Planet Drupal

Since Drupal CMS aims to enable marketers to build and launch websites quickly, Drupal CMS must offer out-of-the-box content types that are common across our target markets. 

This underlying content structure is the content model. Leading up to DrupalCon Barcelona, the Starshot leadership team highlighted the need to create an initial content strategy for Drupal CMS. Through collaboration with the Drupal CMS UX steering committee, we have developed a content model for the initial release.

These content types will be presented during site setup, and will also be available to add later on. As with much of Drupal CMS, the content types are powered by ‘recipes’, which will provide some additional functionality beyond the content types themselves, such as listing pages, menu links and even default content, where appropriate.

Content types for v1

All Drupal CMS sites will include a Basic page content type by default, to ensure users are able to create content even if they don't select any of the optional types. In addition to Basic page, the following content types will be available in the initial release:

• Event
• News article
• Blog
• Project
• Case study
• Person profile

For more detailed information about the content types and the process we followed to develop them, please see the full content strategy page.

Cristina Chumillas, the Drupal CMS UX lead, and I would like to thank everyone who contributed to developing this strategy and the accompanying documentation: Megh Plunkett, Emma Horrell, Niklas Missel, Lewis Nyman, Laurens Van Damme and Kat Shaw.

Incorporating SEO into the strategy

Since we're targeting marketers, we are making search engine optimization a top priority. Drupal CMS will provide an optional recipe for 'SEO tools'. By default, sites will have basic SEO functionality in place, such as default path alias patterns, hreflang metadata, and the ability to manage redirects.

The SEO tools recipe provides additional functionality such as meta tags, XML sitemap, and real-time SEO analysis of content. For meta tag optimization, this recipe also adds three new fields to each content type: SEO title, SEO description and SEO image. Currently these fields are in a collapsed fieldset on the node form, and are optional. If content is not provided, the meta tags will fall back to use the node title, description and featured image. 

Drupal CMS content beyond v1

Once the initial content types are available, we will work on expanding the content model in the second phase for later releases of Drupal CMS. Adding to the content model iteratively allows us to gather user feedback, make improvements, and adjust accordingly. We have some ideas for which additional content types to include later, and will have a better understanding of what content types are most desired once people begin building Drupal CMS sites.

If you have feedback on this proposed content strategy, or questions about it, please add it to this issue. We are planning to test this with users from the Drupal CMS target personas, and will provide more information when the testing is confirmed.

This week was powered by the letter M and the noun "meetings".

We executed the last field-related migrations in the previous article, but we are not done with field configuration yet! Back in article 17, we used the Migrate Skip Fields module to prevent the automatic migration from importing image and YouTube fields. Today, we will use Drupal recipes to create media types and manually add media reference fields where needed.

Read more mauricio Thu, 10/17/2024 - 06:00

Unlocking the Future of Edtech with Drupal bhavinhjoshi Thu, 10/17/2024 - 11:02

Education and technology are no longer separate entities; they've woven into a single, dynamic tapestry known as Edtech. At the heart of this digital revolution lies Drupal—a CMS that goes beyond traditional boundaries, offering a powerful platform for innovation in education.

 

 

Seamless Integration with Learning Tools

Drupal isn’t just about managing content. It facilitates seamless integration with popular LMS platforms like Moodle. Consider the ICE-SA portal, which we integrated with Moodle to provide a seamless learning experience for civil engineers. This integration enabled learners to access a wide range of engineering resources and online courses from a single platform, enhancing their learning efficiency and satisfaction.

Scalable Solutions for Growing Institutions

Educational institutions often face the challenge of scaling their digital platforms to keep pace with growing student numbers. Drupal provides a scalable foundation that evolves alongside the institution. Education Above All needed to revamp their 'resources' website to accommodate a significant increase in user traffic. With Drupal, we ensured the site could handle the growth while maintaining a high level of performance, allowing more educators and learners to benefit from their valuable resources.

