Talking Drupal #571 - GovHub

[00:00:00] John: This is Talking Drupal, a weekly chat about web design development from a group of people one thing in mind, in common. Ooh, we love Drupal. That's what happens when you read too fast. This is episode 571, GovHub. On today's show, we're talking about GovHub, Drupal in government, and why government loves Drupal, with our guest Jasmine Epps.

We'll also cover Convivial Gov site template as our module of the week, question mark. Welcome to Talking Drupal. Our guest today is Jasmine Epps. Jasmine is the director of product at the Georgia Technology Authority. She owns the digital project strategy and delivery for GovHub, a sh- a shared Drupal publishing platform supporting services for more than 85 state agencies.

Jasmine, welcome to the show, and thanks for joining us.

[00:00:54] Jasmyne: Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

[00:00:58] John: Uh, I am John Picozzi, solutions architect at EPAM, and today my co-hosts are joining us, uh, for the, her last, her last show. Well, hopefully not her last show, but her last guest host- ... show, Amber Matz, developer advocate at Tugboat.

Hi. Amber Matz is a developer advocate at Tugboat, a service that automatically creates fully functional preview environments for every pull request, branch, or commit in your Git repository, eliminating the bottleneck of shared staging environments and manual deployment processes. She's the co-host of the Drupal AI Learners' Club, a growing community of Drupal developers who learn, share, and develop best practices around using AI through regular live-streamed Zoom meetings, and the AI Learners channel in Drupal Slack.

Amber, that is an awesome, awesome intro to you. You do so much more. Thank you for being here, and thank you for joining us for the last four weeks. It's been a true pleasure.

[00:02:00] Amber: Thank you.

[00:02:02] John: And last, but certainly not least, Nic Laflin, founder of nLightened Development. Nic, how's it going?

[00:02:09] Nic: It's going well.

Weather's cooling off. Definitely happy to be in fall and, uh, yeah, looking forward

[00:02:14] John: to fall. Oh yeah, that's right, 8:00 this morning it's now fall, right? Yep. All right. Yeah. Well, I, I closed my windows yesterday 'cause I was like, "Oh, it's chilly." And, uh, you know, uh, it was, it was... it's not gonna get, m- like, above 65 here.

Uh, so, you know, for those folks that, you know, maybe live in Georgia, what's the temperature in Georgia right now,

[00:02:35] Jasmyne: Tara? When I woke up at 5:30 this morning, it was 72 degrees.

[00:02:40] John: Yeah. See, we're not- What? We're not gonna beat that. The sun wasn't even out yet. We're not gonna- It's,

[00:02:42] Jasmyne: it's 58.

[00:02:45] Nic: That. It's 58 right now.

Yeah.

[00:02:47] John: Yeah.

[00:02:48] Nic: Yeah.

[00:02:49] John: Woo. All right. This week in talking weather. All right. And now to talk about our actually site template of the week, let's turn it over to Martin Anderson-Clutz, a product marketing manager for Drupal at Acquia and a maintainer of a number of Drupal modules, recipes, site templates, and many other things of his own.

Martin, what do you have for us this week?

[00:03:09] Martin: Thanks, John. Have you ever wanted to stand up a polished, accessible government website in Drupal with components, content types, SEO, and cookie consent all wired up without writing any code? There's a site template for that. It's called Convivial Gov, and it was created in March of 2026 by Morphed, the shop behind the Convivial family, with Ivan Zujic leading the maintainer team.

It has a 1.3.3 version available, which works with Drupal 11. It is actively maintained. That latest release was just a week ago. Still technically, I guess, uh, back in the summer, you might say. And it does have security and test coverage. For documentation, there's a full handbook over at docs.morphed.com and a live demo at convivial.io.

There are no open issues that I could find. And as for how it works, like the Haven site template we talked about a couple of weeks ago, Convivial Gov gives you a curated stack plus demo content, and in this case, you get a robust, ready-to-customize government site. Because it's built on Drupal CMS, you get all the latest Drupal tooling, Canvas for visual page building, single directory components, and recipes.

The front end is Morph's, uh, Morphos theme built on Tailwind and Daisy UI, so you get dark mode, multiple color palettes, and a big library of editor-friendly components out of the box. It's worth mentioning that using the Morphos theme on a production site requires a paid license. The provided components are sorted into six buckets: container, content, child, element, background, and behavior.

They include fun ones like scroll reveal and a color palette switching behavior. The content model is broad. You get seven content types: page, section, article, publication, resource, topic, and audience. And they come with a stack of teaser and card view modes to display them. The whole point is no code. A site builder can compose sophisticated pages in Canvas without ever touching a template.

One thing to watch, the, uh, default time zone is Australia, Sydney out of the box. Um, and it's also worth comparing Convivial Gov to another site template called Local. Both dropped in March of 2026. Both are Canvas-based Drupal CMS site templates for the public sector, and both lean on ECA for automation, so there is really common ground.

The difference is scope and mechanism. Local from AnnerTech is narrowly purpose-built for local councils and community service directories. It ships a specific service information architecture, uh, service and service landing content types with ECA wired so section pages stay in sync when service pages get published or updated, taking its cues From the gov.uk design system.

Convivial Gov goes the other way. It's a design system-led and general purpose with a broad component library and content model meant for any government agency or marketing site, rather than one particular workflow. So let's talk about Convivial Gov.

[00:06:08] John: Before we jump right in, I would also like to say convivial is an adjective that means friendly, lively, and enjoying good company, often in the context of feasting, eating, and drinking, or in this case, Drupal, for those of you that might have been wondering.

[00:06:23] Martin: Well said.

[00:06:24] Nic: So I, I'm curious, um, are the different content types and fields and things documented well enough that if somebody didn't wanna use the morphed, uh, or Morphos theme rather, they could easily swap in their own? Or is it, um, if you decide not to use a theme, you kinda have to build it yourself fully?

[00:06:46] Martin: Yeah, that's a good question. I, I will confess I don't really know the answer. I would imagine it's one of those things that, um, you know, at the minimum, they would show up in sort of, you know, the content architecture, like the content types tab- Yeah ... and so on, and so you could sort of build those out, you know, potentially even just directly in Canvas.

Um, so it, it should be something that you could use with other themes, but definitely, you know, if you want that out of the, out of the box experience, you know, uh, Morphos is the way to go. And, and you can use it for free in non-production environments, so.

[00:07:13] Nic: Okay. Yeah. And, and I guess the, uh, the b- maybe the bigger question, this is something that's gonna be com- becoming more and more common, is are there SDCs that are kinda...

'Cause those can be provided by the theme separately as well, and that's a lot harder to recreate, I think, than a few templates. So it might be, it might be worth, um, 'cause it looks like it's posted on their private pack- on their packages directly, rather than on, uh, drupal.org.

[00:07:44] Martin: Yeah, I think there is a GitHub destination you can get to for the Morphos theme.

Yeah. But yeah, it definitely- Yes ... requires the paid license.

[00:07:53] Nic: And to answer my question, there are a lot of SDCs, so

[00:07:57] Martin: Yes.

[00:07:57] Nic: Uh, it'd have you worked out for you.

[00:08:00] Amber: Well, I think this is kind of an interesting, uh, approach to marketing services. So we were talking about marketing Drupal last week, and providing a, a- an agency providing a, a purpose-driven site template that gives people, gives developers, whoever, a chance to see what it's like, see what, uh, an approach that an agency is taking.

And then, you know, hosting is the thing, right? Like, how do I host this? All that, that deployment bit, the production, the ongoing maintenance, that's a really hard thing. And being able to play with a site template, and then, oh, now, you know, this is the, the agency that built this. Maybe I can trust them to, to take this to the finish line.

So I think it's kind of an interesting approach, companies using, uh, site templates to market their services and give folks a chance to play around with, with what it is that they offer.

[00:09:00] Martin: Yeah, and I'll say when I used to work at a Drupal agency, you know, oftentimes we might speak to smaller orgs that, um, needed a cha- an update in their website, uh, maybe didn't have a lot of budget in sort of the current cycle.

