Planet Drupal

Shanice Ortiz

Director of Projects

Alongside her project management duties, Shanice is passionate about expanding Four Kitchens’ DEI efforts and fostering a culture of advocates and allies.

January 1, 1970

Platform upgrade.

For any IT manager, especially those at large organizations, these two words are enough to cause stress. Even if you just completed a move to Drupal 10, the release of Drupal 11 is around the corner with the latest version available in late July 2024.

What does that mean for your organization? Primarily, your greatest takeaway is that you shouldn’t feel the anxiety of another looming deadline. You still have two years to complete the upgrade. Plus, engineering plans are just starting to come together about how to tackle the upgrade multiple different ways. Time is still on your side.

However, just because a move to Drupal 11 isn’t cause for immediate alarm doesn’t mean you shouldn’t start planning an upgrade. You and your organization will see considerable benefits by addressing this change sooner rather than later.

What the move to Drupal 11 means for your website

In terms of adding new tools or website features, moving to Drupal 11 doesn’t mean much for your organization. Drupal rolls out upgrades differently than conventional software platforms. Version 11 will seem a lot like Drupal 10.3 in terms of new functionality.

Instead, Drupal will be deprecating features to eliminate ‌unnecessary or outdated code from the core platform. For example, in moving from Drupal 9.5 to 10, the CKEditor 4 module was removed to make room for CKEditor 5. For Drupal 11, the Book module will be deprecated.

If your organization doesn’t use this feature, its subtraction amounts to a positive by eliminating unneeded weight to the platform. If you do, then Book will still function in a more nimble way as a contrib module.

Ultimately, your organization won’t see any new features from Drupal 11 until the release of the next version, Drupal 11.1. Does that mean you should wait until then to start planning a website upgrade? You guessed it — absolutely not.

Why get ahead of Drupal 11?

The biggest benefit of planning your upgrade to Drupal 11 early is to avoid the scramble of a last-minute migration. This creates headaches for your team, and you also run into crowded schedules if you rely on a development partner. You don’t just run the risk of incurring unnecessary charges for trying to plan an upgrade at the last minute. You also risk limited availability as development agencies support other clients who also waited until the last minute.

Plus, planning to migrate to Drupal 11 now enables you to sidestep the complications of upgrading after 11.1 is released. Version 11.1 will include new features, and migrating across two versions will be more difficult, especially if you manage multiple websites.

Making the Drupal 11 move now gives you a leaner version of the platform while leaving you better positioned for 11.1. In all, your journey to Drupal 11.1 will be significantly faster and easier if you’ve already completed the migration to Drupal 11.

What stakeholders need to know about Drupal 11

As you plan an upgrade to Drupal 11, you need to keep your stakeholders informed about what to expect. Rather than getting bogged down with deprecations or other elements, you should frame the upgrade as a maintenance release.

In other words, the migration is primarily a way to improve your organization’s position going forward. Along with creating an easier path toward accessing the new features coming for 11.1, this update also will improve the performance and scalability of the platform for your websites.

How to plan a Drupal 11 migration

Drupal 11 will be released in late July. Consequently, your organization has a long runway toward completing an upgrade. In fact, you have two years until version 10 reaches its end of life in mid- to late 2026.

While that sounds like an eternity from now, your organization has more options at its disposal for planning an upgrade the sooner you begin. With enough lead time, you could include much of the work of preparing for Drupal 11 as part of a Continuous Care program with Four Kitchens.

Depending on your subscription tier, you can allocate your hours differently to support the upgrade. Alternatively, you can plan to allocate additional hours to your tier to complete the upgrade. Or, you can upgrade to Drupal 11 as part of a standalone project separate from your Continuous Care engagement.

The point, ultimately, is to underscore that you have options. At Four Kitchens, we’re already working on our upgrade plan to guide our clients through a seamless transition to Drupal 11. By considering the right approach for your organization sooner rather than later, you can ensure you still have options for navigating this upgrade in a timely, efficient way.

If you’re ready to start planning, we should talk.

The post Why time is of the essence for a Drupal 11 migration appeared first on Four Kitchens.

As of July 1, Acquia Personalization is no longer available for new customers. The platform is being replaced by Acquia Convert, powered by VWO.

