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Drupal 11 Release Date Arrived: Why This Upgrade Takes CMS to Whole New Level

In our recent article on Drupal 7 EOL (end of life), we mentioned the CMS’s declining popularity and the possible reasons behind it. We speculated that Drupal was falling out of fashion due to its high complexity and steep learning curve, giving it a reputation as an “enterprise-level CMS.” This, in our opinion, drove away owners of startups and small businesses seeking more user-friendly and accessible solutions. Turns out, it wasn’t speculation after all. The Drupal community seems to attribute the decline to the same reasons, as their Drupal 11 release and the introduction of the Drupal Starshot initiative address the very issue we’ve just mentioned. The team is currently working on a myriad of features and improvements to “enable people without Drupal experience to easily create Drupal sites.” That’s one of the biggest changes in Drupal’s 23-year history, and as a leading provider of Drupal consulting services, we couldn’t ignore the release of Drupal 11. In the following paragraphs, we explore Drupal’s efforts to transition from an “enterprise CMS” to a “CMS for everyone.” We’ll discuss the crucial upcoming improvements that will make the content management system more user-friendly and can potentially transform its perception. Let’s dive right in. Drupal Recipes: New Feature for Streamlined Website Configuration Recipes is a new CMS feature supported in the latest versions of Drupal that helps users jumpstart their websites. Added to Drupal core in Drupal 10.3.0, Recipes are templates to which we can add a set of predefined configurations (user roles, content types, and the like) and quickly apply them to our websites. We can create our own Recipes or utilize ones created by others. This feature alone saves hours of manual work. And if you’ve ever configured Drupal websites, you know how tedious and time-consuming this process can be: 1. You start with a barebones installation of Drupal and add the modules you require with specific configurations to them. 2. You select one of the installation profiles and disable or tweak the settings you don’t need after the installation. 3. Additionally, you configure a dozen or so contributed modules to meet your specific needs. The configuration takes from two to five hours. In case you have several sites, you have to repeat the process with each one of them. To complicate things even further, once you select a specific installation profile, you are stuck with it and can’t easily change it. The new feature completely revamps the website configuration process. With Recipes, you can configure a site in minutes. All you have to do is download a proper recipe for your type of website and then apply it. The best part, Recipes are more flexible than installation profiles and can be applied at any time during the lifecycle of the website. Recipes makes the CMS more user-friendly, allowing users without deep Drupal expertise to easily configure their websites. Automatic Updates for Drupal Core Patches and Security Releases Manually updating a Drupal site is time-consuming, technically challenging, and expensive. Without proper expertise or Drupal development experts by your side, you won’t be able to install critical updates and security patches. Yet, neglecting them would mean exposing your website to external threats, which isn’t wise. So, whether you want it or not, you have to seek the assistance of professionals every time minor releases and updates are rolled out, which costs you a pretty penny. Luckily, this is about to change, as the Drupal community is working on the Automatic Updates initiative to provide secure automatic updates for Drupal 11 sites. As specified on the initiative’s page, its goal is to implement a secure system for automatically installing updates in the CMS, thus reducing website maintenance costs, improving security, and lowering the barrier to entry to Drupal. Automatic updates are not intended for large enterprise organizations with established build workflows and pipelines. Rather, this feature is designed for small and medium-sized businesses with a “set-it-and-forget-it” attitude toward their Drupal installations who don’t want to dive deep into technical depths every time a security patch is released. Here’s what is about to be added to Drupal core: Automatic updates for Drupal core patches and security releases. Site readiness check that shows whether updates can be installed safely. Code signing and verification for updates from the official website. Composer integration. A custom "A/B" bootloader that allows you to install updates in a separate location from the live site. If the update is successful, you can apply it to the live site. If it’s not, you can roll back. Although automatic updates will be available for Drupal core patches and security releases only, they will still save us plenty of time and money on maintenance while helping us stay secure and up-to-date. No wonder this is currently the most requested Drupal feature. Single Directory Components for Convenient and Easier Front-End Development Introduced as an experimental module in Drupal 10, Single Directory Components have now been fully integrated into Drupal core and are natively supported in Drupal 11. As the name suggests, this feature consolidates all the files required to render a web component (such as a button, carousel, or menu item) into a single directory, offering quick and convenient access. This organization enables front-end developers to efficiently work with these components, eliminating the need to search through multiple folders. Moreover, Single Directory Components are designed with modularity and reusability in mind, allowing for easy integration across multiple pages or applications. This streamlined approach not only enhances development efficiency but also helps to reduce website development and maintenance costs.