And so we would try to have that conversation about, like, is there kind of like an MVP starting point where we could say, "Let's put you into something stock to begin with, and then, like, you know, maybe next year or the year after we can start to, you know, um, you know, get approvals for budgets to do, like, a fully custom retheme- Mm

or some of those kinds of things. So having something that, you know, when I checked, it looked like it was about $500 price point for the theme. To get something that's gonna look, you know, pretty nice out of the box, it's not like Olivero that like every Drupal site, you know, on the internet looks like. So it's, you know, um, sort of like stock photography.

It's not, like, unique, but it's, you know, maybe different from what you see everywhere. Um, I feel like for a lot of organizations, that could be a great starting point, and then they can, you know, w- work with either Morph or some other agency that's local to them, uh, to sort of, you know, customize it over time and, and sort of make it into something that's sort of like the unique and beautiful reflection of, of what they need precisely.

But, but having something that they can get into, you know, inexpensively and quickly, I think could be really compelling for a lot of organizations.

[00:10:15] Amber: Cool. Yeah.

[00:10:21] John: All right. Well, I, I, sorry, I'm enamored by the number of, of components and page layouts that this site template- ... provides. I'm looking at the, uh, I'm looking at the screenshots on the, on the, the pa- the site template page, and I'm like, "Wow, look at all the fun stuff you can do with this thing. This is really cool."

Um-

[00:10:39] Martin: It literally left you speechless.

[00:10:40] John: I, I, yeah. Well, or, or, or distracted, which is, you know- Okay, sure. ... not, not, not a hard thing to achieve most days. Um, Martin, thanks for, for bringing this along and, uh, you know, both educating me on the, the term convivial and, and educating our listeners on this great site template.

If folks wanted to suggest a module or a recipe or a site template or, you know, kinda really anything that would, that would fit into our Module of the Week segment, how best could they go about doing that?

[00:11:09] Martin: We're always happy to have exactly those kinds of conversations in the Talking Drupal channel of Drupal Slack, or folks can reach out to me directly as mandclu on a variety of social and Drupal platforms.

And I will also be at DrupalCon Rotterdam next week, so if folks bump into me there, then they can certainly, you know, uh, talk about either past projects like this one or suggest new ones.

[00:11:33] John: Hopefully they say excuse me first. All right, Martin. Well, safe travels, and thank you for, uh, the Module of the Week.

[00:11:42] Martin: Okay. Thanks, all. See you

[00:11:45] Nic: next week. Thanks. Bye.

[00:11:47] John: Subsequently, I think he'll actually be back next week. But it's all right. He'll be in Rotterdam. We can talk about that experience. Okay, let's start with the basics here, uh, Jasmine. Mm-hmm. What is GovHub? Mm-hmm. And what problem was it trying to solve, uh, for Georgia when the platform was created?

[00:12:11] Jasmyne: So GovHub, it didn't always start out as being called GovHub. We used to refer to it as the platform when we were on Drupal 7.

[00:12:21] Martin: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:21] Jasmyne: Um, but as you all know, uh, going from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 was just a whole new world. Um- Yeah ... a, an earlier, uh, callback to our Latin discussion. Um, but we took that as an opportunity to really examine how we structure the content for our content editors at our state agency partners.

So, um, this was a total examination of the state agency landscape of the clients that we already have, the customers we already have, and trying to standardize the content across the website. So before, um, it was even Drupal 7, we were on Vignette. I don't know if y'all know what Vignette... Okay.

[00:13:06] Amber: No, yeah.

Yeah.

[00:13:08] Jasmyne: And this was before my time. So I'm actually-

[00:13:10] John: Sounds scary, but continue.

[00:13:11] Jasmyne: Yes. I was actually... I've actually been here for a little over 12 years. Um, so even b- it w- that's how old Vignette is, I suppose. And before, it was like the Wild Wild West. Like, the, the content editors were able to create their own content types.

All the sites looked different. They didn't have a, any brand continuity. And so when we moved to Drupal, we achieved at least the brand continuity part. Like, all the sites kind of looked the same, but they all had different structured content types. And so if you went between two sites, your experience was still pretty different.

And so going from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8, that opportunity ga- that gave us the opportunity to standardize the content type so that the constituency had a consistent experience between the different state agency websites. And so that was, like, an introduction of our different color palettes and, um, different ways for content, or excuse me, uh, state agencies to display their content, but also, you know, have some sort of uniqueness to them, you know?

Um-

[00:14:18] John: Yeah ...

[00:14:18] Jasmyne: especially, like, with, like, landing pages and the layouts that we were able to introduce, uh, with Drupal 8. Uh, that, uh, gave the, uh, content editors at the different state agencies some, um- Reprieve, I suppose, because they are like, "We want our sites to look, you know, unique. We wanna, you know, um, express our, our brand identity in some cases."

And so, um, I think that answers your question. That- Yeah ... Drupal, so, and we, we like to let agencies know that GovHub is not Drupal, because what they'll do is go on drupal.org and say, "Hey, I want this, uh, module." Or, "Can I add this to my-" '

[00:15:01] John: Cause you're like, "No, no."

[00:15:02] Jasmyne: Right. And so we do stress that GovHub is very bespoke, is very custom, and that it is a product at the end of the day for our state a- to serve our state agencies and their web publishing needs.

[00:15:18] John: So when you, w- so when you say, like, you, you kinda educate folks as to, like, hey, like don't just go to drupal.org and, like, start shopping for, like, modules we can add, right? Yeah. Um, I, I imagine there is, though, a process if they're like, "Hey, I need this feature to do this thing." Mm-hmm. Like, could you install this module?

Where they can, like, make that feature request, and then you can evaluate it to add it to the platform. Is that, is that true? Yeah.

[00:15:46] Jasmyne: Yeah, totally. We, our, um, everyone who is a subscriber to GovHub, we, um, have a support, uh, aspect where they can write us like, "Hey, this thing is broken," or feature requests. Um, you know, "This would be really cool if I could do this," or, "This could be really cool if I could do that."

And we'll, sometimes we'll, we'll, we'll take it and like, okay, you know, maybe this isn't, like, the best use of our time in f- as far as, like, maintaining that thing because once we add it to GovHub- Yeah ... it lives forever, right? Um, but then if we get enough requests or if it's something that we see that could be beneficial for everybody on the platform- Right

then we'll totally take it seriously. Absolutely. Okay. It may not be the thing that they suggested, but just that capability and maybe the- Yeah ... you know, we evaluate the best way to implement it, but totally, people are very ... And we also have, um, a, a, um, advisory committee that's made up of our content creators at the state agencies.

Oh, okay. Our power users, um, stuff like that. And, um, we, uh, we, we work with them too to kind of, uh, work through our assumptions about things, get questions answered about things that we are like, "Are you guys really doing this? Are you guys using this feature? What if I..." You know, we have questions. Yeah. We go to the advisory committee and get their feedback as well.

[00:17:10] Nic: So GovHub, I, I hear powers more than 80 state websites at this point in Georgia. What, what made Drupal the right foundation for something at that scale? Yeah. Uh, 'cause I, I imagine that Drupal 7 to 8 you, you evaluated other platforms as well. Uh, why'd you choose Drupal?

[00:17:28] Jasmyne: Yeah. Um, well, from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 it was just, it was a no...

We weren't, we weren't turning back. Once we chose to go from Vignette to Drupal, there was no going back. Um, and we actually are powering over 90 sites at this point. Um- Oh, wow. I think we're up to like 95. Um, but Drupal, the, the structured content aspect of, of Drupal is what we were drawn to, and also the open source aspect of it.

Being government, we wanna be extremely transparent about the things that we're doing, and just that open source nature and community of maintaining the Drupal project is definitely something that attracted our team to using it as a solution for our, um, websites. Um, the security aspect of it as well, so there's a security team that is always evaluating all the modules and things that we use.

