Talking Drupal #539 - EvolveDigital

Feb 9, 2026

Maya Schaeffer, community lead at Evolving Web and Drupal Association board member who runs the Evolve Digital summit series. She discusses how Evolve Digital began and its focus on cross-discipline case studies. Conversation covers summit format, speaker selection, networking, comparisons between Drupal and other CMSs, and how the event supports marketing and technical collaboration.

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INSIGHT

Drupal CMS 2 Adds Canvas And AI Layout Generation

Drupal CMS 2.0 centers on layouts and AI by bundling Canvas and Canvas AI into an out-of-the-box recipe.
Canvas generates and populates layouts and code components from prompts, and integrates Context Control Center drafts for marketing updates.

INSIGHT

Canvas Performance Improved But UI Needs Polish

Canvas has improved performance and usability since earlier builds but still has UI quirks developers notice.
Nic Laflin reported Canvas became significantly snappier and suited for client landing pages, though data model cleanup may be needed.

INSIGHT

Drupal CMS Competes With AI Site Builders While Remaining Open Source

Drupal CMS offers an open-source response to AI-driven 'build-a-site' SaaS tools by integrating AI while staying OSS.
Catherine Tsiboukas highlighted CMS as one of the only open-source tools competing with AI builders like Loved or Lovable.

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Today we are talking about EvolveDigital, What it is, and how it started in Drupal with guest Maya Schaeffer. We'll also cover Drupal CMS 2.0 as our module of the week.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/539

Topics

Comparing Drupal and WordPress
Evolve Digital Summit Insights
Marketing and Drupal Integration
Evolve Digital and CMS Comparisons
Summit Structure and Networking
Speaker Selection and Outreach
Balancing Content and Community
Lessons from Different Cities
Future Plans and New Formats

Resources

Guests

Maya Schaeffer - evolvedigital.com mayalena

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Catherine Tsiboukas - mindcraftgroup.com bletch

MOTW Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

Brief description:
- Do you want to start your next Drupal site using a variety of best practices, including Canvas for page layouts, or site templates for an opinionated architecture out of the box? Then the recently released Drupal CMS 2.0 could be just what you need.
Module name/project name:
- Drupal CMS
Brief history
- 2.0 release was created by phenaproxima less than a week ago, and requires Drupal 11.3
Maintainership
- Actively maintained
- Security coverage
- Test coverage
- Documentation guide linked in the show notes
- 145 issues on the development project, 24 of which are bugs
Usage stats:
- No direct way to track, but drupal_cms_helper was added as a dependency late in the Drupal CMS 1.x cycle, so the fact that it has been installed 3,780 times likely indicates that Drupal CMS has been installed several thousand times at a minimum
Module features and usage
- The biggest change in Drupal CMS 2 is the addition of Canvas for creating and managing layouts. We talked about Drupal Canvas in depth back in episode #518 so I won't go into too much detail here, but having it set up for you as an out-of-the-box feature is a big benefit
- Drupal CMS 1.0 included a carefully curated content architecture, including some optional recipes for additional capabilities. With version 2, the intent is for site templates to be the source of the content architecture. I'm sure we'll be hearing a lot more about site templates, including a marketplace where people can find them, in the coming and in particular with DrupalCon Chicago fast approaching
- Drupal CMS 2.0 also ships with much more sophisticated AI capabilities. There's a dedicated Canvas AI that can be used to generate and populate entire layouts, as well as generating code components, based on a user's prompt. And listeners may remember the demo in the Vienna Driesnote of using the Context Control Center to automatically create drafts of content updates when marketing information changes
- And of course, starting with Drupal core 11.3 means you'll get all the performance and other improvements in the latest version