Customisable Learning Experiences

Every educational organisation has its distinct identity and goals. Drupal’s flexible architecture empowers institutions to tailor their learning portals to meet these unique needs. Take the SABEeX Drupal 10 website, for instance. By integrating SCORM features, the platform offered a more dynamic and interactive learning experience. This allowed learners to engage with customised content and track their progress effectively, transforming the traditional learning journey into a personalised adventure.

Security First

In an era where data breaches are all too common, protecting sensitive educational data is paramount. Drupal’s enterprise-level security measures offer robust protection, ensuring peace of mind.

Community Support and Collaboration

The Drupal community is a treasure trove of insights and collaborative potential, especially for those in education. By joining this vast community, developers and educators can share innovations and tools that enhance educational experiences globally. A recent collaboration between several European universities using Drupal led to the development of an open-source tool that revolutionised resource sharing across institutions.

Are you ready to rethink your Edtech strategy with Drupal? Whether you're looking to dive deeper into custom solutions or curious about real-world transformations, Drupal offers the tools to elevate educational experiences. Share your story of innovation or explore how you can harness the power of Drupal

EdTech Drupal Planet Add new comment

DrupalCon Barcelona 2024 was another great Drupal community event. Discover highlights from our team's conference experiences!

Drupal 10's release date is December 14th, 2022. We took the opportunity to look for 10 things you might not know about the CMS yet. Curious? Read on!

Combining Drupal and Mautic is perfect for managing your omnichannel digital experiences. We built a plugin to allow you to send emails straight from Drupal.

Headless Drupal is an innovative way to use Drupal. In this blog we'll tell you everything you need to know about the concept, the pro's and cons and more...

In this blogpost, I'll show you how to get your meta tags working in your headless Drupal (Next.js) application.

To deliver a frictionless digital experience as efficiently as possible, headless offers you the perfect solution. In this blog we explain how we got there.

Dropsolid Experience Cloud is both capable of satisfying marketers and developers, enterprise customers, and agencies. While staying secure and compliant.

A DXP is a software to build, manage, deploy and continually optimize digital experiences across multiple channels such as websites, portals, emails and mobile.

Join us THURSDAY, October 17 at 1pm ET / 10am PT, for our regularly scheduled call to chat about all things Drupal and nonprofits. (Convert to your local time zone.)

We don't have anything specific on the agenda this month, so we'll have plenty of time to discuss anything that's on our minds at the intersection of Drupal and nonprofits.  Got something specific you want to talk about? Feel free to share ahead of time in our collaborative Google doc: https://nten.org/drupal/notes!

All nonprofit Drupal devs and users, regardless of experience level, are always welcome on this call.

This free call is sponsored by NTEN.org and open to everyone. 

• Join the call: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81817469653

  • Meeting ID: 818 1746 9653
    Passcode: 551681

  • One tap mobile:
    +16699006833,,81817469653# US (San Jose)
    +13462487799,,81817469653# US (Houston)

  • Dial by your location:
    +1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)
    +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)
    +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
    +1 929 205 6099 US (New York)
    +1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC)
    +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)

  • Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kpV1o65N

• Follow along on Google Docs: https://nten.org/drupal/notes

View notes of previous months' calls.

Project: Drupal coreDate: 2024-October-16Security risk: Moderately critical 13 ∕ 25 AC:Basic/A:None/CI:None/II:All/E:Theoretical/TD:UncommonVulnerability: Improper error handlingAffected versions: >=10.0 < 10.2.10Description: 

Under certain uncommon site configurations, a bug in the CKEditor 5 module can cause some image uploads to move the entire webroot to a different location on the file system. This could be exploited by a malicious user to take down a site.

The issue is mitigated by the fact that several non-default site configurations must exist simultaneously for this to occur.

Solution: 

Install the latest version:

• If you are using Drupal 10.2, update to Drupal 10.2.10.
• Drupal 10.3 and above are not affected, nor is Drupal 7.

