Build it with Drupal 8

Build it with Drupal 8

FFW Marketing
Thought byFFW Marketing
October 18, 2013

Site building is a term we use in the Drupal community to reference using the user interface that Drupal and its contributed modules expose to build pages, menus, and the general features of our web applications. Its a unique skill set to Drupal that has enabled us to build very powerful applications while minimizing and sometimes eliminating the amount of code we have to write. So what can we expect in Drupal 8 for site builders? To sum it up in a single tweet:

Lets take a look at some of the big points that support this claim. For a more detailed look at what D8 will be adding Heather James @ Acquia has recently published a growing list of modules and functionality added to core. For now I want to look at the big ones:

  1. Views is in core! A site that does not leverage the views module is most likely not a very feature rich application. For most (all?) projects Views is one of the first contrib modules to install. This module opens up a world of capabilities to site builders. Mastering it is key to developing Drupal applications. In Drupal 8 we have all of the Views module capabilities in core.
  2. Configuration Management in core. What does this mean for site builders? Well, we don’t have to use the features module to export configuration stored in our database. Most of this will be available via the configuration management features.
  3. Additional Field types in core. Many popular field types such as the Date, Link, Telephone, and Email fields are now in core. No more bringing in these modules… its all there!
  4. Fieldable Blocks. Blocks are now entities which means they are now first class citizens in our Drupal world. We can field them, manage displays, and export them!

Site building is powerful. I believe it is one of the big differentiation points of the power of Drupal. Build more, write less. Drupal 8 is going to continue to deliver on this promise.

Happy building!