drupal

It has been a while since I wrote a blog post and it's an acknowledgement that I dialed back some of my normal Drupal community involvement. Between several years of maintaining and rebuilding SimplyTest.me on top of my personal and professional obligations, it was good to take a break. I have since been promoted at Acquia and invested a lot there. I’ve also enjoyed time with my family, and recently got a puppy. I feel it is now time to look ahead. State of the Project I was in the first in-person Drupal Camp in Florida a few months ago. I presented a talk evaluating the landscape of Drupal

When I took over as the project lead for SimplyTest.me, the previous lead shared three primary things with me: The system had a non-trivial amount of technical debt and was rising more with time Significant changes were coming with Drupal 8, Composer, Drush, and more His interest was elsewhere As part of my proposal, I promised to do what I could to revitalize this. While this effort has taken years, we have hit another major milestone in our journey: We launched a completely new version of SimplyTest.me. We rebuilt the system from the ground up in an effort to revitalize the project. It’s

SimplyTest.me, like other large efforts in our community, requires many types of contributions to be effective. Effective today, I am announcing the creation of a new partners program. While this program will evolve with time, we wish to kick off the effort of recognizing both the individuals and companies that helped us get here and are helping us transform. All types of sponsors will be recognized through ongoing social media campaigns. This is especially important as we look to formalize a roadmap and need trusted partners to help us execute. Financial Sponsors Nearly three years ago, we

In the wake of the poor leadership demonstrated by the FSF, there was a sharp contrast displayed today at DrupalCon. Passion, interest, and innovation around open source software seems to be at an all-time high. One of the most prevailing open source projects, Drupal, just turned twenty years old. You can't help but recognize Dries and other long time community leaders for choosing open source before it became cool and helping to push the boundaries of what a large, open source community is capable of doing. Today's Driesnote was an inspiring message fitting for now and the road ahead. While

SimplyTest.me is a labor of love but it has been one of the most unique, satisfying contributions I've made to the community. Most of that labor has been dedicated toward maintaining the Drupal 7 version. Our maintenance was massively improved with the introduction of Tugboat.QA, but this year found major changes in the Drupal community with the launch of Drupal 9, the major changes to Composer workflows, and the Gitlab integration. All of these things are of high impact for Drupal and required major changes to SimplyTest. This has been especially hard to keep up with for me. Our latest

Vacation this year has been amazing. I've caught up on some of my long-standing to do list, like launching this new nerdstein site and digging into some of the newer technology I've wanted to explore. SimplyTest has some great new contribution I am excited about. I've spent a ton of time with the kids coloring, playing, and just enjoying these moments while they are young. It is shocking how quickly they have grown. I've cooked a lot and those close know how much I enjoy doing that. I've blogged more - finally - after a long hiatus and lack of motivation. I am currently enjoying an Eight &

Let me welcome you to the new nerdstein.net. I'd like to thank Ana Laura Coto for help with the design. I'd like also thank Jonathan Daggerhart for being there when I needed an assist. I am really happy to finally share this project with the world. This has been a long time coming. Three years. Yes, you read that correctly. Three years. Why? I prioritized learning. And, I am slow and methodical. This website is a culmination of many things I learned over a three year span. But, three years?!? Yep. I have a rewarding and challenging full time job at Acquia. I have a family with two young kids

Drupal 8 introduced a lot of changes. Its usage of best-of-breed dependencies, like Symfony, represented a major shift for Drupal. Drupal 8 also moved to a more nimble release cycle with its major and minor releases, allowing a major version of core to get new features in minor releases. Between dependencies releasing updates and changes to core being more common, Drupal needed to evolve to manage change. One way this happens is through deprecations. This provides a way for Drupal to evolve, identify old code as deprecated, and offer guidance on a replacement. Deprecations were especially

Our community has always meant more than just code. These last several months have been difficult to make the same kind of connection we have come to expect from things like in-person events. And, during this time, many of us are having to juggle new challenges, may have sick loved ones, face professional or financial uncertainty, and more. I’m choosing to do something about it. I am announcing free community care packages for Drupal. I care about our community and I care about the wellbeing of all of you. I recognize this is basically nothing at a time when people are dealing with much larger

An update from SimplyTest maintainers AmyJune and Adam: In late 2019, simplytest.me joined OpenCollective (https://opencollective.com/simplytestme), allowing transparency around accepting donations and creating expenses. The Open Collective Foundation (https://opencollective.com/) is a 501(c)(3) organization collecting these contributions on our behalf. Because of this, contributions to simplytest.me through OpenCollective are tax-deductible for US taxpayers. Supporting our project through the collective allows us to make strategic investments and maintain our critical infrastructure. It also