We're excited to announce the launch of a new blog series that takes a behind-the-scenes look at TheDropTimes and the technology that powers it. As we approach our second anniversary this July, we're proud to reflect on the journey that has brought us here, and we can't wait to share our story with you.

In this first post, we focus on the decision to use Drupal and the Thunder distribution to launch TheDropTimes quickly. We knew we wanted to use Drupal from the outset, but with limited resources and a tight timeline, we had to find a way to get our media portal live as quickly as possible.

After careful consideration, we decided to use Thunder and an out-of-the-box theme to bootstrap TheDropTimes. This approach allowed us to launch the site quickly, with the website available and fully functional for our editorial team to create content from day one.

At first, we were skeptical about using a Drupal distribution like Thunder to start the project. We know that distributions can be easy to set up, but maintaining the website over the long term can be challenging, especially if there are a lot of custom code or patches used in the distribution.

However, we researched and evaluated multiple options, ultimately deciding that Thunder was the best choice for us. One of the key reasons we chose Thunder was its commitment to keeping up with Drupal security releases. This gave us confidence that we could use Thunder as the foundation for our media portal without having to worry about security issues down the line. So far, we've had no problems with the use of Thunder for TheDropTimes.

We're excited about the upcoming release of Thunder 7 (the beta release is announced), which will include Drupal 10 and new features like the Gin Admin theme, Media Library, and CKEditor5. We're ready to make the switch with our current codebase and can't wait to see what Thunder 7 has in store for us.

Yes, the decision to use Thunder for TheDropTimes has been successful, allowing us to launch the website quickly while maintaining its long-term maintainability. We're proud of what we've achieved so far and excited about the future of TheDropTimes.

Stay tuned for more posts in this series, where we'll dive deeper into the activities happening on the editorial desk, the community desk, and the infrastructure that powers TheDropTimes.