What can Drupal learn from other projects?

And we're live. All right. Thank you all. If you are looking for what can Google learn from other projects, you're in the right place. If you're looking for probably a much better presentation about AI, Mark's gone right downstairs. But if you're here, then then hopefully this is what you're looking for. Uh, my name is Ruby Farmer, Chris Reynolds, and Renee Davis Le over there, as you can see from our picture. Um, you know, I I fed Chat GPT little tiny head shot of us and and you know, it did that. Um, and then I actually stretched and made it so that we're even fatter here than than we are in real life. But in any case, uh, this is kind of a interactive session, two ways around. First of all, um it in that uh we we represent some CMS's just you know that that we here and we're prepared to talk about that but if any of the audience members are familiar with other CMS's and want to bring in a perspective from that that would be terrific that would be very welcome. Um and we have similarly uh a few questions that we've queued up to wrestle with in terms of uh of looking for pieces um of knowledge that you can just compare and I'll give you space at the end. So I'm telling you sort of in the beginning and I'll I'll reflect this a couple times if you look at our questions and you say ah well it would have been more interesting if you had asked you know something else is cool. We'll give you a little time at the end to uh to address that. Um, all right. So, this is the session description for this thing that uh >> Luke did not attend the accessibility thing. >> Yeah, that's a lot of words for one slide there. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's So, moving on. Moving on here. These are these are the five initial questions that we're going to wrestle with. Uh why do young people choose or not choose to get involved in the platform? You know, how do what's the entrance look like? Uh what are the options for marketplace monetization? You know, how do people make money? What are the balances between the developer experience and the site builder experience? And that kind of presumes that everybody cares about the ultimate end user. You know, the people actually visiting the websites these things create. But, you know, that's important too. If there are differences there, that would actually be worth highlighting. Um, what do you like about your home team here? assuming I mean not really for for the purpose of this discussion we're pretending like we're you know particularly partisan towards you know a particular platform and you know we'll we'll ask shortly coming up any second now if there if there's anybody that wants to you know is familiar with other platforms that we'll talk about and market concentrations which the the question we'll talk about that later so Um, should we should we do little intros? >> I think so. >> Yeah. Okay. Uh, because that'll that'll sort of set it up where where we're from. All right. So, I'll start to nobody's surprise. Uh, my name's Luke McCormack. Uh, I've been building websites since 1993. Uh, but I've been building Drupal websites since about 2009. Uh so you know six is that 18 years ago I guess I started looking towards Drupal. Um and I'll I'll give like I've got maybe a slightly different story from a lot of Drupal people that I think is relevant to this and in that I came into Drupal not so much as a developer but as as a business person. I I worked for the Drupal Association uh selling sponsorships for Drupalcon and uh served as a business analyst and project manager and you know I I'm kind of an ex-coder and I I know code. I've always looked at the code but that's not really like my focus. I I'm definitely interested in sort of the uh the business side of it and I'll maybe work some things. >> My name is Chris Reynolds. Uh, I've been in the WordPress ecosystem for about 20 years. I also started making websites sometime in the 90s. Um, I've done a bunch of worn a bunch of different hats in the WordPress ecosystem. Um, I had started off just building stuff for myself and then I started freelancing and then I started working for a plug-in development uh company. Uh and then I got into uh making online developer training uh about WordPress and then I did agency stuff and then I went to Plurals Pantheon. I did work at Plite but that was earlier uh Pantheon uh where I was a software engineer uh with a WordPress specific focus and then I uh moved over to developer relations last year. >> My name is Renee Davis Leathers. I am currently a communication specialist at uh at the University of California's office of president. It's a mouthful. Um I'm the same timeline as them, late 90s for their first websites. And then um I came into Jumla, which is what I'm going to talk about today. From the um from the agency side, I was a creative director at the agency that I worked at, and I was one of the more technical people on the team back in the early 2000s. and we started spinning up large portal based websites for our clients, news aggregators, uh, cataloges, stuff like that. And but Jula was just a a shockingly cost-effective way for us to recover money back from what it would cost us to buy a CMS, particularly in the 2000s. Um, at that point, after I'd used it for a few successful times, I joined user groups. I started running a user group um, for a while. Um, team of people and I ran the one out here in San Francisco. But around the late 2000, late 2010s, it like it started to die off. Um, and my needs were for something that was as stable as it was, you know, able to do the other things I needed, but I also needed to stop doing tech maintenance. Like I did not want to manage websites anymore. That's a wonderful job for youngsters. Um, and so that's why when we moved up to Drupal, like I had to hire people, which is great, but I also learned where it where June's pain points allowed me to thrive where Drupal has impeded where I've not been able to use that particular tool