Joshua Mitchell Writes About Hands-On Experience with Drupal CMS

Drupal CMS is about to be launched on 15 January, 2025. The release candidate of the new version was launched by Drupal founder, Dries Buytaert at DrupalCon Singapore 2024. With this, Drupal developers have got the chance to have an inside view the upcoming software prior to the official release.

Experienced Drupal developer and M6L founder, Joshua Mitchell recently published a blog post about his hands on experience in running the blog site on Drupal CMS. It is after nearly a decade on GitHub Pages, that Josh Mitchell moved to Drupal CMS. Motivated by enhanced editorial features, Mitchell rebuilt his blog using DDev, Tome, and GitHub Pages, achieving a zero-cost, Cloudflare-supported setup.  

Unlike his previous markdown-based workflow, Mitchell now enjoys a more robust authoring experience with Drupal's CKEditor. While Drupal CMS offers a pre-packed, opinionated take on Drupal, Mitchell embraced its defaults to fully explore its potential ahead of the first stable release on January 15.  

Notable modules like Autosave Form, ECA, and Automatic Updates are bundled by default, showcasing Drupal’s shift toward a streamlined, ready-to-use approach. Mitchell detailed the site's setup process, from using DDev for local development to configuring Tome for static exports. He also addressed key challenges, like AJAX pagination issues and login form glitches, which he resolved by customizing display settings and removing unnecessary blocks.  

While praising the improved authoring experience, Mitchell flagged concerns about page load speeds, accessibility flaws, and disaster recovery. Despite these drawbacks, he remains optimistic, promising future updates on his journey with Drupal CMS.