Evolving Web attended Acquia Engage in New Orleans last week, an exciting and informative three-day conference where we learned a lot about how different companies are thriving in an evolving digital landscape. We were also sponsors of the event and presented a session on how to create more effective personalization by combining UX research and a strong content strategy. Aside from the fact that New Orleans has great food, music, and people, here are other takeaways from our time in the Big Easy.

There’s never been a better time to be a Drupal user in Canada.

Since I started using Drupal in 2008, I’ve seen anecdotal evidence that Drupal is popular in Canada. Since 2006, and probably earlier, there have been active users groups in Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal, that organize regular conferences and meetups. These local groups are key to the Drupal community’s culture of open source and knowledge sharing. So I wasn’t surprised to learn that Canada is fourth in the world in terms of active users on Drupal.org (behind the US, Great Britain, and India).

The Layout Builder is one of the most exciting new features in Drupal 8. It's a site building tool that makes it easier to configure how your content is displayed in Drupal. You can use a drag-and-drop interface to combine fields, nodes, and other content, and actually control the layout used to contain that content.

This year's edition of Drupal North has come to an end and what a great experience it has been. We got to connect with so many people in the community, share our experiences, and learn from others. Here are some of the highlights and key takeaways from the last 3 days:

Another successful day at Drupal North is now complete! This day was packed with sessions from all kinds of speakers, including our very own Jigar Mehta and Robert Ngo. Some great discussions were had amongst the Drupal community which was out in full force. Here are some of the ideas that we saw repeated throughout the day:

Today marked the kick-off of Drupal North 2019, and Evolving Web is excited to be a part of it for the 4th year in a row. Day 1 was packed with trainings, summits (for the 1st time!), and networking opportunities.

Search is a key feature in web experience, and for a lot of people, it's the go-to method to find content. We use search countless times a day on our smartphones in various contexts. And yet, when we're building out websites, search is often an afterthought that we don't spend much time on. Search gets added to the laundry list of site features, like meta tags and social media links.

We at Evolving Web are really excited to see the progress being made on improving the Drupal admin UI. As a designer, I’m curious about the process that drives such a huge project. I talked to the designer in charge of the refreshed interface, Cristina Chumillas, and got super interesting insights into what’s behind the new design.

I’ve recently been researching, writing, and talking about content editor experience in Drupal 8. However, in the back of my mind I’ve been reflecting on the site builder experience. Every developer, site builder, themer who learns Drupal is going to try out the admin UI to get their site up-and-running. What are some things site builders often struggle with in the admin UI when learning Drupal?

Over the last few months, I've been involved in a UX study to shed some light on what would make a good content editor experience in Drupal. I helped run a survey asking content editors for their feedback about the Drupal admin UI and got some interesting results.