Backdrop CMS: past and future

ah hi everyone thank you for coming to

our session this is a session that is a

little newer to May tonight but we did

it last year at bad camp and everybody

really liked it so we thought we'd make

it a little more official we're gonna go

through everything that's happened in

the world of backdrops since the fork up

to the present and then we'll talk a

little bit about our plans for the

future and this should be really useful

for those of you who are coming from

Drupal and are wondering what have we

been doing for the last four years

you'll get to see all the great stuff

that's been going on in the backdrop

world and why this is a pork and not

just long term support for Drupal 7 well

first of all how many people are not

familiar with backdrop at all like you

know this is kind of the first

introduction for them okay four people

or so okay excellent

well we how many of you are running

Drupal 7 sites currently everybody

almost that's great yeah so well-well be

covering a little bit about how backdrop

actually was created as well but mostly

we're gonna be covering all of the

progress that backdrop has seen over the

last five years for nanu sure all right

let's go so I get to push the buttons oh

there was doing about us

who are you oh yeah I'm Nate Lambton I'm

one of the project founders along with

Jen I've been doing Drupal for 12 years

I think felt like a half years and I'm

most well known for doing things like

the web form module in Drupal 7 and I

was also the file and image system

maintainer and I were at the dialog

system that's in Drupal 8 and was

advocate for putting ckeditor

integer play so got a long history with

Drupal though during that process I kind

of find myself diverging mentalities

around where drip was heading versus

where I had always wanted Drupal to be

heading and that's how we ended up

where we are with backdrop I'm John

Lampton I am a little younger in Drupal

years than native only been around for

have a little bit of involvement in

Drupal core and later to that then nate

is I was involved in usability team I'm

doing a couple of studies early in the

nurple 7 cycle all the way up to early

in Drupal 8 and through that process I

got really passionate in about making

the software easier for people to use

and easier people for people to learn

and by doing that I somehow ended up

core initiative lead for Drupal 8 and

started organizing people to put Twigg

into core and it was through my work in

that trying to make Drupal easier to

learn that I realized that it wasn't

ever gonna be the product that I wanted

it to be and so that's how we ended up

making in fact I've been said don't

where we are today

I guess backdrops five years old I was

saying four and a half but somewhere

around there depends I guess when you

start counting we'd really start teen

versions so I'm like Drupal backdrop has

a very strict schedule release cycle so

every four months we have a new version

whether there's new features in it or

not again it comes out like clockwork so

since the 1.0 version we've done that 13

times in every single time it has been

delivered on time though with varying

amounts of functionality so one version

as to how backdrop got started so let's

yeah five five years twelve versions ago

we kind of poorly executed this

manifesto that said why we were doing

what we were doing and it was largely

created kind of out of frustration at

the time which wasn't you know we'd been

toying around with the idea and trying

it out at various camps saying if people

were like hi how would you feel about

this and it the the stimulus for it was

actually my work on ckeditor when I

posted up a full version of the module

and it was ready to be committed and

then it was like actually huh not

anymore because we don't write modules

that way anymore and they rewrote the

whole thing and I continued rolling

along with that for a little while but I

realized think this again this is gonna

honestly it's gonna cost a lot like

changing every module that is an

existence from what I'd written to what

was being proposed or what the new way

of writing things from a purely

technical perspective I was like oh my

gosh is this gonna cause so much trouble

and so we made the fork in

September 2013 which actually yeah well

that was like really starting to be

getting people found the fork much

faster than I thought and that was

unexpected because we didn't have our

plans fully formulated and written down

so if you guys ever fork a software

project I suggest you write down your

thoughts first and then create the

github repository so because if people

find a fork with no explanation they

freak out

well in everybody and everybody jumps in

bringing their own ideas like we got

everybody from Drupal coming over and

saying that's great Drupal 8 didn't do

what I wanted it to do so let's try

again and I was like no no that's this

is not not what we're going for it's not

so that we can rewrite Drupal

differently a new way that's not what

we're going for we're not rewriting

things and everyone's go well that's not

what I wanted let's see and yeah yeah

exactly

anyway so the manifesto it's kind of

like this everyone's panicking yeah

despite our big bold letters up at the

top so don't panic thanks like but if

you read through the manifesto you can

still find it I think it's actually a

blog post the first blog post on backup

CMS org now running on the backdrop

instead of just being an HTML page these

are the points that we made in the

manifesto of preserving the Drupal

audience or some Drupal audience that

Drupal historically had been catering to

like a wide audience but small sites

were a large part of that hobbyists had

driven Drupal from its origin story and

nonprofits and political campaigns

actually were really Drupal's bread and

butter for a long time

small-scale Drupal being accessible to

individual sites small teams being a

product end-users catering more towards

user interfaces and making so the end

users could manage their sites

themselves without the help of

developers a different release cycle

because Drupal 8 was I think and it's

like 60 year of development at that

point

and it would be another two and a half

years before Drupal 8 was actually

released and so this the the release

cycle was at the forefront of our mind

and we we did a call to contribute on

github so yeah can we go back one more

time just a recap like really this is

not too far off of where we stand today

the biggest thing that we have to

address why backdrop exists we brought

up the philosophy I think we actually up

slides for that don't we but the big

driver is that we have some serious

philosophical differences around what

we're trying to do with what was then

Drupal and now we're calling it backdrop

but we were imagining Drupal was good

for versus where Drupal headed and the

big driver today is that the audience

has now officially been defined that

backdrop says that it's for small medium

sized businesses nonprofits education

small sites small budgets that is our

target target audience and Drupal is

defined its target audience finally

officially as ambitious digital

experiences which many people translate

as big budgets or enterprise and so that

alone is enough reason to justify a

different product because they're for

different people so anyway we're trying

to make it so that this very first point

preserving the Drupal audience we're

trying to make it so those people that

are within the not target audience now

but historically it may have been within

the target audience have somewhere to go

and so that's our objective with

backdrop still is today point number one

still valid so the software launched in

January but the website didn't get

launched until April we're like oh we

should I guess put up my website and

have information some people know what

we're doing but that backdrop wasn't

vector I didn't really exist it wasn't

any different until it was 2015 in

January when it launched so we're like

well we need to put up a website but we

don't have soccer yet so I guess we'll

just build it on Drupal seven because

that's what we're doing here we set up

Vector temesta org and we set up an api

website to parse our code based on was

interested in seeing what we were doing

with the code even though it wasn't out

yet we're welcome to look at the API

site and take it first minute we also

ended up hiring a couple of different

designers to make up some assets for us

we needed a logo we hired a designer to

help us with that he also helped us with

a style guide for the website in general

brand guidelines which is great and then

we hired another designer from I think

some weren't nearby to make us a dragon

and part of that was really important

because we thought a huge part of the

Drupal community was the truth look on

and in particular how different camps

and various different organizations

could take that icon and turn it into

something that was their own they could

put on it change its color make it up

feet or wings or hair or whatever it was

and it became a recognizable thing that

people could use for their own purposes

and we wanted to have something very

similar in the backdrop community and

we're like oh we should have some kind

of animal there's a lot of debate about

what it would be and eventually we were

at Drupa corn camp and somebody was like

oh guys usually dragon and I was like

ooh we definitely need a dragon

everybody at the table wanted to do like

some barbecue place or something and

everybody around the table is like yes

yes yes we need a dragon except for this

guy

[Music]

