Without a doubt, 2015 was one of the Drupal community's best years. We continued to grow and change from being on an island to more of a peninsula. We also released the best Drupal version ever.

If you look back at our predictions for 2015, the Drupal 8 release was one of the most predicted events for the year. Now the question is: what we will be doing in 2016?

Will we have a decoupled Drupal? Will Drupal 9 be released? Will we see a "Drupal 6 Legacy Support" program? It is that time of year when you—yes, you—can predict the future of Drupal; take a look at your crystal ball and describe what you see. Share your deepest thoughts on what will happen for us as a community, what will happen to our code, and the difference our work might make.

Comments

smartasc’s picture

I suspect 2016 will see better support and improved extensibility for existing online learning tools and environments such as H5P and E-Learning. Drupal provides an incredibly robust foundation for users to develop customized online learning environments but is only slightly behind the curve of dedicated online learning environments such as Moodle or Canvas. We may have to wait until 2017 for the analytics improvements that result from the predicted improvement to Drupal online learning environments.

timmillwood’s picture

Drupal 8.1 and Drupal 8.2 are easy predictions for 2016.

Balu Ertl’s picture

My personal hope that Drupal 8 core will be localized to all European languages in 100%.

paulwdru’s picture

I wish I could make a powerful Mobile App with Drupal as the backend this year.

In future, the world is Mobile App + Mobile Web + Web, 3-in-1 implementation

sime’s picture

Core will separate completely from drupal as a distribution - the distribution will be composed of some empty folders, some profiles and a composer.json file that references drupal/core. Make files will disappear. Drupal console will begin to replace Drush. Someone will demostrate exporting a whole site (ie. content included) to code, threatening the idea of a canonical database.

panchtatvam’s picture

I guess given the popularity of NoSql, some NoSql database support will be added ( preferrably CouchDb). On a more futuristic view, Polyglot Persistence should become a reality.

timmillwood’s picture

Have you seen the Relaxed Web Services module (https://www.drupal.org/project/relaxed) it exposes Drupal as a Couch database, allowing replication of content entities using the CouchDB API.

srikanth.g’s picture

  • Working with Drupal 8,all the Drupalers will face a massive learning curve with new things like Symfony OOPs,Composer,YAML,Twig.
  • There is huge development going on JavaScript based technology like
    NodeJS,Meteor,AngularJS and PhoneGap.
  • So,the developer definitely expects drupal 8 should work nicely with JS latest trend and "Decoupled/HeadLess Drupal" is going to be a Big topic.
jackenmail’s picture

We will see all D7 support module also available in to D8.

dddave’s picture

This year will show if d.o. can still attract community volunteers or if it needs to become a 100% DA affair. I hope the DA will recognize that their continued blocking of volunteer efforts for vital community tools (especially the forums) is wrong and highly contra-productive to their core mission (https://www.drupal.org/node/2536122).
Even without movement on these issues drupal.org will continue to get further massive improvements.

nod_’s picture

In 2016 we'll get a clear decision making process for core. Hopefully.

xjm’s picture

nod_’s picture

Knowing who is half the battle, the how is still a mess.

xjm’s picture

I'm not sure what information you are looking for that is not covered? The policy is very detailed and explains when a signoff is needed, how to tag that on the issue, who can give the signoff, what to to do when a signoff is missing, and what each role's specific responsibilities are.

If you could submit a governance issue to explain more what is not clear that would help. :)

https://www.drupal.org/project/issues/governance?categories=All

darrenmothersele’s picture

  • Amazon adds CMS-as-a-service, powered by Drupal, to it's collection of cloud computing services.
  • Acquia IPO
  • Sort out Composer support and start decoupling components from Drupal core.