All versions of Drupal 10 prior to 10.2 are end-of-life and do not receive security coverage. (Drupal 8 and Drupal 9 have both reached end-of-life.)

This advisory is not covered by Drupal Steward.

Reported By: 

• Pierre Rudloff

Fixed By: 

• catch of the Drupal Security Team
• Lee Rowlands of the Drupal Security Team
• Benji Fisher of the Drupal Security Team
• Kim Pepper
• Wim Leers
• xjm of the Drupal Security Team

Coordinated By: 

• xjm of the Drupal Security Team
• Dave Long of the Drupal Security Team
• Juraj Nemec of the Drupal Security Team

If you are searching for the best content management system or CMS, then Drupal is the one that can power your website. In case you have not looked into Drupal before this, then you might not know its perks. 

Well, do not worry, in this read, you are going to learn about the benefits of using Drupal for your website development. Whether you are an individual, agency, small business, or enterprise, with Drupal you can now create powerful websites and apps.

Top 10 Benefits Of Using Drupal For Your Website Development 

There are many advantages of using Drupal for your website development. Let us delve more into it.

 

In this article, I’ll show you how to build a system to keep track of your company assets using Drupal. This system allows you to easily create and manage an equipment list with resources such as laptops, phones, monitors, or desks that are assigned to employees. It’s ideal for remote or hybrid companies, where control over issued equipment is crucial. Read the blog post or watch an episode of the “Nowoczesny Drupal” series (the video is in Polish).

You have likely upgraded Drupal to version 10.3.0 and noticed a new message in the reports regarding the State Cache:

Image

The message reads as follows:

The State Cache flag $settings['state_cache'] is not enabled. It is recommended to enable it in settings.php unless too many keys are stored. Starting with Drupal 11, State Cache will be enabled by default.

What is the State API?

Let's begin by understanding what the State API is. The State API in Drupal is a system that allows the storage and retrieval of small data fragments that are necessary for site operation but are not part of the overall configuration. Unlike the Config API, which focuses on data that must be consistent across different environments (like production, development, etc.), the State API is intended for environment-specific data that can change more dynamically and do not need to be synchronized across different environments.

Why does it…

Discover how a comprehensive Measurement Strategy can optimize B2B performance by aligning metrics, improving data quality, and driving business outcomes.

Top 10 presentations from DrupalCon Barcelona 2024 Hansa Pandit Drupal frontend developer 15.10.2024

20 employees from Ramsalt Lab had the opportunity to attend one of the most awaited Drupal events of the year, DrupalCon 2024 in the beautiful city of Barcelona.

It was a great event with inspiring sessions and hands-on workshops. Our team have made this list of the top 10 session from Barcelona:

1. Driesnote: DrupalCon Barcelona 2024
   Our top recommendation is Driesnote, where Dries Buytaert, the founder of Drupal, presents the revolutionary Drupal CMS (being built under the Starshot Initiative). This will be a new era in Drupal with AI-enabled website building for non-developers.
2. Drupal Recipes Initiative Update
   This session gives an update on Drupal’s Recipes initiative, and how you can contribute to it. You'll also learn about recipes that you can start using right away!
3. Building Safer Digital Communities - The Mission of "Defend Iceland"
   In this keynote, Theódór Gislason shares his journey, ignited by a life-altering accident thirty years ago, and discusses the vision for the "Defend Iceland" hacker platform. He addresses the challenges of democratizing cybersecurity and highlights how a united community of responsible companies and ethical hackers could enhance our collective cyber resilience.
4. Running a fleet of websites with ease via LocalGov Drupal Microsites Platform
   Learn how to create and manage a fleet of websites, all hosted within a single Drupal installation, the "LocalGov Drupal Microsites" module.
5. Implementing AI solutions for the French government
   This session gives you an insight into how an Artificial Intelligence system can be integrated into a Drupal website and, more broadly, into any digital experience platform.
6. Drupal LMS: A new, modern, easy-to-use Learning Management System
   Explore the structure of a Learning Management System (LMS), the ongoing work on the project, key structural differences from Opigno and ANU, and opportunities for contributing to its development.
7. Drupal AI: Once again leading the way with the new golden era of the web - The AI Module and Starshot
   Watch this session to discover how AI is transforming Drupal site building in Starshot and how to utilize the Drupal AI module to create advanced web applications.
8. Everything you need to know about cookies but are afraid to ask!
   This beginner-level session will help you learn about cookies, their purpose, and emerging alternatives. You will also explore how to optimize user experience, insights, and marketing strategies while maintaining privacy and compliance.
9. Practical exploitation of Drupal security vulnerabilities
   This session aims to understand the importance of addressing web application vulnerabilities, moving beyond the typical "alert" XSS pop-up scenario. It also covers various approaches for detecting, mitigating, and preventing these vulnerabilities to ensure stronger overall security.
10. Supply Chain Security in Drupal and Composer
    This session provides a foundational understanding of supply chain security, with a deeper focus on Composer's features and their impact on it. Learn best practices for securing Drupal sites from supply chain attacks and explore how the Drupal Association is developing solutions to safeguard the entire community.

The Ramsalt team at our favorite tapas restaurant.

We hope you enjoy these sessions as much as we did! You can find all of the sessions from DrupalCon Barcelona 2024 on the official YouTube channel of the Drupal Association.

Marc Berger

Senior Backend Engineer

Always looking for a challenge, Marc tries to add something new to his toolbox for every project and build — be it a new CSS technology, creating custom APIs, or testing out new processes for development.

January 1, 1970

For higher ed institutions and nonprofits, Localist is a powerful resource that provides a valuable means of centralizing your organization’s events into a single branded calendar. However, integrating that event data into a Drupal website in a seamless way can pose a significant challenge.

At Four Kitchens, we recently completed a custom module for a client that can regularly import events from Localist into their higher ed site. After finishing the project, it dawned on us that the Drupal community could benefit from our work. In keeping with our commitment to sharing knowledge with our community, we rebuilt it as a contrib module, so it’s available for your organization, too.

During this rebuild, there were several lessons that we thought were valuable to share to aid other developers who also build custom modules.

Setting functional goals

Before we get into the challenges and lessons we learned, let’s talk about what this module does and how it can help your organization import event data from Localist.

The Localist platform offers an API, but it requires time and development resources to create a custom Drupal module that satisfies your organization’s data requirements. This module simplifies the work needed to import event data from Localist into Drupal by using Drupal’s plugin architecture. Fundamentally, this module uses Drupal’s migration APIs to handle all of the heavy lifting. However, we needed to add custom plugins and functions to handle the Localist API specifically.

Additionally, migrations in Drupal are usually a one-time import — for example, migrating data from an older Drupal 7 site to a newer Drupal 11 site. With event data, importing needs to happen regularly, so this module is designed to import data roughly every hour.

Finally, we decided to build a UI, include optional installable examples (using Drupal’s new Recipes initiative!), and include a code generator that guides a developer to quickly get started building their own event migrations required to import the data.

The information imported from Localist is then stored in fields on a Drupal content type to display however you’d like. If your organization already uses Localist to manage events, you can now display that information in a consistent way on your own website.

Shifting a custom solution to a community contribution

Transforming a client-specific module into a contrib module for the wider Drupal community required extra work, but those efforts are true to our values of sharing knowledge and enabling others to benefit from our research.

Remember the last time you went searching for a module to perform a specific functionality, found it, and installed it? Not only did that experience save you development time, but it also showed the power of the open source community.

Shared modules provide ready-made solutions to common challenges, allowing developers to focus on innovation rather than reinventing the wheel.

