I'm trying to help a colleague find a local developer or agency in Ottawa that can help her update the Drupal version on a website which is on an older version that is no longer supported.
In addition to this immidiate update and perhaps some immediate reconfiguration of the website, she wants someone available for occasional updates or support on a per task basis without having to pay a monthly retainer or fee.
Does anyone have any advice on local independent contractors or agencies that would do this sort of work?
When I started learning Drupal as a WordPress developer, I quickly realized it is not just a different admin panel. Drupal does not let you build pages quickly. It makes you think in structured content, reusable components, and system-level design.
The first challenge was my local setup. I used Laragon like I do for WordPress, but image uploads and file handling kept failing. Switching to XAMPP finally made things stable and let me focus on Drupal itself.
Creating a Programs listing page was another eye-opener. Views gave me the data, but rendering it correctly required understanding how Views, Twig, and layout work together. At first it felt frustrating. Once I accepted the workflow, structure first and layout later, it started to click.
Learning Layout Builder was similar. Unlike WordPress page builders, Drupal made me think in reusable blocks and layout regions instead of designing sections visually.
By the end I understood that Drupal does not aim for speed. It is built for consistency and structure. It took time, but the process taught me to think differently about building websites.
When I started learning Drupal as a WordPress developer, I quickly realized it is not just a different admin panel. Drupal does not let you build pages quickly. It makes you think in structured content, reusable components, and system-level design.
The first challenge was my local setup. I used Laragon like I do for WordPress, but image uploads and file handling kept failing. Switching to XAMPP finally made things stable and let me focus on Drupal itself.
Creating a Programs listing page was another eye-opener. Views gave me the data, but rendering it correctly required understanding how Views, Twig, and layout work together. At first it felt frustrating. Once I accepted the workflow, structure first and layout later, it started to click.
Learning Layout Builder was similar. Unlike WordPress page builders, Drupal made me think in reusable blocks and layout regions instead of designing sections visually.
By the end I understood that Drupal does not aim for speed. It is built for consistency and structure. It took time, but the process taught me to think differently about building websites.
More than 84 world leaders, 800 CEOs, and thousands others gathered amid the Alps this week to attend the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. Artificial intelligence —...
Elon Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., during the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026. The annual Davos gathering of political leaders, top executives and celebrities runs from Jan. 19-23. Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Iran’s near-total communications blackout has entered its 16th day, but that’s just a live test. Following a repressive crackdown on protests, the government is now building a system that grants...
An Iranian flag hangs on a wall of the Aqsa Mosque, which burns during anti-government protests in eastern Tehran, Iran, on January 21, 2026. (Photo by Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
China’s ByteDance has struck a deal with a clutch of investors to set up a new U.S.-focused TikTok that complies with the country’s regulatory requirements. ByteDance will retain a 19.9%...
Happy birthday to Drupal! On January 14th, Drupal turned 25. Dries wrote up a nice reflection on those 25 years. In that, he wrote this
6. Nobody fully understands Drupal anymore, including me
After 25 years and tens of thousands of contributors, Drupal has grown beyond any single person's understanding. I also google Drupal's documentation. I'm strangely proud of that, because it's how I know it has become something bigger than any one of us.
Don't feel like you need to know it all. Grasp the fundamentals, Google the rest.
I a using chatgpt and gemini to help with upgrading some very complicated drupal7 to drupal10, and it works, but it takes lots conversations, am wondering anyone has experience by using ai agent to help with site/module upgrade automatically ? Thnks
‘When someone passes away, there are always regrets,’ said Roro, a young Chinese woman who is a content creator and currently studies in Melbourne, Australia. ‘Once she was gone,’ she...
The tech job market in 2026 is being built on contradictions. Companies are laying off staff, insisting artificial intelligence will “do more with less” — yet they haven’t found ways...
Kyle Enero, a call-center employee, was at work one night on the 11th floor of an office tower in the Philippine city of Cebu, when the building began to shake...
TOPSHOT - People walk along a flooded street in Manila on July 24, 2024 amid heavy rains brought by Typhoon Gaemi. Relentless rain drenched the northern Philippines on July 24, triggering flooding in Manila and landslides in mountainous regions as Typhoon Gaemi intensified the seasonal monsoon. (Photo by Jam Sta Rosa / AFP) (Photo by JAM STA ROSA/AFP via Getty Images)
American big tech companies want to become Africa’s next internet providers. Earlier this month, Amazon acquired an operating license to roll out its low-Earth orbit satellite broadband service, Amazon Leo...
Jan 20, 18:25 UTC Resolved - The issue impacting App Platform deployments has been successfully resolved. Users should no longer encounter delays during the build phase or have deployments getting stuck. All services are now confirmed to be stable and operating normally.
We appreciate your patience throughout this but if you continue to experience any issues, please create a support ticket for further analysis.
Jan 20, 18:05 UTC Monitoring - Our Engineering team has implemented necessary changes to address the issue impacting both new and in-progress App Platform Deployments. Our team is currently monitoring the situation. Users should now notice improvements in deployment performance.
We appreciate your patience. We'll update once the issue is confirmed to be resolved.
China is beating the United States in the race to control the Gulf’s driverless car market. The latest win came in October 2025 when Chinese company WeRide secured an exclusive...
I'm testing Drupal CMS 2 (currently in beta) with the Byte theme, but I can't get comments to display on blog posts.
I've already checked: - Content type comment settings (enabled and set to "Open") - User permissions (view/post comments enabled) - Display management (comments field not hidden) - Cleared all caches
With Drupal Core everything works out of the box, but with CMS 2 I'm running into issues that are difficult to troubleshoot.
Questions: - Has anyone managed to get comments working in Byte theme? - Is this a known bug in the beta version? - Is it worth waiting for stable release, or better to stick with Core and customize it?
I was hoping CMS 2 with Canvas would be a game-changer, but so far it's not meeting expectations. That said, the overall approach seems very promising as a starting point for projects.
Thanks for any help!
Update: Today I tried CMS 2 RC1 with both Byte and Starter themes.
Tried to remove Canvas and install Olivero, but it's far from simple.
At this point, I believe it's better to start with Drupal Core and just install a few useful recipes (like admin_ui and media) to replicate what worked in CMS 1.
CMS 2 remains too opinionated and ironically limited: even though it includes a Blog content type, the comment system still doesn't work properly out of the box.
My conclusion: For a functional, flexible blog with multilingual support and working comments, Drupal Core + selective recipes is the most reliable path forward ATM.
Update 2: The issue has been officially acknowledged by Drupal staff!
Key findings: - Confirmed: Canvas has no SDC component for comments, making them unsupported - The problem is that there's no way to know comments aren't available except by trial and error - Proposed solution: Add support for Field Blocks as an "escape hatch" for use cases like comments
At least the issue is now officially documented and being tracked. However, no immediate fix or timeline yet.
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