Get exclusive insights from the organizers about DrupalCamp Colorado 2024. Learn about keynote speakers, session highlights, venue details, networking opportunities, and the vital role of sponsors and volunteers.

Recently, there has been a flurry of activity as the Drupal community has scrambled to mitigate a vulnerability caused when the company that bought polyfill(.io) started injecting malware into the scripts returned by the service, referred to as a supply-chain attack. If you own or manage a Drupal site and you haven’t heard about this, ... Making the polyfill.io vulnerability a thing of the past for Drupal

Migrating content into Drupal is an extremely useful skill for most Drupal developers. Often, the most difficult step in learning to do migrations is the first one - that of getting everything set up and running your first migration to ensure that everything is working as expected.

Most Drupal migration-related blog posts and documentation that I've seen either completely ignore the setup process or gloss over it before diving into the details of writing migrations. I like to ensure, both here, and when working with participants in our Professional Module Development course, that we ensure a solid understanding of this process to build not only skills, but confidence.

This blog post will explain how to set up and run your first (very simple) Drupal migration. The process I will outline is actually the same steps I do when beginning to write a custom migration - just to make sure I have everything "hooked up" properly before I start getting into the more complex aspects of the project.

I generally write migrations on my local machine, using DDEV as the local development environment. 

Configuration migrations vs. Plugin migrations

When creating a custom migration, one of the initial decisions to be made is whether you'll write the migrations as plugins or configuration entities. I've always used configuration entities, but there are pros and cons to both approaches. Here, we will focus on configuration entity migrations.

There are some minor differences in the workflow presented below when using plugin migrations. For more information on the differences, I recommend Mauricio Dinarte's article. 

Core and contrib modules used

If you're planning on following along with this article, the following modules should be installed and enabled:

Drupal core: 

• Migrate
• Migrate Drupal

Contrib: 

• Migrate tools (for Drush commands) https://www.drupal.org/project/migrate_tools
• Migrate plus (migrations as configuration, additional process plugins, and more) https://www.drupal.org/project/migrate_plus

Source database

This blog post will demonstrate importing a small portion of user data from a Drupal 7 site into a Drupal 10 site. Normally, the first step is setting up the source data: in this case a Drupal 7 database. I normally create a new d7 database on the same MariaDB server as the Drupal 10 site (using DDEV, this is quite easy) and then import the Drupal 7 database into it.

Next, we have to tell the Drupal 10 site about the d7 source database. This can be done by adding the following database connection array to the bottom of your settings.local.php file (which I know you're using!):

$databases['migrate']['default'] = array(  'driver' => 'mysql',  'database' => 'd7',  'username' => 'db',  'password' => 'db',  'host' => 'db',  'port' => 3306,  'prefix' => '', );

Note the database key is migrate and the database name is d7. Everything else is identical to the regular Drupal 10 database credentials in DDEV. If you're using Lando or another local development environment, then your database connection array may be different. 

Custom migration module

Next, we need a custom module to house our migration. The easiest way to create one is via Drush's generate command:

$ drush generate module Welcome to module generator! –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Module name: ➤ My d7 migration Module machine name [my_d7_migration]: ➤ Module description: ➤ Migrations from Drupal 7 site. Package [Custom]: ➤           Dependencies (comma separated): ➤ migrate, migrate_drupal, migrate_plus Would you like to create module file? [No]: ➤ Would you like to create install file? [No]: ➤ Would you like to create README.md file? [No]: ➤ The following directories and files have been created or updated: ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– • /var/www/html/web/modules/custom/my_d7_migration/my_d7_migration.info.yml

Once created, go ahead and enable the module as well:

$ drush en my_d7_migrationMigration group configuration

As this blog post will be writing migrations as configuration entities, create a new config/install directory in your new module. 

We'll define a migration group to which all of our migrations will belong - this is what connects each migration to the source d7 database. Create a new migrate_plus.migration_group.my_group.yml file in the new config/install directory with the following contents:

id: my_d7_migration label: My Drupal 7 migration. description: Content from Drupal 7 site. source_type: Source Drupal 7 site shared_configuration:  source:    key: migrate  migration_tags:    - Drupal 7    - my_d7_migration

The most important bit of this configuration is the source key of migrate; this links up this migration group with the d7 database, with the migrate key we previously configured. Then, any migration created that is in this group automatically has access to the source d7 database.

