a seamless integration between Drupal and Salesforce that synchronizes Salesforce objects, such as Contacts and Accounts, with Drupal entities, such as nodes, terms, and users. Prerequisites for the integration: Create a salesforce developer account. You can either start from https://developer.salesforce.com/signup or use this video to create one. Create a New Salesforce Connected App for authentication purposes. Add the API settings for JWT auth or basic auth, Download and install the Salesforce Suite module into the Drupal site. Enable the required module for integration. The Salesforce Suite module features various submodules that perform different tasks. Let’s see a few modules which are generally used: Salesforce Integration: Maintains integration between Salesforce and Drupal Salesforce OAuth: For Basic OAuth authorization Salesforce JWT Auth: Provides functionality for key-based authentication system for Salesforce Salesforce Mapping and UI: Provides mapping interface to map Drupal entities to Salesforce objects. Salesforce Push & Salesforce Pull: Provides functionalities to have data sync between Salesforce and Drupal based on the mappings created.  Salesforce Logger: Consolidated logger for logging Salesforce events. Salesforce Authorization There are two commonly used techniques within the Salesforce suite module for Drupal-Salesforce Authentication i.e Basic User Agent oAuth & JWT based oAuth. Setting up of the Salesforce-Drupal authorization can be divided to two steps as mentioned below: Step 1. Salesforce Connected App Setup a Connected App on Salesforce instance Login to Salesforce, navigate to Setup → Platform Tools → Apps → App Manager → New Connected App. This navigation path is applicable only,  if you are using lightning experience UI on the salesforce If you are using Salesforce class UI, navigate to Setup → Manage Apps → Connected Apps → New In the new connected App, there are some basic settings like names and contact details to be provided. In the API settings section: Check the “Enable oAuth Settings” checkbox. Add the callback URL for the site, site_url/salesforce/oauth_callback Select the OAuth Scopes, we need to select the four mandatory scopes: Full access (full) Manage user data via APIs (api) Manage user data via Web browsers (web) Perform request at anytime (refresh_token, offline_access) Save the connected App Gather the salesforce key and secret details as they are needed to configure in the Drupal website for successfully establishing the connection. If you want to use JWT based authentication, there are few more steps to be followed while creating the Connected App Generate the public/private key using the below command openssl req -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout privatekey.pem -x509 -days 365 -out publickey.pem The private key “privatekey.pem” must be added in Drupal as an authentication key in the key settings page. Login into Drupal as admin, navigate to “admin/config/system/keys”. In the Drupal keys configuration page, make sure to select "File" as the "Key provider" dropdown. Check the "Strip trailing line breaks" checkbox in the "Provider settings" tab, and specify the right path for “privatekey.pem” The public key “publickey.pem” must be uploaded on salesforce. On the connected App, all the basic settings as mentioned in the above section remain the same. Additionally, we must do the following in the API settings: Check the “Use digital signatures” checkbox The public key “publickey.pem” must be uploaded using the “Choose File” button.   Save the connected App. Gather the salesforce key and secret details as they are needed to configure in the Drupal website for successfully establishing the connection. Step 2. Connecting the app on Drupal Once the Authorization is completed on Salesforce and we have the consumer key, secret details, we can start configuring the connection on the Drupal site Login as admin on Drupal website Navigate to Configuration → Salesforce → Salesforce Authorization or visit “admin/config/salesforce/authorize” This page will list all the providers that exist in our Drupal website. Click on “Add Salesforce Auth Provider” button As mentioned in the above section, we have two different “Auth providers”: Salesforce OAuth User-Agent:   Add the Label, consumer key and consumer secret and save the form This will redirect the user to salesforce login and post doing auth activities on the salesforce it will return to Drupal screen with successful established connection. Salesforce JWT OAuth Add the Label, consumer key and login user. Select the private key that we have added while generating the keys. Save the form. On save, it will redirect to the auth providers page with a successful established connection. Salesforce Mappings On successful authorization, we must tell both Drupal and Salesforce how to talk to each other. Please find the steps to below: Login as admin into your Drupal site Head to Salesforce mappings page, Structure → Salesforce → Salesforce Mappings Click on “Add Mapping” to map a new one Fill in the basic information, add the Drupal entity and select the Salesforce object to sync the data. Add the action triggers on which the sync has to take place Once the basic settings are set we head on the field mapping screen where we map Drupal entity fields to Salesforce object properties. We must set the direction in which the field data sync has to take place. We have three different sync mechanisms; “Drupal to SF”, “SF to Drupal” and  “Sync” After setting up mappings to all the fields, save the mapping After the authorization and mappings are set up properly, each time the cron runs, if a new record is added, an existing record is updated, or a record is deleted, the data will be synced between Drupal and Salesforce according to the direction and trigger selected in the mappings. Final thoughts This is just the basic guide for integrating Drupal with Salesforce. There's a lot more you can do, like customizing queries for specific use cases. No matter what you need, Drupal allows for seamless implementation. By integrating Salesforce CRM with Drupal, you can enhance your customer management workflows, streamline operations, and boost overall efficiency. If you're ready to kick off your next big integration, reach out to our Drupal development company, and one of our experts will guide you every step of the way.