Um, that was something that drawn us, dr- drew us towards Drupal as well. Yeah. Knowing that there's a community of folks who are always looking out for security vulnerabilities, um, unlike other CMSs that, you know, we will not name. Um, Yeah. But you know, it's just, um, that whole community aspect of it was a, a good, a, a huge draw

[00:18:44] Amber: So you were talking about how the different departments have, you know, a means to ask feature requests and get support and things like that.

But what is the, like, the development team, like, what is... how is that structured? Do you just have one big development team for everything, for GovHub? Or- Mm-hmm ... do you have developers kind of distributed amongst the other agencies? How does that work?

[00:19:06] Jasmyne: Yeah. So for our team in particular, so at GTA I work in the Office of Digital Services and Solutions.

And so our team is the, uh, support, basically, for the GovHub product. Uh, we have on our team a, uh, solutions architect, and she's basically our lead developer that is in-house. Um, but we are, our team is augmented by a third-party company. Um, and they have a team of developers who we meet with, uh, twice a week, sometimes three times a week.

And we have a regular sprint cadence, um, two-week sprint cadence. And I actually, right before this, I was on our sprint planning call , um, where we look at our backlog and we pull items out to plan for the next sprint. So, um, we are a very, uh, well-oiled machine over here. Uh, we do not, uh, stray from our sprint sch- schedule at all.

Uh, we try to make sure that every sprint we're adding value for the customer. So whether that be fixing bugs that are hanging out in the backlog or improving on features and things like that, we wanna make some public-facing change every sprint Um, but for the most part it's, uh, maintaining our code, you know, uh, Composer updates, making sure all of our, uh, modules are up to date and on the bleeding edge of the security coverage.

Um, and that's what's made our transitions from 8 to 9, 9 to 10, and very soon 10 to 11, uh, pretty smooth, because we are constantly updating and making sure our modules are up to date. Um, so yeah, that, that's, that's, that's our, that's our release schedule. And, and, you know, if a feature request comes in, we, um, and, and it's something that we decide to implement, we definitely reach back out to the customer and say, "This was a good idea.

We're gonna put it in our backlog." And then once it actually is implemented, we go back and reach out- Yeah ... to them and say, "Hey, we, this thing is out there now." Um, and we also re- have release notes every sprint, too. So- Oh, nice ... and the release notes are only things that are customer-facing. Like, we don't let them know that, you know, we updated-

uh, Renovate bot. Like, they don't know. They don't care about that, you know? So- Um, but, but yeah, so everything that we do is very transparent, and, uh, we definitely like to include our customers in our roadmap and decision-making.

[00:21:34] Amber: Right on.

[00:21:35] Jasmyne: Yeah.

[00:21:35] John: So as a, as a, a, just a personal interest as a solution architect, uh, is your on, on-staff solution architect, like, looking at, um, kind of different ways of implementing things that you've already implemented?

Like y- you know, uh, module, improving modules that you're using and stuff like that? Mm-hmm. Or are they more looking at those kind of requests coming in to see if it makes sense to add that sort of stuff to the, to the, uh, system? Like, what, what, uh, what does their day-to-day look like in-

[00:22:05] Jasmyne: Yeah ...

[00:22:05] John: in a sentence or two?

[00:22:07] Jasmyne: Yeah, totally. So she mainly is looking at, uh- our existing code and improving- Mm-hmm ... on our existing code. Uh, if we have a feature request that comes in, we also have a user experience researcher and tester, and so she will go and get data to support why we should do this thing, not just somebody wanted it.

[00:22:29] John: Or, or shouldn't do this.

[00:22:31] Jasmyne: Right. Ah. Right, right, right. No, we are

[00:22:33] John: not doing that. Look,

[00:22:33] Jasmyne: here's the data. Yes, so we can always point back to the data. Like, the data says that, okay, we're gonna do it or not. Um, but no, her, most of her day-to-day is, um, uh, uh, keep maintaining our existing code, looking at ways to improve on a module that may be getting dated or something like that, or we may have to switch to a different module that's no longer supported or not gonna be supported in Drupal 11, for example.

Now we have to reevaluate the use of this module, things like that. And then-

[00:23:00] John: Mm-hmm ...

[00:23:00] Jasmyne: um, a lot of our projects, uh, they're, they're, they're, they span over months if we im- in, uh, implement something, uh, new.

[00:23:09] John: Sure.

[00:23:09] Jasmyne: Yeah.

[00:23:10] John: So that kinda leads into my next question. You know, government websites have a lot of requirements and- Mm-hmm

and standards that they have to uphold around accessibility, security- Mm-hmm ... compliance-

[00:23:22] Jasmyne: Mm-hmm ...

[00:23:22] John: that sort of thing. Um, I'm wondering how GovHub uses Drupal to kind of, like- Address those requirements, but also kind of like support, you know, the idea of like doing it once and having everybody benefit.

[00:23:36] Jasmyne: Totally. Um, so ba- way back in 2015 is when we did a huge audit of our sites, of our platform, and made everything WCAG 2.0 AA req- uh, compliant. Um, and since then we've been revisiting the compliance levels, 2.1, 3.0- Mm ... things like that. So we're, we're seeing where we can make changes that are applicable to the things that we do.

Uh, we have a third-party tool that ru- that continuously audits the site for accessibility. Um, but it... as far as what we use for Drupal, we actually just implemented the Editoria11y-

[00:24:16] Martin: Mm-hmm ... uh,

[00:24:17] Jasmyne: accessibility checker, and that's been awesome, and our, uh, our agency partners have loved that because that is the part that we can't control.

That's checking their content that they're working with every single day and adding every single day, and there's no way that we could audit, you know, 90 sites for their content every day, so we're putting that power into the content editors' hands with that module, and they love it. Uh, we actually also, uh, wrote tests for it recently to catch like, you know how you copy and paste links from your email?

Mm-hmm. If you're in 11y, it's like a safe link. Yeah. We implemented that test that was offered by the maintainers of that module, um, to catch those type of accessibility issues as well. So, um-

[00:25:01] Nic: Oh, very cool ...

[00:25:02] Jasmyne: yeah, it's really cool. Um, but as far as, uh, just maintaining that accessibility and doing that, we rarely audit the site, like I mentioned, with this third-party tool that we use, but then any time we implement some new functionality, that goes through an audit as well.

And we also on our team just, um, uh, hired a web coord- a web accessibility coordinator.

[00:25:25] Martin: Hmm.

[00:25:25] Jasmyne: A- and so he has taken on the task of, you know, using screen readers and assistive technology to also get that experience that, you know, people who don't use those technologies, we're just kinda going by the guidelines and making our best judgment, but he actually uses those technologies and can give us like a real firsthand experience of what he's experiencing on our sites.

[00:25:49] John: Hmm. Shout-outs to, uh, the Pr- the team at Princeton for, for- Yes ... their work on editorially. Mm-hmm.

[00:25:54] Martin: Yeah.

[00:25:55] John: Um, so I imagine, like, once you kind of have these, have these fixes and, and updates and changes, like, you're obviously adding that to the code base. That's getting deployed to the, the 90-plus sites that you, you have on, on the platform now.

So it, it kind of allows for that model of, like, test once, apply everywhere. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Is that, is that fair to say?

[00:26:17] Martin: Yes.

[00:26:18] John: Cool.

[00:26:19] Nic: Uh, and I'm, I'm curious a little bit about that process actually. Like, how, how are all these sites hosted? Do you have like a common... Is it a multi-site and you kinda just have one code base that you manage?

Or do you have to deploy... Like, there's a big security update coming out that we got kind of advance warning for.

[00:26:36] Jasmyne: Mm-hmm. Do

[00:26:36] Nic: you have to deploy 95 sites individually-

[00:26:39] Jasmyne: Yeah ...

[00:26:39] Nic: um, to make sure they're secure?

[00:26:41] Jasmyne: No, it's a multi-site, so it's one code base, uh, 90-something databases. So, uh, if we patch it for one, we're patching it for all.

Right. So that, that, that definitely, um, helps, uh, with maintenance for such a large platform. Um, but yeah, so it's multi-sites as of now.