Simple sample migration configuration

Next, let's look at a super simple example migration for user entities. This will not be a complete user migration, but rather just enough to migrate something. Many migration blog posts, documentation pages and other sources provide guidance and examples for writing migration configuration files (remember, this blog post is focused on all of the configuration and mechanics that normally aren't covered in other places.) 

Here's the user migration configuration we'll use. Create a new /config/install/migrate_plus.migration.user.yml file in your custom module with the following contents:

id: user label: Migrate D7 users. migration_group: my_d7_migration source:  plugin: d7_user process:  name: name  pass: pass  mail: mail  created: created  access: access  login: login  status: status  timezone: timezone destination:  plugin: entity:user

Reputable Drupal migration articles and documentation will explain that migrations need a source (extraction,) some processing (transform,) and a destination (where to load the data.) Often these three concepts will be called ETL. Each of these concepts are easy to spot in our sample configuration file:

• The data is coming from the d7_user plugin (provided by Drupal core with the data source being that of the my_d7_migration group which we configured in a previous step.) 
• The processing of the data in this simple migration is just field mapping (to: from.) Many migration configurations have transformations as part of this section, often provided by Drupal process plugins. 
• The destination is Drupal user entities. 

Running the migration

Again, these instructions are specific to Drupal migration configurations when created as configuration entities. Instructions for migration configuration written as plugins are slightly different (and not covered in this article.) 

As we are dealing with configuration entities, they must be imported into the active configuration store - which, by default, is the Drupal database. This is easily accomplished with the drush cim --partial command. This must be run each and every time a migration configuration file is modified. This is one of the (few, in my opinion) downsides of writing migrations as configurations. 

Next, I often check the status of migration via the drush migrate:status command. When using the Migrate Drupal module, it is recommended to always use the --group option otherwise the output of migrate:status can get a bit messy (due to all the default migrations that will be displayed.) 

The drush migrate:import and migrate:rollback commands should be self-explanatory. Each can be used with either the --group option or with a migration name (as shown below.) I almost always use the --update option on migrate:import for updating previously imported data. 

Finally, keep the drush migrate:reset command in your back pocket when writing custom migrations. If the migration crashes, you'll need to use this to reset its status from processing to idle in order to run it again. 

Here's a full set of the command specific to the sample user migration, migration group, and custom module created in this article:

$ drush cim --partial --source=modules/custom/my_d7_migration/config/install $ drush migrate:status --group=whatever $ drush migrate:import user --update $ drush migrate:reset user $ drush migrate:rollback userWhat's next?

What I've presented in this article is 90% of what I regularly use when running migrations. Sure, there are a few edge cases where oddities occur, but I believe this is a solid base of knowledge to start with. 

Once all this makes sense, I encourage you to utilize other blog posts and documentation to extend the user migration we started, or write new ones based on other resources. Once you're comfortable writing additional migrations, learning how to create your own process plugins is the natural next step. As process plugins are written as PHP classes, some knowledge of module development is necessary. 

Interested in learning more about Drupal module development? Check out DrupalEasy's 15-week Professional Module Development course! 

Additional resources

• UnderstandDrupal.com - loads of resources about Drupal migrations from Mauricio Dinarte. 
• Tag1's recent series about migrations (also written by Mauricio Dinarte!): 
• Migration related modules (definitely not an exhaustive list, but a solid start):
  • Migrate plus 
  • Migrate tools 
  • Migrate devel 
  • Migrate process extra - process plugins for migrations.
  • Migrate conditions - additional process plugins for migrations.
  • Migrate source CSV - allows migrations from .csv files.
  • Migration tools - even more process plugins and additional helper classes and methods for migration. 
  • Migrate upgrade - Drush support for the Drupal core migrations from Drupal 6 and 7.

Lead image generated by OpenAI.

Best SEO Practices for Drupal Websites in 2024 Editor Tue, 07/23/2024 - 10:10

If you are enthusiastic about Best SEO Practices for Drupal Websites in 2024 and want to grow your website traffic, you are just in the right place! Drupal is like a wise friend on the web who helps you complete tasks quickly without understanding many programming details. Also, it has some cool tricks that make your website both Google-friendly and user-friendly. And here we go, deeper into optimizing your SEO for Drupal!

