It’s that time of the year for which all the Drupalists around the world eagerly wait for. Guess what? It’s Drupal’s 21st birthday! Cheers to every astonishing Drupal contributor for their spectacular contributions to the Drupal community. Without their honest efforts, we wouldn’t have got the opportunity to celebrate the journey of this phenomenal CMS. So, what are you waiting for? Let’s start the party! 

Today on the occasion of Drupal’s 21st birthday, let’s cherish the incredible contributions that Drupal has made to the community. I mean, who wondered that a young 22-year-old boy would make such a huge impact on the world with his extraordinary vision. From the Drupal 1.0 release in 2001 to the Drupal 9 release in 2020, the Drupal community led by Dries Buytaert, founder and project lead of Drupal, has left no stones unturned to evolve and transform with each passing year. 

A big year for Drupal and its splendid contributions

Just a year ago, we were celebrating two decades of Drupal! 2021 has been a remarkable year for the entire Drupal community. There are many things to talk about. Well let me start with Drupal 8 end-of-life. 2nd November 2021 was marked as the Drupal 8 end-of-life with the door open for easy upgrade to Drupal 9. Drupal’s responsible community spent hours creating automation and tools in order to make the migrating process to Drupal 9 as smooth as possible. All your burning questions on Drupal 9 upgrade answered here. Also, by adopting GitLab, Drupal modernized its collaboration tools giving the users a whole new experience. In the midst of all such efforts given to transform Drupal, let me here give you an honest insight into Drupal’s contribution dynamics. Just take a look at the image below. 

What do you understand from these above metrics? There has been a downfall in the contributors in comparison to the previous years. Isn’t it ? This made the community panic for a while. But then that’s not all. To get a proper understanding of this situation, a closer look was taken at the attrition rate of Drupal’s contributors. And then the data was compared to the industry averages for software and services companies. Now, take a look below at what was found.  

A 15 percent attrition rate is regarded as good for software and services companies, while Drupal’s attrition rate for its Top 1,000 contributors is just 7.7 percent. Also, the attrition rate for Drupal agencies among the Top 250 organizations is just only 1.2 percent. So, do you think there is any need to feel worried? Not really. In fact, we can be satisfied with having a very loyal, strong, and resilient community of Drupal contributors. 

We can even celebrate the success of our user’s massive migration to Drupal 9. Surprisingly, we could set a record of 0 to 60,000 websites in a span of just one month. Also, after 10 months of the release of Drupal 9, 90 percent of the top 50 modules were ready for Drupal 9. Isn’t that amazing? 

Despite the challenges of the pandemic, 2021 was the year that gave many opportunities to the Drupal community for sharing knowledge and connecting with each other. DrupalCon Europe and DrupalCon North America were successfully conducted where Dries shared his prospect on Drupal’s future and the roadmap for Drupal 10 that inspired the Drupalists around the world to make meaningful contributions to the community. Why not take a look at the events below?

What’s coming up in the future?

Aren’t we curious to know about Drupal’s future? I suppose we are. There will be a lot of things to look upon. Like, one of the important events for Drupal in 2022 will be Drupal 7’s end of life in November. It’s well known that most of the organizations will be planning to migrate from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9. Also, with Drupal 7 behind us, future versions of Drupal will become less complicated, and we will witness a much greater significance on continuous enhancement through feature releases. 

Thereafter, comes the launch of Drupal 10 which is presently planned for June 2022. Dries Buytaert confirmed that the upgrade from Drupal 9 to 10 is expected to be the same smooth upgrade approach that was encountered during the upgrade from Drupal 8 to 9. We can even look forward to crucial developments in new features in Drupal core that includes Decoupled menus, Easy out of the box, Automatic updates, Drupal 10 readiness, and New front-end theme initiative in the coming times. 

2021 proved to be a magnificent year for Drupal with the unparalleled contributions and remarkable efforts of the Drupalists around the globe. I am pretty sure that the whole world awaits the release of Drupal 10 and most importantly let us all keep working towards further advancements of  Drupal with the best of our abilities and make 2022 an even bigger year for the Drupal project. Once again, a very happy 21st birthday to Drupal! Still many decades to follow.