to thrive in the same way. So, I'm just going to talk today about sort of the differences in community and I think um why Drupal probably is doing better than Jumla does and ever will, but why that's okay. I I I should actually mention in that early like before Drupal time that I was in and this might be another story is that before I I got into Drupal and CMS's I I built a whole bunch of my own content management systems like I I came from from a world where um I would construct a CMS in Cold Fusion in ASP in JSP in Vignette Story Server. Uh there's probably a couple of others that that are in there too. So So and that's actually how you know a lot of systems are currently still. You know, there's a I I looked at a market share map and of the very biggest sites of the, you know, sites that the top I think 10,000 sites I looked at, you know, 25% of them are customuilt CMSs that that aren't anything off the shelf at all. Uh, so, you know, that's that's a fact there. All right. So anybody here this is the first volunteer time. You know in my description I in our description we mentioned craft CMS which is a total lie. None of us know craft CMS. So the is there anybody that knows craft CMS here because that that would >> invite you. >> Is there anything that >> I've installed it? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean it kind of reminds me a little bit of some of the uh the attempts around doing uh static site generation. >> Yeah. >> Um but it's it's model I mean like it's not as purely static site generation as something like Hugo or Jackal but it's that same sort of concept but with these modules so that you can kind of expand the ecosystem of what it can hook into. >> Yeah. All right. All right. So going once, going twice. Any other anyone want to like defend a different CMS if it comes to it? You you can you know something curs you later, you can jump in. So let's let's talk questions. And again there's the five questions we looked at and if if one occurs to you feel free to >> Can I just call in on one? So the other people who users are not choosing the platform because >> here's you're jumping ahead here. We're We're going to do that question right now. Ready? >> Yeah. I was I was going to jump. >> Why were you asking me questions? >> Oh, well, once we're done with those, if there's any that >> he was asking, are there any other CMSs that anybody want to talk about? >> Well, that was one if there's any qu but the questions after we do these five. >> Okay. >> If there's time left. >> Okay, sure. >> We'll uh we'll try. So, let's talk the first one. Young people, new users. Uh I let me I guess read this for the benefit of course stuff. >> One issue that Drupal is wrestling with these days is the perception that young people or perhaps new people in general are not choosing to learn about it as a career choice. Are other projects feeling the same thing? What steps are the communities taking either intentionally or organically to this? Since I'm in Drupal, I I'll throw it to these two to >> Yes, the answer to the question is yes. WordPress definitely has felt that for a long time. We have uh have a long-standing reputation on like uh Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange and things like that uh of being the CMS that sucks. So, um, that I think affects people like, uh, uh, not wanting to use WordPress because they don't want to use something that sucks. I mean, like I mean, and I, yeah, it's it's been a it's it's a long and doesn't really matter if any of the the points that they that they make are particularly still valid. It still like has that reputation. And also what you were saying, Eric, about PHP, like, yes, for sure. Um, PHP also much maligned in in the dev circles. >> Yeah. Yet somehow you have 80% market share. >> Somehow we have a ton of market share. >> So something's working. What what what is working here? >> What is working is um I think we have a long history of backwards compatibility. So like you don't break stuff between versions. Um >> that's a big one. >> Yeah. I mean I >> I feel like I feel like that's worked in our favor quite a bit quite a lot. Uh as Drupal versions have have required uh major refactors um uh WordPress really hasn't. Um, and I think that there's been um, a lot of emphasis on trying to keep the user interface, the admin as intuitive as it can. And obviously I think it is probably more complex than it needs to be, especially in comparison to things like Squarespace or Wix or there's other things that people are are moving forward that that aren't either of any of these things that we're talking about at this table. Um but uh but that's also I mean certainly for me when I was first uh coming into it I had used I had looked at Jumla. I'd used Jumla a little bit. Um I had used like things like Zen Cart and Magento. Um, and compared to that mess, WordPress was a site for sore eyes. >> Can I add >> Go ahead. So, um, so here's what I think. Uh, young people, uh, it's struggling on the side. Well, we they have way more options now. You mentioned Wix, Shopify, web. >> You don't have to run your own web server. Like there's a cost. >> Yeah, exactly. They give you the whole thing already already. But as far as WordPress, I think WordPress is a great platform and it provides a lot of tools as a developer like coter blocks. You can build a different ways of blocks. Advanced custom fields is a nice tool to have as a developer. It will help you a lot. However, there are other things that makes WordPress as web flow like Elementor, DB and all these site builders. I think those are affecting the reputation of WordPress and the WordPress uh community itself. Me as a developer and the developer experience, I don't like those. >> Yeah, I was gonna say in a good way or a bad way because I feel >> you start saying that we're Yeah, WordPress had a bad reputation in these areas and I think it's because of that. Uh it's time for anyway. >> Why John people is not picking it? It's because it's uh easier to