Drupal SEO Checklist in 2024

All right, let's make a rough Drupal SEO checklist.

An engaging website is like a great party host who makes everyone feel welcome and ensures they have such a fantastic time that they never want to leave. Who are these engaged users? They’re your future loyal customers, your content’s biggest fans, and the ones most likely to convert into paying customers. Keeping your content fresh and relevant is one of the best things you can do to maintain user engagement on your website, but a CMS like Drupal offers so much more than just that. From creating personalized experiences to integrating interactive elements, Drupal empowers you to build a dynamic, engaging website that keeps users coming back for more. In this blog, I’ll explore the benefits of creating an engaging website for your business and introduce 8 fantastic Drupal modules that can boost user engagement. Let’s get started! Why is user engagement important anyway Profitable B2B, B2C, or SaaS companies use effective user engagement as one of their KPIs to demonstrate the value they’re offering to their customers through their services. Engagement is crucial to achieving all marketing goals if you want to boost your website traffic, establish brand awareness, or launch social media campaigns. Driving higher user engagement draws substantial benefits for your business.  You get sustained audience attention Build stronger emotional bonds with customers Increase in repeated customers gradually Brand advocacy from loyal customers Shortened sales cycles You can track your user engagement using various user engagement metrics such as customer base growth, average customer value, and churn rate. Your users engage with your business via social media, your company website, and product or service purchases. Here are some common metrics that help measure user engagement: Page/scroll depth Page views Conversions Time spent on the page/site Pages per session Bounce rate And more… How can you improve user engagement With advanced technology and a rise in user expectations, it is only essential to refine websites for optimized user experiences. To begin with, here’s what you can do to improve user engagement: Identify and cater to your target audience: Understand your target audience and customize your content to meet their expectations and preferences. Implement a design that adapts to various devices: Build a responsive website that is adaptable to various devices whether laptop, desktop, mobile, or tablet. It helps deliver a seamless experience with a responsive design and optimum website functionality. Ensure easy-to-use navigation: Develop an intuitive web design, easy to navigate, providing users with what they look for with clear menus and search functionality. Utilize personalized content and experiences: Craft your content, recommendations, and CTAs based on user preferences, behavior, and demographics. Incorporate interactive features and social media integration: Analyze user behavior and gather feedback by implementing interactive elements like forms, surveys, quizzes, polls, etc. Integrate social media buttons on your website for social engagement and brand awareness. Optimize page load time: Reduce bounce rates with the help of leveraging caching, optimized images, compressing files, utilizing CDNs, etc., to optimize page load times for an enhanced user experience. Top 8 Drupal modules to boost user engagement There can be pretty small yet essential elements that can contribute to boosting user engagement, meeting user preferences, and generating valuable statistics. Drupal’s active community continuously develops innovative modules and themes to boost engagement. I have gathered a list of 8 Drupal modules that you can use to build user engagement through your website. 1. Webform Image source: Drupal .org The Webform module is one of the most important Drupal modules that bridges the gap between you and your audience. It helps engage your audience, gather insights about their preferences, maintain interaction with your regular customers, track marketing analytics, and offer assistance as and when required. This module allows you to collect data in any form that is submitted to the application or system. These forms are customizable based on any behavior or aspect. Whether you need a form with multiple pages or multiple columns with conditional logic or a simple, basic form that pushes data to Salesforce/CRM, the Webform module makes it all possible. Users can enter their data through these forms - contact forms, feedback forms, job applications, support requests, subscription forms, surveys, appointment forms, and other types of forms as required for your business and marketing goals. Webforms feature text fields, checkboxes, select menus, radio buttons, and more. Administrators can enhance their features using placeholders for required data formats, autocomplete options, and relevant text to improve user-friendliness. Drupal’s webforms adhere to specific web accessibility standards that ensure seamless functionality even for differently-abled individuals. This includes clear labels, easily associated form validation, and keyboard accessibility. Take a deeper dive into the Webform module in this article. 2. Flag You might dog-ear pages of a novel to mark where you left off or use bookmarks to keep track. The Flag module in Drupal offers similar functionality. It’s an adaptable flagging system, fully customizable by administrators. Admins can create numerous flags for nodes, comments, users, and additional entities. Any website featuring user-generated content may require monitoring for spam and adherence to submission guidelines. The Flag Drupal module allows users to mark (or bookmark) content for future reference. Users have the ability to “Add to wishlist,” “Mark as inappropriate,” “Add to bookmarks,” or “Flag as helpful,” as part of this module’s functionalities. Flags can be either per-user, letting individuals mark items independently, or global, meaning any user’s action affects everyone. This flexibility allows additional flags (similar to published or sticky) to be applied to nodes or other elements, managed according to admin preferences. Additionally, the module’s integration with Views allows you to build custom lists of popular content or monitor key items. 3. Poll Image source: Drupal .org Just like you can vote your opinion on Instagram stories and posts nowadays, the Poll module in Drupal enables users to vote among multiple choices. You can create and manage multiple polls. These polls can be customized among options such as anonymous voting, setting voting requirements, or toggling open/closed status. Administrators can create a block that highlights the most recent poll. Additionally, this module can also be integrated with Views, so admins can create their own blocks and pages. The best thing about these polls is that they are multilingual. Users in any part of the globe can choose their preferences in their respective languages. 