Talking Drupal #534 - Webhaven.io

Dec 29, 2025

Fons Vandamme, founder of Webhaven.io and a veteran in the Drupal community, dives into the innovative platform designed to expedite Drupal site launches. He discusses how Webhaven's visual installer and 'recipes' streamline development and address common challenges. Fons highlights the switch from Layout Builder to Drupal Canvas, the importance of DDEV for a smooth developer experience, and his vision for integrated AI features. He also shares plans for Webhaven Academy and tailored site templates for specific industries.

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INSIGHT

Webhaven Is A Rapid Drupal Starter

Webhaven is a Drupal site starter that launches projects in days by using a visual installer and prebuilt recipes.
Fons built it to speed developer setup and make sites client-showable from day one.

ADVICE

Use DDEV For Fast Local Setup

Use DDEV to spin up Webhaven local environments for near-instant setup and consistent developer experience.
Follow Webhaven docs to install DDEV and Docker before running the visual installer.

INSIGHT

Recipes Are The Building Blocks

Recipes bundle pre-made chunks of configuration and serve as the building blocks for Webhaven installs.
Fons sees recipes as essential but admits documentation and tooling for creating them remain immature.

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Today we are talking about Webhaven.io, What it is, and How it helps build Drupal faster with guest Fons Vandamme. We'll also cover Metatag Simple Widget as our module of the week.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/534

Topics

What is Web Haven
Web Haven's Technical Insights and Future Plans
Developer's Perspective on Recipe Upgrades
Documentation vs. Automatic Updates
Module Management Concerns
Drupal Canvas
Challenges with Drupal Canvas Integration
Web Haven's Future with Drupal Canvas
Exploring Headless Architecture with Web Haven
Business Plan and Roadmap for Web Haven
AI Integration in Web Haven
Creating and Testing Recipes

Resources

Guests

Fons Vandamme - webhaven.io f0ns

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

MOTW Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

Brief description:
- Have you ever wanted a simplified widget for managing meta tags in your Drupal content? There's a module for that.
Module name/project name:
- Metatag Simple Widget
Brief history
- How old: created in Jul 2025 by Jim Vomero (njim) of Four Kitchens
- Versions available: 1.0.0 and 1.1.0, the latter of which works with Drupal core 10 and 11
Maintainership
- Actively maintained
- Security coverage
- No open issues
Usage stats:
- 1 site
Module features and usage
- With this module installed, in the form configuration for your content types, you'll see a new "Simplified meta tags form" widget for metatag fields
- It's designed to provide a dramatically streamlined input for metatags, focused on only exposing the most commonly used tags, the title and description
- As a configuration option, you can have the widget hide default values, which for metatag fields often contain tokens, which could be confusing for Drupal neophytes
- The module was nominated by Dave Hansen-Lange (dalin), also of Four Kitchens, and a co-maintainer, as well as a fellow Canadian

I also wanted to give a shout out to the Drupal.org Infrastructure Working Group. In the lead-up to this recording there was a media server failure that brought down the entire site. They worked as furiously as Santa's elves and were able to quickly get the site back up. It was a reminder for me of how much we all (and this segment in particular) depend on the tireless work they do. In this season of giving please consider supporting the Drupal Association, and if you already do, maybe see if you could give a little more.