Summary plugin for Pelican v1.3.0 released! Now keeps internal link indicators (like {filename}) from leaking into summaries. on PyPI #Summary (Pelican) #Pelican Plugins #Releases #Python

Welcome to the *Free Software Supporter*, the Free Software Foundation's (FSF) monthly news digest and action update -- being read by you and **231,236** other activists.

Welcome to the *Free Software Supporter*, the Free Software Foundation's (FSF) monthly news digest and action update -- being read by you and **231,236** other activists.

CommonMark Pelican reader v2.0.1! Should stop complaining about intra-document links (e.g. #target) on PyPI #CommonMark Reader #Pelican Plugins #Releases #Python

Tellico 4.0.1 is available, with a couple bug fixes.

Improvements and Bug Fixes

• Fixed encoding for HTML export in Qt6 (Bug 493180).
• Fixed compilation with Qt6/msvc.
• Added a menu item for changing the application language.

The event Another year, another Akademy; and what an incredible experience it continues to be! KDE’s Akademy 2024 was my 7th in a row (5 in-person and 2 online), and I’m continually struck by how much we all gain, both individually and as a community, from coming together at this annual event. The opportunity to connect with over 100 contributors from across the KDE ecosystem, all passionate about the future of our projects, is something truly special.

Krita 5.2.6 fixes a critical error with pass-through group layers (https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=493774).

Download Windows

If you're using the portable zip files, just open the zip file in Explorer and drag the folder somewhere convenient, then double-click on the Krita icon in the folder. This will not impact an installed version of Krita, though it will share your settings and custom resources with your regular installed version of Krita. For reporting crashes, also get the debug symbols folder.

Note: We are no longer making 32-bit Windows builds.

• 64 bits Windows Installer: krita-5.2.6-setup.exe
• Portable 64 bits Windows: krita-5.2.6.zip
• Debug symbols. (Unpack in the Krita installation folder)

Linux

• 64 bits Linux: krita-5.2.6-x86_64.appimage

The separate gmic-qt AppImage is no longer needed.

(If, for some reason, Firefox thinks it needs to load this as text: right-click on the link to download.)

MacOS

Note: We're not supporting MacOS 10.13 anymore, 10.14 is the minimum supported version.

• MacOS disk image: krita-5.2.6-release.dmg

Android

We consider Krita on ChromeOS as ready for production. Krita on Android is still beta. Krita is not available for Android phones, only for tablets, because the user interface requires a large screen.

• 64 bits Intel CPU APK
• 64 bits Arm CPU APK
• 32 bits Arm CPU APK

Source code

• krita-5.2.6.tar.gz
• krita-5.2.6.tar.xz

md5sum

For all downloads, visit https://download.kde.org/stable/krita/5.2.6/ and click on "Details" to get the hashes.

Key

The Linux AppImage and the source .tar.gz and .tar.xz tarballs are signed. You can retrieve the public key here. The signatures are here (filenames ending in .sig).

At DrupalCon Barcelona 2024, Dries Buytaert, the creator and project lead of Drupal, delivered his 40th DriesNote, in which he shared an exciting vision of where the platform is heading, with a strong focus on Drupal CMS (the product being developed as part of the Starshot Initiative). As part of the Starshot Initiative’s Leadership Team, I’m the Marketing Lead, working to align the positioning of the product with the needs of our target audiences: primarily marketers, content teams, and site builders, but also evaluators, designers, and developers. 

 

The Drupal Starshot Leadership team, featuring Dries Buytaert as the Product Lead, Tim Plunkett as the Technical Lead, Pamela Barone as the Product Owner, Cristina Chumillas as the UX Lead, Lenny Moskalyk as the Delivery Manager, Gabor Hojsy as the Contrib Coordinator and Suzanne Dergacheva (that's me!) as the Marketing Lead. 

 

I’m also excited to contribute along with my colleagues at Evolving Web— who are leading the Analytics track. We’re proud to contribute to Drupal CMS (formerly known as Starshot). With a focus on Drupal CMS, Experience Builder, AI innovations, and a commitment to responsible AI, Dries outlined how the platform is becoming more accessible to non-developers while pushing the innovation and flexibility that Drupal is known for. 

If you missed the DriesNote, I will share some key takeaways below. Check out the recording for the preview demo of Drupal CMS and all the exciting features ahead directly from Dries.

