For DrupalFit, every DrupalCon is special in its own way, but DrupalCon Vienna turned out to be a defining moment for DrupalFit!

The attention and appreciation DrupalFit received were beyond what we anticipated. Still, there’s also that fun little thought in the back of our minds: “Maybe we should’ve set our expectations higher because DrupalFit really outperformed them!”

But on a serious note, DrupalCon Vienna was unlike any other. It marked our first year as a proud gold sponsor, and with that came both excitement and a sense of responsibility. Our mission was clear: to discover “Which Drupal website is the fittest of all?”

We wanted to challenge the community to look beyond design and content and focus on what truly keeps a Drupal site healthy: performance, stability, and technical fitness. If websites could hit the gym, this would be their fitness test.

In this blog, we’re recapping DrupalFit’s incredible experience at DrupalCon Vienna, the DrupalFit Challenge, who stole the spotlight, Splash Awards, and how DrupalFit made its mark.

Before going further in this article, if you didn’t get a chance to participate in the challenge, but still, you can check how fit your site is using DrupalFit’s free audit and start optimizing today.

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Now, let’s see what exactly happened at DrupalCon Vienna!

DrupalCon Vienna: Scale of the DrupalFit Challenge

At DrupalFit, we believe a healthy website is a happy website. That’s why we launched the DrupalFit Challenge – Vienna Edition ‘25, a competition designed to recognize websites that lead the pack in performance, stability, and technical fitness.

The challenge brought together passionate Drupalers, developers, and organizations eager to see how their websites measure up. When we first shared the submission form on social media, the response was overwhelming, so much so that we had to extend the deadline to accommodate the enthusiasm.

But even after the entries closed, we didn’t want anyone to miss out on. So, we opened the opportunity to every DrupalCon Vienna attendee and anyone who ran a website audit on DrupalFit.

This way, everyone had the chance to test their site’s fitness, identify what could be improved, and join the spirit of healthy competition. The event truly showcased Drupal’s flexibility and how the right performance optimizations can transform user experience.

And to ensure a fair and thorough competition, we structured it around five essential categories, each highlighting excellence in a crucial aspect of Drupal site health:

1. Fittest Drupal Site
2. Best in Security
3. Best in Performance
4. Best in Accessibility
5. Community Choice Award

These categories guaranteed that every critical facet of a website’s health received the attention it warranted.

Each site that participated was assessed across four fundamental pillars of digital performance, utilizing DrupalFit’s audit framework to uphold fairness and consistency. By examining every submission through these perspectives, the DrupalFit Challenge offered a comprehensive view of a website’s technical fitness, focusing not only on its appearance but also on its performance in the areas that truly matter.

DrupalCon Vienna: Credibility Meets Drupal Community

Transparency is the heartbeat of DrupalFit, and the essence of the DrupalFit Challenge lies in its objectivity. This objective scoring eliminated bias and made sure that every participant, regardless of scale or size, was judged by the same standards.

Each website was tested using DrupalFit’s audit engine, which analyzed real data points of load time, stability, accessibility, and code hygiene.

This data-driven approach gave participants a clear picture of their website’s overall health, helping them identify strengths and areas for improvement. More than a contest, it became a community-driven fitness check, one where learning, trust, and fair play took center stage.

By turning competition into collaboration, DrupalFit strengthened its position as a trusted benchmark for Drupal performance and reaffirmed the community’s shared pursuit of technical excellence.

ALSO CHECK OUT

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2. Full-Spectrum Site Analysis: Where SEO, Performance, Security & Accessibility Converge
3. Website Audit: Perform Like a Pro and Elevate Your Digital Experience
4. Digital Accessibility Compliance: A Practical Guide

DrupalCon Vienna: And the Winners Are…

Every competition has its champions, and the DrupalFit Challenge was not at all just about winning; it was about setting up a new benchmark for the Drupal community.

Each participating website showcases what it truly means to be fit for the web, optimized, secure, and accessible. The winners earned recognition, exclusive rewards from DrupalFit, including performance optimization credits, feature mentions, and community spotlights that put their brands in front of the global Drupal ecosystem.

After a rigorous evaluation across multiple metrics, here are the standout Drupal websites that proved their digital fitness:

Fittest Drupal Site

Winner: FIRST CERTIFICATION AUTHORITY (Submitted by – Jan Polzer)

Runner-up: Factorial (Submitted by: Shibin Das)

These websites demonstrate exceptional all-around performance, from Core Web Vitals to security, accessibility, and SEO. They stood tall as examples of how a well-maintained Drupal site can achieve peak performance while staying true to stability and user experience.

Best in Security

Winner: BRANDCODE (Submitted by – Martina Lewis)

This site impressed us with robust protection mechanisms, excellent vulnerability management, and strong adherence to Drupal security best practices, proving that performance means nothing without trust.