ten Drupal developers think backups

should be a dragon surely that's enough

yeah so I was looking around at the very

least I I do appreciate one of the

Dragons name being drop so he's dragging

drop way up stickers for everybody if

you didn't get one thank everyone

check-ins even if you know it was Becca

okay so after fifteen months of a

development we decided to release

backdrop one this was January 15 2015

which coincidentally we didn't realize

was also the ritual release date of

Drupal once per day so we accidentally

for real may backdrop 1.0 come on the

same day as Drupal 1.0 so we have the

same birthday so every January 15th

what doodle birthday parties are

happening there is also the backdrop

yeah pretty good set for me so yeah

we've released it on January 1st and if

there were some people in our

communities like January 1st is not a

good day to do anything publicity why

cuz everybody's busy with New Year's and

the holidays you should push that like

will do the 15th we're like okay and

about the 10th we realize we had a

little conflict and we're like that's

probably fun yeah yeah it's like a

little brother born on the same day okay

Mina Oh what did I do wind it up at the

end

Oh reveal how did he do that I don't

know I think I hit the track yeah

it's Linux's fault oh geez and it hit

the we can type in this line number I

think it was like five okay

yeah not sixty-five that's for later no

we were like there we go okay number eat

everything sign okay spacebar alright so

what's in backdrop one a drupal

compatibility layer so this is one of

our big things about preserving the

existing audience we also want to make

it really easy for any of who's running

a triple7 site to be able to run a

backdrop site so we included a

compatibility layer so that things like

functions that used to start with the

word Drupal now start with Route

backdrop but still work this is probably

the big driver for 1.0 that was like

actually one of the to keep killer

features new layout system so a backdrop

out of the box in 1.0 years ago had an

equivalent of panels built in and

removed the idea of themes having

regions and said now everything is

driven by the layout system we've given

lots of presentations on LED system it's

definitely the biggest functional driver

difference between Drupal 7 and and

backdrop high does but does still

provide an upgrade path moving from out

of a region based system to a lay-up AC

system views module built in it's kind

of like a given like a not very actually

not too difficult for moving in but that

also means things like views bulk

operations had to be moved in the

listing said to be converted let's see

what other kinds of things

oh yeah the action system got changed

the dialogue system is now used lots of

changes that we're all combined together

to make it so that would happen

we also a dialogue system than they just

mentioned is something that would easily

part of see tools so it emerged in a lot

of see tools as well and the big reach

to the management this is something that

people were so excited about

improvements in Drupal 8 config

management we knew if we were gonna

release a comp or mold product it needed

to have the same feature so we

introduced a really early version of

configuration management and then we've

worked a little bit from how Triple E

ended up doing it so though we have the

same feature it's implemented very

differently anyways it's a little bit

more in line with our philosophy so hey

we have a product we should use it so in

January 24th so this is like nine days

after we released backed up the product

we got our API website updated and less

than one month afterwards we had our

main website upgraded from Drupal 7 to

backdrop so this is just kind of a we've

thought we wanted to do a demonstration

of how easy it is to get from Drupal 7

backed up and using our own properties

to do so it seemed to make the most

sense

be able to do an API for Drupal aids

well it's the same the same indexing

yeah yeah it's I mean the API website

I'm to flip on drupal.org is Drupal 7

yeah and we're running the port of the

same module yes so dad can into a site

yeah I can index all we the same same

code okay hey so it may came out and

guess what that's four months after

January so it's time to practice what we

preach you come up with a new version so

backdrop one was released what do we do

in backdrop one we change the look of

the administration theme so we used to

use this theme called seven we actually

still have it in backdrop but now it

looks different sorry the colors are

totally blown out and all of the

screenshots but it's a slightly

different color

we made the links with bigger the links

bigger so they work with your finger on

a phone or tablet everything is

responsive just a bunch of usability

improvements but we wanted to make it

feel different than Drupal other things

we added more tokens at Oakland user

interface half auto and other stuff

minor things

all right September what do we do the

next four months so we found that Oh

okay yep so vertical tabs are made

responsive we were slowly like going

through iterating making all of backdrop

core more mobile-friendly

we added ckeditor decor kind of one of

the rich ironies of backdrop is that we

released 1.0 without the main feature

that I put into group allayed so but we

we followed in there not too shortly

after the original release with CK

editor in core we also had eight all of

this most all the date sub modules

except for date repeat Lincoln email

module

rounding out kind of the core field

functionality and I guess in general

just that our approach to putting

modules in core it varies kind of

substantially from Drupal 8 and that our

primary objective is making so that you

can upgrade easily from Drupal 7 running

those same modules so in the process of

porting the modules and making the core

compatible we're trying to maintain as

much as possible but also have it be

more you know tightly integrated into

core without it being kind of like feel

like it's been bolted on and that makes

it so that those people moving from

Drupal 7 all of the equivalent

functionality from those Drupal 7

modules moves over directly into the

drupal era into the backdrop version of

them because the entire point is to make

it so you can get easily from Drupal 7