Drupal CMS

Drupal CMS is being designed to make the power of Drupal more accessible than ever, offering preconfigured solutions that allows marketers, web designers, and organizations to easily build and manage their own websites.

It’s important to note that Drupal CMS isn’t some reduced-functionality, beginner-friendly version—it’s built on the robust foundation of Drupal Core. This means that while it is designed to make getting started with Drupal easier for new users, it still offers all the power, flexibility, and scalability that experienced developers rely on. Drupal CMS will open  the door to greater adoption directly by marketers and non-developers, making it simpler to use without sacrificing any of the advanced capabilities that make Drupal such a powerful tool for complex websites.

Preview of Drupal CMS

In the DriesNote demo, Dries demonstrated just how easy it will be to get up and running with Drupal CMS, by showing how a fictional marketer named ‘Sarah’ could easily create a wine tour website with a calendar to highlight upcoming tasting tours.

What Are Recipes?

A standout feature of Drupal CMS is the introduction of Recipes, which are pre-configured functionality, like SEO optimization or event management, that can be easily added to your website. They package content types and other configuration into easily reusable bundles. 

The benefit is that you can add features quickly, use smart defaults that have been carefully selected by experts, and take advantage of best practices even if you’re not a technical user. 

Dries demonstrated how Sarah used an Events Recipe to set up an interactive calendar and SEO-friendly pages for her wine tour website. With just a few clicks, Sarah was able to accomplish in hours what would previously take days.

 

The Recipes dashboard shows the status of the Recipes currently underway
AI-Driven Site Building and Migration

One of the most exciting moments of the DriesNote was the unveiling of AI Agents, which automate many complex tasks in Drupal. These AI agents, embedded within Drupal CMS, allow non-technical users to rename content types, create custom fields, and enforce image quality standards—all through simple, plain-language commands.
Dries showed how Sarah leveraged AI to make critical site changes quickly. From migrating content from a non-Drupal website to setting up structured content types, AI simplifies traditionally cumbersome processes. 

Additionally, Drupal’s AI is transparent and flexible. Users can see what language models are used and even swap out the default AI providers with their own models, offering an extra layer of customization and control.

A Commitment to Responsible AI

As part of Drupal’s commitment to the open web, Dries announcedDrupal’s new Responsible AI Policy, which is built around the following principles: 

• Human in the Loop: AI decisions must be reviewable and reversible by a human.
• Transparency: Users must know where and how AI is being used on their sites.
• AI Model Flexibility: Drupal users can select different AI providers based on their needs, ensuring that privacy, ethics, and energy efficiency are prioritized.

This policy has been developed to not only drive the incorporation of AI features into Drupal CMS but to also encourage its adoption by other parts of the Drupal ecosystem including Drupal core and Drupal contrib.

Experience Builder

Another major highlight from the keynote was a preview of Experience Builder, a React-based interface for modifying the UX and UI of a website. It provides content editors and marketers with a no-code builder that gives end-users the ability to add components, select styling options, and apply branding to the website without writing custom code. What really makes it user-friendly is how fast the interface is. Thanks to the fact that it’s React-based, clicks feel instant. This encourages users to experiment and makes the overall experience much more positive. It’s built using Single Directory Components (SDCs), making it familiar to front-end developers. 

Experience Builder will be part of Drupal CMS but is also set to revolutionize the way that all Drupal websites are built. The plan is for it to eventually replace the current Drupal admin UI, providing a more intuitive way to edit all aspects of a Drupal website. During the keynote, Dries presented a demo of Experience Builder, showcasing its initial version, with drag-and-drop interface, as well as an overview of what it will look like in the future.

With 30 full-time developers working on it—making it the largest, fastest-moving initiative ever undertaken in Drupal—Experience Builder will significantly modernize how websites are built and managed in Drupal,  eventually replacing the current Drupal admin interface. 

 

A preview of what Experience builder will look like
A Roadmap for Drupal CMS 

A pre-release version of Drupal CMS is available to install so you can try it out and a hosted version is also available so you can try out the AI capabilities for yourself right from your browser. The first release of Drupal CMS will happen on January 15th, 2025—Drupal’s 24th birthday. A release candidate will be launched at DrupalCon Singapore, happening on December 9-11, 2024.  Experience Builder will be included in version 2 of Drupal CMS sometime in 2025.

The “Adopt a Document” Program

In addition to these technical advancements, Dries introduced the Adopt-a-Document program, a new initiative aimed at improving Drupal’s documentation, not only for Drupal CMS but also for Drupal Core. Organizations can sponsor sections of documentation to help ensure that Drupal remains well-supported and accessible for all users through a partnership with Drupalize.me. In addition, the Drupal Association is hiring a full-time documentation lead. 

