Drupal 10: A Deep Dive into the New Features

The Drupal 10 release fueled the web developer community with enthusiasm to explore the major updates.

Undoubtedly this is exciting news for anyone managing a site as the update comes with exciting features to the table, especially when it comes to making websites work better and faster.

Let’s overview what’s new, improved, and see why it matters in a way that’s easy to understand.

What are the new features of Drupal 10?

• Claro Administration Theme:

Using the Claro admin panel is as straightforward to navigate as writing a document in Google Docs.

It’s designed with a focus on simplicity and minimalism, catering especially to those who aren’t well-versed in the languages of the web like PHP, HTML, or CSS.

The idea behind this simplicity is to empower site owners, helping them reach their online goals with ease and without always needing a developer by their side.

Drupal’s strides in enhancing its admin UI and focusing on accessibility standards show a promising path toward becoming a top CMS choice.

How?

The shift from the Seven admin theme to Claro wasn’t just for a change of scenery.

It was a response to the evolving needs of web design and development. Claro is about reaching out to non-experts in web engineering, making Drupal a platform for everyone to share their ideas and services.

To help you gauge the key sections of the Drupal admin panel with Claro better, we have noted down the features:

1. 1. 1. Content: Here, you can manage all the content created, including profiles and comments. It’s about keeping everything organized and accessible. The upcoming CKEditor 5 will make content creation as familiar as using Microsoft Word or Google Docs, with added functionalities like drag-and-drop for media files.
      2. Structure: This section lets you shape the site, dealing with blocks, content types, and more, crafting the website’s architecture.
      3. Appearance: Customize the look and feel of your admin panel here, choosing designs that suit your style.

   a) Typography: With a base font size of 16px, Claro ensures that readability is never compromised, making content easy on the eyes.
   b) Iconography: Accessibility takes the front seat with icons designed for all users, including those with visual impairments or limited dexterity.
   c) Color Palette: A light, uncluttered interface with a splash of bright blue for emphasis, making navigation not just easy but visually pleasant.

   1. Extend: For those looking to add or remove functionalities, this is your playground, where modules come in and out.
   2. Configuration: The backbone settings of your website, from languages to image sizes, are all adjusted here.
   3. People: Manage user profiles and roles, ensuring the right people have the right access.
   4. Reports: Keep an eye on logs, warnings, and updates, maintaining a healthy website environment.
   5. Help: A resource hub for understanding the modules and features at your fingertips.

   2. Olivero Default Theme: 

   Olivero provides an exciting starting point, encouraging you to craft engaging and inclusive online experiences. It’s a fitting tribute to Rachel Olivero’s legacy, ensuring the digital world is accessible and welcoming to all.

   Olivero went through a meticulous process with accessibility gurus to meet the AA level of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

   This means it’s built to be user-friendly for everyone, a nod to Rachel’s vision for an inclusive digital world.

   Now, if you want to tweak your site, Olivero’s got you covered with customizable colors, fonts, and layouts. It’s like having a digital canvas where your website can truly reflect your style or brand.

   
   Here is the design options:

   Design 1 :
   Design 2 :

   
   Design 3 :

   
   Olivero ensures your site looks great on any device. It’s all about making sure your audience gets the best experience, whether they’re on a desktop or scrolling through their phone at a coffee shop.

   Besides that, it offers a variety of styling and design options, giving you the freedom to make your site uniquely yours. Whether you’re aiming for a corporate look or something more creative, Olivero adapts to your vision.

   Olivero and Claro, Drupal’s administration theme, work together really well, providing a consistent experience for both your site’s visitors and administrators.

   3. Theme Starterkit Tools: 

   Starterkit is not just the new kid on the block; it’s the future, offering all the good stuff Classy had right within the core of Drupal.

   Starterkit is all about making life easier for developers, especially newcomers to the Drupal scene. It’s about less fuss and more fun in theme development.

   By handing over a robust starting point, it reduces the initial heavy lifting, allowing you to focus on customizing and innovating.

   Plus, with theme maintainers at the helm, expect quicker updates and more nimble innovation.

   The beauty of Starterkit lies in its simplicity and efficiency. It’s like having a theme blueprint.

