Drupal professionals have to constantly upgrade their skills to keep up to date with technology. The good news is that much of the knowledge now is available online, and there is no more need to spend hours in the library looking for resources that can give answers to your questions. In the 21st century, most of the topics are covered in different blogs.
Vardot was featured as one of the top 20 Drupal blogs for Drupal developers. In this post, we recommend several resources (in addition to the one you are reading now of course) for you to subscribe. We believe that these resources will give you an excellent overall picture of what is happening in the Drupal community.
Drupal Blogs You Should Be Reading in 2017
Dries Buytaert blog
Dries' personal blog offers a glimpse of his work at Acquia and his views on Drupal and open-source software, in addition to general news and his opinions about the Drupal community.
If you are looking for low-level Drupal tips from the grand master himself, this is not the source of it. Instead, you will find a high-level and strategic perspective of where Drupal has trekked before and where it is heading, from none other than its creator. It will keep you well-informed of Drupal trends.
In our opinion, Dries’ blog is simply the best online resource for catching Drupal trends and formalizing your Drupal strategy.
Acquia blog
Acquia is the company that Dries Buytaert co-founded to provide cloud-based Drupal services, and according to a recent report, the number 1 organization for code contribution to Drupal in the 12-month period ending on June 30, 2017. The Acquia blog publishes posts by Dries, other Acquia insiders, and guest bloggers about 4 times a week.
This blog is the mother lode of knowledge about all things related to delivering Drupal enterprise solutions. You will find posts on best practices, architectural considerations, marketing trends, etc, on full-cycle Drupal commercialization.
Developers should take note of posts from the Acquia Developer Center.
If you want to learn more about delivering enterprise Drupal solutions, the Acquia blog is a great resource.
Vardot is proud to partner with Acquia to deliver professional hosting and training services.
Lullabot blog
The Lullabot blog averages about 2 new posts per week, and its target audience is enterprise Drupal developers. Building a modern enterprise Drupal website involves integrating multiple open-source technologies that must work well together. Consequently, enterprise developers must be well-rounded in various open-source technologies in addition to Drupal. The Lullabot blog has an excellent coverage of the entire Drupal technology stack.
One great feature of this blog is that it also features a library of podcasts on various Drupal topics. If you have a long commute, these Drupal podcasts are a great means for making good use of your time. (Another good source of Drupal podcasts is DrupalEasy.)
If your interests are entirely developer-centric, you may want to subscribe to the Lullabot feed.
Drupalize.Me blog
Drupalize.Me, a sister company to Lullabot, runs a website dedicated to Drupal developer training. It is made up of 2 main components: a blog and a series of technical guides/tutorials. The Drupalize.Me blog mainly posts Drupal community news and announcements about new Drupalize.Me guides. A small proportion of the guides are free (samplers), while the rest are available for a monthly membership fee.
Despite the paid subscription model, Drupalize.Me offers arguably the most systematic approach for Drupal developers of all skill levels to upgrade their Drupal expertise online. The guides are categorized into topics: an introduction to Drupal (including Drupal 8), site building, theming, module development (including API), site administration, and backend and infrastructure. The guides cover multiple Drupal versions, including the latest Drupal 8 as well as the older Drupal 6 and 7.
Drupalize.Me is a good investment for Drupal developers for continuing their Drupal training because of its breadth of topics and its depth in skill level. For a detailed list of the main online resources for learning Drupal, please consult this Vardot guide.
Volacci's Drupal SEO blog
Volacci's Drupal SEO blog, as its name suggests, targets marketing professionals rather than developers. Marketing has become a critical component in the Drupal community as evident in the recent DrupalCon Vienna 2017. DrupalCon hosted the very first Drupal Marketing Sprint in the DrupalCon Vienna program. So, we include Volacci’s high-caliber Drupal SEO and marketing blog on our recommended subscription list.
This blog is updated with a new post about once every 2 weeks. It covers Drupal industry news, SEO techniques, and best practices. Ben Finklea, CEO and the primary author of the blog, is a world-renowned Drupal SEO expert. He was also the presenter for the Drupal 8 SEO hands-on seminar at DrupalCon Baltimore 2017.
If you are strictly interested in the SEO and marketing perspectives of Drupal, this is a blog that you should definitely follow.
Don't want to read too many Drupal blogs at the same time?
No problem, there are several resources where you can find the latest news about Drupal from all over the world. Honorable mentions of blogs worthy of your subscription are listed below.
Planet Drupal
This is the official Drupal blog. It aggregates posts from a pre-approved list of Drupal-related blogs. The volume is quite high, about 40 posts per week. The scope spans a broad spectrum of development as well as business and marketing topics.
Reddit Drupal
Reddit Drupal is another high-volume website that covers anything Drupal-related. Because it is being hosted on the Reddit platform, you will find the website more interactive than the other Drupal blogs. You can ask questions directly on Reddit or search through the existing posts for possible answers.
The Weekly Drop
This is a handcrafted weekly digest of the best Drupal-related blog posts from each week. If you find following multiple Drupal blogs too time-consuming, you should consider subscribing to the Weekly Drop which can keep you up-to-date with a minimal weekly drop of relevant articles.
Drupal Association Youtube channel
If you could not personally attend a DrupalCon conference, the best consolation is to watch the video recordings of its always educational workshops on Youtube. The Drupal Association Youtube channel has been updated with the workshops presented at the recent DrupalCon Vienna 2017.
To keep abreast of developments in the fast-changing Drupal community, we recommend that our readers subscribe to the above Drupal blogs in addition to Vardot’s own. And what is your favorite Drupal blog?