into back it works I built an upgrade

path so you don't have to worry about

the module going in but your date are

not getting upgraded which is what

happened with the fields in Drupal 7

anything that got put into backdrop core

has a built-in upgrade path in court so

you can just get to it quickly so one

point to also included the first use of

our packager drupal.org is similar kind

of packaging mechanism but because all

of our code is hosted on github way to

build a new kind of system for packaging

and so when github we still do all of

our issue management and all the code

hosting is on github but now we

integrated with web hooks and github

system that it sends pings over to

backdrop CMS org when you create a

release and this works for contribs well

as core

backdrops nuanced auto

and packages it does some slight

modifications to like the dot info files

inserting that the virtual information

zips it up and then posts it back to get

hub for hosting all right

one year later this was a great example

of release where we didn't get a whole

bunch of big fancy features in because

everybody was really busy over the

holidays but really that's okay we've

got it released anyway what do we have

in it and we looked at what was in it

and there were a ton of little tiny

fixes that improve the user experience

we're like we're just gonna call this

user experience focused release and

we're gonna get all the rest of that

stuff done and we're gonna create a more

polished product so one release has 32

enhancements specifically to improve

these our experience oh it beats X I

love this feature this is like one of

those like obscure things that we hardly

ever talk about but is really cool from

a technical side of things we added

background fetching in backdrop 1.3

background fetching and background

processing which makes it so that when

backdrop finishes the page requests and

has to do additional tasks afterwards it

returns the page to the user it suffers

the the open connection on the Apache

side and returns the HTML to the user

and then runs background processes after

returning the page back to the user this

is most noticeable when doing localhost

development where you haven't set up

cron and the first time you load up your

website in the morning it just like is

loading and loading and loading they're

like we'll say that Drupal site yeah and

you're like what is going on then you

hit control art comes up instantly right

and what that is is that's cron running

at the end of the request because cron

hasn't run in 24 hours since the last

time you loaded the page and so Drupal

doesn't return the page requests until

that all the cron tasks are finished

even though it does it in a shutdown

hook and all these things it doesn't

return the page properly and so we added

this background processing capability

that intentionally moves that stuff

after the request has been returned and

it makes it so that we can do stuff like

generate the the paint the the page

cache but we don't actually right

to the database until after we've

returned it so we're only reading and

then we're doing the writing after we've

actually finished generating the page we

also have background fetching Zemin yeah

background fetch that's the page cache

that makes it so that we pull the page

out of the varnish playbook

varnish this explore varnish for

playbook that varnish is the caching

software that when you're generating the

page cache when the page cache is stale

you go ahead and you you note the fact

that you need to regenerate the cache

but you go I can return the stale copy

right away and then you generate a new

page after returning the stale copy and

then the next person that comes in gets

the fresh one so there's no slow page

load after your cache expires it's all

it's just one stale page load and then

the next page load is fast again and so

and fresh yeah so it makes it so that

you can you can trade off like one page

load being extra one extra page load

being stale in exchange for never ever

having a slow page response and a big

key thing about integrating something

like this I think it'd be unlikely you

might say contribute you'll do this in

in Drupal 8 if it was possible it might

be but it's unlikely that Drupal would

pursue this as being core functionality

instead they would probably refer you

over and say you should use varnish

Josie's varnish but that's a difference

in in target audience that varna that

Drupal is made Enterprise you should

just use another layer have your DevOps

team put another layer on your software

stack use a CDN and we're targeting

specifically for people that don't have

a CDN or don't have a DevOps team and so

this kind of functionality we think is

highly critical important for backdrops

audience

alright one of these ability and

percents that I love may be one of my

favorites as we've put in a big red dot

into the administration bar

so there's anything wrong with your site

you will know immediately this game

comes from Drupal where sometimes that

admin message is only visible on the

back end of your site and you can do

something like apply update without

running the update script and click

around your site for a while before you

discover that there's something wrong or

like which doesn't put this dot

everywhere and as you all know from

using Facebook if there is a red dot

somewhere you cannot help but click on

it so that's worked really well in our

favor we're getting people to know

there's problems we changed the node

create node type creation form to

include a bunch of different things like

your permissions being able to set a

pattern for your URL aliases we

basically took everything that has a

setting for a node type and put it on

the node type form so that you don't

have to go to more than one place in the

administration to perform a single task

like creating a know type and we're

trying to create this pattern all

throughout course so anywhere that

they're in more than one place that you

can do anything we can make people's

instinct so like I'm going to go here to

do something be the correct place to

find it even if it's that same setting

is in lots of places we also included a

transliteration module field blocks

custom text blocks logging in with email

address or email login module login to

logged in

[Music]