Get Involved 

The message of Dries’ keynote was clear: Drupal CMS is not just about making web development easier; it’s about making the open web accessible to everyone. With AI-driven tools, intuitive page building, and a commitment to responsible technology, Drupal CMS is set to bring the power of Drupal to a whole new generation of users.

Whether you're a developer, a site builder, or a marketer, this is a great time to get involved and help shape the future of Drupal. Want to join us in pushing these initiatives forward? Get in touch or learn more at drupal.org/about/starshot. 
 

+ more awesome articles by Evolving Web

Approximately 1,100 of Drupal enthusiasts gathered in Barcelona, Spain, this week for DrupalCon Europe. As a matter of tradition, I delivered my State of Drupal keynote, often referred to as the "DriesNote".

If you missed it, you can watch the video or download my slides (177 MB).

In my keynote, I gave an update on Drupal Sharshot, an ambitious initiative we launched at DrupalCon Portland 2024. Originally called Drupal Starshot, inspired by President Kennedy's Moonshot challenge, the product is now officially named Drupal CMS.

The goal of Drupal CMS is to set the standard for no-code website building. It will allow non-technical users, like marketers, content creators, and site builders, to create digital experiences with ease, without compromising on the power and flexibility that Drupal is known for.

A four-month progress report A preview of Drupal.org's front page with the updated Drupal brand and content.

While Kennedy gave NASA eight years, I set a goal to deliver the first version of Drupal CMS in just eight months. It's been four months since DrupalCon Portland, which means we're halfway through.

So in my keynote, I shared our progress and gave a 35-minute demo of what we've built so far. The demo highlights how a fictional marketer, Sarah, can build a powerful website in just hours with minimal help from a developer. Along her journey, I showcased the following key innovations:

1. A new brand for a new market: A brand refresh of Drupal.org, designed to appeal to both marketers and developers. The first pages are ready and available for preview at new.drupal.org, with more pages launching in the coming months.
2. A trial experience: A trial experience that lets you try Drupal CMS with a single click, eliminating long-standing adoption barriers for new users. Built with WebAssembly, it runs entirely in the browser – no servers to install or manage.
3. An improved installer: An installer that lets users install recipes – pre-built features that combine modules, configuration, and default content for common website needs. Recipes bundle years of expertise into repeatable, shareable solutions.
4. Events recipe: A simple events website that used to take an experienced developer a day to build can now be created in just a few clicks by non-developers.
5. Project Browser support for recipes: Users can now browse the Drupal CMS recipes in the Project Browser, and install them in seconds.
6. First page of documentation: New documentation created specifically for end users. Clear, effective documentation is key to Drupal CMS's success, so we began by writing a single page as a model for the quality and style we aim to achieve.
7. AI for site building: AI agents capable of creating content types, configuring fields, building Views, forms, and more. These agents will transform how people build and manage websites with Drupal.
8. Responsible AI policy: To ensure responsible AI development, we've created a Responsible AI policy. I'll share more details in an upcoming blog, but the policy focuses on four key principles: human-in-the-loop, transparency, swappable large language models (LLMs), and clear guidance.
9. SEO Recipe: Combines and configures all the essential Drupal modules to optimize a Drupal site for search engines.
10. 14 recipes in development: In addition to the Events and SEO recipes, 12 more are in development with the help of our Drupal Certified Partners. Each Drupal CMS recipe addresses a common marketing use case outlined in our product strategy. We showcased both the process and progress during the Initiative Lead Keynote for some of the tracks. After DrupalCon, we'll begin developing even more recipes and invite additional contributors to join the effort.
11. AI-assisted content migration: AI will crawl your source website and handle complex tasks like mapping unstructured HTML to structured Drupal content types in your destination site, making migrations faster and easier. This could be a game-changer for website migrations.
12. Experience Builder: An early preview of a brand new, out-of-the-box tool for content creators and designers, offering layout design, page building, basic theming and content editing tools. This is the first time I've showcased our progress on stage at a DrupalCon.
13. Future-proof admin UI with React: Our strategy for modernizing Drupal's backend UI with React.
14. The "Adopt-a-Document" initiative: A strategy and funding model for creating comprehensive documentation for Drupal CMS. If successful, I'm hopeful we can expand this model to other areas of Drupal. For more details, please read the announcement on drupal.org.
15. Global Documentation Lead: The Drupal Association's commitment to hire a dedicated Documentation Lead, responsible for managing all aspects of Drupal's documentation, beyond just Drupal CMS.

The feedback on my presentation has been incredible, both online and in-person. The room was buzzing with energy and positivity! I highly recommend watching the recording.

Attendees were especially excited about the AI capabilities, Experience Builder, and recipes. I share their enthusiasm as these capabilities are transformative for Drupal.

Many of these features are designed with non-developers in mind. Our goal is to broaden Drupal's reach beyond its traditional user base and reach more people than ever before.

