Experience Builder Initiative Launches 0.x Branch, Supported by Acquia

Wim Leers announced the official opening of the 0.x branch for the Experience Builder initiative on May 23, 2024. Sponsored full-time by Acquia, Dries Buytaert formally introduced the initiative at DrupalCon Portland 2024, following extensive research conducted by Drupal core product manager Lauri Eskola.

"Acquia is sponsoring me full-time to operate as the tech lead for Experience Builder — thanks!"

wrote Wim, in his blog post.

In March, Lauri collaborated closely with members of Acquia’s Drupal Acceleration Team and Acquia’s Site Studio team to review and size the product requirements necessary for Drupal to enhance its competitive edge. The team, including Ben Mullins, Ted Bowman, Alex Bronstein, and Tim Plunkett, along with Felix Mazeikis and Jesse Baker, engaged in developing proof-of-concepts to address the riskiest aspects of these requirements. Leers specifically worked on dynamically loading different design versions and validating a proposed data model.

Feedback on these proofs-of-concept was sought from seasoned Drupal core contributors, including Mateu Aguiló Bosch from Lullabot and Lee Rowlands from PreviousNext, to ensure the viability of the concepts. Despite their hacky nature, these proofs were instrumental in exploring connections and assessing feasibility.

Dries Buytaert highlighted the importance of community contributions to both the Starshot initiative and Experience Builder during his announcement at DrupalCon. This led to an influx of interest from attendees eager to contribute, though the project was still in its nascent stages with no concrete UX or code base available at the time.

Post-DrupalCon, hooroomoo initiated the 0.x branch of Experience Builder, integrating various proof-of-concept branches. On May 16, Lauri and Wim met with six members of the PreviousNext team, leveraging their expertise in Drupal core, Layout Builder, and JavaScript. The PreviousNext team proposed running asynchronous meetings in the #experience-builder Slack channel, a successful strategy used previously to engage the global Drupal community effectively.

By the end of the week, Wim had established GitLab CI pipelines with PHPStan Level 8. The decision was made to forgo the repo structure from the Recipes Initiative in favor of not using a core fork and implementing CODEOWNERS from the outset, a choice supported by Lee.

The Experience Builder initiative is now poised for more structured development in its second week, promising significant advancements for the Drupal community. For more detailed information, visit Wim Leers' blog.