For every new project, there are certain tasks we have to complete over and over again. We install the same modules, because we are used to having them, we configure features in a consistent way, implementing best practices or the optimal approaches that we know work well. Until January 15, 2025, these repetitive tasks were delegated to distributions or profiles. When Drupal CMS was launched this turned everything upside down, including what was done for its preparation in Drupal 10.3 - the profile is no longer needed, and moreover it can be uninstalled from existing projects too!

Prerequisite
You already have your own way of doing things - your beloved set of modules that was proven with time and maybe even organised as a distribution or installation profile? You want to use best features of Drupal CMS, but in your own unique way? Then you should consider building your own Drupal CMS, powered with custom and contributed recipes.

Outline
Drupal CMS represents the collective work of hundreds of contributors, making Drupal available for everyone and showcasing its best features. However, because we can’t pre-configure Drupal for all possible use cases, the maintainers are focused on making Drupal CMS a solid foundation for further configuration and customisation. This is where “Recipes Initiative” comes into the picture. While working on Drupal CMS, many new features were added to core, and contributed modules were introduced that make it easier for everyone to use Drupal without starting from scratch.

In this session, I will present the story of how at 1xINTERNET, we converted the distribution that we had used for almost 8 years, which had almost a hundred custom modules, to a recipe based installation. This was a journey of four months of hard work, collaboration with contrib module maintainers, core patches and being track lead for the “Advanced Search Track” of Drupal CMS. All this experience is what ultimately made it possible to accomplish the task.

Learning Objectives
In this session, you will learn how to convert your distribution into a recipe based installation, including how to keep your current projects up to date and ensure they're ready to adopt new features using recipes.

Experience level
Intermediate