Release schedule

Our launch plan targets Drupal CMS's release on Drupal's upcoming birthday: January 15, 2025. It's also just a couple of weeks after the Drupal 7 End of Life, marking the end of one era and the beginning of another.

The next milestone is DrupalCon Singapore, taking place on December 9–11, 2024, less than 3 months away. We hope to have a release candidate ready by then.

Now that we're back from DrupalCon and have key milestone dates set, there is a lot to coordinate and plan in the coming weeks, so stay tuned for updates.

Call for contribution

Ambitious? Yes. But achievable if we work together. That's why I'm calling on all of you to get involved with Drupal CMS. Whether it's building recipes, enhancing the Experience Builder, creating AI agents, writing tests, improving documentation, or conducting usability testing – there are countless ways to contribute and make a difference. If you're ready to get involved, visit https://drupal.org/starshot to learn how to get started.

Thank you

This effort has involved so many people that I can't name them all, but I want to give a huge thank you to the Drupal CMS Leadership Team, who I've been working with closely every week: Cristina Chumillas (Lullabot), Gábor Hojtsy (Acquia), Lenny Moskalyk (Drupal Association), Pamela Barone (Technocrat), Suzanne Dergacheva (Evolving Web), and Tim Plunkett (Acquia).

A special shoutout goes to the demo team we assembled for my presentation: Adam Hoenich (Acquia), Amber Matz (Drupalize.me), Ash Sullivan (Acquia), Jamie Abrahams (FreelyGive), Jim Birch (Kanopi), Joe Shindelar (Drupalize.me), John Doyle (Digital Polygon), Lauri Timmanee (Acquia), Marcus Johansson (FreelyGive), Martin Anderson-Clutz (Acquia), Matt Glaman (Acquia), Matthew Grasmick (Acquia), Michael Donovan (Acquia), Tiffany Farriss (Palantir.net), and Tim Lehnen (Drupal Association).

I also want to thank the Drupal CMS track leads and contributors for their development work. Additionally, I'd like to recognize the Drupal Core Committers, Drupal Association staff, Drupal Association Board of Directors, and Certified Drupal partners for continued support and leadership. There are so many people and organizations whose contributions deserve recognition that I can't list everyone individually, partly to avoid the risk of overlooking anyone. Please know your efforts are deeply appreciated.

Lastly, thank you to everyone who helped make DrupalCon Barcelona a success. It was excellent!

Although my blog has been quiet, a lot has happened with the Drupal Starshot project since its announcement a month ago. We provided an update in the first Drupal Starshot virtual meeting, which is available as a recording.

Today, I am excited to introduce the newly formed Drupal Starshot leadership team.

Meet the leadership team Product Lead: Dries Buytaert

I will continue to lead the Drupal Starshot project, focusing on defining the product vision and strategy and building the leadership team. In the past few weeks, I have cleared other responsibilities to dedicate a significant amount of time to Drupal Starshot and Drupal Core.

Technical Lead: Tim Plunkett (Acquia)

Tim will oversee technical decisions and facilitate contributions from the community. His role includes building a team of Drupal Starshot Committers, coordinating with Drupal Core Committers, and ensuring that Drupal Starshot remains stable, secure, and easy to upgrade. With 7 years of engineering leadership experience, Tim will help drive technical excellence. Acquia is providing Tim the opportunity to work full-time on the Drupal Starshot project.

User Experience Lead: Cristina Chumillas (Lullabot)

Cristina will define the design and user experience vision for Drupal Starshot. She will engage with contributors to initiate research activities and share the latest UI/UX best practices, ensuring a user-centric approach. She has been leading UX-related Drupal Core initiatives for over 7 years. Lullabot, Cristina's employer, has generously offered her the opportunity to work on Drupal Starshot full-time.

Product Owner: Pamela Barone (Technocrat)

Pam will help ensure alignment and progress among contributors, including defining and prioritizing work. She brings strong communication and organizational skills, having led Drupal projects for more than 12 years.

Contribution Coordinator: Gábor Hojtsy (Acquia)

Gábor will focus on making it easier for individuals and organizations to contribute to Drupal Starshot. With extensive experience in Open Source contribution and community engagement, Gábor will help communicate progress, collaborate with the Drupal Association, and much more. Acquia will provide Gábor with the opportunity to work full-time on the Drupal Starshot project.

Starshot Council (Advisory Board)

To support the leadership team, we are establishing the Starshot Council, an advisory board that will include:

1. Three end-users (site builders)
2. Three Certified Drupal Partners
3. Two Drupal Core Committers (one framework manager and one release manager)
4. Three Drupal Association board members, one from each of the following Board Working Groups: Innovation, Marketing, and Fundraising
5. Two staff members from the Drupal Association

The council will meet monthly to ensure the leadership team remains aligned with the broader community and strategic goals. The Drupal Association is leading the effort to gather candidates, and the members of the Starshot Council will be announced in the coming weeks.

