Press Release

Acquia Lightning Speeds Drupal Development With New Capabilities

Open Source Distribution Accelerates Drupal Development Time by 30 Percent

BOSTON  – May 20, 2019 – Acquia today released the latest version of Acquia Lightning, a flexible Drupal 8 distribution thousands of organizations are using to launch new Drupal sites and projects quickly. Acquia Lightning offers new capabilities for developers, site builders, site managers, and marketers to build sites faster and deliver richer digital experiences.

As companies continue to elevate the role of content delivery across every channel, teams face pressure to build sites that are increasingly demanding. They have turned to open source distributions such as Acquia Lightning to make building enterprise-ready, feature-rich sites faster and maintaining them easier. The latest version aligns Acquia Lightning with the recently released Drupal 8.7.

Acquia partner Igility Solutions turned to Acquia Lightning to incorporate advanced Drupal capabilities more quickly for the sites it builds for customers. “Because Acquia Lightning is aligned to Drupal core’s roadmap, using it provides developers the best long-term opportunity  to be more efficient when building and maintaining Drupal projects,” said Brad Gronek, CEO, Igility Solutions. “We don’t have to reinvent the wheel when using Acquia Lightning; module selection, integration and testing is all handled by the Acquia Lightning team. That means we can focus on experience innovation and spend less of our time and our customers’ money on maintenance and development.”

Acquia Lightning includes the following new capabilities:

  • Acquia Lightning takes advantage of the industry’s only fully accessible Layout Builder in Drupal 8.7, and also provides templates not available in Drupal core that editors can choose when creating or editing content. Layout Builder replaces the Panels and Panelizer modules previously available in Acquia Lightning.
  • Additional out-of-the-box Layout Builder components, on top of what Drupal core delivers, supporting the use of Google Maps, slideshows, banners and other rich media in layouts.
  • Enhanced media management, including a carousel widget that can be embedded on pages and a built-in tool to crop images.
  • A preview of a new, improved, and accessible administrative interface built on a design system consisting of visual and behavioral components and patterns, combined into user-friendly user interfaces.
  • Acquia Lightning has adopted Drupal’s support for JSON:API, delivering out-of-the-box support for building decoupled or headless applications using a common standard.

“By bringing together modules and capabilities enterprise applications demand most, Acquia Lightning speeds up Drupal development time by 30 percent or more and helps organizations get to market faster and maintain Drupal sites more easily, while delivering more engaging experiences,” said Dries Buytaert, Drupal creator and project lead and Acquia co-founder and CTO.  "Acquia Lightning is the best place to start a new Drupal 8 project, particularly on Acquia Cloud."

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About Acquia

Acquia is the open source digital experience company. We provide the world’s most ambitious brands with technology that allows them to embrace innovation and create customer moments that matter. At Acquia, we believe in the power of community – giving our customers the freedom to build tomorrow on their terms. To learn more, visit acquia.com.

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