[00:27:03] Nic: Yeah, m- I mean, multi-sites make a, a lot of sense in- Yeah ... a system like this. Yeah. I mean, there, there's, there's some complexity to them. They're not always the best solution.

Yeah. But I think for something like this where you have control over both the development and a mandate for-

[00:27:18] Jasmyne: Mm-hmm ...

[00:27:19] Nic: um, managing the feature set, I think, I think that's the perfect-

[00:27:23] Jasmyne: Yeah ...

[00:27:23] Nic: perfect use case.

[00:27:24] Jasmyne: Yeah. Yeah, we have a... We, we've thought and discussed, like... 'Cause we wanna make sure that we're future facing, and is this still the best solution for what we have going on?

Yeah. And so far, that's... we found it s- s- It's- ... it's working. If it's working, don't... If it, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[00:27:41] John: I love a, I love a good, um, uh, multi-site versus, uh, custom upstream battle, but, um- Mm ... we don't, we don't have to get into that here today.

[00:27:53] Amber: So content is obviously a huge part of government websites, and you've mentioned, like, structured content being so important and why Drupal is a great fit for this.

How does GovHub's use of structured content and reusable microcontent help agencies create better and more consistent experiences?

[00:28:13] Jasmyne: Yeah. Uh, you know, a lot of agencies pretty much produce the same type of content. You know, there's nothing too, uh, there's not too much variation. But there are some cases where certain agencies produce, for instance, more press releases than others, and some produce more events than others.

You know, some agencies- Mm.

[00:28:34] Amber: Mm-hmm ...

[00:28:34] Jasmyne: some agencies don't have physical locations. Agencies like the Department of Driver Services have a ton of locations. And so- Yeah ... the structured content, you know, aspect of GovHub allows for agencies to not have to, like, guess about what type of content they need to produce at any given moment.

We have given them, I think, 16 content types, I think we have- Oh, wow ... on site.

[00:29:02] Nic: I

[00:29:02] Jasmyne: mean- Right, so- ... I mean, 10,

[00:29:03] Nic: but that's a lot.

[00:29:04] Jasmyne: Yeah. Yeah. That's a lot. So, like, and, and, uh, we- Think we're addressing the needs of all the agencies and all the various ways that they post content online. Um, we have some agencies who don't use the location feature at all, but if they do decide to, if someone's on the Department of Driver Services site and they go to this other site, there's no, um, confusion about-

[00:29:29] Nic: Yeah

[00:29:30] Jasmyne: what they're looking at. They, they know how to use it. And if, uh, one thing in the government is that I might be working here one day, and then I might go work over at the Department of Public Health, you know, next year or something. So knowing- Oh, yeah ... how to function in this website, and it's not different between, uh, agencies in how to maintain the website is also, uh, a benefit- Yeah

to, um, the structured content. Um, the reusefulness, uh, re- reusability rather for, of the micro-content has been- Yeah ... also something that the agencies have loved, and they don't have to, um, you know, create the same type of lists and things like that, uh, multiple times. They can reuse them in different pieces of content.

So, um, that, that was another thing that we assessed when we moved from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 is that, okay, we see a lot of people making a bunch of, like, lists of documents, but they're just, like- Yeah ... naming them the same thing. And, like, so how administratively are they, you know, figuring out which list goes where and where, you know, how that all works.

And so them being able to reuse the content, too, uh, has been, uh, beneficial.

[00:30:40] Nic: Are, are you, are you able to sh- Are they able to share content across multiple agencies as well? Oh, Nic stole my

[00:30:46] John: question.

[00:30:47] Nic: Well-

[00:30:47] John: Content syndication.

[00:30:48] Nic: Yeah. I was curious. Content syndication. Yeah, we have similar questions. H- how do you syndicate content?

And, and who kind of owns that content once it's been syndicated?

[00:30:56] Jasmyne: So the only syndication that we have right now, and it's really just us being notified when a change happens so that we can go and grab that content because- Okay ... the agencies are the SMEs, right? Mm. They own their content. They have to make sure it's accurate.

Like, that's not our authority, to make sure that the content on their site is accurate. But my team also runs Georgia Gov, so www.georgia.gov. Um, or excuse me, georgia.gov. Um, so that's the state's, you know, website and main hub that contains information about all of the state agencies. Mostly, uh, information that constituents are looking for the most.

So like, how do I get my driver's license? How do I get, uh, food stamps? Things like that, things that all Georgians are looking for. But we source that content from the agency's website. So if they make a change, we have syndication to know that the change was made- Mm-hmm ... and then we go grab that and make an editorial decision about changing it on the georgia.gov site.

Um, but no, the, the short answer between... So there's a, a family of agencies like Department of Community Health. They have like, uh, a family of websites, and they right now can't share content across the site- Oh ... unfortunately. Yeah.

[00:32:14] Nic: I, I'm sure that's a common feature request from you then.

[00:32:16] Jasmyne: Yeah, yeah. Just like

[00:32:18] John: sharing content, I was just imagining like the, you know, Department of Health putting out like a, a, a warning about salmonella and then it showing up on like the DMV website-

as like a news item. Like, "Watch out, salmonella." They're like, "Oh, absolutely."

[00:32:31] Nic: I mean, it's a good... But you, you... I, I think you're kinda saying that tongue in cheek, but the truth is that is a good way to get notified about something like that. Like, how... Like, people do go to the DMV website far more often than they probably go to the Department of Public Health website.

[00:32:45] Jasmyne: Now, one feature we had that we just removed was called the emergency feature. Now, that was a feature where the, um, uh, I can't even think of... depart- the, the emergency department system of Georgia.

[00:33:00] John: Oh, like emergency management?

[00:33:01] Jasmyne: Yes, they- Yeah, yeah ... they, we wanted to work with them and the governor's office to control this feature because the emergency feature would go across all of the gov

[00:33:11] John: websites.

Yeah. Yeah,

[00:33:12] Jasmyne: yeah, yeah. Now, the moment to use the emergency feature may have been, I don't know, when we were experiencing a global pandemic, but we were never contacted to, um, you know, deploy that feature and send alerts across all the websites. So we were just like, if it's not being used, we kinda just like, uh, sunset it for now until maybe a governor comes across and they're like, "We really need that, and I wanna use that more for, you know, other emergencies-" Yeah

and things like that. But like, you know, yeah,

[00:33:44] John: it- And then, and then the power of Git repos really shines- Exactly ... 'cause you're like, "Hey, we're gonna go back to- We got it ... we're gonna go back to point

[00:33:50] Jasmyne: 23- We had it.

[00:33:51] John: It's in the repo ... and pull that feature back out."

[00:33:53] Jasmyne: Pull it right back up.

[00:33:54] John: Yeah.

[00:33:54] Jasmyne: Yep.

[00:33:55] John: Um, so, uh, one thing that I'm, I'm pretty interested in, and I've been, I've been biting my tongue not to ask this question until right now.

But, um- ... uh, Georgia also has the aptly named Orchard design system. I'm wondering, um, how you combine the shared design system with Drupal to create consistent content, um, and also a little bit of insight as to, you talked about structured content. I'm wondering if there's like with the design system unstructured content that gives content editors a little bit more, um, creative freedom maybe.

[00:34:32] Jasmyne: Yeah. So the short answer is we don't. We don't-

[00:34:36] John: Okay ...

[00:34:37] Jasmyne: combine Orchard with- GovHub. Okay. So we like to think of Orchard as like a cousin of GovHub, right? Rather than like- Okay ... a child or a sibling. So they, the design system was created to help agencies extend their brand continuity to the internal transactional applications that their agency control.

[00:34:59] Martin: Oh, okay. So

[00:35:00] Jasmyne: that if they're on a GovHub site and then they click a link to go log into the portal to get their- Mm ... benefits, that those experiences remain the same, that they don't feel like they've just been taken to a whole new planet. Mm. And, but we would get requests of like, "What are my color palette colors?

Like, what, what are... You know, we wanna brand our stuff to make it look like our website." And so that was the need we were filling with the design system.

[00:35:25] Martin: Mm.