More opportunities to get involved

There are many opportunities for others to get involved as committers, designers, developers, content creators, and more.

We have specific tasks that need to be completed, such as finishing Project Browser, Recipes and Automatic Updates. To help people get involved with this work, we have set up several interactive Zoom calls. We'll update you on our progress and give you practical advice on where and how you can contribute.

Beyond the tasks we know need to be completed, there are still many details to define. Our next step is to identify these. My first priority was to establish the leadership team. With that in place, we can focus on product definition and clarifying the unknowns. We'll brief you on our initial ideas and next steps in our next Starshot session this Friday.

Conclusion

The Drupal Starshot project is off to an exciting start with this exceptional leadership team. I am grateful to these talented individuals for stepping up to drive this important project. Their combined expertise and dedication will drive excitement and improvements for the Drupal platform, ultimately benefiting our entire community. Stay tuned for updates as we continue to make strides in this ambitious initiative.

This week, approximately 1,400 Drupal enthusiasts came together for DrupalCon North America in Portland, Oregon. As a matter of tradition, I delivered my State of Drupal keynote, often referred to as "DriesNote". In case you missed it, you can watch the video or download my slides (385 MB).

This year's keynote was inspired by President John F. Kennedy's famous "Moonshot" speech. After being global leaders, the U.S. had fallen behind in the Space Race. Challenged by the Soviet cosmonaut program, President Kennedy rallied Americans around the ambitious goal of landing on the moon before the decade was out.

Drupal Starshot, a new version of Drupal

Drupal has always been known for its low-code capabilities. However, many competitors now offer similar features, and in some areas, they even surpass what Drupal provides. While Drupal is celebrated for its robustness, it can be challenging for newcomers, especially those with limited technical expertise. So in my keynote, I was excited to introduce Drupal Starshot, our "Moonshot" to make Drupal more accessible and easier to use.

Twenty-three years after Drupal's inception, we are preparing to launch a second official version of Drupal. For the time being, we're calling this second version "Drupal CMS". It will be built on top of Drupal Core and common contributed modules, and available as a separate download alongside Drupal Core. Wireframe of the Drupal.org download page featuring two options: Drupal CMS (Drupal Starshot) and Drupal Core, with Drupal CMS being promoted as the preferred starting point for most.

Drupal Starshot will be designed to have a great out-of-the-box experience. It will enable Ambitious Site Builders without Drupal experience to easily create a new Drupal site and extend it with pre-packaged recipes, all using their browser.

The vision for Drupal Starshot is the outcome of highly productive brainstorming sessions with Drupal Core Committers, the Drupal Association, colleagues at Acquia, various Drupal agencies, and others.

From an implementation standpoint, it will primarily rely on the Project Browser and Recipes initiatives, while also incorporating the Experience Builder initiative. We actually started prototyping Drupal Starshot a few weeks ago and showcased our progress at DrupalCon. Our goal is to launch a first version of Drupal Starshot within 8 months.

At DrupalCon, hundreds of people pledged to get involved, and we had two "super BoFs" with over 50 people each. If you're interested in getting involved with Drupal Starshot, you can register your interest at https://drupal.org/starshot. Additionally, join the conversation in the #Starshot channel on Drupal Slack.

Drupal's brand refresh and marketing strategy

Alongside our technical efforts, we've launched a bold marketing strategy. At DrupalCon Lille, I discussed the need for a fresh marketing approach. Since then, we've made tremendous progress.

I introduced a Drupal brand refresh, which includes updated brand guidelines to ensure a consistent and modern visual identity. This refresh aims to invigorate our brand – making it more vibrant and appealing to newcomers, while still honoring our history and representing our diverse, global community.

I couldn't cover all the details around the brand refresh in my keynote, so I'm expanding on them in this blog post. For a detailed explanation of Drupal's refreshed brand, check out this video by Shawn Perritt: Drupal 2024 brand refresh explained.

Our efforts went beyond just a brand refresh. The Marketing Committee has also guided the community in developing a comprehensive marketing toolkit, which includes messaging guides, pitch decks, and more. All these resources will be available at https://www.drupal.org/marketing.

Let's reach for the stars

As we advance with Drupal Starshot, I recall President Kennedy's famous words:

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.

Embracing the Drupal Starshot initiative reflects a similar ethos; we're not choosing the easy path, but the one that tests our strength, creativity, and ability to do hard things. The success of Drupal Starshot will be a testament to the incredible collective power of the Drupal community. It's a challenge we are also unwilling to postpone, and intend to win.

Drupal Starshot is more than a technological leap; it represents a shift in how we think, innovate, and collaborate. It's about reaching for the stars and making the Open Web accessible to everyone.

