The title of this post is a l33t-speak way to announce that Drupal has now been updated with a new major release, Drupal 8. This has been years in the making, and I'm thrilled! On a much smaller note, this site is now built on Drupal 8 as well.

I started contributing to Drupal 8 in the summer of 2013. Since then I've had 61 commit mentions to Drupal 8, as in I helped with patches on 61 issues that made it into Drupal core. That puts me just shy of being in the top 100 contributors to Drupal 8, out of about 3300. I feel good about the contributions I made, and I am very thankful for the loads of people who contributed way more time and effort than I did.

Drupal 8 was a team effort. There are a lot of Drupal superheroes, but I am positive all would agree that none of us could do any of this without all of the others.

I got started by piping up in the issue queues, and now then people listened to some of my suggestions (and I listened to their counter-suggestions). At Twin Cities Drupal Camp 2013, friendly Drupal folk encouraged me to try contributing, particularly Cathy Theys. The core mentoring program gave me an opportunity to chat with other contributors on IRC, ask loads of questions, and get assistance with the basics. The Drupal Ladder site helped show me how to do key contribution tasks. Loads of Drupal videos helped me to better understand how to contribute. John Albin was welcoming as I joined in on some of the mobile initiative hangouts. I was able to get help in #drupal-contribute from larowlan, timplunkett, chx, xjm, yesct, webchick, effulgentsia, catch, alexpott and others as I tried to figure out how to help.

Best of all, I eventually found the Twig team. Working together with a close-knit team is one of the best ways to make open source move forward. joelpittet, laurii, davidhernandez, lewisnyman, emma.maria, jenlampton and many others were all wonderful to work with as we tried to find ways to make the Drupal front-end development better. I also worked closely with attiks and sebrightjelle on a loads of responsive image issues, and I eventually became a co-maintainer of Drupal 8's Picture and Breakpoint modules.

On issue after issue, I could not have done anything without the help of Wim Leers. Few people know as much about how Drupal actually goes about rendering a request. One of the main things I worked on in Drupal 8 was converting page variables to blocks, and by the skin of our chinny chin chins, we finished all those off thanks to all the hard work from Wim, laurii, joelpittet and many many many others.

I'm also very very thankful that I was able to join a new work team over a year ago. Working in a supportive environment with others passionate about front-end development, Drupal and open source technologies in general has been a true blessing. Being able to work remotely and with flexibility in my schedule made it loads to easier to contribute to Drupal 8 while still having time with my family.

Most importantly, I'm thankful for my wonderful spouse for all the time watching the kiddo so I could run off to a meetup or camp or coding sprint, or just when my eyes were glued to a line of code I was trying to figure out. Patience, good humor and generosity are just a few of wonderful traits I truly appreciate in my spouse.

Drupal 8 is an awesome release. It's a huge change, but very much a change for the better. In so many ways, Drupal 8 will make for much better front-end development. It will be easier to build responsive sites with REST APIs, sites that excel at accessibility and internationalization and easier deployment between environments and easier content authoring... I could go on.

All of this happened because somehow loads of people around the world found ways to work together. Through issue queues and patch reviews, IRC, local meetups and camps and cons, somehow we all cooperated across the globe to make this happen. We have more to do, and we will, but today is a day to celebrate!