Mediacurrent is at the forefront of what’s next for the future of decoupling Drupal. We’re excited to team with Netlify to bring the modern Jamstack architecture to customers for better performing websites and web applications. By joining the Netlify Agency Partner Program, together we’re continuing our commitment to deliver transformative digital experiences to customers and run web projects at a global scale.

If your site is already running Drupal 8, you do not have to rebuild it to make it decoupled. Here are the key ingredients to decoupling your Drupal 8 site as well as the steps needed to make the transition.

Today, Drupal developers must acknowledge that when building a rich, stateful user-facing interface, it is best to use a modern JavaScript framework. Although less framework-driven JavaScript approaches like vanilla JavaScript and jQuery were good enough for many years, I have started to realize that my criteria for whether a piece of UX “should use a framework” has gotten pretty darn low.

Fortunately, even if Drupal is serving your site’s pages, it is possible to make use of React to build components. Some people refer to this method as “progressive decoupling.”

What is GraphQL?

If you are a frontend web developer you have probably heard of GraphQL or maybe you have even used it, but what is it? GraphQL is a query language for APIs that allows you to write queries that define the data you receive. No more emailing the backend team to update an endpoint for your application. The client developer defines the data returned in the request.

In our first post that announced the new Mediacurrent redesign, we looked at the evolution of Mediacurrent.com over the years and talked through the over goals of the relaunch. Now let's take a look under the hood to see some of the cool stuff we did and discuss what our development team learned along the way.

Recently, I was lucky enough to catch a workshop by Brian Sinclair entitled 'Accessibility: The Basics and Beyond.'  The workshop was part of the DinosaurJS conference in Denver CO.

As part of the accessibility group at Mediacurrent, I was excited to see the issue being addressed at a javascript conference.

No, this is not a joke.

Decoupled Developer Days took place in New York City on August 19th and 20th and was hosted by NBCUniversal at 30 Rock in the heart of Rockefeller Plaza.

This was a first time event. Mediacurrent was a Gold Sponsor and several colleagues were going to be in attendance including Co-Lead Organizer Matt Davis with whom I’m currently working with on a client project.

Whether you are a Digital Marketer looking to adopt open source and Drupal for the first time, or an Engineer, Strategist, or Project Manager assigned to a Drupal project, it’s critical that you define your approach to the “3 C's" of Drupal: Core, Contrib, and Custom. This decision directly impacts the performance, scalability, and maintenance of the websites and/or other digital assets that you are powering with Drupal.

At DrupalCon Baltimore, Preston So and I came up with an idea for a new Drupal conference, specifically focused on decoupled architectures, aimed at helping establish best practices and seeding a discussion about where Drupal as a whole is heading. Just a few short months have passed since then, and I’m excited that our first edition of Decoupled Dev Days is right around the corner.