Start every new Drupal project with a solid foundation so you can truly focus on the unique features of the project itself. Sounds good, right?
This has always been a dream of mine, so why am I not doing anything with it? What am I afraid of, and what’s holding me back?
People who know me probably already know that I’m a big fan of Drupal. I first came into contact with it in 2009, and I already feel quite old just writing that down. Drupal has never really let go of me since and I’ve always kept using it.
There are many obvious reasons to use Drupal (it’s open source, actively maintained, a mature and proven solution, modular, etc.), but after giving it some thought, one thing stands out for me above all: with Drupal you rarely run into technical limitations. It offers endless possibilities, you can start with something small like a website and later add (AI) automations and processes that work for you, enabling sustainable growth.
I’ll admit that in the past I’ve been afraid of sunken cost fallacy more than once. I’ve invested so much time and effort into learning Drupal that maybe I’m holding onto it for that reason alone. Whenever that thought comes up, I go and test other technologies and every single time I came to the conclusion that Drupal is still the right choice for me.
Right now, there’s a big shift happening with the rise of AI (big surprise). Is Drupal still the right platform for me today? I think it is, precisely because it fits in perfectly. Dries Buytaert even wrote a recent blog post on this titled “Why Drupal is built for the AI era” . This post is definitely worth a read!
In short, I’m continuing to bet on Drupal. For me, it’s still the right platform to build sustainable solutions on.
So, I’m still convinced that Drupal is the right choice for me. Now, let’s take a step back and define what a Drupal Starter is.
For me, a Drupal Starter is a ready-made foundation for building a Drupal website or platform.
It includes a fresh Drupal installation with logical settings, essential features, and a base design that’s already in place. Instead of starting with an empty system and spending time setting up the basics, you start from this point and focus on:
It’s essentially a head start. Like moving into a new home where the plumbing, electricity, and walls are already done, so you can immediately start decorating and finishing it.
Building a Drupal Starter entirely from scratch has always been a dream of mine. There were always plenty of reasons not to do it until I finally decided to give it a try and just go for it. What’s the worst that can happen? It could completely fail, but then at least I’d have a good story to tell and, without a doubt, plenty of new lessons learned.
Once I decided to take action, I made a list of what I consider important in every Drupal project, based on my past work experience.
I ended up with the following (short) list:
This felt like the minimum viable product to me. Still quite a mouthful.
When I first started working with Drupal, it felt like a solution for both small and large projects in terms of project size as well as the budget needed to build and maintain them.
In recent years, I’ve had the feeling that Drupal has shifted, making it less accessible and feasible for smaller projects and budgets.
With Webhaven, I want to break through this trend.
I consider the above list for the minimum viable product to be complete. You can already see the result in action at webhaven.io or demo.webhaven.io.
I’m now working on planning the next steps in the Webhaven roadmap, which can also be found on the Webhaven website.
You can also sign up to be notified when Webhaven is officially launched.
This post was originally written in Dutch and was translated.