EDIT: I've provided more information about these predictions on my blog.

kerby70’s picture

  • Gradual uptick in Drupal 8 use, and then a sudden surge of demand all at once.
  • The community will be discovering many packages that composer makes available.
  • Drupal dev's will be sending more and more code into the greater PHP universe.
  • The Drupal community will push for better tools on Drupal.org for development and community communication.
  • Larger discussions about content editor and builder, terminology & usability changes will gain momentum.
  • More asynchronous PHP will at least be played with.
  • Work will be done to improve & consolidate UI's & API's for headless admin/dev tools like Drush & Console.
  • More growth and mergers.
naveenvalecha’s picture

In 2016, we will have big_pipe in core

--
Naveen Valecha
http://valechatech.blogspot.in

cosmicdreams’s picture

I think we'll see a gradual advancement of Drupal 8 modules and projects.

People will tinker with the new apis that are available. Someone will probably make one of these kinds of modules:

Something that makes it easy to create config entities and get them working with the Plugin API
Something to improve the UI of layouts.
Something like Features that will help with the export, organization of config for Drupal 8

Hopefully:

We'll see attempts to improve the administrative UI

xjm’s picture

Something like features... like features? :)
https://www.drupal.org/project/features

cosmicdreams’s picture

Yes, like specifically the features module. But perhaps not the features module.

Maybe something like extending the configuration system to improve it's creation / organization of configuration so that you don't need the full features module. Maybe a system-driven, rule-based, organization of configuration and folders.

dineshw’s picture

  • PHP 7 as default requirement for core as well as it's support by major platforms like acquia, pantheon etc...
  • then momentum in D6 to D8 migration...
  • Considerable rise in use of decoupled architecture by large players ...
  • Large scale Drupal for Web for Apps : Drupal + JS frameworks + NoSQL

Cheers
Dinesh Waghmare (LAMP)
UK, Surrey | India, Mumbai
Web Development | Digital Media Marketing | Strategic Consulting
--
m: +91 9867888266
(Drupal / Wordpress / SugarCRM )

@baux’s picture

My predictions (and hope) for this year.

Drupal 8 is the first tool with heavy bases... We now have a tool which can connect potentially to every system thanks to the (core) REST service. Some technologies (such as ProcessMaker) has already developed a module (still in beta) to connect and interchange data with D8.

Prediction 1: Lots of external tools and technologies will connect each other using Drupal as the catalyst (e.g. Big Data technologies).

Bootstrap based themes are actually growing in the community.

Prediction 2: The bootstrap theme will be included in core

Someone told that the web 4.0 will starts in 2020. D8 has the power to anticipate some of the discussed stuff of "this" web.

Prediction 3:Some modules such as Content Staging will be evaluated for core inclusion to go toward "federated sites".

Time will tell :-)

andrewmacpherson’s picture

Content staging/federation is one of the use cases for the Workflow core initiative announced at DC New Orleans, so prediction 3 is underway already.

Anonymous’s picture

I'd actually predict a slow, if stagnant adoption for D8. While I _love_ it personally, it is a very complex tool compared to past Drupal and other less capable competitor CMSes that are "just good enough". Unless contrib burns down the house I'm not seeing adoption this year going to new heights. It won't hit a nice stride until 2017.

Jaypan’s picture

I predict that in 2016, no forum specific improvements will be made to Drupal.org, unless the improvements are for other parts of the site and just happen to also impact the forums.

N1ghteyes’s picture

Buwahahaha. Sad, but oh so true

botris’s picture

Starting with serious:

  • More generic PHP libraries will released by the Drupal community, following Drupal Commerce and BAT
  • We’ll see more acquisitions and mergers leading to more enterprise scale Drupal companies
  • Drag & drop D8 migration ui tool
  • Dries will announce a sabbatical year
jeeshi’s picture

2015 is a very nice years and the year 2015 begin the global services for India. The 2016 is going to developing and improve in golden global services.

Software Testing Training in Chennai

estevan_carlos’s picture

Headless Drupal will make Drupal relevant.

marykabbrown’s picture

I think AngularJS will be good in India & Aboard.

The freshers who does AngularJS Training & Backbone.JS Training will get a easy job in 2016