go these other ways and focus on other things. Uh and right now we have headless everything. So you can focus things like React and Angular that you can uh learn and together with the AI you can build a really fast website or platform uh with Shopify and React. Yep. >> Right. Or Elementor. uh and those are things that are you know it tastes easy to build a website. If I can provide like you as a business uh person if I can tell you I can give you a website in three days while this guy who is a great developer is going to give you a website in a month both doing the same while his platform is well robust and it can develop or add more value on your goal mine is faster and cheaper. >> Yeah. So those are the points uh easier and cheaper. I think I think uh another thing that has that plays into the idea of why young people don't want to use WordPress is there a big part of why people would choose WordPress and a big part of sort of one of the foundational ideologies that Matt Mullen has put out since the beginning is that it democratizes publishing that you own your content and increasingly as there are things like Tik Tok and Twitter and Blue Sky and Google Docs and all these other things where your content lives in other places and you don't actually own your content. And like the kids that that grew up with cell phones in their hands when they were, you know, 10 years old or younger, like they're used to not owning their content. >> So that's not that's not a a feature feature for them. >> Yeah. Um, and I think that's a really important thing that I think probably crosses all of the sort of CMS lines. Um, because yeah, I mean that that's that's a reason why I would want to own like work uh like run my own WordPress site or whatever, but that's not necessarily like obviously Shopify, you don't own that. You're you're going to live on their platform uh and that means that you're subject to their terms and if they want to shut your site down or whatever, like but like that's That's just cost of doing business to to folks that are, you know, a generation younger than I am, I guess. >> So, Randy, I want to give you a chance for that first question. >> So, the reason why is the same reason they've all said if it's harder to do, and I don't know if y'all remember being young, then we did not do hard, you know, you did easy. You just easy was easy is what 20 year olds do and 30 year olds do. And this is the most effort I want to put in for this. You know, it's like that's just that's just human. The reason I think you while we're talking about all of these symptoms like it's it's because it's bad or it's because you know no one likes it or it's because they don't learn it's because it's too hard. I don't think that's it. I think that all of these CMS's don't snag you users because they don't get new users where new users live and where they get engaged about doing this. High school kids, junior high kids, they love this They are into robotics. They want their own websites. They don't want to have to go to their parents and ask for a credit card. They just want to spin it up and do it. We're not catching them when they're interested in being self-sufficient with doing something on their own. And that's in their early teens until there's an education program partnered with open source CMS and major universities and major learning institutions that catch the kids when they're interested and wanting to have their own autonomy and that's in their teens. We It's like I hate to use this analogy, but the reason that drug dealers give you a free sample is to get you hooked. If you give a teenage level, I need dopamine in my brain kid this this standup ability to have this thing that is theirs that nobody else owns and nobody else watches and nobody else looks at. That's when they're interested in being autonomous. By the time they've gotten out of college, they've exhausted. They had to get through school. They had to get through learning everything they were told to learn before they could decide to think about things that might interest them. And that is an awful long time to let your potential audience be ignored by you. Neither. >> And I think that's the thing. >> Neither of my kids were interested in having a website when they were in their early teens, >> right? Because yeah, admittedly, you didn't catch them when they wanted it. Which of your kids did robotics or STEM or >> Right. If you catch them when they're interested. I absolutely assure you medical companies do this. We never see it because we never talk to doctors or live in hospitals. But medical companies will go to medical schools where the residents are captive audiences and they teach them for free how to use one specific product, Striker Hips. And then they have converted those residents into lifong Striker customers because they don't want to have to bother to learn something new. They learned how to do it in their 20s when they were in school. That is when you catch people to give them these things that are harder than just I push the button and I have a website. >> Well, to trying to catch the kids early, I I bought my daughter's name as a domain name on the day she was born, >> right? >> Uh so so it's uh it's registered. >> It's not like she just wants that. >> Oh, she she doesn't show any interest in it. >> She's going to want to have to have a need for it. It's a time and a life when a space online is important for me. because they it's so important for them to be on socials or it's so important for them to be wherever it is that their peers are. This where their peers are. This is where the old people are. They love us but old. >> And I think that's why I think it's because we do all of our marketing and all of our education and all of our training and we gear it towards people in their late 20s and early 30s. >> Okay. I'm going to actually touch on something that you mentioned that isn't in the questions, but I think it's kind of interesting. It sort of fills these. You mentioned Matt >> Mullen. uh the the founder of of WordPress and and Rene I'll I'll throw this over to you in a second too because I think it's actually an interesting thing about comparing these and perhaps other other systems is the way the personality of the founder kind of infects things >> well you know >> in in in Drupal's case for example Dre um was a hot computer science science case I I don't know if you guys ever looked at this, but I I looked at Dre's PhD thesis once and it it had nothing to do with PHP or Drupal. It was a Java thing and it was one of his advisors was James Gosling, the founder of Java, like the the guy that wrote Java. And so that that was sort of like, oh, okay, you know, if if you think that Dre doesn't know Java, like yeah, you haven't picked it up. So, so it the underpinnings of Drupal are are very techy as the case may be >> whereas Mullwink has a different story, right? >> Yeah. He's a high school dropout. >> Yeah. >> Uh yeah, he uh he was just like a 16-year-old kid on the internet that uh had a blog that was what V2 Cafe log. And uh it was one of those things where the primary contributor uh kind of probably gets busy with life uh and stops committing to the the project and he's like I want to fork this and he and a British uh software engineer Mike Little um who's actually a really amazing guy um uh said I'll help and they forked it and wasn't even like it's it wasn't foundationally built up from the ground uh as its own thing. It was a fork of a of another project. Um but it was forked at a time when some of the larger sort of proprietary uh paid sort of uh blogging andor content like publishing platforms like TypeScript or Type type. That's my model library. >> Yeah. Yeah. Like that was that that was where I went to. No, that's >> movable type. There we go. Uh and and other things that were like that started like shutting down. Um and so it just sort of serendipitously evolved um out of out of you know um but like yeah, one of the one of the things that I that he was the idea that that you own your stuff. Uh that's always been part of it. And I think just I don't know if that was an intentional thing or or or just something that came along the way, but like the idea of making sure that things are always backwards compatible. Um because that that has been a really big uh driving force for I think um what's kept WordPress in like we haven't lost market share >> because there there have been with with WordPress updates. Well, I I I think it's interesting the the head of the project was a user, was a content editor >> and and so you kind of see that as an ongoing story that at every point if anything gets in the way of that experience that gets, you know, put you know it it's focused on that. That's really what it cares about. Now I this will come to our next question. So Rene, >> it was different for the Jumla team. and they actually worked all at an agency together and had spun up the CMS that they liked and they had stood up a foundation to make it open source but their boss didn't want to do that. He wanted to monetize it and so they forked it. They all quit and they all spun up the Jumla Foundation where their big push was this will be open and free forever. That was their giant push. Not free as in beer but you like free as in knowledge. So yeah, it it's a different model. So it it really appealed to different users. >> Oh, those are interesting. So and Mango pretty much died, right? The thing they forked it from. >> Mama died after they forked. >> Um because nobody wanted to use what was janky and broken about it. They wanted what was coming next. >> All right. Well, that actually leads us into our second question and we hopefully will speed up a little bit because at this rate all afternoon, let's talk about monetization. Let's talk about the the money thing because this is actually big news in Drupal these days. Drupal is putting together a marketplace. Dre floated it in Atlanta and and it was sort of you know I think he expected more controversy than it he was expecting to get shouted down. >> Was a marketplace for just the news or a marketplace for everything? >> He pitched a marketplace for >> for recipes. >> It wasn't recipes. It was the thing that was one >> site templates >> site templates. Right. Right. Right. >> And when he said marketplace, market implies you will sell this. People will buy things from me in this market. So it was a it's going to be a stand up. You have to come to the Drupal website and buy stuff. >> He definitely he definitely framed it as a commercial thing. >> Yeah. I think that's where work I think that's where WordPress and and even gymn Excel was the marketplace because you can find a solution to a problem >> and then you can get you know in some cases you could get excellent support for that problem >> whereas Drupal like I can't tell you how many modules I go to their stupid page >> and there's not a single line of documentation anywhere and you're like okay well I can't use this thing because it's way You get what you pay for, >> huh? >> You get what you pay for. >> Exactly. You pay for it, right? >> Yeah. >> Serene, can you talk to the commercial Jula? >> So, ecosystem. >> Jula was offered to purchase many many times and turned it down and signed to set up their foundation in a different way. They I'm not exactly certain what their revenue model is, but I know it is not single ownership. It never has been. They keep getting offered. They're not going to buy that. The way that the Jumla people make money was generally businesses that spun up that p that used Jumla as a tool would be listed in the directory of people who provide this service. Then they would be listed in the directory of all the things that get made on the extension modules plugins blah blah blah blah um and then they get mentioned again like in a resources section and then they get highlighted sometimes like in their community magazine. So Jim's got a very good presence and that they continuously market to their base. Um but