improved interface for adding multiple

values with multiple field Remove button

module there's like a bunch of little

modules that were improvements to the

triple UI that we just kind of did the

same thing in fact yeah this is Wow at

the same time as we were doing all of

this software work we also started

thinking about how we wanted to organize

the overall management of the project

for the first year it was basically this

is the gen and Nate show which we didn't

ever want it to be that we specifically

but at least I I don't like management

positions very much like I'm I

acknowledge the fact that I'm a

developer and running a project is not

going to be my strong suit it's writing

software and we started looking at

models to make it so that this project

could survive and be managed by people

that were not us beyond us and we

adopted the model from the Apache

projects or Apache community called the

project management committee project

management committee is basically just

distributing the authority to a group

the project management committee do we

have the description now the project

management committee sets the direction

of the project the principles the

mission and handles conflict resolution

so it's the overall guiding group for

result they're like making it so that if

there's a problem like you can escalate

to the project management committee they

vote on it and then that is then the

where where authorities derives from

within the backdrop project it's it's

been really successful I really

appreciate this this model and yeah it's

been rolling really well

so next version was backed up 1.4 came

out in May 2016 this would include the

project installer this is I think one of

Angie's favorite modules it exists for

triple7 if you want it but it basically

takes the previous field on the modules

page where it was like randomly pasting

a URL it's something that might explode

your site here and instead of doing that

we provide a browser so you can search

for the module you want the browser will

look through a list provided by backdrop

CMS or find the module and the list give

you information about the module and you

can click install without ever having to

leave your website and find a URL we

also added a little additional

protection and buried that URL box

really far away we're knowing we'll find

it unless they're really looking really

hard hopefully to make the kinds of

people who need to use a point equip the

module installer much safer yeah I mean

all Drupal 7 sites have the ability to

install modules which is kind of crazy

if you have update module turned on

which is like also great you want update

modules but maybe you don't want them to

be able to paste in URLs of arbitrary

code and run it on your site we

separated our update module from

installing modules so you can keep

update management and update module and

this is now installing module so you can

turn off installer separately if you

don't want that functionality we also

added a whole bunch of new layouts in

backtrack 1.4 and these were using the

bootstrap corporate system still are but

at the time bootstrap 4 was not out yet

so we were super cutting-edge although

I've been in development for like four

years so that's questionable but this

basically made it so that all of the

layouts that are in core really easy to

just copy and change the classes and you

can change your column widths you can

make new rows it makes it super easy for

people who need to get something done

quickly to take what's there use it as

an example repeat and get their work

done oh and it's also backwards

compatible for old layouts so if you've

been using an older version a backdrop

your old lives would still work but the

new ones are also there so it gives you

something else to choose from

I made a bunch of improvements to the

layout user interface as well including

changing the way visibility conditions

worked and I think we did some

provements to the dragon dropping after

we installed path auto we realized we

need to include redirect module so we

added that one in the next release we

also took what was functionality from

menu block module in Drupal 7 can trim

and merge it into the core menu blocks

in backdrop and we made it so that if

you're on a mobile device trying to

create a node if you clicked into the

image field it'll give you access to

your camera which is something there's a

control on tool for that as well triple

yay this is very exciting a new

front-end dean by call basis that was

made by Westerville Kaba so backdrop no

longer looks like Drupal yeah that was

very exciting for us we're like look

you're running back job it looks just

like Drupal and then finally Oh finally

it's like its own product this is really

greatness this is using the layout

system to edit a block on that the

front-end and this is just featuring the

hero once it comes out of the box just

an easy way to put a hero

that's background image and some text on

the on your site that Inglot is included

right on the front page out of the box

we have sided responsive drop-down menus

we used a library called smart menus to

make it so that out of the box you have

hierarchical responsive drop-down menus

family better touch friendly whoo yeah

they keep navigable yeah just one of

those super confusing things about like

as a new user you tried to make a

hierarchical menu and it's not

hierarchical on outputs and Drupal it

just like just shows you the top level

links and so it's very natural to assume

that you're going to get a hierarchical

menu if you drag them into a nested

structure so that's great they also

included a default home page layout this

is the most common use case where you

have a different layout on your site and

every other page that differently on

your home page needs to be there so we

put them in beben vault

and we put an existing content block so

you can reference any piece of content

that's already on your site you can

place it as a block with any of you mode

and we included emoji support this is

the same this release came out the same

time as emoji support for Drupal 7 so we

coordinated that yeah

but different yeah another difference

like this is crazy like the small things

that it's all about audience here that

if you guys had Drupal 7 sites how many

people upgrade their sites to include

emoji support there Drupal 7 sites no oh

well it turns out anyone for you turns

out it's kind of hard actually

you have to use address command in order

to update your database tables to make

it so that they support emoji but in

backdrop we integrated the upgrade path

into the user interface so it shows you

a sadist message indicator saying hey

you're capable of supporting emojis just

put this in setting so that PHP and then

you come back and it's like okay now you

need to run the upgrade and the button

with a button and does batch process you

know so it's highlighting that