[00:35:26] Jasmyne: And so they can basically create a replica, 'cause the components and the colors and the design and the fonts and all that are based on the Drupal theme that we're using.

But it's not using Twig, it's not using any Drupal, uh, technology. It's just-

[00:35:43] Nic: Yeah ... HTML,

[00:35:44] Jasmyne: CSS, JavaScript. So- And so they can pull it into their own projects and just so they can, they don't have, that takes the guesswork again out of making sure- Mm ... things are accessible, making sure that your brand continuity remains the same.

You don't have to do a whole bunch of digging in the code of your Drupal site to figure that out. And so that, that's, that was, uh, the, the plan behind Orchard.

[00:36:07] Nic: The, just to clarify, though, GovHub does implement that design system too, right? It's just n- the design system isn't, um- directly written from the Drupal code base, right?

Mm-hmm. So you, you follow the same guidelines?

[00:36:24] Jasmyne: Yeah, so it's the, it's the same colors, same fonts, same components in the way that they're- Mm-hmm ... laid out and things like that. But we don't directly source- Okay ... or for GovHub. Okay.

[00:36:36] John: Yeah. So there's no d- there's no direct connection, but, uh- Right ... it's a, it's a statewide- Got it

design system- Yes. Yes ... so that everything- Yes ... can look and feel the same. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:36:44] Jasmyne: The,

[00:36:44] John: the same-

[00:36:44] Amber: Sounds

[00:36:44] John: like,

[00:36:45] Amber: yeah, it's a brand guide.

[00:36:46] Jasmyne: It's a brand guide. Yeah. It is a brand guide, and it's also a, a, a, a product in itself. It's just- Right. Yeah ... it's, it's another product that we're offering agencies so that, again, they don't have to go hire a development team or, or, or someone- Mm-hmm

external to develop a whole new website. They can just pull the design system into some things that they already use.

[00:37:07] Amber: Yeah. Right on.

[00:37:08] Jasmyne: Yep.

[00:37:09] Nic: So you, you talked about recently, um, releasing the Editorially feature, and you said that your, most of your partners absolutely love that. I- Yeah ... I'm curious about how you go about onboarding or training content editors, because I- Yeah

I've worked on a few projects where there's dozens of sites using the same thing, and governance, content governance is always a bigger project than I think people realize. Yeah. So how do you, how do you go, guys go about onboarding a new editorial team or, or telling them about new features?

[00:37:40] Jasmyne: Yeah. Totally.

So in order to gain access to a GovHub site, you have to complete some basic training. So through that basic training, we introduce all of our content types. We introduce best practices for branding, like if they have their own logo, you know, letting them know what format do that logo needs to be in. It needs to be in SVG and all these things, dimensions and all that.

Um, when they're sourcing images, what are the dimensions and aspect ratios of those images? What do they need to be? And so in order to gain access, you have to go through that basic training. But then we also have a knowledge base, a public facing knowledge base that gets a little deeper into some of the scenarios that you may encounter when you're maintaining your content.

Um, we also are about to introduce refresher training, because we have some folks who have been our customers for like 10 years, and we've noticed that they may not be taking advantage of all of the features of GovHub. And so we just wanna- Okay ... remind them like, "Yay, the, these are some things that you may be, uh, missing out on."

And so we're gonna start implementing refresher training. We also have, uh, what's called our digital, um- Center of Excellence, where we hold seminars and webinars about best practices as far as being a content editor and maintaining content and creating content, and, you know, how to do that with your go- within your gov website.

And so there's a lot of touch points that we have to keep, uh, our content editors up to date on, you know, what they should be doing when they're maintaining their content. And then we also have a conference of our own that we used to put on in person twice a year before the pandemic, but then it went to once a year online, and now we're bringing it back to twice a year in person.

Right. 'Cause the, this is the first year we're doing it twice in one year since the pandemic. And it's actually next Thursday, on October 1st. Um, it's called, uh, Gov Talks. Mm. And so we invite all of our customers to Gov Talks and let them know what we're working on, what we're doing, what's on the roadmap.

Um, and that's a good time also to interface with them and hear their concerns and their questions and just make, again, making them feel like they're a part of what they're doing. Yeah. And not just... You know, 'cause a lot of, a lot of agencies, the person maintaining the website, that's just, like, one of, one of their jobs.

They're not, like- Yeah ... a web master or a developer, anything like that. And so, you know, make- making them feel like they're not out on an island alone too- Yeah ... is, is very helpful.

[00:40:09] Nic: I, I think, I think the refresher is a great idea, 'cause I can't tell you the number of times for long-running projects somebody's like, "Hey, I need this feature."

Or, "I, I can't, I don't like this site because I don't have this feature." It's like, what do you mean? We released that feature three years ago. Yeah,

[00:40:21] Jasmyne: exactly.

[00:40:21] Nic: Yeah. And so I, I do have one very in the weeds follow-up question though, 'cause this is a problem that one of my clients who manages a, a government website runs into, and that is logos How do you handle logos on these different sites?

Because some, like, you kind of design for, like, the specific size, but there's some agencies out there that have a really, really, really long narrow one or a really tall one. Mm-hmm. And h- how, do you guys... Do you just tell them, like, "Hey, your logo has to meet these specs," or, or what?

[00:40:52] Jasmyne: Yeah. Basically we have a public-facing page that has our logo specifications on it.

It, the, like I said, the, the size, um, the file type has to be a SVG. Um, it has to have a transparent background. Um, just all the... We have all these things, and so they'll send us, like, "Hey, put my logo on the site," which also has to go through a release. It's, we can't just, like, upload your-

[00:41:19] Nic: Oh, okay ...

[00:41:19] Jasmyne: it's, it's a code change, so it's not gonna happen immediately.

Interesting. So in the meantime, um, h- go to this page and make sure that your logo meets these specifications. And so yeah, sometimes it's a lot of pushback, but you know, there's one, um, there's a, a thing that we have to consider. So when we're scoring tickets to be put into a sprint, we use the RICE method.

Are you guys familiar with that? No. Mm-mm. What is that? Reach, impact, um, confidence, and effort. So those are the things that we measure, and it produces a score for us. But because we're in the government, we had to add a P on the front of that and call it the PRICE, uh, scoring methodology for politics.

Because sometimes we just get a call, and we gotta do it. 'Cause it's the commissioner, it's the whoever of whatever agency, and they're just like, "No, do it." And so we have to factor that in sometimes. And so if we get a call, and it's from someone high up, that definitely affects the score of whether or not that ticket is gonna be, uh, prioritized.

And so- Makes sense ... um, so yeah. So sometimes we just have to do it, but it, sometime- you know, if we explain, like, it's for accessibility purposes, most people, based on the data, are viewing your website on a little bitty phone. So they're not gonna see that little bitty, tiny script you have in the seal of your logo.

So you know, don't, you know, bank on that being, like, something that's gonna translate some brand identity

[00:42:51] Amber: So you've got like code changes that maybe just apply to, to one site, like this, like let's say a department says, "Okay, I've got a new logo. Here's the SVG." Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So how does the QA process look, um, when you're deploying, uh, changes that, you know, not only just affect everybody, but maybe just affect like one particular department?

Do you involve them with that or do you just like punt it till when it's live or how does that work?

[00:43:17] Jasmyne: So we actually use Tugboat as a part of our QA process. Oh, nice. All

[00:43:23] Martin: right?

[00:43:23] Jasmyne: I didn't know that. So the, the third-party team that augments our development, uh, team, they're, they have a QA analyst. And so he just QAs every PR as they become available.

Um, we don't involve the agencies in our development process at all. Oh, interesting. We, matter of fact, um, we, you know, don't, we, we advise them not to like stage content on their staging site if they really need to do something. Where it's really just to, it's really for us to stage functionality to make sure things are working.

Um- Mm-hmm ... if we have a request come in we do it on our staging site first to just check it and then we'll go do it on their live site. Um, but you know, we don't, we don't involve them in the testing process, um, or in the sprint process or anything like that. Um- Yeah ... but yeah, the, the, our QA analyst he, you know, is very thorough.