   It inherits from a core theme called “starterkit_theme,” which itself is built on top of “Stable9.”

   This setup ensures that your theme gets a familiar structure, similar to what Classy offered, but with a twist.

   Instead of just inheriting from a base theme, Starterkit copies the default markup and CSS right into your new theme. It’s all about giving you a head start with a solid foundation.

   Getting started is easy peasy. You’ll need Drupal 10 support and PHP 8.1 at least. Even if you’re feeling adventurous, Starterkit’s got you covered.

   You can take a custom theme and use it as your starting point. Want to use Olivero as your base?

   That’s possible too, with just a slight tweak to the command.

   4. Improved Multilingual-Support

   Drupal 10 has rolled out some exciting advancements that greatly enhance multilingual website capabilities.

   One major new feature is the introduction of the “language type” entity. This useful addition allows administrators to easily add new languages directly from the backend interface. Picture being able to greet website visitors in their native language right when they land on your homepage.

   But the multilingual improvements don’t stop there. Drupal 10 has also implemented smarter automatic language detection abilities.

   Thanks to improved language negotiation algorithms, the CMS can now better identify each user’s preferred language and serve up a truly personalized linguistic experience from the moment they arrive.

   Anyone who has managed a multilingual site knows the challenges of keeping translations properly synchronized across multiple languages.

   Drupal 10 tackles this head-on with an overhauled translation management workflow. Maintaining translations for not just site content, but also feeds and other language integrations is now a much smoother process.

   The language selector itself has also received a modern new interface, providing more flexibility and customization options.

   Users can now switch languages on your site with just a couple of clicks, ensuring they always have access to the content most relevant to them.

   These robust multilingual capabilities unlock new potential for businesses and organizations to create robust, professional websites that can reach audiences in every corner of the world, no matter what languages they speak.

   With Drupal 10, you can confidently deliver your message clearly and consistently across all languages.

   5. Advanced Security Features

   Drupal 10 release introduces a tougher way to protect passwords with something called Argon2id. It’s like a vault that’s much harder for hackers to crack open, ensuring your website’s user credentials stay safe.

   With security advisories right in the Composer file, you’re always in the know. It’s like having a security briefing every morning, so you can proactively keep your site safe and sound.

   CSRF attacks are like tricksters trying to make you do things you didn’t intend to. Drupal 10 beefs up its defenses here, making it much harder for these tricksters to succeed.

   Think of cookies as little bits of information. Drupal 10 development makes sure these are encrypted, making it tougher for eavesdroppers to snatch them away.

   
   The two-factor authentication (2FA) works like a double lock on your door. With 2FA, even if someone gets your password, they need another key to get in, making unauthorized access a lot harder.

   Keeping up with updates is like changing the locks regularly. Drupal 10 can do this automatically, ensuring your site’s defenses are always up to date.

   While Drupal 10 brings a lot to the table, there are other things you can do to make your site Fort Knox:

   1. Updates Are Your Friends: Keep everything up to date – the Drupal core, modules, and themes.
   2. Strong Passwords: Use them, love them, and maybe even enforce policies around them.
   3. Limit Permissions: Not everyone needs the keys to the kingdom; only give access to those who truly need it.
   4. Back It Up: Regular backups are like insurance policies for your website. Keep them safe and separate.

   6. Performance and Scalability

   Drupal 10 has really stepped up its game with better caching mechanisms.

   Think of caching as a shortcut for your website. Instead of taking the long route to fetch information every single time someone visits a page, caching keeps a ready-to-go snapshot of that page handy.

   This means your site can serve up pages super fast, making visitors happy and reducing the strain when lots of people are browsing at the same time.

   It’s a bit like having a fast pass at an amusement park – you get to skip the long lines!

   Then, there’s the efficient content delivery.

   This is all about getting the content from your site to the user’s screen without dilly-dallying.

   Fast and reliable delivery is crucial because, let’s face it, no one likes waiting for a page to load. Drupal 10 makes sure your content is zipping across the internet and landing on screens swiftly.

   Lastly, the improvements don’t stop at just making things faster for the users; they also extend to the backbone of your site – the database.

