At Pokecode, we are very happy to announce that Decidim Awesome has been recognized as the winning module of the Decidim Fest 2025! 🎉 This recognition is very special to us, as we are the creators, developers, and maintainers of Decidim Awesome since the very first commit back in 2020.

Who uses Decidim Awesome?

During 2025, we analyzed more than 280 Decidim instances and detected its presence in 215 of them,3 out of 4. Over these five years of the module’s life, we have seen how the use of Decidim Awesome has not stopped growing, to the point of becoming essential for any organization adopting the Decidim platform. This high level of usage by organizations around the world — governments, political parties, cooperatives has given the module the solidity and reliability needed for daily use.

In fact, if you are currently using Decidim, you probably didn’t know it, but Pokecode was already giving you a better experience :-)

What’s the story behind Decidim Awesome? Aren’t you tired of asking the development team for every little change? Or, in other words: aren’t you tired, developer, of being asked for the same thing over and over again? That’s exactly what happened to us. Ivan Vergés, development lead, realized that Marta Anducas and Pau Parals kept asking him to enable image uploads in the rich text editor of the different platforms they were managing.

The conversation went like this:

Why don’t we create a module, I install it for you by default, and then you don’t have to keep asking for this change?

Good idea! And you know what would also be great? Being able to edit the menu items. It’s annoying that Decidim doesn’t allow menu editing and is so rigid.

Absolutely! Decidim is already a very powerful platform, and now we can make it AWESOME too!

From the co-creation of a technical profile, a commercial/product profile, and an admin/facilitation profile, this little experiment was born — and five years later, it has become the best Decidim module!

But keep in mind: this experiment did not come from a commercial intention to sell a product. It emerged from a real need within a team wanting to provide the best possible experience when using the Decidim platform. We were also convinced that these features — bringing more flexibility to platform administration — would be valuable for admin users. And it seems the data has proven us right :-D

Why has Decidim Awesome, despite being an unofficial module, stayed alive and up to date for five years?

First, at Pokecode we take technical quality very seriously. We use a test suite (RSpec/Rails) with automated tests to detect any issues and prevent possible bugs. We also monitor Test Coverage to ensure a significant portion of the Decidim Awesome code is covered, and we apply code style checks with tools like Rubocop.

Second, Decidim Awesome was originally created to match Decidim version 0.20. Today, Decidim is at version 0.31. Across the 11 versions in between, Decidim Awesome has always been updated (meaning it can be used with any of them). This shows we’ve never left it “outdated”. Moreover, we rely on Continuous Integration (CI), ensuring a pipeline with high quality standards.

Third, we know how useful this module is — we are its first users. Luckily, we have an ecosystem of organizations that entrust Pokecode with maintaining their platforms. Thanks to their co-funding, we have resources to keep the module updated. That said, our resources are limited. When an update is needed, we look for funding, although not every update is lucky enough to receive support. Bug fixing follows the same pattern. Even so, everything that is critical is resolved by Pokecode. If we claim to deliver technical quality, our products must live up to it.

Fourth, Pokecode was born with the philosophy of free and open-source software, and with Decidim’s values. If a client proposes a feature that could benefit other organizations, we suggest including it in Decidim Awesome. That way, we don’t charge twice for the same functionality — we make it available to the whole ecosystem, because we believe (and defend) that progress comes from shared knowledge. This is how features like additional fields in proposal forms, CSS injection boxes for themes, or the color-card voting system were created.

Some of the features that make Decidim Awesome truly Awesome:

Menu customization Surely at some point you’ve wanted to tweak Decidim’s menu… and you’ve done it with Decidim Awesome! This feature lets you easily adapt the navigation structure to your organization’s needs.

Additional proposal fields With this functionality, you’ve been able to create the exact form you needed — more complete, clearer, and better adapted to your participatory process.

Custom Styles With this option, some organizations have even created a full visual theme from scratch! A great example is participa.somenergia.coop, showcasing how far customization can go with Decidim Awesome.

Visibility restriction with verification Our latest addition allows components to be shown only to verified participants. Imagine having a process open to everyone, but making the proposals component visible only to verified users. Now it’s possible! We’re talking about maximum granularity in access management — and this information does not appear in the API, the “last activity”, or the open data. Everything remains protected and aligned with Decidim’s privacy standards.

👉 Discover all features or use the module in your own instance here: https://github.com/decidim-ice/decidim-module-decidim_awesome

What’s next?

Decidim Awesome is possible thanks to the co-funding of organizations that are our clients and choose to improve the platform collectively and openly.

However, we don’t always have the resources we’d like to keep up the desired pace. That’s why, if you feel like contributing to the co-funding effort, we’d love that! You can write to us at [email protected] to learn more. And if not, don’t worry: we will keep updating the module anyway :-)

Right now, we are working on the update to Decidim 0.31 without external resources, ensuring that Decidim Awesome continues to be an essential, up-to-date, and reliable add-on for the whole community.

Winning the Decidim Fest 2025 award is a clear sign that the community recognizes this collective effort and the impact the module has had on projects around the world.

Thank you to all the people and organizations that trust us and help make Decidim a better space. We will continue working with the same open, collaborative, and community-driven spirit that defines us 💜