He's excellent and he catches things before they go to production and Tugboat definitely helps with that

[00:44:18] Amber: Right on. Yeah. So, we, you talked a- about, you know, sunsetting the emergency thing. But what about, like, like we've got an election coming up here and, you know, maybe certain departments, you know, like an elections department or something, or the, the Secretary of State Department, has a spike in traffic.

So how does GovHub's Drupal and cloud architecture help-

[00:44:40] Jasmyne: Mm-hmm ...

[00:44:40] Amber: you handle those spikes to maybe certain, certain areas, uh- Mm-hmm ... certain departments or how does that work?

[00:44:46] Jasmyne: So it's funny, the one agency we don't have is Secretary of State.

[00:44:51] Amber: Okay. And we,

[00:44:52] Jasmyne: and we- Not

[00:44:54] Amber: my problem.

[00:44:57] Jasmyne: Oh my gosh. But I mean, there's other agencies that experience spikes, for sure.

But it's-

[00:44:59] Amber: Okay.

[00:44:59] Jasmyne: Okay ... that is just funny that you say that one, 'cause we've been- Okay ... since I've been working here- I made that assumption,

[00:45:03] Amber: I guess.

[00:45:03] Jasmyne: Yeah ... since I, since I've been working here, we've been trying to get them on our platform. But I, yeah. I mean, hopefully this ... um, but no. Like, for instance, Department of Revenue.

They will get a spike- Okay ... around tax time. Sure. 'Cause people gotta go download the forms and things like that. Um, and so we definitely, we have a web application firewall that has, uh, load-balancing capabilities. And so, yeah, when we experience those spikes, uh, we have monitoring and, uh, rules in place to mitigate any security issues that could come, uh, from that.

But even outside of spikes, we get confused with the country Georgia a lot. And so- Oh, yeah ... we get constantly attacked. Constantly. Like, all year round. And so, you know, we have to, we, we definitely have a lot of, uh, security measures in place, um-

[00:45:54] Amber: You got a target on your back because- Yeah ... of the name. Yeah.

Uh, well- Oh, man ...

[00:45:58] Jasmyne: multiple targets.

[00:46:01] Nic: Yeah. Oh, shoot. Multiple targets. Yeah. I, I mean, I, I, I think the truth is state-level websites are a target in general. Yeah. Mm-hmm. In general, yeah. Like, I mean, you, you just have that added confusion.

[00:46:09] Jasmyne: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

[00:46:10] Nic: But, um, I, I, I just want to say I've been, I recently have been updating a lot of my clients to Drupal 11.

I think you'll be very happy with the performance improvements that Drupal has had between 10 and 11. I mean, I, I released a site last week and was d- running some numbers, and the average response times are, like, 30% lower in the highest- Nice ... tier, and 60% lower in the middle, like the median tier. Oh.

Significantly better. Yeah. I, I mean, Drupal is always great for performance. Yeah. Especially compared to, like you said, uh, the way you put it, uh, what was it? Other CMSs we shall not name.

[00:46:51] Jasmyne: Yeah.

[00:46:51] Nic: Um, but Drupal 11 is, uh, hands down by far the best in

[00:46:57] Jasmyne: terms of performance. Yeah, that's what I've been hearing. And, you know, of course, we use Varnish, and we cache whenever we can- Yeah

and stuff like that. Um, so that, that definitely helps, but yeah, that, without that firewall, it would be a long day.

[00:47:10] John: It'd be a long day. You'd be on fire.

[00:47:12] Jasmyne: Literally.

[00:47:13] John: That's, that's why, that's why we have the firewall. Um, so you've been, uh, y- you've been working with this platform, um, for a long time, right?

Mm-hmm. So the platform has existed since Drupal 7, I think you said. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Um, that means you've gone through a couple of Drupal upgrades.

[00:47:33] Martin: Mm-hmm.

[00:47:33] John: Uh, obviously, 7 to 8 was kind of like a, a big, a big lift. Yeah. But I'm wondering, like, uh, what is the one, like, piece of advice, um, that you have for folks out there that are maybe doing something similar, managing a large Drupal platform in kind of that maintenance and evolution-

[00:47:54] Martin: Mm-hmm

[00:47:54] John: track of like, "Hey, just remember, like, make sure you're doing this because it's gonna save you, like, a bunch of headache-" Yeah, yeah ... as you move to different versions.

[00:48:04] Jasmyne: Yeah, absolutely. The Composer updates. Keeping the modules up to date as much as you possibly can from sprint to sprint, if you can help it.

We have composure updates every single sprint. It checks to make sure our modules are up to date, and we make those updates every single sprint. So that has saved us a tremendous amount of work, and that is something I've- Yeah ... noticed sig- significantly between those changes, from 8 to 9, 9 to 10. Like, it was a lot of work to go from 8 to 9, simply because we had so many modules to update and to make sure they were compatible with 9.

And so now, not so much. The issue we're running into now is that the modules that we're using, they're not compatible with 11.

[00:48:48] Martin: Mm.

[00:48:49] Jasmyne: Because of the maintainers. They're not... They haven't worked on them in a while or what have you. And so we're discussing whether or not we need to patch it or just find a different solution.

But that's been, like, a couple. Like, it's been just a couple things. Yeah. Like for, you know, just not anything that's, uh, caused a major delay. So I would definitely say make sure that your modules remain up to date as much as you possibly can, and keep that going. Um, and then because GovHub is so custom, some stuff we just have to, like, retool

[00:49:20] Martin: Mm

[00:49:20] Jasmyne: um, to m- to make work for Drupal 11. So that's kind of, like, our issue, not necessarily, like, a Drupal-wide issue. Um- Yeah ... but, you know, making sure that you have a lot of documentation, a lot of traceability into why you made decisions when you made them, so that when- Mm ... you have to go back and do that retooling, you don't forget, like, why you- Yeah

put this line of code in here, you know. Um, we are very big on that. We use Jira to keep track of all of our decisions. Even if it's something that we decide that we're not gonna do, we don't delete it. It's still there. Yeah. It's still there for the record. It, you know, we close it with a decision of why we chose not to do it, so we know why we didn't do it, so we're not- What

[00:50:03] John: does this checkbox do?

Why... We don't

[00:50:05] Jasmyne: have to remember. We don't have to rely on our memory- Yeah ... from 10 years ago why we didn't do something. Like-

[00:50:10] John: There's, like, one light in an office somewhere every time you check the checkbox. It goes on, it goes off, and people are like, "It doesn't even do anything."

[00:50:17] Jasmyne: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:50:18] John: Somebody's just like, "Why does my light keep going on and off?"

Why?

[00:50:20] Jasmyne: Where is the documentation for this light?

[00:50:21] John: I like, I like one thing that, well, I like a lot of the things that you, you just said, but I think, like, the, the one or two things that come, like, always drive me nuts when I look at a Drupal platform, somebody's like, "Oh, like, we're re-platforming. Can you, like, look at this and tell us, like, what we're, what we need to do better?"

And I'm like, "Ah, just, like, look at your status report and fix all these errors. And, like, make sure you're updating your, your modules regularly. Like, this module's, like, three versions out of date." Yeah, no. Like, where, why? Why is that a problem? Okay. Yeah. It's so easy. Yeah.

[00:50:55] Nic: I, I do, I do wanna let you know of one, one new thing in the 10 to 11 upgrade that you may not be aware of that you'll wanna evaluate.

[00:51:03] Jasmyne: Okay.

[00:51:04] Nic: And that is, um- The equivalent update. So I assume you're in 10.6?

[00:51:09] Jasmyne: Yes. 10,

[00:51:10] Nic: 10.6 has to update to 11.4.

[00:51:14] Jasmyne: Okay.

[00:51:14] Nic: Right? So you can't update to 3210.

[00:51:17] Jasmyne: Mm-hmm.

