Talking Drupal

In episode #547, guest JD Flynn joins us to discuss why developers don't choose Drupal, focusing on Drupal adoption, discoverability, and outdated perceptions from Drupal 6/7. JD cites survey data showing low interest among non-Drupal developers, arguing Drupal's biggest problem is invisibility and that developers often pre-filter it due to PHP stigma and friction getting started.
For show notes visit:
https://www.talkingDrupal.com/547
Topics
Welcome to Talking Drupal
Meet JD Flynn
Co Hosts Introductions
Module of the Week: Native Observability
Production Overhead Debate
AI Patches and Etiquette
Live Stream and Topic Setup
Why Developers Skip Drupal
Invisibility and Discovery
Perception and Onboarding Friction
Composer and Leaving the Island
Perception Gap and PHP Stigma
PHP Perception Versus Reality
Why Developers Avoid Drupal
Selling Drupal to Clients
Instant Demos With Drupal Forge
Discoverability in the AI Era
Content Strategy Beyond Drupal
PHP Stigma and Performance
Community Effort and Live Streaming
Marketing Drupal Out of the Box
Wrap Up and Where to Connect
Resources
Why Developers Don't Choose Drupal (And What We Can Do About It) - https://www.fldrupal.camp/session/why-developers-dont-choose-drupal-and-what-we-can-do-about-it
JD's stream - http://twitch.tv/jddoesdev
Drupal is Great! Its Perception Might Not be. -https://picozzi.com/notebook/2025/jan/drupal-great-its-perception-might-not-be
Drupal Forge - https://www.drupalforge.org/
Guests
JD Flynn - Crepdrop dorficus
Hosts
Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Rod Martin - DrupalHelps.com imrodmartin
Module of the Week
Correspondent
Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu
Native Observability brings real observability into Drupal. Trace requests, inspect execution, analyze performance, and explore runtime behavior — directly inside your application.
No core patches. No external dependencies required to get started.
Just install, enable, and start seeing what actually happens inside your system.

Live from DrupalCon Chicago, Nic Laflin is joined by Tim Plunkett, Steve Wirt, Martin Anderson-Clutz, and John Picozzi to discuss the event's tone, Dries Notes and key themes including Drupal Canvas, Drupal AI, and new site templates/marketplace progress and more.
For show notes visit:
https://www.talkingDrupal.com/546
 
Topics
Reconnecting With Community
Must See Sessions
Vibe And Starshot
Attendance And Venue
Community Party Returns
Dries Note and AI Debate
Roadmap And Templates
Recipes And Exports
AI In Engineering Workflows
Keynote Style Takeaways
Dries Note Takeaways
Canvas Content Templates
View Modes Roadmap
Translation Plans Explained
Gala Highlights
Commemorative Tokens
Future Excitement Roundtable
DrupalCon Orlando Tease
Wrap Up and Contacts
Guests
Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Tim Plunkett - timplunkett
Hosts
Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
Steve Wirt - civicactions.com Swirt

Today we are talking about the open data platform DKAN, what it's used for, and how it applies to Drupal with guests Liz Tupper & Dan Feder. We'll also cover Modern Drupal Dashboard as our module of the week.
For show notes visit:
https://www.talkingDrupal.com/545
Topics
What Is DKAN
Who Uses Open Data
20:08 DKAN Origin Story
Why Drupal Fits DKAN
From Distribution to Module
DKAN 2 Rebuild and JSON Shift
Async Jobs and API First
How Teams Publish Data
What a Dataset Really Is
Metadata vs Data Access
Why DKAN Left Drupal Org
Migration Path to DKAN Four
Harvesting and Data Store ETL
APIs Visualizations and Bots
Roadmap Data Store and AI
Contributing and Where to File Issues
Resources
DKAN
DKAN Drupal Module
DKAN on GitHub
Public sites using DKAN 2
DKAN channel on Drupal Slack
JSON Form Widget
Guests
Liz Tupper - civicactions.com etupper
Dan Feder - getdkan.org dafeder
Hosts
Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Steve Wirt - civicactions.com Swirt
MOTW
Correspondent
Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu
Brief description: Have you ever wanted to have your Drupal site admins start with a fast, widget-based interface that surfaces key site metrics, system health, and operational insights? There's a module for that.

Module name/project name: Modern Drupal Dashboard

Brief history How old: created in Feb 2026 by Gaurav Kapoor (gaurav.kapoor) of werk21 in Berlin
Versions available: 1.0.5, which works with Drupal core 10.3 and 11

Maintainership Actively maintained
Security coverage
Number of open issues: no open issues

Usage stats: 4 sites

Module features and usage With the module installed, site visitors with the new "Access modern dashboard" permission can access a React-based dashboard with widgets to provide insights on topics like:
Content overview: total content count, published vs unpublished, and per content type breakdown.
Users overview: user count per role (users with multiple roles are counted in each role), plus pie chart visualization.
Additional Content (Entity overview): lists all entity types (content + configuration), shows counts, and provides direct "Manage" links.
Modules overview: installed modules summary, including enabled/disabled and core/contrib breakdown.
System & status: key environment details such as Drupal core version, PHP version, and database information.
Health checks: displays Drupal requirement checks grouped by status (pass/warning/error) with a dedicated detail view.
Each widget can be clicked to open a detail view of the extended data, making it easy for admins to dig into any area
The widget-based architecture should also help to pull in data from other sources, potentially including things like analytics

Today we are talking about World Cancer Day, how they use Drupal, and why Drupal was the right choice with our guests Charles Andrew Revkin & Diego Costa. We'll also cover PDFa11y as our module of the week.
For show notes visit:
https://www.talkingDrupal.com/544
Topics
What Is World Cancer Day
Why UICC Uses Drupal
Diego Joins the Project
Multilingual Strategy at Scale
Drupal Architecture and AI Tools
Vetting AI Moderation and Summaries
AI Disclosure and Review
Traffic Spikes and Scaling
Drupal Stack and React Apps
Campaign Theme United by Unique
Yearly Content and Three Year Cycle
Drupal Community and Open Access
Custom AI Modules and Azure
Future Improvements and AI Tagging
Story Submission Formats
Prevention PSA and Wrap Up
Resources
World Cancer Day
Union for International Cancer Control
Guests
Diego Costa - 1xinternet.com diegofcosta
Charles Andrew Revkin - worldcancerday.org revkin
Hosts
Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Steve Wirt - civicactions.com Swirt
MOTW
Correspondent
Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu
Brief description: Have you ever wanted to check PDF files for accessibility, as they're uploaded to your Drupal site? There's a module for that.

Module name/project name: PDFa11y

Brief history How old: created in Feb 2026 by Joshua Mitchell (joshuami), a friend of this podcast
Versions available: 1.0.1, which works with Drupal 10.2 and 11

Maintainership Actively maintained
Security coverage in process
Test coverage
Number of open issues: none

Usage stats: 0 sites

Module features and usage With the PDFa11y module installed, you can set its configuration, including whether to enable or disable automatic checking on upload, whether to block uploads that fail checks or just show warnings, a minimum PDF version requirement, and which accessibility checks to run
The module also sets creates three new permissions, Administer PDF accessibility settings, Run PDF accessibility checks, and View PDF accessibility report
Each PDF media item has an "Accessibility" tab where anyone with the necessary permissions can view the check results
Under the hood PDFa11y uses the smalot/pdfparser library to extract data from PDF files
Many sites rely on PDFs to make available content that they aren't able to migrate directly into Drupal content, so making sure that doesn't introduce its own accessibility regressions is an important step