information that you can support a wider

character set and in the status report

and then providing you an opportunity to

upgrade it through the user interface

a button as opposed to a developer

command-line tool it's a different

different audience they're all right

backed up 1.6 backed up is now two years

old this is where we put in file entity

module or most of file into B module we

put in the file entity part some of the

user interface is still not quite there

and this is because we knew that we

needed a better media solution than

what's in triple7 so we're currently

moving towards lots of media

improvements you'll see as we go through

here things you can do but when you

insert an image into the body of the

page it hasn't reference from the files

table so they look like what cleanup

there you can change it in one place and

have it update everywhere same thing is

true for PDF files all the great stuff

you get with having thousands entities

is in that report now we also added a

hamburger to our fancy mobile-friendly

menu again this is iteration later we

realized if we're going to put in this

menu looks out looks like everybody

wants a hamburger number one question in

the forum is how do I put a hamburger on

my fancy new menus like oh we should put

that in court so there's your hamburger

and we also added entity View mode

module but this wasn't something that we

just took the module and shoved it in

this was in addition to an existing

course system so there's a couple of

different ways that we take contribute

modules from triple7 and put them in

backtrack or things like date email link

you just take the module stick it in the

little clean up user interface a little

cleanup in other ways

things like token entity View mode they

become part of system modules so token

is a part of system and anivia mode is a

part of field UI so there are things

that are just sort of missing pieces of

subsystems that we put them where we

thought they should be and then there

are things that we just left them

exactly as they were a little module

on/off button

um we added translation support so this

is where we set up our localization

server it was the start of the

localization server still working in

progress to make the localization server

fully integrating with backed up core I

know and automated and and automated I

know it's great in Drupal 8 that you can

install alterable with a new language

without having to download the

translation files separately still

working on that because like it requires

integration between multiple servers so

we do have essentially a multilingual

lead who's hang up making the site and

we have backup translations in a couple

of languages now that are fully

translated which is very exciting to us

but right now it's all still manual

processes including like installing out

of the box but we're getting there this

is exciting

yeah so we got forked and we've got your

the the press flow of backdrop was

created and so this was one of our heavy

core contributors made a fork of

backdrop that wanted to support more

more database systems and make some

performance optimizations that we've

been pulling on in the backdrop for

queue and he's like that's fine you know

I'll just make my version that it was

like the optimized ones that he'll use

on his platform so I he we removed just

in case you guys missed it so he removes

support for any database that's not my

sequel because I was less than 1%

after pleasers so we're again we're

trying to cater to like look largest yes

and he's like wait I have a need for

running on an on my sequel database and

we're like well we don't want to support

that it doesn't need our use case he's

like fine then I'm gonna I'll support it

myself

and so now we have a fork and he's

actually continued to maintain his fork

in parallel with ours and he's been

super helpful on most of our court

releases too so having this work has

been really beneficial

- the backyard project alright

may 15th back deck 1.7 comes out it

includes new redesigns of several of our

administration pages it's really pretty

I promise this missus projector doesn't

really show you all the fancy colors but

we've put in icons and color-coded it

and we removed all the like giant green

stripes and stuff we also added I don't

remember what this module is called

ckeditor

link it like it I think it's the common

link in it yeah so just making it so you

can link to various Pat's on your site

with autocompletes

uh drag and drop Oh No

copy paste then go and copy paste copy

paste upload so there's a there's a

triple module for that too that's only

an alpha vertical seven that's pretty

exciting

lanten improvements so again the pickle

that system is new we tend to iterate

and improve on layouts with every

release so we included per box per block

placement options in the views module

and we made a bunch of page elements

placeable as blocks there's a

contributor that the fuse box was part

of the c tools views comment module back

up one-point-eight comes out in

September this is another user

experience release guess what we care

about user experience because most of

our users are users as opposed to

developers we represent progress bar in

different color and kind of pretty we

add a color coding into our dip so this

is for configuration management we stole

the colors from github I believe and the

pattern so we just took what they did

when you do a diff on github made it

match what you do when you get a dip on

backdrop we added an unpublished

indicator so that was very clear and

basis when the content you were looking

at hadn't been published yet we redid

the admit admin listing page so this is

just kind of use of icons and better fit

for our style we included screenshots in

the practic buzzer so if you're going to

install a theme you want to be able to

see what the theme looks like before you

install it so browser now includes

images and then

backdrop the King three years old I know

it's just just keep rolling so

previously you can upload files but you

couldn't or you could delete files but

you couldn't actually edit them and so

we had the ability to manage in 1.9

this is more of file entity oh I guess

that was it might have been our only

right so in May backdrop 110 came out it

includes the comment closer module this

is something that comes in corporate

WordPress this is when we started

looking at wordpress annoying what does

WordPress doing right that we need to do

as well and this is the ability to

create a post and say hey closed

comments after two weeks that prevents

excess spam issues which is nice and

decreases the need for constant

moderation on a site we also added

scheduled publishing so this gives you

the ability to create a post and say hey

let's publish this tomorrow morning at 6

a.m. I don't have to get up at six am

and push this publish button on my