Thank you for being part of this journey. I can't wait to see where it takes us together. The feedback from the last two days at DrupalCon has been overwhelmingly positive. I am more committed than ever and excited to pledge a significant amount of my time to this mission, and to the future of Drupal.

Horizontal recently completed building a Drupal 10 site for a major children's hospital. Drupal has long been a favorite choice in the healthcare sector. This post will introduce a module we contributed that we hope will make Drupal an even more appealing choice when hospitals are considering how to present themselves on the Web.

Today we are talking about Drupal’s Popularity & Dev Experience, what could be better, and things that are great with guest Nathan Dentzau. We’ll also cover Spam Master as our module of the week.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/469

Topics

• Drupal's popularity
• What can Drupal to enhance popularity and enhance dev experience
• What is missing in Drupal
• What could use improvement in Drupal
• What about recent tooling improvements
• Drupal CMS (Starshot)

Resources

• New drupal
• Drupal at your fingertips
• Laravel
• Next.js
• Document using DDEV as the recommended Drupal local development environment
• Just say drupal

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Nate Dentzau - dentzau.com nathandentzau

MOTW Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

• Brief description:
  • Have you ever wanted to defend your Drupal website from webform spam using a constantly updating list of known bad actors? There’s a module for that.
• Module name/project name:
  • Spam Master
• Brief history
  • How old: created in Mar 2018 by Pedro Alves (pedro-alves)
  • Versions available: 8.x-1.99 and 8.x-2.50, the latter of which support Drupal versions 8 through 11
• Maintainership
  • Actively maintained
  • Security coverage
  • Documentation on SpamMaster.org
  • Number of open issues: no open issues
• Usage stats:
  • 449 sites
• Module features and usage
  • Spam Master is a website protection technology that was originally created back in 2012, and is used across sites based on a variety of technologies, including Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, and more
  • It uses a variety of techniques to identify and block malicious actors, including “real-time block lists”, honeypot traps, comment analysis, and more
  • By maintaining a list of known bad actors, tracked by IP address and email addresses used, you can also benefit from a “network effect” by being able to identify them based on malicious behavior on any of the thousands of sites using Spam Master
  • The module claims compatibility with a variety of forms, including registration, comments, commerce, and more
  • It includes a variety of reports you can use to understand the amount of spam your site is receiving, and the module can automatically send you an email if it believes your site has reached “Level 3” of spam targeting
  • Spam Master does use licenses on SpamMaster.org, but free licenses are available

The datetime.strptime class method can parse a date/time string into a datetime object.

Table of contents

1. Parsing strings into datetime objects ➡️
2. The strptime formatting directives 📑
3. Just parse my string please! ⚡
4. What time is it? It's "string parse time" ⏱️
5. Converting a datetime into a string ⬅️
6. strptime parses and strftime formats 🔄
7. f-strings for datetime formatting ✨
8. strptime for date and time objects? 🤔
9. Parse with str-p-time, format with str-f-time 📝

Parsing strings into datetime objects ➡️

Here's an example of the strptime class method in action:

>>> from datetime import datetime >>> datetime.strptime("Jun 1 2005 1:33PM", "%b %d %Y %I:%M%p") datetime.datetime(2005, 6, 1, 13, 33)

Note that strptime is a class method: we're calling it on the datetime class (not an instance of the class).

The strptime formatting directives 📑

Those single letter % codes …

Read the full article: https://www.pythonmorsels.com/converting-a-string-to-a-datetime/

Many of you already know about my love of photography. I am taking photos for many years, mostly people photos. Portraits in conferences like PyCon or Fedora events. I regularly post photos to wikipedia too, specially for the people/accounts which does not have good quality profile photos. I stopped doing photography as we moved to Sweden, digital camera was old and becoming stable in a new country (details in a different future blog) takes time. But, last year Anwesha bought me a new camera, actually two different cameras. And I started taking photos again.

I started regular photos of the weekly climate protests / demonstrations of Fridays for Future Stockholm group. And then more different street protests and some dance/music events too. I don't have a Facebook account and most people asked me to share over Instagram, so I did that. But, as I covered more & more various protests as a photographer, I noticed my Instagram postos are showing up less in people's feeds. Very less. Was wondering different ways of breaking out of the algorithmic restriction.

Pixelfed is a decentralized, federated ActivityPub based system to share photos. I am going to share photos more on this platform, and hoping people will slowly see more. I started my account yesterday.

You can follow me from any standard ActivityPub system, say your mastodon account itself. Search for @kushal@pixel.kushaldas.photography or https://pixel.kushaldas.photography/kushal in your system and you can then follow it like any other account. If you like the photos, then please share the account (or this blog post) more to your followers and help me to break out of the algorithmic restrictions.

In the technology side, the server runs Debian and containers. On my Fedora system I am super happy to add a few scripts for Gnome Files, they help me to resize the selected images before upload (I will write a blog post tomorrow on this).

