Drupal Platform Updates

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.
• Full-width agency heroes: We are completing the design work to allow agencies to use full-width "Hero" banners at the top of their homepages.

Next (near-term updates)

• 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.
• 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.
• Basic page listing pages: We are creating a listing page for basic pages.
• 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.
• 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

Version 26.08

🚀 New features & 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.

Version 26.07

🚀 New features & 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.