Drupal CMS 1.0: ai agents, recipes & privacy by default

Introduction

On 15 January 2025, Drupal CMS 1.0 was officially launched, a major milestone in the history of the CMS.

Over the past few years, Drupal has faced declining popularity. One of the biggest challenges with using Drupal has been its "empty box" approach. Users often start with a blank slate, requiring significant knowledge of Drupal modules to enable the core functionalities of a CMS.

While this "empty box" approach provides unparalleled flexibility and customisation - allowing you to tailor a CMS to your exact needs – it also makes Drupal less accessible. Out of the box, the platform is often not immediately usable. For marketers seeking a user-friendly CMS, Drupal has historically been dismissed as an option. Furthermore, it heavily relies on developers or highly experienced site builders to be effectively utilised.

To address this issue, Drupal has introduced Drupal CMS. This out-of-the-box solution comes preloaded with the best practices from nearly every Drupal project. With Drupal CMS, you get a robust and fully functional CMS right from installation, without the need for extensive configurations.

Although this new CMS is specifically designed with marketers in mind, it also features several innovations that elevate Drupal to the next level.

AI Agents in Drupal

Every modern CMS strives to seamlessly integrate AI into its solutions – and Drupal has taken a significant leap forward with AI Agents.

With Drupal AI, various AI systems, such as OpenAI, Claude, or custom AI solutions, can be integrated. The possibilities are impressive for both developers and marketers.

For developers, Drupal AI offers tools to automatically generate page types and component types. This dramatically speeds up the development process and saves valuable time.

Additionally, AI Agents improve several key aspects:

Content structures are created more quickly and efficiently.
Content generation becomes seamless and consistent.
CMS configuration is simplified and less time-consuming.
CMS usability is significantly enhanced.

With Drupal AI, developers work more efficiently, and marketers gain powerful tools to achieve results faster.

Recipes: Efficiency and Functionality in One Package

Setting up a robust CMS and creating content structures used to be a time-consuming process. Repeated actions and the tendency to start "from scratch" were common challenges. With Recipes in Drupal, this repetitive work is now largely eliminated.

Thanks to Recipes, you can install bundles of functionalities and add powerful features to your CMS in just minutes. For example, where you previously had to manually create an event content type and event overview every time, you can now simply install a Recipe. Instantly, 85% of the required functionality is ready to use.

This offers tremendous benefits:

Time savings: The basic setup is much faster, giving you more time for other tasks.
Cost efficiency: End users get more value for their investment, as the time saved on setup can be spent creating additional value.

The potential of Recipes continues to grow with each new addition to the ecosystem. As this ecosystem expands, more easily installable functionalities will become available, further enhancing Drupal’s flexibility and power.

Drupal and Privacy with KLARO

Privacy by default is unfortunately not standard in most systems. In fact, many platforms offer little protection for user privacy or deliberately make it difficult to avoid tracking.

Drupal, however, takes a completely different approach. Drupal CMS now includes a built-in privacy solution: KLARO. This is a free, open-source tool (available under a specific licence) for managing cookie settings.

With KLARO, external third-party providers are automatically managed, and by default, Drupal CMS and KLARO ensure that no tracking occurs unless explicit consent is given by the user for a specific functionality.

This approach highlights Drupal’s commitment to respecting user privacy while providing a user-friendly and compliant solution.