Project present and future

Key features in version 1.18

Release date: January 15th, 2020

Backdrop 1.18 (announcement and release notes); focused on providing WebP support, improving token support, and providing options for various features.

  1. Support for WebP image format (if the installed PHP version supports it)
  2. Menu blocks: allow defining custom breakpoints
  3. Provide a :link sub-token for user tokens
  4. Provide option to skip deleting config staging files after a config sync
  5. Provide a phone field for contact forms (optional)
  6. Add the option to show/hide the links to translations in content body and teasers
See the GitHub issue tracker for all 1.18 issues.

Features planned for version 1.19

Scheduled release date: May 15th, 2021

  1. Advanced Caching (a.k.a. cache tags and cache max-age)
  2. Add support for "Relationships" to Layout Contexts
  3. Add a filename filter to the media selection tool
  4. Reorganize the "Updates" pages
  5. Upgrade UI module (similar to Migrate UI in D8)
See the GitHub issue tracker for 1.19 issues.

Goals for 1.x

All Backdrop 1.x releases will include new features that do not require API breaks. A subset of proposed topics are listed below. Please note: our priorities may change based on the most urgent needs of the Backdrop community.

General Goals

  1. A more intuitive administrative User Interface with each release.
  2. Improving the out-of-the-box User Experience with each release.
  3. Improve the admin interface for people on RTL languages.
  4. Ensure that a transition from Drupal 7 is as smooth as possible.
  5. More TBD!

Specific Goals

  1. Automatic core updates (manual core self-updates have been available since 1.11).
  2. A flexible reference field for content, user accounts, etc.
  3. Improve and expand multi-lingual support
  4. More TBD!

Goals for 2.0

Backdrop 2.0 will NOT be released before January 15th, 2025.

Backdrop Version 1 will continue to be the active branch of development until at least 2024. Development will continue on version 1 for at least 2 years after Drupal 7's end-of-life in November 2022. Backdrop version 1 will continue to be supported until Backdrop version 3 is released.

Backdrop 2.0 will include the removal of deprecated functions, and will most likely include changes in HTML markup.

The upgrade from Backdrop 1 to Backdrop 2 will be easier than the upgrade from Drupal 7 to Backdrop CMS, which is already easier than the upgrade from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8.

See the GitHub issue tracker for more 2.x issues for a set of proposed changes that cannot happen during the 1.x cycle.