Drupal 10.1 Release: What You Need To Know

With one in eight enterprise websites running on Drupal, building on its capabilities is a must. The sites of organizations like Nasdaq, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, IBM, and Pfizer depend on the software’s continued improvement. Its ability to securely scale is already a key trait that elevates it as the content management system of choice for ambitious organizations swinging for the digital experience fences — no matter the company’s size. 

Drupal’s latest update, Drupal 10.1, expands on the platform’s well-loved capabilities and continues to make it a compelling solution for site builders. We’re excited for this release for a bunch of reasons that we’ll dive into shortly, but, most importantly, we’re happy to keep contributing to and growing this community. 

Drupal 10: What’s new?

An open source project, Drupal regularly receives thousands of development contributions, ensuring its innovations remain one step ahead of R&D shops for closed system software. And, this is the shiniest Drupal update yet. Here’s what you can expect. 

Olivero front end

The old Bartik theme will be replaced by the sleek, modern Olivero theme. This theme is gorgeous right out of the box. 

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Named after Rachel Olivero (1982–2019), a Drupal contributor, head of the organizational technology group at the National Federation of the Blind, and lauded accessibility expert, the Olivero theme boasts accessibility features that ensure Drupal 10 works for everyone. 

Claro back end

Claro is the modernized back end that replaced the 2009-designed Seven theme. A great deal of work went into color contrast and element unification in the various user interfaces of Drupal 10 core. Touch targets are bigger, and administrator tabs were moved based on user research and better accessibility. The look is fresh, making Drupal more inviting. In the past, the look didn’t match the underlying power of Drupal, making its infinitely flexible capabilities seem dated based on appearance alone. Claro gave it a refined look that invites people to discover Drupal’s power.

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CKEditor 5

CKEditor 4 will reach its end of life in 2023, so we moved to CKEditor 5. On the front end, it’s a greatly refined content editing experience. For instance, you can now edit links and images in place versus having to open additional dialogue boxes. 

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Another CKEditor 5 update we’re excited about is improvements to copy-pasting from Word Documents or Google Docs into the content editor. It’ll remove markup copy-pasted from those programs. With Drupal 10.1, CKEditor adds more improvements, including autoformatting, which lets you use shortcodes to quickly format content.

And for an extra fee, there’s CKEditor 5 Premium Features, a contributed project with real time collaborative editing and commenting features available, as well as Word and PDF exports. Take it out for a spin with a 30-day free trial.

Easier theme customization

Drupal themes are not often created from scratch; instead, they’re built atop base themes. New to Drupal 10 are Starterkits, which let front-end developers copy a base theme for use as a starting point for building a new theme, rather than extending the base theme at runtime.

In Drupal 10.1, a new Single Directory Components experimental module has been introduced. This new feature bundles template, style, and JavaScript files together for components and makes Twig template debugging and render caching settings available on an easy-to-use admin page. New Twig filters were also added to simplify markup manipulation in field templates.

Decoupled navigation 

Drupal 10.1 makes managing navigation between content elements in a decoupled scenario easier. New dedicated endpoints using the Linkset standard to enable JavaScript front ends to consume configurable menus from Drupal. Now, front-end developers don’t need to hard-code navigation, meaning even non-developers can manage application menus without writing any code.

Flexible block and content management

Creating consistent content models is easier in Drupal 10.1 with the revamped user interface for reusing existing fields. The content editing experience is streamlined with text fields that can enforce specific text formats. Additionally, a unified entity revision editing experience makes it easier to manage prior versions of content – whether it’s in content blocks, nodes, or other entity types.

Speaking of blocks, in Drupal 10.1, you can now create custom blocks directly in the Structure section of the admin interface. Revisions to block content can be easily reviewed and rolled back (if necessary), thanks to more granular permissions.

Enhanced page loading 

The user experience is improved with better page loading capabilities. BigPipe reduces page load times by populating the main content of a page first while auxiliary content, like sidebars, is still being generated. As of Drupal 10.1, BigPipe now supports interface previews for delayed content, which reduces page reflows and streamlines the user experience. Additional features available in Drupal 10.1 make the initial page load faster, including the ability to lazy load responsive images and configure oEmbed content to be lazy loaded.

Streamlined core

To focus Drupal 10 on the core experience, as well as to allow some modules and themes to be more freely improved by the community, the following components were moved from Drupal Core to contributed projects. They are still available and will be maintained separately.

Upgrading to Drupal 10

For those of you installing Drupal 10 for the first time, you're golden; for others, the new release may require a site migration or an upgrade. Below are tips and tools to help. But, first, here’s an idea of where to go based on where you’re starting from. 

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So, if you're upgrading from:

• Drupal 7, you’ll need a full site migration to Drupal 10. Acquia offers the Acquia Migrate Accelerate tool to migrate from Drupal 7, which greatly simplifies your process. If you are not on Acquia Cloud, use the Upgrade Status Module to check which of your projects have compatible releases and the Migrate module suite to migrate your content and configuration manually.
• Drupal 8, remember that Drupal 8 reached its end of life on November 2, 2021. Because of how the major upgrade paths are built, there’s no direct upgrade path to Drupal 10. You’ll need to first upgrade to Drupal 9, then follow the steps in the next section. 
• Drupal 9, follow these steps:
  • Step 1: Install the Upgrade Status Module and enable it. It’ll run an environment readiness check that will note everything you need to do before moving to Drupal 10 and give you a checklist directly in the UI. 
  • Step 2: Follow the upgrade instructions and update your modules as needed. For your custom code, run Drupal Rector to automatically fix most incompatibilities. For identified issues that can’t be addressed automatically, follow the documentation to fix them manually.
  • Step 3: Finally, update Drupal core to Drupal 10. 

Acquia and Drupal 10: The perfect match

Acquia is the world’s foremost contributor to Drupal, and we’re here to help make your solution work as smoothly as possible. Whether you’re a Drupal noob or a seasoned veteran, Acquia’s got you covered. Learn more about the Acquia + Drupal 10 dynamic duo in the Ultimate Guide to Drupal 10 and stay up to date on the roadmap for Drupal 10.2, 10.3, and beyond.