Top 10 Drupal Developers

Drupal is a content management powerhouse, but have you ever wondered who the developers are that have made it so great? These men and women have spent countless hours contributing to core, developing modules and themes, and promoting Drupal to the world. Here, in no particular order, is your All-Star team.

Daniel Kudwien

Kudwien (aka sun) is a German developer responsible for dozens of modules as author or maintainer. Two of his most high profile projects are the WYSIWYG and Administration menu modules. I recommend checking out his blog on Unleashed Minds for his interesting take on things.

Stephanie Pakrul

Pakrul, aka StephTheGeek, is an American theme developer. She co-founded TopNotchThemes and is the woman behind the wildly popular Fusion, Acquia Marina and Acquia Prosper themes. Something of an internet celebrity, her development work seeks to allow website owners to create great sites without hiring a coder.

Jake Strawn

The force behind what I call the “Omega stack”, Strawn is a theme and module developer from the United States. His Omega theme has pushed Drupal strongly toward HTML5 and responsive web design. In addition to Omega, he is the author of the Delta, Omega Tools and Omega UI modules that further extend the functionality and usability of his powerful base theme. UPDATED: Read my full review of the Drupal Omega theme to learn more about Jake's work.

Earl Miles

Best known as MerlinofChaos, the American developer Earl Miles is arguably the most influential of all contributors. He’s the man behind the Views, CTools and Panels modules among many others. Aside from Dries Buytaert, Miles has arguably made the greatest contribution to the community by creating modules that have distinguished Drupal from the competition. He’s my nominee for captain of this All-Star team.

Yves Chedemois

Frenchman Yves Chedemois is the author of Content Construction Kit, one of the most popular and influential modules of all time. CCK has offered such important functionality to site administrators that it was ported to core in the form of the Fields module. He is also one of the top contributors to core in D7.

Jeff Burnz

A Swedish developer, Burnz is author of AdaptiveTheme and Pixture Reloaded, among others. He is also the current maintainer of Seven (D7 administration theme) and a co-maintainer of Bartik (D7 default theme). In addition, Burnz is the Drupal 8 Design Initiative owner whose objective is to build a new core theme for D8.

Nathan Haug

Known by his alias QuickSketch, American developer Nathan Haug is the author of the Webform, File and Image modules. He is also a maintainer and contributor to dozens of others including Fivestar and Flag. One project Nathan is working on that I’m particularly happy about is WYSIWYG in Core, a project to include a WYSIWYG editor in core for D8. He is also an active Drupal evangelist and co-author of the book, Using Drupal. 

Wolfgang Ziegler

Austrian developer Wolfgang Zieglar is author and/or maintainer of the Rules, Entity API and Automatic Nodetitles modules among others. Ziegler is also an active promoter of Drupal as co-founder of the Austrian user group and co-organizer of Drupalcamp Vienna.

John Albin Wilkins

American John Albin Wilkins is arguably the most influential theme developer on this list. His Zen project is the most installed Drupal theme in the world. In addition to being listed among the top 30 contributors to D7, he is an active Drupal promoter and a co-author of Drupal 7 Module Development. 

Dries Buytaert

What can you say about Buytaert? His work has influenced and inspired thousands of developers across the world. The Belgian developer and creator of the Drupal content management system is also the co-founder of the sometimes controversial company, Acquia. Additionally, he is the co-founder of the anti-spam service Mollom, which made my list of 10 essential modules for Drupal 7. He's placed last only because he is the most obvious choice for inclusion on this list.

Wrapping It Up

Whenever putting together a list like this, you inevitably leave out very important people. There are hundreds of developers across the world making large and valuable contributions to the Drupal community. This list merely seeks to shine a spotlight on a few who have made high profile and high impact contributions as Drupal developers and evangelists. I know my work would be very different (and more difficult) if it were not for their hard work and commitment.

Whose work do you think deserves special mention?