website this is something else that's in

WordPress core and it's called the

scheduler module for triple7

we also included inline file uploads so

instead of just being able to drop in an

image and you read text editor degree

you can drop in a link to a PDF file and

upload it right there many new items

became translatable and block's game

translatable so this is after we have

the multilingual initiative people

started translating stuff imagine that

and we started improving translation in

core September vector Quentin comes up

color module so we ignored color module

in the first version of basis because

we're like oh that's kind of old and

crufty maybe we'll find a better way to

do it and then guess what people needed

color module so we're like okay well

let's make color module work with faces

so we had someone else come in and

colorize basis which was great color

module also got a little clamp because

it was old and crafty right so we redid

the user interface we use html5 elements

for color just stuff that had been

ignored for a while got a little love we

have an image browser this is also

catching up with media right trying to

get more of that stuff for media module

in core so giving people the ability to

see image thumbnails naka load them into

their content we put back on content

preview so in backdrop 1.0 we deleted

content preview because it didn't work

but then we realized the people like

reviewing content imagine that so we put

in a version that does work and this is

a little different than most of the

preview solutions in Drupal and then it

shows you a live rendering of your

actual website including placement of

blocks and layouts in addition to just

the content you're looking at so I think

there's something called a live preview

a module that does the same thing that's

what we've got something similar in in

fact rip also gives you the ability to

preview different view modes of your

content if you want to see is a whole

page or is it either you can see those

differences

also rabbit-hole module went into court

this is because in backdrop our blocks

are configuration and not content and so

we wanted people to be able to have

content style blocks and so because we

have the ability to place existing

content you can just use notes as blocks

as long as their packs can be hidden so

we made it so packs can be it in a court

we also did a whole bunch of

improvements to contact module speaking

of things that are old and crusty we had

someone who was super passionate about

making that work and look better for

everyone I don't know where the client

set up his progress bars I didn't work

on that used to have to it required a

PHP extension or get a progress bar

while uploading a file but that's

totally unnecessary this day and age

JavaScript can do all of that so we

removed the requirement and actually

even the recommendation that you install

the PHP extension and just say no

client-side everybody now has progress

bars just nice and then this is the

biggest one we put in the ability for

backtrack or to update itself so we

didn't actually make it usable because

we wanted to test it first in order to

test it I had to exist so first we put

it in so it existed and then we were

able to do some testing as a core team

and then later on we turn it on so it's

hidden from end users by like a

configuration flag so although it was

possible to self update you really had

to know what you were doing in order to

turn on that ability not a lot of stuff

one release 111 and then the subsequent

bug fixes to actually test back drop

updating itself with the whole thing all

the whole system combined so guess what

happens in 112 we turned on the updates

so yeah now there's a checkbox where if

you want people to be able to push a

button and say up Drake or you can check

the box and then the button will appear

when updates come out which is great so

this is part of update module where you

same thing you use to update your themes

and layouts you can

of course and to be clear this isn't

automatic updates no just it's just

manual core updates it can be done so

you have to push the button yeah they'll

actually is a checkbox here that's right

below it you can tell you some

checkboxes on the screen but it says

automatic self updates as a disabled

checkbox

says coming soon because ultimately that

will be supported but we want to test

this for a while yeah one one step at a

time

yes at least as far as this is concerned

yeah well we're also behind in some

areas yeah yeah we have a kind of a

large advantage in that we're a lot

simpler like we can we're not composer

based and so composer is both blessing

and a curse and as far as automatic

updates yeah I mean giving having Drupal

control composer is probably the

direction that they're heading but that

it's a whole can of worms and so

backdrop doesn't have any dependency on

composer whatsoever and so updating core

is no more difficult than updating a

contributor so Drupal 7 has had the

ability to update its own contributes

although not is commonly used by

developers making it so that that same

system works encore was practically

trivial so there's it's very simple like

download new tar ball replace it so very

simple direct updating mechanism ran

update update

yeah and then and then director update

up page thank you we also added a

kinship module called option it's

element this used to affect only web

form components at Drupal 7 but we made

it work on field UI so that you no

longer have to type key pipe value into

a massive text area this gives you a

nice key value entry system you can hunt

the keys you can make custom keys you

can make them carry numeric

youth a little more user-friendly

because our users are not developers we

think hi we live icons so does Drupal

they were way ahead of us in this area

they had nice fancy icons in their admin

bar we wanted fancy icons in our admin

bar so we added them uh we also

implemented CSS grid so if you use a

views grid display you now get a CSS

grid for that unless you have a box

check saying use legacy table which

might be useful if you have thieved your

tables we also took those contact module

improvements and made a block you can

place in any region on any page it's

pretty common these days you see a

contact form in the footer now it's

really easy to get that done on your

backdrop site and we continued including

translation so taxonomy terms are now

translatable now I just said that twice

and tags for modules so this is a really

long standing issue in back chocolates

issue number 37 and there's a lot of

bickering and different opinions and

who's this page for and what are we

trying to do for it and so we just

decided those coming to know there's

something everything everyone agreed on

is that the package is not sufficient

like you have a module that might be

several different things maybe it's a

