Drupal Starshot progress update

Just 37 days have passed since Dries Buytaert presented his ambitious vision for Drupal Starshot, an initiative aimed at revolutionising the Drupal Content Management System (CMS) by making it significantly more user-friendly and accessible, particularly for those new to Drupal.

Speaking today at DrupalJam Utrecht to a capacity audience, Buytaert reported to members of the European Drupal community that remarkable strides towards achieving Starshot have already been accomplished.

A new Startshot Hub is now available providing details of leadership team, mailing list, upcoming webinars and recordings, ways to engage with the Starshot team.

Starshot is Drupal's recipe for rapid innovation

Buytaert explained how consensus has been reached that the Starshot product will be purposefully engineered to take full advantage of “Recipes”, a way to install packaged functionality.

Historically developers wishing to Drupal extensions offering packaged functionality have been hampered by the fact Drupal web sites are created from unique combinations of modules, themes and approaches.

Starshot will for the first time in Drupal's history provide a consistent and predictable base platform which much simplifies the creation of such extensions.

Similarly to how we have all becoming familiar with install apps on our mobile devices to meet specific needs (without being coders), recipes will empower site owners to easily add packaged features on top of the default Starshot CMS. These recipes might be an events section, landing page with form, blog for example.

Several recipes can be combined to achieve novel solutions, most importantly of all it will be possible to install recipes without the need to code.

Much in the same way as the Apple AppStore opened the floodgates to innovation on the iPhone, I predict Drupal will see a proliferation of Starshot compatible recipes which will see the platform being opened up to new markets and business models.

Ways to get involved

With the newly announced leadership team now in place and several upcoming opportunities to meet in person, online or via slack there are ample ways those wishing to contribute to get involved. Buytaert emphasised that many roles were needed to achieve Starshot way beyond the code including user experience design, testing, marketing and more.

Dries acknowledged that an important element leading to the success of Starshot will be marketing initiatives. These have for some years been building momentum and have the stars have aligned with the recent announcement of a new vibrant Drupal brand.

It is clear from the high level of interest, pledges of contribution to the Startshot initiative and rapid mobilisation of teams around key areas that in the coming weeks momentum will build.

Make sure you sign up for updates to keep abreast of this fast moving topic.

#drupaljam