Drupal Platform Updates
Updated:
The Maryland Drupal platform is constantly evolving. Below is a snapshot of our current priorities and recent improvements. We also maintain a broader backlog of agency requests and technical enhancements that are prioritized by reach, impact, usability, accessibility, security, and team capacity.
Have a suggestion? Share your ideas in our Drupal Community of Practice to help shape our future releases.
Upcoming priorities
Now (active development)
- New CX measurement tool: We are adding a statewide Customer Experience (CX) tool to collect real-time feedback from residents. This helps agencies understand how people are using their sites and where they can make improvements.
- Content review and approval workflows: We are adding the ability for editors to submit content for review and approval prior to publication. Email notifications will be sent to reviewers when a page is pending their review.
- Dynamic tables: We are expanding filter options and enhancing visual presentation of large data tables for improved usability.
- Mega menu: We are adding the option to use a mega menu for site navigation.
Next (near-term updates)
- Automated PDF search: We are extending site search to automatically index text within new PDF uploads, allowing users to find specific keywords inside documents.
- Enhanced navigation: We are adding a third level to the header dropdowns, allowing for a more organized, multi-tier hierarchy to improve how users navigate complex site sections.
- Expanded social media integration: We are updating our standard icon sets and sharing tools to include support for platforms like Bluesky and Threads
- Text size: We are decreasing the size of headers and body text across the platform to improve scanability.
- Vertical spacing: We are decreasing the vertical spacing across the platform to improve scanability.
- Listing page flexibility: We are adding more flexibility to listing pages with customizable metadata/tagging controls and simple show/hide options, allowing agencies to tailor what information appears.
Later (longer-term updates)
- Switchable color palettes: We are introducing preset color schemes that allow agencies to update their site’s look and feel while ensuring all color combinations remain accessible and compliant with state branding.
- Photo gallery: We are developing a dedicated gallery component to showcase images, featuring responsive layouts to improve visual storytelling across agency sites.
- Hero search integration: We are adding an optional search bar directly into landing page heroes.
- Interactive maps: We are adding interactive maps to visually display locations.
- Enhanced search (autocomplete): We are upgrading the search experience with real-time suggestions that appear as users type, helping residents find relevant services.
Release history
Drupal Platform Release History
New features and improvements
- Heroes: Added a full-width “hero” banner for the top of agency homepages.
- Basic listing pages: Added a Basic Listing Page content type.
- Accordions: Added a "Close all" checkbox option to the Accordion component.
- Events: Added a registration link expiration field and configured the Event hero to automatically hide the registration button once the link has expired.
- Media: Added help text about image size requirements to image fields.
- Print stylesheets: Implemented a new sitewide print-specific stylesheet.
- Bulleted lists: Enabled mixed and Roman numeral list styles.
- System and maintenance: Updated Drupal Core to 11.3 and executed a security update.
Bug fixes
- Footer: Fixed an issue where footer menus without children would only output navigation elements and headings without any links.
- Links: Resolved inconsistent behaviors experienced when linking directly to documents.
New features and improvements
- Accessibility: Added PDFa11y module to scan PDFs at upload.
- Embeds: Enabled the ability to embed ArcGIS maps and Google, Microsoft, and Smartsheet forms.
- Navigation: Laid groundwork for mega menu rollout.
- Contacts and locations: Added a flexible Body field to both the Contact and Location content types.
- Events: Cleaned up authoring experience by renaming the "Registration information" field to "Event introduction."
- Media:
- Added additional filters for Media to improve content management.
- Added help text for image fields (e.g., accepted file types)
- Pagination: Adjusted pagination to reduce the number of visible page items, preventing horizontal overflow on mobile screens.
Bug fixes
- Links: Fixed link regression that caused button link to turn white after clicks. Fixed promo link color so text is not blue on blue.
New features and improvements
- Embeds: Added the ability to embed Google Forms and Microsoft Forms into the platform.
- Alert placement: Enabled alerts to be placed on Listing Pages.
- User interface: Refined the admin user interface by hiding individual Steps from the Create menu.