4. Node Read Time Image source: Drupal .org Time is precious and you’d like your time to be respected. Many websites understand this sentiment and value their readers’ precious time. When you read a blog on such websites, you may have noticed at the top of the blog that it mentions the time required to read that particular blog. The Node Read Time module in Drupal is behind this feature of Drupal websites. The Node Read Time module allows admins to add an extra field of content types to showcase the time taken for users to read a node. This field considers all text fields in the content type and entity version revision fields like Paragraphs and Custom Blocks. Additionally, the configuration page of this module allows you to enable the reading time field for specific content types. You can also set the “words per minute” value for your users to calculate the reading time. Users usually get to view the time in minutes or minutes and seconds. 5. Like/Dislike Image source: Drupal .org If you want to understand how your readers perceive your blogs, this module can help. The Like/Dislike Drupal module allows you to implement a customizable like and dislike widget anywhere on your site. With the help of the Voting API, the module securely stores, retrieves, and tallies user votes. You can easily configure its settings through a dedicated page to specify which content types or entities the widget should apply to. Users can simply hit the like or dislike button on the page to express their approval or disapproval of your site content. However, be mindful of the fact that only authenticated users can engage with the like or dislike option. Anonymous users are required to log in or register to cast their vote. 6. Commerce Wishlist When we shop online, we mostly tend to “Add to Wishlist” to save our preferences for a later buying decision. The Commerce Wishlist module in Drupal offers such Wishlist functionality. This module is specifically developed for e-commerce websites. With the help of this module, admins can create a dedicated wishlist page, along with a customizable block. Its integration with the Views module makes it easier for straightforward customization. With the help of this module, admins can add an “Add to Wishlist” button on every product display node. You can also generate a customizable list using Views to showcase all Wishlist products. Users can effortlessly remove or transfer Wishlist items to their Shopping Cart with a simple click. 7. Quiz Image source: Drupal .org Have you ever participated in a quiz tournament? While this quiz isn’t related to that one, they do share a common trait. But if you look at it this way, the tournament brings into the limelight the winner who knew the highest number of answers to the questions. It highlights their knowledge of different subjects/topics. The Quiz module in Drupal gathers insights from users with the help of graded assessments that consist of a series of questions. These responses are then stored in the database. The scores and results of these quizzes are displayed during or after completion. Admins can use its intuitive drag-and-drop interface to order the questions (and answers) and pages. Admins can also customize the number of questions on every page. Additionally, the module allows dummy Quiz generation, along with Question and Result data with Devel. The questions can also be randomized where multiple attempts are allowed per user. Admins have the option to provide feedback manually or automatically. Here are the versatile application options of the Quiz module: Integration into larger Learning Management Systems (LMS) or as a supplementary classroom activity Standalone functionality supporting multimedia-rich content in questions and answers Adaptive mode for self-paced learning with multiple attempts Training programs allowing iterative improvement attempts 8. Advanced Content Feedback (Admin Feedback) Image source: Drupal .org Last on my list is a crucial Drupal module that is most helpful in gathering insights about your site’s content. To understand if you’re providing relevant content for your users, you need to be mindful of their preferences. Feedback is a traditional yet proven and useful approach to gathering insights into your users’ preferences. The Admin Feedback module in Drupal allows users to submit feedback on content (nodes) via AJAX requests and ensures a seamless user experience without redirects. The insights from this feedback are then monitored, analyzed, and inspected by administrators from the dashboard. This module facilitates direct improvements based on client feedback gathered via FAQ or help pages seeking user input to enhance content quality. It includes a permission system to control feedback submission and analysis by specific roles. Admins work via two significant features of the Admin Feedback module for its optimum purpose: Feedback Block - This feature offers a customizable form on various content types for users to provide positive or negative feedback backed with optional messages. Content Feedback Dashboard - Accessible at /admin/content/feedback, this dashboard displays all user feedback with permissions to manage access. It offers two views: Summary View and Detail View. Other Drupal Modules that promote user engagement Apart from the previously mentioned modules, here are a few additional Drupal modules that help improve engagement of your Drupal site: Simple Feedback Survey: This module is an alternative to survey forms to collect data from users visiting your site. Website Feedback: This module allows users (with permission) to submit feedback comments along with a screenshot of the page. Reviews: This module allows authenticated users to submit their reviews about the site content.  Social Media Share: As the name suggests, this module allows users to share the current site page to various social media platforms like Twitter (X), Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Pinterest, and email. Social Auth Google: This module allows users to register and log in to a Drupal website via their Google account. Final Thoughts Your website is the face of your brand, and users are drawn to businesses that offer a seamless experience, engaging them with interactive features and personalized content. Drupal is an excellent tool for achieving just that. If you’re looking for a reliable Drupal development company to help improve your user engagement with your Drupal website, let’s make it happen together! Contact us today to get started!