   7 Reasons to migrate to Drupal 10 

   Still not convinced enough about the migration? Here are our compelling reasons that demonstrate why migrating to Drupal 10 would be the best choice.

   • Advanced Security

   Drupal 10 sets a new standard for security in content management systems. Upgrading to Drupal 10 is like putting your website in a suit of armor.

   With its advanced security features and robust architecture, it offers advanced protection against online threats, ensuring your site’s data remains safe.

   

   Regular updates and a proactive security team mean vulnerabilities are addressed swiftly, providing peace of mind and safeguarding your digital presence against emerging threats.

   • Enhanced content editing experience 

   The content editing experience in Drupal 10 is significantly improved, designed to be intuitive and user-friendly.

   The inclusion of a modern WYSIWYG editor and streamlined workflows allows content creators to craft and manage content with ease, reducing the learning curve for new users and enhancing productivity for seasoned editors.

   • Removed less used modules & improved content management experience 

   Drupal 10 streamlined its core by removing deprecated modules and integrating more efficient ways of managing content. And ditched the modules that were just lounging around making managing content feel like a chore.

   This decluttering not only makes the CMS lighter and faster but also simplifies the content management process. Now it’s sleeker, quicker, and lets you zero in on the good stuff without the clutter.

   It’s like your CMS finally cleaned its room, so you can find everything you need without stepping on a Lego.

   With an emphasis on efficiency and usability, Drupal 10 offers a more refined content management experience, enabling users to focus on what matters most

   • More themes with better functionality

   With Drupal 10, there’s a broader selection of themes available, each offering improved functionality and responsive design.

   These themes are built with modern practices in mind, ensuring your site is attractive, accessible, and performs well across all devices.

   Whether you’re looking for a theme that’s sleek and professional or dynamic and engaging, Drupal 10 provides the versatility to bring your vision to life.

   • Ready-to-Go Headless

   Drupal 10 is optimized for headless applications, offering unparalleled flexibility in how content is delivered and presented.

   By separating the back-end content management from the front-end presentation layer, Drupal 10 migration allows developers to use modern front-end technologies.

   It helps in creating highly interactive and dynamic user experiences while leveraging Drupal’s robust content management capabilities.

   • Project browser

   The introduction of a Project Browser in Drupal 10 simplifies the process of discovering and installing modules and themes directly from the Drupal admin interface.

   This feature enhances the site-building experience by making it easier to extend and customize your Drupal site with the vast ecosystem of community-contributed projects.

   

   • Continuous improvement

   Drupal lives and breathes continuous innovation.

   With each new version, the platform unveils a fresh wave of groundbreaking features, brilliant enhancements to existing capabilities, and performance optimizations that’ll blow your mind.

   This relentless drive to push boundaries ensures Drupal doesn’t just lead the web tech pack – it laps the competition. Drupal evolves proactively to outpace the ever-changing needs of its users.

   Drupal 10 is the ultra high-performance engine powering your digital experiences.

   It’s a turbo-charged beast under the hood, supercharging every aspect from front-end browsing to backstage content choreography.

   Whether visitors are soaking in your content or you’re producing the next content masterpiece, Drupal 10 delivers an experience so silky smooth, rapidly responsive, and finely tuned, it’ll blow your sneakers off.

   From running a humble blog to orchestrating a vast ecommerce empire, this performance powerhouse enables your site to effortlessly scale to handle tidal waves of traffic.

   The user experience is refined, polished, and downright impressive. Drupal 10 takes your digital ambitions into an uncharted realm of performance possibilities.

   Get Expert Help With Your Drupal 10 Upgrade

   Upgrading to Drupal 10 is more than just making a transition; it’s about transforming your online presence to leverage the full suite of features and improvements that Drupal 10 offers.

   But here’s the thing, navigating through the complexities of such an upgrade can be daunting. This is where the expertise of a Drupal development agency can be beneficial.

   At cmsMinds, we have a dedicated team to ensure your Drupal 10 upgradation is smooth, efficient, without barreling into any pitfalls that can divert you from your core operations.

   Our expert developers have worked in the trenches of Drupal development that ensures we can tackle any changes that comes our way.