Bug fixes
- Homepage hero layouts: Resolved a critical issue where Heros were broken across all production homepages.
- Link styling: Fixed a front-end styling issue where document links were appearing bolder than standard page links.
New features and improvements
- Content and editor permissions: Configured the Content Editor role and set up "Access Unpublished" permissions to improve the editorial workflow. Work is progressing toward full implementation.
- WYSIWYG enhancements: Added indent and outdent buttons to the text editor toolbar.
- Agency logos: Removed duplicate agency logo from the hero.
- Media types: Added ability to embed Qlik and Tableau media type.
- Theming: Themed the full-width agency hero within Storybook and implemented updated styling for Events list items in Drupal.
- Image optimization: Defined the optimal image sizes and resolutions across all content types to ensure better site performance and visual consistency.
- Footer clean-up: Removed the Customer Service Survey link from the global footer.
Bug fixes
- WYSIWYG tables: Resolved an issue with text wrapping and inconsistent HTML markup occurring inside table column headers.
- Critical text visibility: Fixed a highest-priority contrast issue where the white-on-white Event registration link text was unreadable for future events.
- Form field validation: Fixed a bug where Summary box fields were not properly marked as required.
- Icon list creation: Resolved an issue where content creators were unable to generate new icon lists directly from the modal interface.
- Module & code maintenance: Fixed an error originating from the Trash module and uninstalled the unused field_visibility_conditions module to clean up the backend codebase.
New features and improvements
- SEO & metadata: Automated meta descriptions by mapping the summary field text to the meta description tag for better search engine optimization.
- Media enhancements:
- Added a County field and an accessibility status field to Document media items for improved tracking and compliance.
- Implemented responsive image styles specifically for the new image card listing layout.
- Content management:
- Renamed the "Archived" moderation state to "Unpublished" for better clarity in the editorial workflow.
- Simplified the UI by hiding URL Alias fields for content that is automatically aliased.
- Streamlined the "Steps" content type by making the description field optional.
- Discovery & filtering:
- Refined the Year dropdown filter logic to ensure accuracy for Documents and News items, even those without optional date values.
- Standardized the Affiliation field to the restricted text filter format , so agencies can link to other agencies.
Bug fixes
- Display & UI:
- Restored missing image options across various content types.
- Resolved a styling issue where links within Landing page description fields appeared too small.
- Fixed a character encoding bug where apostrophes were displaying incorrectly in Auto Lists.
- Navigation & redirects:
- Fixed Document redirects to ensure they point correctly to the "view in browser" URL.
- Updated Landing page link text for better user guidance.
- Filtering & logic:
- Fixed the Document type filter to correctly display only relevant terms rather than the entire taxonomy.
- Resolved a validation error occurring when saving visual link collections with empty image fields but existing descriptions.
- System maintenance:
- Cleaned up the testing environment to prevent the generation of unneeded files during command execution.
- Configured Editoria11y to skip specific alt-text checks where they were redundant or conflict with platform settings.
New features and improvements
- Event content system: Completed a visual overhaul of the Event content type, including the main page theme, hero section, and automated list teasers.
- Power BI integration: Agencies can now embed Power BI dashboard as a media item.
- Expanded microcontent: Enabled microcontent embeds across Location, Contact, News, and Event content types for more flexible page layouts.
- Image card listing: Implemented a listing page that displays images as interactive cards
- Enhanced image metadata to display captions and credits across all microcontent.
- Media management: Created and expanded Image Category Taxonomies for better asset organization.
- Streamlined Document media items by removing the redundant summary field.
Bug fixes
- Link collections: Resolved an issue where the "minimum 2 links" rule prevented users from removing the first or second link in a list.
- WYSIWYG editor: Fixed a styling bug that prevented images from being centered within the text editor.
- Event fixes: Corrected the Event listing order (previously appearing in reverse).
- Fixed a bug where Event end dates were not properly required.
- Display issues: Fixed News listings to ensure publication dates are visible.
- Resolved an issue where the Contact header failed to render on the front end.
- Location updates: Updated the hours heading to a standardized "Hours" label for clarity.