Project present and future

Key features in version 1.16

Release date: May 15th, 2020

Backdrop 1.16 (announcement and release notes); focused on improving the user experience in various parts of the admin UI.

  1. Vastly improved the UX of the text format configuration form, by merging the UI elements that allow you to enable/disable, reorder and configure filters into a single draggable table
  2. Autocomplete is now available on all link/path fields
  3. Disabled text formats can now be re-enabled
  4. Any configuration value can be overridden in settings.php
  5. Author and Date display can now be customized for each content type
  6. Individual content types can now be excluded from the search index
  7. No password required when creating user accounts, if the "Notify user of new account" option is selected
See the GitHub issue tracker for all 1.16 issues.

Features planned for version 1.17

Scheduled release date: September 15th, 2020

  1. Add the ability to use the admin theme on the log-in pages.
  2. more TBD
See the GitHub issue tracker for 1.17 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, 2024.

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 2021. 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.