Today we are talking about Preconfigured CMS Solutions, How they can help your business, and The best way to build them in Drupal with guests Baddy Sonja Breidert and Dr. Christoph Breidert.

For show notes visit: www.talkingDrupal.com/460

Topics

• Spain
• What is a Preconfigured CMS / Drupal Solution
• Who is the audience
• What business objectives can preconfigured solutions solve
• What are the ingredients
• How do you manage theming
• How do you manage customized design
• What do you do if your client has a need that your preconfigured solution does not solve
• What about Starshot
• Did the two of you meet over Drupal
• How do you manage work life balance

Resources

• TRY drupal
• Design system
• Front end editing

Guests

Christoph Breidert - 1xINTERNET breidert

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Baddý Sonja Breidert - 1xINTERNET baddysonja

MOTW Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

• Brief description:
  • Have you ever wanted to customize the way Google Maps appear on your Drupal site? There's a module for that.
• Module name/project name:
  • Styled Google Map
• Brief history
  • How old: created in Mar 2014 by iampuma, but recent releases are by Artem Dmitriiev (a.dmitriiev) of 1xINTERNET
  • Versions available: 7.x-2.0, 8.x-1.7, and 8.x-2.6 versions available, the last of which works with Drupal 8, 9, 10, and 11
• Maintainership
  • Actively maintained, latest release a week ago
  • Security coverage
  • Has a Documentation page and lots of information on the project page
  • Number of open issues: 8 open issues, 1 of which is a bug against the current branch, though it was actually fixed in the latest release
• Usage stats:
  • 1,764 sites
• Module features and usage
  • The module provides allows your Drupal to use custom styles, which you can copy and paste from SnazzyMaps.com, or create from scratch using a configuration widget on Github that is linked from the project page
  • You will be able to use custom markers by using the System Stream Wrapper module
  • You can also specify popups for the markers, using a field or a view mode
  • If you use the companion styled_google_views module, you can also show multiple locations, and define clustering options
  • Styled Google Map also has integration with Google's Directions service, so visitors can easily get turn-by-turn directions for how to reached their chosen location
  • The module also includes a demo submodule you can use to quickly set up a working example to illustrate all the different options available using Styled Google Map

Hello Tech Enthusiasts,

In this edition, we’re exploring why Drupal is a smart choice for your website development needs.

Drupal’s modular design makes it highly scalable and flexible, allowing it to support everything from small blogs to large enterprise sites. This adaptability ensures your website can grow and evolve alongside your business without needing extensive overhauls.

Managing content on Drupal is straightforward, thanks to its intuitive interface. Even non-technical users can easily handle updates and changes. Additionally, with numerous themes and modules, customization is virtually limitless, enabling businesses to tailor their sites to specific requirements.