[00:51:18] Nic: What that means is some modules now are releasing a new version for 11.3 plus. So for example, Gin- Mm-hmm ... Gin Toolbar is one where I hit this, right? You're... I- if you're on Drupal 10, you're on version two or version one of Gin Toolbar.

Mm-hmm. Because that's the only one that supports Drupal 10. It supports Drupal 11, but only up to 11.2.

[00:51:42] John: Mm. Okay.

[00:51:43] Nic: So you, you can't, um, you kind of have to remove Gin Toolbar with Composer, update to Drupal 11, re-require Gin Toolbar to get the right version-

[00:51:54] Jasmyne: Gotcha ...

[00:51:54] Nic: and then run database updates. So it's not, it's not the end of the world.

[00:51:57] Jasmyne: Yeah.

[00:51:58] Nic: But it is, it is a g- like, y- it's not as simple as just going like, "Oh yeah, Gin Toolbar has an 11 release."

[00:52:03] Jasmyne: Yeah.

[00:52:04] Nic: You're, you're, you're gonna have to do a little bit of- It's like, uh ... a little bit of- ... Indiana

[00:52:07] Amber: Jones,

[00:52:08] Martin: you know, with like- Yeah ... the

[00:52:09] Nic: stones. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

[00:52:09] Jasmyne: The, yeah. Gotta swap real fast. Yeah. Yeah.

Swap fast. And so one thing, one, one thing we're doing is we have a draft PR with 11 on it to see what's- If you've gotten

[00:52:22] Nic: there, then

[00:52:22] Jasmyne: you're good. Yeah ... yes, to see what's broken. 'Cause like I said- Yes ... like a lot of our stuff is custom, so we don't know what we don't know- Yeah ... until we're on Drupal 11. So we, so we're not gonna just like switch everybody and be like, "Oh, everything is broken."

Nope. "And we didn't know." Yeah. So we do, we, uh, we have made several draft PRs, several versions to just check, you know, what is actual- the things that we have upgraded.

[00:52:45] Nic: Yeah.

[00:52:45] Jasmyne: Will they actually work in Drupal 11? So. So.

[00:52:47] Nic: Yeah, the, the upgrade status module is a godsend for- Yeah ... checking what needs to change before you get up.

Yeah. But yeah, it... That, that's a new thing for the Drupal 11 cycle- Okay ... that some people may not be aware of.

[00:52:58] John: So I would, I would like double, double down on that, or plus one on that to like- ... also look at what's being taken out of Drupal 12, right? Or being added for that matter. Mm-hmm. Because, um, one thing that, uh, is, is coming down the pipe, and I think it's in, I think it's in 11.4, maybe it's experimental in 11.4, but, um, is a new, uh, admin theme based on Gin, right?

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. So like, you know, for a lot of, a lot of my clients I'm like, "Don't even bother installing Gin, just go to the experimental, you know, version of the module."

[00:53:32] Nic: I-

[00:53:32] John: If you, if you, if you c- ... would

[00:53:33] Nic: not use the experimental version

[00:53:35] John: of Gin Toolbar. All right.

[00:53:36] Nic: But it's stable-

[00:53:37] John: You're, you're overly cautious in c- No,

[00:53:39] Nic: no, no, no

in some cases. But- It is not ready. But it is stable. PS, this is

[00:53:42] Amber: not a support channel. Yeah.

[00:53:43] Nic: It is, it is-

[00:53:45] John: Seriously. So like, I'm not saying, I'm not saying like you should just bli- blindly do it, but like, if, if you can make it work and makes sense- Yeah ... like you should look at that. Because ultimately, like that's be- like there are things being removed from Drupal 12, right?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So like, I always like to look a one version ahead to be like, "All right. Can I make my life easier and not have to like-

[00:54:03] Jasmyne: Yeah. Yeah ...

[00:54:03] John: do something now and then do it again later?" Yeah. Uh,

[00:54:06] Jasmyne: that's all I'm saying. Yes, that's totally valid. No, that's totally valid, and that, that- Admin theme is something that I have been harping on because for the most part, from a customer standpoint, going from version to Drupal version, it's like a nothing burger.

They don't know. They, they don't- Yeah ... see anything happening. Yeah. And so if I say we're going to Drupal 11, I want something to- Yeah, yeah ... show them. You know what I mean? And that admin theme is one thing- Yeah ... I'm like, "I really want this," 'cause this is cool. This is a different way, a different experience than they've been used to for the past 10 years almost.

Yeah. Um, and so I really want that. But yeah, it's not ready. I'm- And so

[00:54:41] John: it- I'm gonna, I highlight that in one of my talks, like when you're talking about like platforms and design systems, like get- Yeah ... your users excited. Like the Apple- Yes ... the Apple level.

[00:54:49] Martin: Yes,

[00:54:49] Jasmyne: yes.

[00:54:50] John: Like, "Hey, we're going..." And I'm gonna s- I'm gonna steal the term nothing burger because that-

that is absolutely it most of the time. It's like- This is hard ... it's like, "Hey, we updated Drupal 11." It's like, "Oh, cool, the, the, the navigation- It looks exactly the same ... is on the side now and slides out. Great, thanks." But-

[00:55:05] Jasmyne: Yeah. Man,

[00:55:05] Amber: can we at least have confetti- Yes ... on the login or something?

[00:55:08] Jasmyne: Like, we trying to, we trying to zhoosh it up for them.

I'm trying to, you know, make it exciting. But yeah, no, I've... We've been looking at that, uh, admin theme, and yeah, we- Yeah ... we just

[00:55:16] Nic: like, "

[00:55:16] Jasmyne: What do we need to do- Well- ... to get it working?"

[00:55:18] Nic: I, I will say Mike Herchel did an uh, a- an untold amount of work. It will be ready for 11.5 for zer- .0. Okay. It's not gonna be experimental again.

Okay. It's ready to use then. I was just saying the 11.4 version, really, based on the amount of work that he did, I wouldn't use it. It's not ready. I don't, I don't know. It's 11.5.

[00:55:38] John: I've been using it on my personal site.

[00:55:40] Nic: Yeah, on your personal site.

[00:55:42] Jasmyne: It's working fine. Listen, customers- No difference. No difference.

customers will find a way to break the thing. Yes. So my background, I came from being a QA analyst myself. Yeah. And so that, that was my job, was to, to break things. And so I'm like, "Okay, I found all the ways to break it." No. Somebody will find a way- ... that I did not think of to break those things. Yeah. And so, yeah, we can't be...

We can't experiment unfortunately with, yeah.

[00:56:08] John: I was also an early adapter on navigation too, which, which I think Nic and I had a similar conversation about. We'll have to go back into the, into the, the history- Yeah ... and look, but anyway.

[00:56:19] Nic: I, um, I, I'm gonna pivot a little bit here too, 'cause a lot of, um, government sites have a lot, uh, translate a lot of their content.

Um, I'm curious how GovHub handles that and if in... I- is it, do you have kind of a centralized process for translating and a set of languages that they can or have to use?

[00:56:41] Jasmyne: Yeah. So we honestly heavily rely on the, the person's browser settings to translate. We can't- Mm. We unfortunately don't have the capacity or bandwidth to have a different version, translated version of each page and each pe- and each content, and agencies don't have that capacity either necessarily.

Okay. And so we used the Google Translate module for a while. Mm-hmm. Um, so that they could pick their language. But now with modern browsers, if someone sets their language, all the websites should translate to, to their native language or whatever it, the, uh, language is native to their browser. Okay. Um, we do translate internal, like, documentations that we publish.

So, like our team- Okay ... in georgia.gov, with we're creating content, we have somebody on our team who was translating those documents, uh, that we publish. Okay. But just, like, the site's content, we kind of just have to rely on the, on the browser settings unfortunately.

[00:57:49] Amber: It's a good way to, like, you know, you have got constraints with your budget and your- Yeah

and your capacity, and so it's like using- Yeah ... the technology that's out there, it's a good workaround. Yeah. So, so stepping back from GovHub specifically, why do you think that government organizations continue to love Drupal? What, uh, what is it about Drupal and op- and the open source model that makes it such a strong fit for the

[00:58:15] Jasmyne: public sector?