even with all of that in the last 10 years the number of dependable people in that space who are still making the thing they made 10 years ago or some version of it is dramatically reduced. >> There's just not as many people using Jumla anymore. So there's not enough people to support the extensions and to support the businesses that use those extensions. >> It's almost a softball uh issue about WordPress commercialization. So So while we talk about sort of the the progression of that is it getting more or less commercial is it getting bigger or smaller in terms of size? >> I think the the observation that all yeah talking about the commercial marketplace of WordPress is boring um uh because it has always been a thing and that's s sort of been a character characteristic that has made it distinct from specifically uh Drupal. Um but uh what I see that the the observation that I will make is that uh at one point in time there were as many individual uh producers of premium plugins and themes as there were developers in the space, right? Like everybody was doing it and everybody was trying to make money at it and then slowly over time they've consolidated and many cases like hosting company like WP Engine or uh Bluehost or GoDaddy or whoever will like swallow up like this large company that has made a couple really good plugins or this specific uh plugin and and do a partnership or something. Um and so it's it's it's growing but it's shrinking I guess. Like the money is still there but like Yeah. Um, and it's and it there's less of a sense of like me as an individual developer, I can make money by, you know, coming up with a plug-in idea and then putting it out into the marketplace and then make anything off of it. Um, I'll also sort of say that like the counterpoint to the um the the grand like the WordPress is is the best thing to model things off of is that uh that I observed when I when I was um talking to people at Drupalcon uh in Atlanta this year for my first Drupal con uh was that there's this idea that if I have a really good if I have an SEO module um and you have an SEO module and yours is sort of the the canonical one and I have like this different idea or a different take on something um we would be like in the Drupal space it's more common for us to try to work together and make the one SEO module the right one and work for work the best and have all of this stuff in the WordPress space. If I have an SEO plugin and someone else has an SEO plugin, I'm probably not going to work with them. I'm going to focus on my thing because that's my IP and I might go ahead and sell that. And that's one of the things that like I really like the Drupal model of like cooperation and collaboration and things >> which was not true when it comes to Drush and the Drupal console if you remember. No. Oh, did they they worked together? No, they did not. >> They didn't they didn't want to work together. It was a big thing. >> I I knew the people I didn't realize they had >> I just I I was not intend to bring drama to the table, but it was like I was just pointed out. Yeah. It's not always true on Drupal, but I I get your point. >> Yeah. >> And there's downsides to large groups of people collaborating. Everybody's got an opinion. Sometimes it's nice to have a guy who's in charge or a person who's in charge. >> When you don't have that, it's harder. >> Yeah. >> Um, so Chris, you were just giving the example of like sort of the difference in module collaboration, but how has that also affected like some of the big advancements in Drupal have been in like really heavily used contrib stuff going into core? How's that monetization of the plug-in ecosystem like kind of how has that affected like the ability to actually have this open source core? Um that's a very there's there's a really there's an interesting like balance uh which has has to do with like where I don't know the power sits um because uh Matt Mullenig uh you probably maybe you don't know but you probably know is also the CEO of a company called automatic that is a commercial uh entity that sells WordPress as a hosting thing. So is in charge of WordPress VIP which is a platform. Uh they own Pressible which is a uh also a smaller thing but they also have a plug-in suite which is a one plugin but has a million different things uh in it called Jetack which everybody on WordPress.com just gets out of the box. And so like from a Matt Mullen perspective, this is stuff that is like core, but it's like core light and making it available as a plugin is like, oh, you can do this cool stuff that you can only get here and you can get it on your own self-hosted WordPress site and get it, but then we're going to sell you all the upsells and whatever. Um, and it doesn't go into core. Uh but it kind of it's like we don't have a concept of like canonical plugins or contrib uh uh plugins but like that's sort of the idea is like this is like blessed in some sort of way. Um and what yeah it it creates a weird uh dynamic of of like power and who to trust and and what entities to trust. Um, yeah, it's it it gets I don't know, it gets gross from like like a purely like open-source like, you know, I want I want things to be free kind of perspective. Um, >> and I think it feels gross because that's where the money comes in. It's not free. Like it's kind of free. It's the concept. >> Well, then you guys get when you get to a module page that has no documentation, right? Yeah. Oh, open like you you got in the middle of uh being open source where you fix your house and pay in rent. Like same thing, you you either rent a house or buy a house. If you buy a house, either you hire a professional that's going to fix your stuff or you rent a house and your landlord is going to take care of everything. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. It's the same thing. So, you want to rent a house. >> Good analogy. >> All right. Let's let's move on. We can we can circle back to some of this when we get there's a question coming up about what you you know would cake or did other organizations but let's talk about uh the developer experience versus the site builder experience. Uh I I think here there there's a you know vivid contrast between Drupal and WordPress uh which you know I alluded to before can be traced to to the founders and leaders you know where they come from. You know Dre is very much a developer. Mullen is closer to an end user right >> I mean yeah he was using the thing before he started building the thing or working on the thing. Yeah. Yeah. So, >> um it's also I think the to that point too, I think that the way that WordPress was written and built, uh is more from the perspective of like it's always been easy to learn like PHP development through WordPress because it's not using like it wasn't using classes for a long time. It was not using like you know namespace. It's not using these these like computer science or technical like you know concepts. It's like pretty much just you know functional code like Drupal. >> Yeah. Right. Yeah. It's I mean it's it's it's and that's that's not a bad thing. It's been it's lasted this long and things have been put in there to improve things and it's got a I like I like the the the hook system that's that WordPress has. Um but but yeah it was not it was not built from a computer science starting point. Well, let me and um this will this will head over to you Renee. I mean one one of the things that strikes me from the internal users perspective difference between Drupal and WordPress is Drupal has this depending on how you look at it complicated rich set of of >> you're right with the first word >> of uh of information architecture tools, you know, the multiple content types, the fields, things like views built in, um, taxonomy. So, it's sort of a complicated structure there. Whereas WordPress traditionally has had >> everything's a post >> or articles and posts, right? >> Everything is a post. Everything is post. >> Everything's a post. And then there's like advanced custom fields and And so Rene what's what's happening in in uh Jumbo world in terms of information architecture >> I don't know the developers so I can't speak like but I have opinions I believe having worked in that space for 10 years and gone to a bunch of conferences Jumla was built for people like me it was not built for developers it was built for site builders it was built for you were technical enough to run a web server you were technical enough to understand that you probably need to put a firewall on top of your like you are not technical enough to go in and make swiping code changes throughout >> um WordPress wasn't quite secure enough and Drupal was entirely fast food home-cooked meal fancy restaurant >> steak. No, no, no, not steak. French freaking food. steak broken down into a puff of smoke, >> right? >> That's fancy food. >> Tiki portions. >> So, >> so >> back to the internet is >> to site builder, right? So cyberware is important and WordPress might might the focus on WordPress might have been hostive and all that but there's a community trying to walk away from it and create a better developer experience such as bedrock >> and acorn which by Drupal 8 we introduced symfony on the back end. acorn uh uh acorn philosophy is similar. They trying to introduce Laravel into the back end and and then you have Timbert that you will use tweak. I'm sorry. What are bedrock and >> Yeah, I don't know these things. >> No, I he probably uh so there is a there's a a development group called roots that does that has been around for probably about 10 years. Um, and yeah, they they have a number of different open source projects. Bedrock is a composer is a WordPress composer based WordPress uh like starter. Uh, Acorn is a way of implementing laral concepts. They have a couple other things that are like that that sort of like work in their ecosystem that are trying to bring a more highly technical sort of computer sciencey like element to developer focused >> WordPress. But but even even to that point like um WordPress has had a couple opportunities uh over the years to adopt Composer as a dependency management system and has resisted and instead persists in like you know the automatic updates which work and whatever but like from my developer perspective I would much rather use comp a composer based WordPress but that's a that's a very small percentage of WordPress users that use composer. That's that's my next question. Is WordPress the tool that's trying to be the developer tool or is everyone like, "Oh, here's WordPress now. Let's make it all things to all people." And then getting mad when that fails. >> Well, well, I would point out I mean I I think people might have missed at some point, but you know, the giant chasm between Drupal 7 and Drupal 8, >> okay, >> was was largely >> and that's why backdrop exist. I was gonna bring up background that's too painful. You know, uh Larry Garfield who is a very influential developer in in the world Krell um really pushed for acorn likes for you know composer and that whole workflow and talked D computer scientist into it. >> So so the the people that would be pushing against that >> unfortunately a quick side note is that that that's turned Drupal into an enterpriseonly product. >> Well, that that was that was kind of the point. You know, I I actually know know pretty well the the people that forked Backdrop at at the time for precisely that reason. They were like, "Holy cow, >> this is this is moving beyond where a hobbyist can do it, right?" like as a Drupal 8, you pretty much needed multiple fulltime developers on staff to keep the thing afloat and you're like in a >> Oh, well I mean I I had a related thought which is just like >> also the hosting landscape has changed and how you run like a local environment has changed >> and some of that for us Drupal people is due to those Drupal changes but some of it is like >> just like how the hosting architect arctures and also like how secure things need to be and stuff like