statistics module and its commerce

module and it's an add-on or whatever

and so you can put however many times

you want to categorize that module

someone searching for it later they can

search for commerce your statistics and

I'll come up with both it's a little

improvement to the modules page what are

we doing right now

so in just under a month the next

version of backdrop will come out oh

well very much I guess it seems soon

we're working on a bunch of new features

we took out Drupal 7 dashboard module

because we did not like it nobody used

it and we are gonna put in a different

deck dashboard module that we hope

people will both like and use this is

based on a kinship module in Drupal

called total control which is panels and

views and since we have panels of these

sort of the same thing in we're also

planning on putting in a telemetry

module and this is based mostly on

what's in Joomla about what information

any given site will report back to

backdrop so what marches you have

enabled what your settings are in your

given site it'll give us more

information about what do people

actually want their backdrop sites to do

in the future what are they using now

what is safe to remove what is not safe

to remove what should we improve because

right now we've got a lot of sites been

a running back drop but the number of

people in the queue of working on it are

much fewer and so how do we know how to

serve those people who don't yet have a

voice in our community and this will

help give us a lot of valuable data at

the very least like the main key thing

that we would like to collect is like

what version of PHP are these backdrop

sites running on right because I

compatibility is 5/3 and forward so we

support wide breadth of them because

even even though PHP 5 is officially not

supported anymore it's still like the

default PHP 5 4 is still the version of

PHP you get in the current release of

red hat for example and so anybody

that's using Red Hat Enterprise Linux

like right out of the box like you can't

install Drupal which is you know kind of

a big deal

because PHP lasts a lot longer than it

may seem based on the official support

because of vendor supports and so

figuring out what versions are actually

being used is really important to us we

also added a cup

more kinship modules from Drupal 7 save

draft is something now that we have

fancy jets and scheduling people want to

be able to save them

so that'll clean up the node edit form a

little bit and field for matters module

which is field formatted from Drupal 6

that were excluded from triple 7 we're

gonna put back in and a lot of that is

because most backdrop users today we're

coming from Drupal 6 or most a lot of

them and so they have features they feel

like I'm missing because they were

missing in Drupal 7 and more there's

obviously a bunch of little tiny issues

that we get into every every release

that aren't like exciting enough to make

our big bullet list but if you're

curious about everything we're working

on every release we work on our backdrop

has a milestone on github and issues

that were working on scheduling for that

release going to that milestone if they

get done that's great if they don't

think it kicks to the next one for

things that are big core features they

get kicked twice and if they go to get

kicked at their time they get removed

from the milestone queue because we feel

like they're not important enough to get

worked on in a year then they're maybe

not a priority for our community keeps

our issue queue and I censure

my next so within the one dot X branch

and just in general the one that I

experienced we previously had been

talking about backdrop to like years ago

saying know what's gonna being backed up

to what's gonna react or to and you kept

coming up with all these features that

were like oh this feature definitely is

worth calling it backdrop too but then

we kept finding that wait we can put

that in now yeah there was no reason to

wait and no reason to break API so why

bother with backed up to when you can

just keep going right so as long as we

can maintain backwards compatibility it

doesn't become overly onerous there's no

real reason to create a 2.0 that would

potentially introduce a bunch of

backwards compatibility breaks so more

and more things just keep getting at it

- 1 dot X basically so automatic updates

you know we've been talking we're

progressing towards that end goal

centralizing the config translation

system right now we're still basically

doing the same thing as Drupal 7 that

we're running variables through T that's

the way all things like field labels

were translated in Drupal 7 it's a way

to translate again backdrop and we're

centralizing that to make it a config

files can say these things are

translatable to make it more friendly to

translation extraction so that things

can be translated but start out in

config references we still don't have a

core like version of entity reference or

user reference or references references

just in general so that's a big item

that's been plaguing us for a long time

that we would like to solidify that we

do have those three modules yes we have

the conversions so which is useful for

upgrading because it's gonna be the same

module but it's not great for like

having one quantity standard thing and

we need something in course so we have

to figure that fully filled with cloud

types files or entities and they're

managed to such but they're not filled

well currently so we've got some things

that we're still working on for the

foreseeable future for we're not X

but what about to us Nate mentioned a

minute ago that we were thinking that

too much tuna ex would break api's but

that doesn't necessarily have to be the

case anymore we've been talking to a

bunch of other people managing other

projects about how they handle major

version updates Symphony for example

with every new version just removes

everything that's marked is deprecated

and since we're getting really good at

adding in new stuff and marking all the

stuff that's deprecated we could choose

to make backdrop to our release it just

removes everything that's deprecated and

carries on with its API compatibility

we've also had some crazy harebrained

ideas mostly mine about making backdrop

support both 1x and 2x modules when two

types comes out so anyone who had a 1 to

X module would still be able to run that

module with no upgrade on backdrop 2

that would require some significant

changes to core itself and some

protections in the modules to make sure

that everything will work smoothly but

it is theoretically possible and then

also we could stick to the old-school

Drupal 7 and traditional pattern where

backdrop 2 comes out and maybe

everything is broken so we've got some

thinking to do about ways that we want

to make upgrades easier on our community

knowing it they're less likely to be

developers and so we're looking at

