Last week, the Inforest Communications team attended Drupal Camp NJ, an event where web developers, marketers, and digital strategists came together to explore the latest advancements in Drupal. The conference featured insightful sessions covering everything from AI integration to making Drupal more user-friendly for marketers. Here’s a breakdown of some of the most exciting discussions we attended:
What Do Marketers Really Want? Unpacking the User Research for Drupal CMS
We enjoyed hearing Suzanne Dergacheva talk about what markers want in a Content Mangement System (CMS). Suzanne’s presentation is a result of user interviews as well as benchmarking of different tasks to be completed in various content management systems.
Discussing use interviews, Suzanne discussed how Drupal has historically been a “scratch your own itch” type of environment where developers tend to focus on solving their own problems. Now Drupal is attempting to make it easier for marketers to use an integrate with their various tools.
From her research, people have the impression is that Drupal is powerful, but you need developer to make small changes. Meanwhile, people may have experience working with WordPress, but find it hard to customize.
How do people pick a CMS?
Ease of use integration, reasonable content, accessibility, turnkey solutions, familiarity and support. A big part of what marketers are looking for include “marketing integrations;” Custome Relationship Management (CRM) software, analytics and other tools. It’s also important for them to have familiarity and support.
Pain pain points for CMS include the learning curve, limited flexibility, and dead ends when it comes to trying to integrate dynamic contact and personalization.
Benchmarking
Benchmarking is where you test different tasks in different content management systems to see and compare how each system handles it and what the experience is when using it. Suzanne efforts targeted a number of competitors, including WordPress, Webflow, SquareSpace, etc. I thought it was interesting that they did not include Shopify, which I think a lot of people on WordPress are moving to.
Suzanne went over different tasks and processes that marketers site builders content. Editors would use within the CMS systems and not some differences and advantages with different tools. Key observations are that first impressions count and that some of the best tools are immersive from the start. Also, “jargon creep” can be an issue. Other key observations are the importance of reusable content and including documentation (including video documentation) into the editor itself.
Suzanne saw that Drupal’s new “Experience Builder” editor has a huge opportunity, but it will also be what page editors are going to judge the entire Drupa CMS on.
We’ll do it live: Enterprise content staging with Workspaces
Devin Zuczek presented on Workspaces as a way to create and stage a collection of draft content and other changes that can be previewed on a live website and then published all at once. Basically, anything that is revisionable content or a configuration can be edited this way.
Devin has also created a plug-in that allows for you to have multiple workspaces act at the same time. This looks very cool but also looks pretty daunting in terms of keeping track of everything.
Dana thought it was interesting that Devin is working with Drupal Commerce product variations since these are not revisionable without installing a patch, which reveals one of the frustrations of working with Drupal; it often takes years for issues/features to work their way through to completion.
Unlocking New Capabilities: Drupal & OpenAI Integration
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming how websites operate, and Drupal is no exception. This session explored how Drupal can integrate with OpenAI (the technology behind tools like ChatGPT) to automate content creation, enhance user experiences, and improve site functionality. Imagine a website that can generate blog posts, summarize long articles, or even help customer service teams by automatically answering common questions. AI in Drupal is making these futuristic ideas a reality today.
Drupal and ChatGPT DrupalCamp NJ.pdf
Don’t Wait for Experience Builder—Use Layout Builder Now!
Many website managers struggle with making quick design updates without a developer’s help. This session emphasized why Drupal’s Layout Builder is a powerful tool for building pages with ease. Instead of waiting for new tools to be released, site owners can use Layout Builder today to create dynamic, visually appealing pages without needing advanced coding skills. It’s a game-changer for businesses that want more control over their website content. This was one of my favorite sessions from Drupal Camp NJ 2025.
Empowering Marketers: A Drupal Guide for Digital Experience Teams
Once seen as a developer-focused platform, Drupal is now empowering marketers with tools like personalization, automation, and analytics—enabling engaging, data-driven experiences without heavy technical support. This session highlighted Drupal’s evolution into a full Digital Experience Platform (DXP), blending content management, customer insights, and marketing automation.
Key topics included marketing integration, personalization, and the use of Drupal Recipes—pre-configured features with content types, accessibility tools, and analytics.
Modules like Klaro! consent manager, Google Tag, datalayer, Smart Content, and Drupal Personalization were discussed, along with geo-targeting and AI-assisted tools (used carefully, not relied upon).
The speaker noted that SEO is often overlooked during planning and added late in projects—a mistake to avoid.
Perhaps the most interesting piece of advice we heard is that if you’re struggling to move an agenda forward just get people to commit on what we will do for the next six weeks.
A standout tip: If progress stalls, get everyone to commit to the next six weeks. Dubbed “keeping emergency lines open,” it was a top takeaway for Dana from Drupal Camp NJ 2025.
Baking a Great Recipe: CKEditor in Drupal
CKEditor makes editing in Drupal feel like using a word processor. This session covered new features, including better image handling, a cleaner UI, and customizable tools—making content creation faster and more user-friendly.
Drupal Camp NJ was a great opportunity to explore the platform’s latest innovations—from AI-driven content to marketer-friendly tools. Whether you’re a developer or business owner, Drupal is becoming more powerful and accessible than ever.
