Drupal celebrates its 20th anniversary
Today, just 20 years ago, the first version of Drupal, Drupal 1, was released. We come together with a loud (and somewhat off-key) "Happy Birthday" for its 20th birthday. Great that Drupal and its wonderful community have been part of the world wide web for so long!
20 years, yes that is right TWENTY, is a really long lifetime for a content management system. Many technologies have emerged in these 20 years, became relevant, lost their relevance again and disappeared. But not Drupal. The open source technology has been continuously enhanced by the large community, and is still state of the art and will continue to shape the future of the web.
Drupal was there
“We were blogging before blogging was cool.” This is how Dries started his technology review at the last DrupalCon. And it's true - vividly illustrating the ambition and development history of Drupal.
Who remembers the days before everyone could use the Internet? It feels like an eternity ago, it was even a previous millennium. For a large part of the development within and around the Internet, Drupal was there:
- Drupal witnessed the birth of the browsers Safari and Firefox.
- Drupal accompanied the emergence of the social web and with it, among others, Myspace, Facebook. YouTube, and others.
- When the iPhone became the first device with mobile browsers, responsive designs were implemented in Drupal. Thus, Drupal played an important role in the mobile web from the very beginning.
- Drupal was the first CMS to adopt jQuery, validating it and significantly promoted the spread of JavaScript.
- Drupal is also developing new approaches to current developments, specifically in the area of “digital experiences”, through new channels and approaches such as voice interaction, digital machine learning and integrated solutions.
A wonderful community
We know that Drupal is great. And more and more people are agreeing with us. The Drupal supporters and community is growing.
For more than 10 years, we as undpaul have been part of the Drupal community. Some of us have been part of it for even longer. And here is a personal thank you to Drupal: Thank you because undpaul owes its presence to the lovely and hardworking people in our community. Even though everything was a bit different last year, DrupalCon is one of our annual highlights. We are looking forward even more to the next live event with the community - with our friends and colleagues!
I will always remember my first DrupalCon, back in 2006 in Brussels. It was great to be welcomed into the community so easily. And of course remember enjoying the currywurst with Dries and a few other Drupal veterans in the restaurant of a sports club.