Backdrop CMS: past and future

Jen Lampton, Jeneration Web Development
Nate Lampton, Lullabot

Backdrop CMS is now 4 years old. Since its first release on Jan 15th, 2015, what has changed?

Is Backdrop substantially easier to use than the Drupal it was forked from? Is it more affordable to support? Are the apis you know and love, still stable and functioning as they were? Is the community growing and healthy, or better yet, is it thriving?

If you haven't been following along with all the improvements to the software and community, this session will give you a good overview of where things are today. We'll cover all the major new features that were added in every on-time release, as well as point out when infrastructure and community tools were put into place.

A fork happens when one thing ends up going in two different directions. Come see our new direction!

Speakers
Jen Lampton
Owner @ Jeneration Web Development
Jennifer Lea Lampton has been building websites since 1997, and participating in open-source communities since 2006. She maintains several open source projects, and contributes reviews and fixes to many other projects as it relates to the needs of her work.

Lampton is a very active member in the Drupal community. Not only does she contribute code, but she helps foster community too. Lampton has served as one of the lead organizers for the largest free Drupal event in the world, the Bay Area Drupal Camp (also known as BADCamp) since 2007.

After spending years developing course material and teaching hundreds of people how to use Drupal, Lampton's primary focus became making the software both easier to use ("usability") and easier to learn ("learnability").

In an attempt to make Drupal 8 easier to learn, Lampton spent almost 2 years as the Drupal core 'Twig' initiative lead. After Twig was committed to core, Lampton noticed the rest of Drupal continuing to shift away from the grasps of the average web developer, and decided to shift her attention to Backdrop CMS.

Backdrop stands between Drupal 7 and Drupal 8 including features comparable to Drupal 8 with the familiar code style of Drupal 7, and an increased focus on usability. Backdrop removes complexity that only benefits the 1%, making the system easier to learn, easier to use, and also more performant for the 99%.

As Drupal becomes the tool of choice for the enterprise, Backdrop remains for everyone else. With a focus on affordability, usability, and performance, Backdrop will fill the widening gap between Drupal and WordPress.

Nate Lampton
Senior Technical Architect @ Lullabot

https://www.midcamp.org/2019/topic-proposal/backdrop-cms-past-and-future

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