Well, that you, you really just, you really just said it, the open source aspect of it all. Like-

[00:58:18] Amber: Okay. Yeah ...

[00:58:19] Jasmyne: like the, the governments are very wary of black boxes. Like, we wanna know what's going on. We need you to pop the hood and let us know where our data's going, where, how it's being stored, how it's being transmitted, and the open source community of Drupal definitely aids in that trust building that we also like to do with our constituency.

So if there is a question about how is this site run, we can easily answer that question with Drupal. You, and, and the modules that are being maintained by the community, that again, some other instances, some other products, it is a black box, unfortunately. Like, and they, it's hard to get those kind of answers.

And so, um, I think that is why the public space trusts Drupal so much is that it is very transparent and it allows us to foster that same transparency with our constituents. Yeah.

[00:59:16] Amber: Yeah, I mean clearly those values are present with how you're doing your communication and getting- Mm-hmm ... feedback and the events- Mm-hmm

that you're doing, and so that just lines up. Like that transparency also with the code base, it's like carries through with everything. Yeah. That's awesome.

[00:59:30] Jasmyne: Mm-hmm.

[00:59:31] John: By the people, for the people.

[00:59:32] Jasmyne: Exactly. Yeah. Some of us have to do that work. We have

[00:59:36] John: to- Yeah ...

[00:59:37] Jasmyne: steadfast with that.

[00:59:38] John: Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. I mean, I, I can imagine as a, you know, the, the State of Rhode Island also uses Drupal for its- Mm-hmm

state, state website.

[00:59:46] Jasmyne: Massachusetts do. Massachusetts, yeah. Massachusetts. Yeah. There,

[00:59:48] John: there are a lot of them out there, and I just imagine like, oh, like, hey, let me go look at that code base and see why that thing does that thing that it does. And, you know, it's, it's just- Yeah ... you know, that level of transparency is super, super important.

So Jasmine, thank you for joining us. Uh, thank you for all the hard work you're doing, uh, in- Thank you ... in Georgia to, you know, provide those open source websites to the, to the folks that live there. Um, and, uh, yeah, thank you for joining us.

[01:00:14] Jasmyne: Thank you guys so much for having me. Thank you for inviting me, Amber.

It was great seeing you, Nic. Yeah. Oh, it's great to see

[01:00:19] Amber: you.

[01:00:20] Jasmyne: Yeah. Yes. Hope, like will y'all be in Orlando?

[01:00:23] John: I will

[01:00:24] Amber: Hopefully.

[01:00:25] John: I probably will be I, I actually, I actually just got a, a volunteer ticket f-

[01:00:31] Jasmyne: Okay ... '

[01:00:31] John: cause so I will, I will at least have a ticket.

[01:00:34] Jasmyne: Yeah. Yes. I am, you know, I'm the, on the steering committee for DrupalCon.

Oh. I'm, uh, now, right now I'm the liaison for the summits, so that's, me and John have been communicating for that. And, um, I'm hopefully going to be a part of the government summit somehow, uh, this year. I've spoken at the government summit, but I've never organized it, so we'll see how that goes. But, um- Right on

also Black and Drupal. Black and Drupal started in 2023 in Pittsburgh, and so I'm heading that up, and we have a lunch and all this fun stuff. So I will definitely be there doing

[01:01:10] Amber: a lot. That's great.

[01:01:11] Jasmyne: Run around. That's great. Hopefully I get to enjoy all the events that Mike Kerschel and those guys, like, have put together.

I'm, I'm just... It's gonna be one for the books, I think. So, hope you guys can make it. But thank you again. Mm-hmm. Thank you guys for having me. I really enjoyed this.

[01:01:24] John: Absolutely. Yeah. Don't forget, you can reach out to us on Drupal Slack in the Talking Drupal channel, or email us with [email protected]. To promote your Drupal event, sponsor an episode, or become a guest, visit talkingdrupal.com and click the appropriate button in the sidebar.

And thank you patrons for supporting Talking Drupal. Your support has kept us talking for now 571 episodes. All right. Uh, Jasmine, if folks wanted to get ahold of you to talk about, uh, websites in Georgia, um, DrupalCon, uh, any and all of the things, how best could they go about doing that?

[01:02:03] Jasmyne: So I'm on the Drupal Slack.

It's just my name, Jasmine Oops. Nothing cool. I'm gonna think, I'm gonna think about a cool handle later. Um, but you can find me on the Drupal Slack. Um, and you can reach out to our team at the State of Georgia at digital.georgia.gov.

[01:02:22] John: Perfect. Amber, again, thank you for joining us for the last four weeks.

It's been a pleasure. Hopefully you'll come back often. If folks wanted to get ahold of you, how could they best do that?

[01:02:32] Amber: Oh, on the Drupal Slack, uh, you can find me @ambermatz. Um, elsewhere, like on LinkedIn, amberheimsmatz, and you can find out more about Tugboat at tugboatqa.com.

[01:02:43] John: And also, they can find you on the AI Learners Club.

Is

[01:02:46] Amber: that- That's right, yeah ... is that

[01:02:48] Martin: monthly, weekly? How, how often do you

[01:02:49] Amber: guys meet? It's, like, when we schedule it. It's for, we're pretty- There you go. ... we're pretty informal. We've got one coming up this, um, this Friday, and, um, we've got, uh, Jim Birch coming on to talk about, um- Ah, for Jim Birch ... the delivery record, uh, thing that they're, that they're working on at Canopy.

And then in, uh, October, um, Randy Fei has been playing around with, um, the migration stuff. So we had, uh, Jamie Abrahams, uh, came on the show, uh, a couple weeks ago and did, like, a live stream of static to Drupal, or, like Drupal CMS, Canvas, um, migration. So Randy's been playing around with that. He wants to do a more structured, like, test-driven development migration, Drupal to Drupal.

So we've been chatting, and we've got three sessions planned, uh, where, like, the first one's gonna be, like, about the tests, um, getting, uh, Claude to write the test for the migration, and then proceeding with his personal Drupal 6 site, migrating that using, uh, AI assistance. So it should be pretty exciting.

If you wanna find out more about the Drupal AI Learners Club, go to, um, the Drupal Slack and #ai-learners. We're on, uh, Luma. Luna? Luma. I always forget if it's an M or an N. But luma.com is where- Luma ... our events calendar is. So, uh, Drupal AI Learners Club. Uh- You can find out, uh, about our upcoming events,

[01:04:12] John: so. Uh, we'll put the, uh, we'll put the link to that in the show

[01:04:15] Amber: notes.

Yeah.

[01:04:15] John: And to be fair- The correct link. ... you could've said either one of those things and I would've just been like, "Yeah, it's Luma-

[01:04:21] Amber: Yeah, that's correct ... or

[01:04:22] John: Luna- Yeah ... or whatever."

[01:04:24] Amber: Yeah. I'm gonna need- You

[01:04:24] John: got

[01:04:24] Amber: the email ... another cup of coffee before I can spell websites, you know? I- I'm

[01:04:28] Jasmyne: familiar with Luma. I've found some events on

[01:04:29] Amber: there.

Yeah.

[01:04:30] John: Yeah.

[01:04:31] Amber: Yeah.

[01:04:31] John: All right.

[01:04:32] Amber: Yeah, we like it.

[01:04:33] John: Nic, what about you?

[01:04:35] Nic: You can find me online pretty much everywhere @nicxvan, N-I-C-X-V-A-N

[01:04:39] John: And I'm John Picozzi. You can find me, uh, uh, personally at picozzi.com. You can find me on social media and drupal.org @johnpicozzi, and you can find out more about EPAM at epam.com

[01:04:53] Nic: And we forgot to tell you again, Amber, but since this is your last show

[01:04:57] Amber: you get the privilege Oh, I'm supposed to say something. If you've enjoyed listening, we've enjoyed talking.

[01:05:02] John: Thanks everyone.

[01:05:03] Nic: Yeah,

[01:05:05] John: sweet. Bye. We always bury the lede