that has changed and I mean because yeah Drupal 8 makes this big embrace of object-oriented programming and all these like modern stuff and the symphony framework and that made things harder >> but also I think like some of the documentation could be further along because in some ways it's actually like really easy now to spin up a local and tinker with >> Drupal. You can you can still run Drupal on B. So that's still an option. There's no reason to >> still running that. >> You can put like you can put like three or four commands in your command line and have Drupal running >> if you walk through the right steps. But I I'm just curious with the other ones as well, like how you've seen the the hosting landscape and the hosting architecture change how people are using it, how people are developing, how people are getting started. I think it factors into this site builder question, but also like I mean WordPress clearly like how much of that 80% is is not self-hosted, right? Like how much of that 80% is WordPress as a service? >> Uh I mean it depends on how you define WordPress as a service like if you're talking about like.com specifically or not because I don't think has the majority of those sites. But what I will say is that when I first started using WordPress, there was the five minute install, which was you upload your your files and then you you know type in a couple fields and you hit the button and then you've got a WordPress. Um now like if you go to like Blue Host or GoDaddy or something, they have a button that's install WordPress. And even in on Pantheon, you can say I want a WordPress site. Click a button and then there's your WordPress. So the five minute install is irrelevant at this point. That's one thing that has changed in the hosting landscape from, you know, over the years is is like you used to like have to know SFTP and now you can click a button and have a WordPress. >> Yeah. >> Um and that's the thing about the hosting. I we've talked about like the companies that oversee it and in Drupal's case um Dre's company is Aqua and and it strikes me I mean I've had a personal WordPress site on WordPress.com since 2007 or so in the free one which actually gives me quite a bit of functionality like the only thing wrong with it is I don't update it but like you know it it does its job great and Like I haven't I've never ever thought to do an upgrade, but it runs the latest thing and it runs fine >> and it's free. If I wanted the fancy features, I could pay 15 bucks a month or 20. >> I think you pay 10 bucks a month to just put a domain on it and then it's done atwordpress.com. >> Where where's the cheapest, you know, for the equivalent of Drupal on Aquia? the cheapest possible Aquia site and nobody has anything cheap but like cheapest possible one is like $150 a month maybe like like you you can't have you know what I get for free >> with WordPress is over $1,000 a year >> for Drupal and what is there do they do the >> very easy spin up tool I think the I think where Jimla early grabbed on to what WordPress was also were doing was the installation process could not be upload a bunch of nonsense to your server via FTP and then do magic stuff. It needed to be button button click click here we go. So their installation wizzywig their their wizard for that was actually pretty impressive for its time. Nothing else was as easy as spinning up a dependable multilingual Jumla site in 15 minutes >> and with with one of three site templates right like I've I've installed Juma just to see it and and it offers like three be fully they look realized, right? >> Um >> you'll have fully functional site out of the box. You could with maybe a couple of hours of work, you could have a fully functional multilingual authenticated site stood up. >> I think balancing developers and it depends on on the goal of your website, >> right? If it's a simple website, one developer, let's go for with a easy end user experience site builder, one click button. But if there's a huge platform, let's create a uh developer experience where you have you can integrate composer, good development, continuous integration, testing, all that. So you you can have a robust platform. That's what I think. Uh all right. So, so I'm realizing that we're going to run out of time before we like have too much things. So, so I we're going to skip the last question because I don't think we really care. But this one's pretty good though. You know, this question of of what's your platform's biggest strength? I mean, you know what? And and you know, I'm I'm representing Drupal here. So, so b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b basically, we're asking Jumla and WordPress. That's called WordPress, right? >> All right. Uh, it might be called WB regression. >> What What should Drupal steal from you? >> Uh, what are we not doing that you do that we could do that we should do? >> I would like an improved installation experience to in a graphical way. I I love the composer stuff. I really do. I can do it. It's not hard. But I'm a designer. I am not a developer. I'm a communicator. My job is to talk to the tech guy and then talk to the business guy and since they for some reason don't speak the same language, I translate. So sometimes you don't want to go get the developer involved. You're like, I don't need a development conversation about this. And in those cases, Jumla is very powerful. Like it is very empowering to be able to stand up things quickly without having a lot of overhead that comes with it. >> That's why I love the Drupal CMS installation. >> Yes. Um because I don't know Drupal but I install Drupal CMS and I feel like oh I understand this >> like I I get this. Yeah. >> Let me ask you a question about that. Do you >> do you believe it? Like it it's telling you it's doing things like like how how confident do >> I believe it because I've been trained to believe it because installing WordPress and Juma for a decade when it's done if you see a website it worked. >> I trust that