Security is another area where Drupal excels. Regular updates and a robust security framework protect your site from vulnerabilities. Plus, being open-source, Drupal benefits from a vibrant community that continually contributes to its development, ensuring continuous improvements and access to a wealth of resources.

Businesses across various industries have successfully used Drupal to create dynamic, secure, and scalable websites. For example, the University of Oxford leverages Drupal to manage extensive content libraries and facilitate complex workflows efficiently. You can read more about their experience here.

Drupal offers a powerful and versatile CMS solution for modern website development. Its scalability, ease of use, extensive customization options, and strong security make it an ideal choice for businesses aiming to enhance their web presence. Supported by an active community, Drupal continues to meet the diverse needs of its users.

With that, now explore some of the highlighted stories we covered last week:

Join The DropTimes (TDT) for its milestone 100th interview with Dries Buytaert, the innovative founder of Drupal. Interviewed by Anoop John, Founder and Lead of The DropTimes, this conversation explores Drupal’s rich history and transformative journey.

Learn how to migrate new content efficiently using Drupal's Migrate API. Jaymie Strecker's second part of this tutorial, "Using Drupal Migrations to Modify Content Within a Site," provides detailed examples of creating paragraphs, nodes, URL aliases, and redirects.

The 2024 Drupal Association board election is now open. Community members can nominate themselves until 30 July 2024. Voting begins on 15 August.

The Drupal Association's annual survey is now open! Digital service providers worldwide are invited to share their insights on market trends, growth opportunities, and more. Participate by September 4 to contribute to the comprehensive report and see the results presented at the CEO Dinner during DrupalCon Barcelona.

Varbase 10.0.0 has arrived, bringing a host of enhancements and new features to this comprehensive Drupal distribution. Built on Drupal 10, it offers improved performance, PHP 8.1 compatibility, and a modern CKEditor 5 integration.

Drupal Starshot is recruiting track leads to drive crucial project tracks, focusing on areas like Drupal Recipes, installer enhancements, and product marketing. Apply by July 31st to contribute to this innovative initiative and help shape the future of Drupal.

Mark Conroy introduces the LocalGov KeyNav module, enabling keyboard shortcuts for navigating LocalGov Drupal websites. This module, sponsored by Big Blue Door, enhances site usability with customizable key sequences for quick access to various pages.

DrupalCon Barcelona 2024 invites registered attendees to submit proposals for Birds of a Feather (BoF) sessions. BoFs provide an inclusive, informal environment to discuss Drupal, technology topics, or personal interests. Submit your BoF proposal by September 25, 2024, to join the conversation.

Gábor Hojtsy and Lauri Timmanee have released the open-source slide deck and video recording from their keynote on Drupal Starshot at Drupal Developer Days 2024. Access these resources for your events and presentations.

Sponsorship opportunities are now available for DrupalCamp Pune 2024, which will take place on October 19-20. This is a great opportunity to engage with the global Drupal community and showcase your brand.

Submit your session proposals for Twin Cities Drupal Camp 2024 by August 15. The camp, scheduled for September 12-13, 2024, welcomes diverse topics related to Drupal and web development.

We acknowledge that there are more stories to share. However, due to selection constraints, we must pause further exploration for now.

To get timely updates, follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Also, join us on Drupal Slack at #thedroptimes.

Thank you,
Sincerely
Kazima Abbas
Sub-editor, The DropTimes.
 

Last week was very quiet, July 1–7’s #experience-builder Drupal Slack meeting was even more tumbleweed-y…

… but while that was very quiet, the Acquia UX team’s design locomotive was getting started in the background, with two designs ready-to-be-implemented posted by Lauri — he’s working with that team to get his Experience Builder (XB) product vision visualized:

1. #3458503: Improve the page hierarchy display — with Gaurav “Gauravvvv” enthusiastically jumping on it!
2. #3458863: Add initial implementation of top bar

On top of that, a set of placeholder issues was posted — choices to be made that need user research before an informed design can be crafted:

• #3459088: Define built-in components and categorization for components
• #3459229: Allow saving component compositions as sections
• #3459234: Allow directly creating/editing entity title and meta fields
• #3459098: Define strategy for keyboard shortcuts
• #3459236: Redirect users directly to Experience Builder when creating new content or editing content

More to come on the design front! :)

Missed a prior week? See all posts tagged Experience Builder.

