Dries Buytaert

Seventeen years ago today, I open-sourced the software behind Drop.org and released Drupal 1.0.0. When Drupal was first founded, Google was in its infancy, the mobile web didn't exist, and JavaScript was a very unpopular word among developers.

Over the course of the past seventeen years, I've witnessed the nature of the web change and countless internet trends come and go. As we celebrate Drupal's birthday, I'm proud to say it's one of the few content management systems that has stayed relevant for this long.

While the course of my career has evolved, Drupal has always remained a constant. It's what inspires me every day, and the impact that Drupal continues to make energizes me. Millions of people around the globe depend on Drupal to deliver their business, mission and purpose. Looking at the Drupal users in the video below gives me goosebumps.

Drupal's success is not only marked by the organizations it supports, but also by our community that makes the project more than just the software. While there were hurdles in 2017, there were plenty of milestones, too:

• At least 190,000 sites running Drupal 8, up from 105,000 sites in January 2016 (80% year over year growth)
• 1,597 stable modules for Drupal 8, up from 810 in January 2016 (95% year over year growth)
• 4,941 DrupalCon attendees in 2017
• 41 DrupalCamps held in 16 different countries in the world
• 7,240 individual code contributors, a 28% increase compared to 2016
• 889 organizations that contributed code, a 26% increase compared to 2016
• 13+ million visitors to Drupal.org in 2017
• 76,374 instance hours for running automated tests (the equivalent of almost 9 years of continuous testing in one year)

Since Drupal 1.0.0 was released, our community's ability to challenge the status quo, embrace evolution and remain resilient has never faltered. 2018 will be a big year for Drupal as we will continue to tackle important initiatives that not only improve Drupal's ease of use and maintenance, but also to propel Drupal into new markets. No matter the challenge, I'm confident that the spirit and passion of our community will continue to grow Drupal for many birthdays to come.

Tonight, we're going to celebrate Drupal's birthday with a warm skillet chocolate chip cookie topped with vanilla ice cream. Drupal loves chocolate! ;-)

Note: The video was created by Acquia, but it is freely available for anyone to use when selling or promoting Drupal.