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)
- Automated PDF search: We are extending site search to automatically index text within new PDF uploads, allowing users to find specific keywords inside documents.
- 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.
- 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.
Next (near-term updates)
- Bulk file uploads: We are adding the ability for agencies to bulk upload files through a form.
- Customized taxonomy vocabulary names: We are adding the ability for content managers to customize their taxonomy "Vocabulary names."
- 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.
- Expanded social media integration: We are updating our standard icon sets and sharing tools to include support for platforms like Bluesky and Threads.
- Highlight component: We are adding the ability to include images at the top of each column.
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
- Mega menu: Added a new mega menu option for site navigation.
- Sidebar navigation: Added the ability to hide sidebar navigation from content pages.
- Dynamic data tables: Added a new dynamic data table microcontent type to enhance visual presentation and usability of large data tables.
- Embeds: Added Cognito, Jotform, Leidos IQ, and Retool as supported embed types.
- Header themes: Added a site-wide header color theme picker.
- Footer links: Updated the cybersecurity incident reporting footer link and global footer accessibility and privacy policy link wording.
- Events: Added support for related files on events component.
Bug fixes
- Content editors: Allowed content editor access to microcontent browsers.
- Listing pages: Removed dates from basic pages displayed on listing pages and automatic lists.
- External news: Made the summary field optional for external news items.
- Accessibility: Updated link collection headings to use semantic HTML heading tags and restored the View PDF accessibility reports permission for site managers.
- Listing pages: Removed jump links as option from all listing pages and switched PDFs from automatic download to open in browser.
New features and improvements
- News: Added support for external news items.
- External links: Updated external link configurations across the platform. Links on the current agency site are treated as internal, and links to different sites (including those on the maryland.gov domain) are treated as external.
- Surveys: Integrated 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.
- Media: Added .zip to the list of allowed file upload extensions.
- System and maintenance: Updated Drupal Core to 11.3.14, resolved database backup timeouts with added failure notifications, and updated dependencies.
Bug fixes
- Listing pages: Switched from hard to soft character limits for listing page title and description fields.
- Headers: Fixed an issue causing contact headers to display twice on the front end.
- Table of contents: Resolved an issue where "On this page" was no longer displaying on basic pages.
- Heroes: Corrected an alignment issue on landing page heroes.
- External links: Resolved link behavior issues for links sharing the same primary domain.
- Print stylesheets: Updated print styles to automatically hide body-level overlays.
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.