The performance and scalability improvements promised by the upcoming, 8th version of Drupal are getting the attention of the Drupal website builders working for the European Commission. The open source content management system will also be able to accommodate larger sites, and will also improve delivery of turnkey web site solutions (Software As A Service, SAAS), the EC developers notice.
The EC is already offering Drupal websites as a service to its Directorate Generals and executive agencies. This explains why the developers are also very interested in the announced options to automatically deploy Drupal in so-called containers (Docker), easing the management of running multiple instances of the CMS.
The 8th version Drupal 8 was unveiled at DrupalCon Barcelona 2015, which took place from 21 to 25 September. The conference drew a great many of the Drupal developers working in Brussels on the European Commission’s websites. “The entire Joinup development team was there” said Koen Burm, one of the Drupal developers contracted by the European Commission. “For our team members, this is one of the most important Drupal events.”
Consolidation
A group of EC Drupal website builders meet every two to three months, to review development issues, and exchange best practices. Team members are told about news from recent workshops and conferences, and pointed to useful documents and videos. One example recently passed around at such a meeting is a video they recommend their colleagues to watch, on solving performance and scalability problems that might crop up in Drupal sites. That video was created from a presentation at the Barcelona conference.
In 2013, the European Commission selected Drupal as the CMS to be used for the Europa platform. This will replace both a proprietary enterprise content management system and several other websites linked to the platform that are mostly also built on Drupal.