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Topic.

  • 2026-07-12 : Redesigned the site alongside the migration.
  • 2026-07-12 : JamStack migration complete.
  • 2026-07-11 : Updated DDEV environment to Tome 8.x-1.16.
  • 2026-07-11 : Updated DDEV environment to Drupal 11.4.2.
  • 2026-07-10 : Updated DDEV environment to Tome 8.x-1.15.
  • 2026-07-04 : Updated DDEV environment to Drupal 11.4.1.
  • 2026-07-02 : Updated DDEV environment to Drupal 11.4.0.

Drupal with Jamstack.

This site launched in 2024 as a hands-on learning environment for Drupal. For infrastructure, I chose AWS Lightsail with Bitnami's packaged Drupal plan and have been running it on that setup ever since.

In May 2026, AWS Lightsail ended its partnership with Bitnami, leaving further updates unsupported. That became the trigger to switch plans — and to finally implement the JamStack approach with Drupal that I had envisioned from the start.

JamStack.

The implementation is actually quite straightforward.

  1. Install DDEV and OrbStack on my local MacBook Pro and set up Drupal.
  2. Use the Tome module to convert the Drupal site into static files (HTML).
  3. Deploy the static files to AWS Lightsail.
  4. Serve them publicly via CloudFront, AWS's CDN.

The conventional approach to serving a JamStack static site is to use S3 rather than Lightsail. Since S3 has no Apache, however, the CDN has to handle all website control — which limits flexibility. With that in mind, I chose Lightsail and CloudFront for a setup that's easier to manage. (It's also simpler to configure and maintain than an S3 + CloudFront combination.)

For the Lightsail plan, I selected the OS-only Ubuntu option, configured solely for serving static files. With no programs or databases involved, the usual overhead of CMS server management simply isn't there.

Drupal Article.

The latest Drupal articles.

I started writing these as a personal record — largely because clear, practical guides were hard to find when I was working through the process of building and publishing a website with Drupal. The articles are less tutorial than they are accounts of situations I actually encountered.

I also want to cover the structural side of Drupal and its stricter rules — things that are essential to understanding and working with it, but rarely talked about — in a way that doesn't get lost in jargon.

Rebuilding Drupal CMS

An update to the provisionally installed Drupal CMS ran into problems, so it was removed and reinstalled from scratch. With DDEV handling the environment, the entire process — from deletion to reinstall — went smoothly.

Drupal Articles., Creation.

Drupal Core

S.Takeda

Life Style Article.

The latest Life Style articles.

These are ported from my sister site, Hooked-on. The original articles on Hooked-on run long, so these versions are condensed for mobile reading, with a reduced number of images.

I've used Drupal's taxonomy to build a reverse-lookup structure into the content. For example, you can navigate not only from an item article to the shop where it was purchased, but also from a shop back to the items bought there — making it easy to find related articles from multiple directions.

Levi’s 502 60’s Model

A Levi's 502 from the late 1960s — a zip-fly model produced for just three years — with heavy fading and multiple repairs that make it a pair I can wash and wear through summer without a second thought. The zip fly is easier to live with than buttons, and the length works perfectly with both sneakers and sandals.

Life style - Old-Clothes Articles.

Jeans

S.Takeda

Drupal

Drawn to Drupal's different philosophy from WordPress, I built and run this site on Drupal.

  • WordPress : A simple core with flexible extensibility and ease of use. With a wealth of excellent themes and plugins available, you can build a site freely without needing to think deeply about the core's underlying rules.
  • Drupal : A robust, structured core with extensibility based on strict rules. Fine-grained control is possible, but building a site requires an understanding of how the structure works.

Where WordPress offers freedom, Drupal offers freedom within rules. Understanding those rules opens up a more structured and deliberate approach to building a site.

Multi-dimensional Publishing

One of Drupal's defining characteristics is the flexibility and range of ways it lets you publish information. It's built for reusing content you've created in a variety of different ways — serving the core purpose of a website, which is publishing information, in the most flexible and appropriate form.

  1. Multilingual support : Full multilingual functionality managed from a single admin interface.
  2. Design flexibility : Available themes tend to be minimal and spare (ready-made options are limited), so you build the design yourself in CSS. This requires more work upfront, but allows precise, pixel-level control over the result.
  3. Multi-dimensional use of content : The Views module lets you take content entered once and place it anywhere across the site.
  4. Layout freedom : Block Layout lets you structure page layouts flexibly.
  5. Drupal's flexible taxonomy makes it straightforward to build not only individual article pages and related-article links, but also reverse-lookup structures for navigating content from multiple directions.
  6. Modules let you convert the structure you've built in Drupal directly into static files, or hand data off to other platforms — making approaches like JamStack and headless CMS straightforward to implement.

Drupal is my choice because it includes, as standard, the capabilities I kept finding myself wanting in WordPress.

Thank you, Drupal developers.

Drupal, along with its themes and modules, is entirely open source — built by volunteer developers around the world.

Since I'm benefiting from open source, I want to contribute in some way. I'm not a developer myself, so direct involvement in development isn't realistic — but I hope that sharing my experience as an individual using Drupal can serve as one small part of spreading awareness.

Thank you.

Thank you for reading to the end. I hope you'll continue to explore the articles here.

October 2024   S.Takeda

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