it's doing something. I don't I don't like I see what I see it giving me words. I'm like, okay, it's probably doing that. >> And I can turn on a debug because the debug is delightful. You turn it on in the back end and the front end at the very bottom of your page, it just spits out everything that happened. >> Um, Juma's great for that. >> I think I just wanted to make a a quick comment on Jumla. um their development cycle is extremely slow >> painful >> and that is actually I think a positive thing >> because it doesn't change that much >> right right >> and Drupal is moving so effing fast that it's can be extremely frustrating the the the the amount of effort to go from CK editor 4 to five was just impossible hard to believe it. And and we haven't even done it yet because it's taking nine months to get prepared for it. >> Wow. >> And um I just think that people on the Drupal side, if they want to maintain a a product, they need to learn to tamper back a bit. >> I know everyone goes fast with AI and that's what we're like, oh my god, we have to churn like little jokes all the time. >> But we really don't. WordPress was very good at maintaining compatibility and not breaking things. >> Google was really bad at it. >> I I want to ask you actually about because because WordPress has had this long history of backwards compatibility except >> for Gutenberg for Gutenberg was this giant chain. >> How did that go? Uh, I think that Gutenberg was rushed into WordPress before people were ready for it because Matt wanted a big reveal at uh, Word Camp US that year. >> Um, it's nice to know that people are crappy everywhere. >> I mean, that's like and and that was that was a marker that was a line in the sand. We have a classic press which is basically the WordPress equivalent of backdrop which is WordPress without the Gutenberg. >> Um and uh there you can use it. It works you can install plugins on it and whatever. Um obviously it doesn't have the Gutenberg editor. I think Gutenberg is fine. Uh I think Gutenberg is is good now but when it was dropped in um I think there was a lot of resistance and I think that a lot of that resistance was was rightfully so. in the classic editor plugin which is like the most popular plugin. >> Yeah, exactly. >> That you cannot use Gutenberg. It's like a plugin to use the old. >> Has it just become norm in in the development world for us to purposefully put out software we know is not fake so that we get free user testing with like is that is that the thing now? It kind of feels like the thing. >> Yeah. I wanted to I wanted to hearken back to to the question about the you know young people today and whatnot which is like there's also been this trend lately uh for people that are interested in something outside I mean like there's a whole conversation we could have about like how social media and the sort of platform content has sucked away both developer talent and like people like where people want to put their stuff and and like you know versus the open web but there is like this sort of rise right now of things like Neo Cities and this whole like indie web movement. I'm curious what you think about how each uh how each platform could appeal to to that kind of growing segment of the web and be like the next step for someone that wants to actually create their own thing. >> All right, we're over time. So, so let me just answer like >> a sentence or two what you think about that one and then let's uh call it a day. >> Okay. I don't have an answer. No, I mean I I think that's a really good point. Like I I I think that um I I I think that it's a thing that that that WordPress is I mean the one of the one of the realizations that I came to when I went to Atlanta this last year and I went to the community summit was oh Drupal has this problem too because we've been hearing this in the WordPress ecosystem for years and years that that there aren to new people that are coming to to WordPress um and have been trying to figure it out and there's like uh there's like now a college credit system that's being put into some schools which which is to your point um but yeah I mean it's it's been something for a while that we've been trying to to wrap our brains around >> and I just think it's an opportunity I I don't there are a lot of reasons why open source exists but if you ask me the big reason open source as a concept is so popular is because of the shift that Microsoft did in the 90s where the United States government went bam antirust now you have to be responsible for the open source movement Microsoft and there was a shift there where we all reacted to that >> and I think that there's a shift coming again where for ages the kids have been like oh my content can be anywhere and everywhere there's going to be a backlash to having your life for sale and I think as these kids get older and when they have new kids they're going to back off that I think that it's an opportunity for Drupal Google and Jumla and WordPress leadership to get in that space now so that they're prepared for it to help set up the infrastructure to help set up the architecture so that those people can thrive. I don't think that's what's going to happen. I think that these groups will likely see that as a problem to be solved instead of an opportunity to be taken advantage of. But that's just making >> I thought you were going to bring it home with a positive leg out there. I think that this is a time of change and you never waste a crisis. This is opportunity and it's totally how you're going to look at it. There will be big change coming. It's what at what part of that change do you want to jump in and make noise? I I I I I love the the story you just told about how >> the the antirust >> things of the the excesses in various ways although it's kind of birthed >> the open- source renaissance of CMS's >> in the first part of this century. So >> fingers crossed >> happen in AI land. >> Yeah. >> All right. All right. Thank you all for coming. We're over time. [Applause]