Best in Performance

Winner: Cour De Cassation (Submitted by – Lucas Mathias and Florian Frei)

A masterclass in speed and efficiency, this site recorded outstanding caching efficiency, minimal load time variance, and consistent uptime, setting a gold standard for Drupal performance optimization.

Best in Accessibility

Winner: BRAINSUM (Submitted by – Peter Ponya)

An inclusive experience for every user, this website excelled in accessibility audits, ensuring seamless navigation and compliance with WCAG standards, showing that great design and accessibility go hand in hand.

Community Choice Award

After carefully reviewing and auditing each website across multiple parameters, these were the top four finalists competing for the Community Choice Award.

Finalists:

1. Factorial. io - (Submitted by: Shibin Das)
2. Museum für Gestaltung Zürich - (Submitted by: Josef Kruckenberb)
3. LakeDrops - (Submitted by: Jürgen Haas)
4. Webhaven - (Submitted by: Fons Vandamme)

They were evaluated based on their design and user experience, with composite scoring across:

Domain Health (20%), Performance (25%), SEO (25%), Security (15%), and Accessibility (15%).

Winner: Webhaven

Voted by the Drupal community, this site stood out for its perfect blend of usability, visual design, and performance, truly a crowd favorite that reflects the best of Drupal craftsmanship.

Every winner exemplified the core of technical fitness, merging performance, resilience, and user experience into a cohesive digital presence. Their websites were not only visually striking; they were crafted with care, showcasing clean, efficient code, optimized caching, strong security measures, and design principles that prioritize accessibility.

What distinguished them was their meticulous attention to detail, from rapid load times and impeccable uptime to user-friendly navigation and readiness for SEO. These websites represent the ideal that every Drupal site aims for: robust, high-performing, and prepared for the future.

DrupalCon Vienna: DrupalFit’s Fitness Lessons

The DrupalFit Challenge - Vienna Edition '25 showcased the incredible potential that every Drupal website can unlock with the right focus. Just like the winning websites, any website can achieve its highest potential with the appropriate tools, insights, and optimizations.

This is precisely why we created DrupalFit. Our platform offers ongoing, thorough audits and actionable recommendations to ensure your website remains healthy, fast, and secure. Whether it’s about enhancing load times, fortifying security, improving accessibility, or elevating SEO, DrupalFit provides your site with the same “fitness routine” that the challenge winners excelled in.

With DrupalFit, reaching optimal website performance becomes a continuous journey of enhancement. Consider it as a personal trainer for your Drupal site, it tracks performance, pinpoints weaknesses, and assists you in implementing solutions so your website can consistently perform at its best.

Regardless of your website's size or your team's capacity, DrupalFit guarantees that your site can be as fit, dependable, and high-performing as the champions of the DrupalFit Challenge.

Didn’t get a chance to participate?  

You can still check how fit your site is using DrupalFit’s free audit and start optimizing today.

Start Optimizing Today

DrupalCon Vienna: The Journey Continues...

Every DrupalCon has played a distinct role in the development of DrupalFit, and Vienna has once more demonstrated its potential to be a transformative event. This edition, just like the ones before, brought recognition, connections, and collaborations in multiple forms: whether it was attendees visiting our booth, participants joining the DrupalFit Challenge, social media engagement through tags and mentions, or receiving honors at the Splash Awards.

So, we can confidently say that DrupalCon Vienna was yet another defining moment for DrupalFit. This year, we are proud to bring back three prestigious awards:

1. Runner-Up in the Tools & Apps category at the International Splash Awards
2. Recognition at the Austria & Germany Splash Awards 2025, where OpenSense Labs won in the E-Commerce category, one of the largest regional Splash Awards in Europe.

For this category, we nominated DrupalFit, our AI-powered Drupal support tool that monitors site health, flags issues, auto-patches, fixes links, and optimizes websites through smart dashboards.

In addition to these wins, DrupalFit also received an honorary mention for “Most Inspiring Technical Solutions”, further cementing its place as a leading innovation in Drupal site support.

As always, we’ll see you at the next DrupalCon, ready to raise the bar even higher and discover what new milestones DrupalFit can achieve!

Key Takeaways

1. A look back at DrupalFit’s remarkable journey at DrupalCon Vienna, a celebration of innovation, collaboration, and community recognition.
2. DrupalFit Challenge – Vienna Edition ‘25 is a competition aimed at honoring websites that excel in performance, stability, and technical fitness.
3. The DrupalFit Challenge provided an in-depth look at a website's technical health, emphasizing not just its visual appeal but also its performance in the critical areas that count.
4. Clarity on who led the DrupalFit Challenge, why they won, and how excellence in performance, security, and accessibility set them apart.
5. The thoughtfully built websites showcased efficient code, optimized caching, strong security, and accessible design principles.