2024 Trends: What's New for Drupal

People always want to predict the future. They say that is not good, but this doesn't apply to the Drupal 2024 trends. Undoubtedly, Generative Artificial Intelligence will shape tech trends and stimulate further progress in the website development industry.
However, there are other matters worth paying attention to. Mintz, World Wildlife Fund, Chupa Chups, Mattel, and other prominent Drupal websites won’t sit idly by viewing this chaos of innovations and advancements.
Now is the time for unique insights with Golems web development agency about what Drupal 2024 will be like. The more aware you are of prospective game-changing rules, the more up in arms you will act in SEO, marketing, and business growth strategies. Stay tuned to take a sneak peek into the future!

Overview of Drupal in 2024

Suppose the company follows a similar Drupal development cycle as its tenth version. In that case, the upcoming release of Drupal 11 is anticipated to take place in both beta and full-service projects in June, August, and December 2024. The team plans to accelerate its efforts to implement high-end Symphony and other features.
The Drupal community will strive to stick to its six-month release strategy and fix issues and bugs that arise on the go. If things go according to the original plan, a well-tuned Drupal 11 version is expected to be launched by the end of 2024 and backed up by long-term support and maintenance.
Another breaking news in the life of Drupal is that its seventh release will cease to exist in 2025. From this perspective, keeping track of release windows and development cycle accomplishments is advantageous — everything to control crucial innovation milestones for your Drupal website.
In the long run, Drupal 10 will also undergo significant alterations. Under particular circumstances, its support and maintenance are expected to conclude upon the launch of Drupal 12, which is anticipated to be in the middle or end of 2026. Keep track of the company’s news to know what else may happen next.

New Drupal Features and Functionalities

Drupal aims to simplify website and application development for enhanced online presence in 2024. Using continuous technological enhancement and innovation, the company strives to incorporate the best practices under the same roof:

1. Headless CMS frameworks;
2. PHP development
3. Debugging processes
4. AI technologies
5. Next-gen cybersecurity standards
6. New tech horizons regarding the platform’s accessibility, the computational power required, and compliance with SEO guidelines.

Drupal is projected to work on intelligent applications without providing the leading roles to AI — it isn’t the only worthwhile trend to stick to in 2024. 
Businesses will benefit from ever-improving CTEM and AI TRiSM tactics natively hidden within Drupal’s modules. With over twenty years of expertise in the market, the company has proven how crucial risk mitigation and vulnerability resilience are in practice.

Up-to-date Design Patterns

Website interfaces play a huge role in customer engagement and satisfaction. The structural and informational hierarchy of the platform will predetermine how intuitive its navigation style is and its level of user-friendliness. Here are some influential web design tendencies to embrace in 2024 and help your business thrive:

• Minimalist navigation — space will preserve its power in the Drupal landscape in 2024. Considering the need for accessible and intuitive platforms, tools to create clean and consistent pages will be extremely sought-after. Accelerated Mobile Pages, API Module, and Administration Views will prove their worth.
• Typography — variable fonts will provide more creative and decision-making freedom for interested parties, promoting greater flexibility and versatility. For more details, you can read the official Drupal style guide. It includes actionable insights on implementing the latest markups, grid, typography elements, etc., to achieve a highly accessible platform.
• Voice user interface — voice search and assistants will become the top solution, especially for inclusive platforms that cater to the entire palette of end-user interests. The growth behind their popularity is evident, but the variety of tools to present high-quality solutions is still lacking. Drupal will continue advancing its modules and overcome the boundaries of the current version, namely, Custom Voice Search.
• 3D and vector graphics — incorporating such elements will preserve the boom of immersive, enticing, and dynamic internet-based spaces. Given that they are compatible with product displays, background images, and other web design patterns, multiple options exist to test your creativity in practice. In Drupal, developers can test 3D Buttons, 3D Flipbook, and W2CSS Theme to see how things work.

New Modules and Extensions in Drupal

With Drupal 8 and further versions, enthusiasts can customize their modules and personalize the target system’s functionality effortlessly:

• DevOps practices — so-called composable website architectures will rock it in 2024. Drupal will surely benefit from implementing efficient tools to streamline IT product development cycles without investing a fortune in inefficient budget drafts.
• Headless Drupal — the suite of modules under the roof of Decoupled Drupal will come in handy to generate and publish content across multiple channels without switching between dozens of third-party tools.
• Automated testing — this functional profile in the Drupal universe will contribute to the test coverage and quality of early error detection and troubleshooting. At the same time, such features are promising for large-scale projects — higher accuracy and more significant ROI. So far, the Automated Testing section provides functional, kernel, and unit tests.
• Accessibility-first performance — advocating for accessibility-first principles in web design is necessary for those seeking up-market frames for brand loyalty, customer engagement, and overall company’s appeal and reputation in the industry. Start by checking the Access Policy module in Drupal to see its efficiency.
• PWAs — the palette of advantages progressive web applications can offer is extreme. It perfectly matches cost-efficient, secure, and offline-actionable programs for any demand. Check how to create your first PWA in Drupal!

See what modifications will have an impact on your Drupal’s operability and productivity in the future:

• Next Generation Page Builder — working on accelerating the development, accessibility, scalability, and efficiency of pages on Drupal’s websites.
• Project Browser — focused on streamlining end-user work with Drupal’s modules.
• Recipes — aimed at advancing the quality of starter kits and implementing more versatile and premium-class distributions to Drupal’s interface.
• Automated Updates — simplifying supervision-free system updates within the Drupal environment.

Improving the Quality of Drupal Code

Drupal has thousands of themes and modules, and future performance optimization may involve adopting PHP 8.4. The list of features to set new standards for PHP-based coding won’t be complete without match expressions, attributes, named arguments, and union types. To cut it short, they aim to enhance the PHP code’s readability, efficiency, safety, and clarity.
Aside from the already-mentioned Symphony to streamlining codebase maintenance, Drupal may also work on such innovations in its future releases:

• Smart Chatbots — the versatility of PHP's open-source nature combined with intelligent bots will rush personalized and satisfactory customer support experiences into a business's veins.
• FuelPHP — working on the site's architecture won't be completely automated in 2024, but it doesn't mean extra means for web solution security won't arise either. The FuelPHP framework's extendability will provide your project with a competitive edge.
• Slim is an ideal choice for agile projects in 2024.
• IoT integration — thanks to seamless and instant interaction with IoT gadgets and systems, Drupal websites may reach ultra-modern connectivity ranges.

Let's predict the following big things!

Don’t hesitate to contribute to the prospects of Drupal’s development as a member of its community! Your insights as those working with its tools and modules regularly might highlight unique use cases and scenarios of futuristic dos and don’ts for the platform.

What’s ahead for Drupal’s development journey? 

• 5G-enabled IT products
• services for implementing human-machine interfaces on websites
• the metaverse boom
• revolutionary automation services
• quantum computing
• AI boom

Conclusion

All in all, one thing is for sure — the time of digital change will pick up more steam in 2024. The areas of influence will cover many must-have aspects of successful IT operation, including functional efficiency, prominent supply chain management, customer satisfaction, competitive edges, etc. The abrupt transition from classic to AI-based technologies in 2023 will only keep its momentum in the market.
All of the above is valid for Drupal and other businesses. Tech trends, emphasized in the guide, will require specific reskilling initiatives and effort so as not to let the rush for next-generation innovations ruin your previous progress. GraphQL, PWAs, cybersecurity and blockchain, and headless Drupal are certainly on the company's follow-up update list. What else do you need to meet ever-shifting customer requirements and boost your Drupal websites?