Dear Readers,

DrupalCon Barcelona 2024 closed its doors this past week, but the conversations and ideas sparked by the event are just beginning to take root. For four days, the Drupal community gathered to share, celebrate, and look ahead to what’s next for the platform. DrupalCon Barcelona 2024 has wrapped up, and now the wait for DrupalCon Vienna 2025 begins!

Reflecting on the progress of Drupal, Dries Buytaert proudly remarked, 

“I’m so proud of how far we have come and how fast. This transformation is an incredible collective effort involving everyone from core committers, Drupal Association staff, volunteers, and agency partners; together, we focused on iterating rapidly and focused more on user experience than ever before. We had some brave out-of-the-box thinking…”

Giannis Kyriazopoulos of E-Sepia reported for The DropTimes on all three days of the conference, offering comprehensive coverage of the event.

The event started with contribution workshops and the opening ceremony, where the Women in Drupal Awards took center stage. Esmeralda Braad-Tijhoff was celebrated for her innovative leadership, earning the Define award, while Pamela Barone took home the Build award for her role in advancing key Drupal solutions. Alla Petrovska received the Scale award for her work in growing businesses using Drupal, demonstrating the platform's transformative impact.

One of the most anticipated moments was the Driesnote, where Dries Buytaert delivered his 40th State of Drupal address. He shared several key updates, as reported by The DropTimes, including the announcement that Drupal CMS 1.0 is set to launch on January 15, 2025. The Experience Builder (XB), built using React, is also set to revolutionize how users interact with Drupal, though it will be completed after the release of Drupal CMS. Dries emphasized Drupal's commitment to AI with the introduction of a Responsible AI Policy and demonstrated AI’s potential for automating tasks such as content creation and migration. He also announced the introduction of Drupal Recipes, which are bundles of reusable solutions aimed at streamlining common processes. Additionally, a partnership with Drupalize.me was unveiled to overhaul Drupal's documentation through the “Adopt a Document” initiative, inviting organizations to sponsor specific sections of the new tutorials.

The second day of the conference featured a moving story shared by Theódór Ragnar Gíslason, who recounted how an accident led him to extensive computer use and, eventually, hacking. He founded the organization "Defend Iceland" to address digital threats by introducing bounty programs accessible to both the public and private sectors. Gíslason also highlighted Drupal's security robustness, noting that after testing nearly 32,000 modules, very few vulnerabilities were found, solidifying Drupal's reputation for security.

In governance news, the Drupal Association Board election results were announced. Alejandro Moreno was elected to the At-Large seat, joining Sachiko Muto, Chairperson of OpenForum Europe, and Stella Power, CEO of Annertech, on the Board of Directors.

Esmeralda Tijhoff reported on the BoF session, ‘Getting started with la_eu: local association site,’ led by Bjorn Brala. The session brought together associations, builders, and potential users to discuss the roadmap of the Drupal La_eu project. Participants agreed on monthly check-ins via Slack, focusing on new features and automated updates for local sites. The session also highlighted the need for creating user stories and a roadmap for further development, with discussions about potentially involving an agency to accelerate progress.

Finally, the location of next year's event was revealed—DrupalCon Europe 2025 will take place in Vienna from October 14-17. The event will feature a new mascot, the White Horse, symbolizing the next chapter of Drupal's journey. Stay tuned for more details as they unfold in the coming months.

On other news, in an article for The DropTimes, Sinduri Guntupalli explores how Lupus Decoupled Drupal merges the power of Drupal's backend with modern frontend frameworks like Vue.js and Nuxt. The platform offers a flexible, API-driven architecture with custom elements, caching optimizations, and diverse deployment options, providing an efficient solution for both developers and content editors working on complex web projects.

Drupal CMS is set to receive significant enhancements to its advanced search functionality as 1xINTERNET announces a community-driven plan based on insights from nearly 100 experienced users. The comprehensive survey revealed an overwhelming preference for the Search API module as the standard search solution, with 87% of participants endorsing it over the Core Search module. Related technologies also received strong support, including Facets (88%), Search API Autocomplete (87%), and Search API Decoupled (78%).

We have also covered Provus Edu from Promet Source and Blökkli Starterkit from Liip. A story on Government Website Usability and another on the exclusion of direct module installs in Drupal 10.4 are a bonus. 

Last but not least, The DropTimes would like to extend our heartfelt gratitude to all those who helped us cover DrupalCon Barcelona 2024. 

We acknowledge that there are more stories to share. However, due to selection constraints, we must pause further exploration for now.

To get timely updates, follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. You can also, join us on Drupal Slack at #thedroptimes.

Thank you, 
Sincerely 
Alka Elizabeth 
Sub-editor, The DropTimes.