Symphony style is being very attractive

running two versions of modules giving

people more time to get update is being

sort of attractive and the current style

is easiest because we don't have to

change anything is maybe not the best

fit for our audience

and that's it for the general I know

that was like five years of action all

at once sorry it was a little monotonous

at times but we've got six minutes here

if you guys have any questions so we'd

love to answer so we currently have 350

contributed modules ready more than 64

of them are now in course so those are

not contributing are there now just part

of backdrop and if you look at the

backdrop - chicken trip github group

there's a hundred more that are in

development that aren't currently out

with official releases we have web form

okay with an upgrade path we have most

of the top modules for Drupal we have a

different slide and different

presentation that shows like hard top

what does it track 50 modules or

something and there's two that aren't

ready for backdrop one of them is a

localization update which is underway

and the other one was views PHP which we

hope not to have but we probably will

thank field collection oh yeah we're

gonna feel collection but we do have

multi field and paragraphs yeah so there

are upgrade paths how are you doing like

sitting on backdrop what are the things

like install the prime Softaculous the

backdrop is in both install Tron and

stalked oculus unfortunately those are

not open source projects and we can't

contribute to them so if you click a

one-click installer to get backed-up

installed you'll probably get a version

that's several versions old like 1.4 or

something every time we have a new

version I go and be like

hey we have a new version how do I

update the thing and then there's like

crickets on the other end so I think

they're they they don't we do release as

much faster than they do so it's really

hard for them to keep up on top with our

version but you're making a good point

that Softaculous and other things are

used by shared hosts to install open

source projects and that's that's the

audience that we're trying to serve and

so making it so that you can spin up a

backdrop side easily on any Namecheap

site or GoDaddy hosting or whatever

that's definitely our goal and making it

so that the automatic updates are

available out of the box we'll make

those kinds of monies more viable and

safer to use it'll install it click

update and on our site we'll keep them

up to date

even if installed tron doesn't know

there's new there so our head is in that

space but it's not the implementation

right now isn't where we want it to be

out of people like myself contacting

them instead once you give us a current

version or backdrop yeah maybe

board more popcorn all right apparently

bugging them is the way to make things

happen

[Music]

yeah yes of it so that would be hot

so we're using exactly the same testing

framework in the core as says the

question the question was what's the

status of testing frameworks and what

are we doing - how are we doing testing

in backdrop so we're doing the same

thing as Drupal 7 in in core we are

using a service called Zen CI which is

equivalent to I guess Drupal test me

where it was every pull request against

core we get a sandbox where we can test

things but we do not have PHP unit

testing or JavaScript testing yeah we're

still still saying this Drupal 7 running

along with simply tests

they're simple tests we do have our test

running is really fast really fast we

can run the entire test suite 4 which is

equivalent to all of Drupal 7 test we

have deacon to us views and all the

controls that we put in it runs in 5

minutes

then a complete test suite which is

which is pretty amazing but that's

actually due to optimizations in the

testing code rather than like it's not

it's not actually backdrop theme like 50

times faster than Drupal 7 testing but

the tempo tests are yeah any other

questions is there any interest or

reason

so we are more object-oriented than

Drupal 7 but we have not decided to

eliminate all non object-oriented code

so we use it where it makes the most

sense to use it but we don't just change

it for the sake of making it consistent

yeah and some things that we've added

yeah the entire layout system is all

object-oriented views obvious is

object-oriented previously and that kind

of serves as a model for not quite a

model because views object-oriented Ness

is a little crazy but there's the mix of

procedural and object-oriented code we

have no problem with all of our entities

are true objects not so there's no like

node arrow save but we didn't eliminate

the procedural one say there's still no

to underscore save we sort of took a

page from PHP where they have like both

the procedural date functions and the

object-oriented date functions and we

figured that audience is going to be a

better map to our audience anyway so we

have procedural wrappers around yep and

in many cases like blocks for example

there's still hook based blocks book

block view and hook block form which is

weird with the switch on Delta but you

can also in hook block info you can use

the class instead if you want but the

old procedure on that that is actually

not just wrapped in a class so it does

so it still works so that the backward

compatibility in there so if you have a

Drupal 7 module you want to run in

backdrop that uses up so it'll still

work but if you want to write a fancier

new style block module you can do it

that way - yeah well yeah so just in

general we like object-oriented code

we're just not wholesale ripping

everything out to replace it with

object-oriented

yes excellent question yes so we are on

the drupal security team and by we I

mean me we co release drupal back to our

security releases the same day as your

poll so if there's a core release

Richard cool there's a core released or

backed up on the same day that same

thing holds true for a lot of the

controls they're in backup core so if

there's a security release for use in

Drupal 7 there's going to be a security

release for backup on the same day so

all of our core stuff is is coordinated

the contribs stop we do proactively or

reactively instead of proactively so we

have a backup security team that watches

all of the releases that come out for

all of contributor poll and if there's a

Drupal module that also has a backdrop

equivalent it has a security release our

team will contact the maintainer of the

backdraft module and say hey there's a

scary release this module are you aware

of it are you working on it and if we

don't hear anything we are empowered to

make that release on their behalf so all

of our King trips tuck will be staying

secure even if the contributors are on

vacation ok well we're all out of time

thank you guys all very much and we

appreciate you guys being here today

[Applause]