Challenges and lessons in developing a community-ready module

When building a custom module, you develop with many assumptions in place because the config and code are already in place for a known environment. When building for the community, you have to consider a multitude of scenarios and edge cases. You have to factor in how the module may be used, how it may interact with other modules, and other unknowns.

Additionally, sometimes there can be some very client-specific requirements that don’t make sense for a contributed module. For the client we originally built this for, we built in special functions to handle the formatting and styling of the event dates. To translate this module into a contrib module, that functionality had to be removed, as we can’t make those same assumptions for everyone. We just want to ensure the baseline functionality is in place so your team can then build off that foundation — ultimately saving you time.

Of course, these modifications work both ways. Your organization may need this type of contrib module, but perhaps its functionality doesn’t align with your website’s requirements. Four Kitchens can work with your organization to tailor the module to your needs. Just let us know how we can help.

Localist contrib module Translating a custom module for broader use

Rebuilding this custom module to a contrib version required extra time, planning, and testing to suit the broader Drupal community’s needs. It ultimately helped us learn that in the future, we may want to flip the script and try to develop a contrib module first, and then override in our own code to customize per client. In this way, the base functionality is available to all.

If you are a developer who creates custom modules, think about the goals of your module and ask yourself if your idea would also benefit the community as a whole. Building a contrib module from the get-go may be far more efficient than taking a custom module and turning it into a contrib module later.

Below, we’ll share some examples of a few changes we made as part of the rebuild of the Localist module and the reasoning behind the change. We hope this helps other developers think outside the box and determine if a contrib module may be a better idea as a starting place.

FunctionalityClient projectContrib modulePreflight and prerequisite checksDid not exist. We assumed all of the config, fields, and taxonomies were in place.We incorporated additional functions to verify that the right connections are in place and that config was correctly set up and working. A green check displays before the user proceeds with any data imports from the Localist database. This is important to make the module future-proof.User interface changesThe settings form only had one field for the API URL and one field for the group. All of the other settings were hard-coded in the codebase, which made things simple to configure for the client, but inflexible for the community.The module now features a visual status area displaying preflight checks. Below, additional fields allow the user to supply custom migrations. The settings page also includes the ability to create an example migration.Structural changesThe location of the settings form was in a custom area, and permissions were integrated with client-specific permissions.The settings form was moved to a standard Drupal location with module-specific permissions added. Additionally, a more robust Drupal service was created to allow some methods to be used outside of this module if needed.Migration examplesNoneSince Drupal migrations can be difficult to understand, we provide an optional installable example to show how the module works to help a developer get started.DocumentationMinimal. The original custom module included just enough to learn about the custom plugins and how to extend the existing built-in migrations.Extensive. Documentation describes in detail how to override and create new migrations, usage of the custom plugins, installation, and troubleshooting.Default configurationAlready in place as part of a client project, so the module assumes the config was there.This module not only gives the default settings when it is installed for some needed processes, but also lets you add more settings for the examples. All of these settings must be different and not conflict with an existing environment.Custom client-only functionalityA lot of custom code was written to support specific use cases for the client’s website.Some of this custom code was removed for the contrib version of this module. Some details, such as formatting dates, satisfy very specific use cases, and generally it is best not to make any assumptions when developing for the community. The value of contributing to the Drupal community

Contributing to the Drupal ecosystem through contributed modules benefits the entire Drupal community. By making our work available to others, we collectively elevate the capabilities of the platform and empower developers worldwide.

While this specific rebuild required a bit of extra time, it fosters a culture of knowledge exchange and mutual support. Each contribution, no matter how small, adds to the platform’s versatility and appeal.\We hope that by sharing our experience of moving a module from custom to contrib, we empower other developers to consider building contrib first to give back to the community, collaborate with others on additional features, build more robust and better documented modules, and hopefully save a little time in the end.

The post From custom to contrib: Rebuilding our Localist module to import event data into Drupal appeared first on Four Kitchens.