Goal: make it possible to follow high-level progress by reading ~5 minutes/week. I hope this empowers more people to contribute when their unique skills can best be put to use!

For more detail, join the #experience-builder Slack channel. Check out the pinned items at the top!

Speaking of design, Hemant “guptahemant” Gupta and Kristen “kristenpol” Pol are volunteering on behalf of their respective employers to implement the initial design system prior to DrupalCon Barcelona.

Front end

• Jesse “jessebaker” Baker landed an important refactor (#3456946: Refactor Preview.tsx React component to prevent duplicate backend calls), with reviews from Ben “bnjmnm” Mullins and Lee “larowlan” Rowlands
• Jesse also landed a small foundational piece of the UI: #3458723: Implement context menu for hovered component, which also is a crucial stepping stone for future accessibility work
• Harumi “hooroomoo” Jang got #3456084: Add initial implementation of primary menu landed and filed the follow-up #3458617: Close menu on drag in primary menu — which subsequently spawned an interesting discussion about the design between Jesse and Lauri
• Jesse got #3459235: Implement front-end (React) routing library going, with enthusiastic participation from Bálint “balintbrews” Kléri and Ronald “roaguicr” Aguilar
• Having observed environment setup issues for some, Ben opened #3458369: DDEV support for Cypress tests after witnessing how painful it was for Jesse to get Cypress talking to Drupal inside DDEV

Front-end starting points for contributing to XB

Jesse reported two bugs that would be excellent starting points for contributing to XB:

• #3459333: Undo/redo - user can undo the loading of the initial state (regression)
• #3458535: Middle click + drag doesn’t work correctly if middle click is inside preview iframe

And Lauri added a feature request that builds on top of the aforementioned foundational UI piece Jesse & Ben landed (#3459249: Allow opening the contextual menu by right clicking a component) — that too is a great entry point.

Back end

And, finally, on the back-end side:

• Ted “tedbow” Bowman pushed forward #3456008: Add support for matching SDC prop shape: {type: string, enum: …} but got stuck. He opened #3458580 as a blocker … and upon my return that Friday, I discovered that actually … that was working correctly, but the implementation was very confusing — not surprising, considering this code dated back to a PoC branch from the chaotic origins. So, instead, the logic was made a lot clearer, with better comments. If you’re interested in the deepest parts of how Drupal handles structured data, you’ll probably find it an intriguing commit. 1
• I’d missed it the previous week, but Lee actually did a huge push forward on #3454519: [META] Support component types other than SDC, by turning a high-level concept into a concrete proposal in the form a massive draft MR, with lots of interesting concepts, all rooted in his real-world experience with Layout Builder. An interesting discussion between Alex “effulgentsia” Bronstein and Lee ensued :)

Thanks to Lauri for reviewing this!

1. Sadly, it’s an inevitability that this is still complex: Drupal 8 introduced Typed Data API into the pre-existing Field API, and then later the Symfony validation constraint API was integrated into both. Getting a full picture of what constraints apply to an entire entity field data tree is not something Drupal core provides, so that picture must be manually crafted, which is what that code does. ↩︎

• Drupal
• Acquia
• Experience Builder

"I will turn every stone, and I will turn them on time," notes a very confident Janne Kalliola. Over a decade ago, Janne's idea to host a dinner for Drupal business leaders at DrupalCon Prague 2013 sparked the Drupal Business Survey, now in its ninth year. In an interview with Alka Elizabeth, Janne discusses the survey's origins, its evolution, and the key players involved. He shares the benefits for the Drupal community, significant changes, and expectations for this year's survey, highlighting its role in gathering vital insights for Drupal businesses and agencies worldwide.

Here's what I've been working on for my Drupal contributions this week. Thanks to Code Enigma for sponsoring the time to work on these.

Evaluating Acquia storage limits - "Emergency upsize" notification

In addition to best-in-class Drupal training courses (pun intended), we at Debug Academy provide Drupal development services and Drupal 7 migration services. Our clients may self-host, host with Acquia, Pantheon, or even host with us.

Recently, a client who hosts their Drupal 9 website on Acquia reached out to to ask us to investigate an alert they had received from Acquia. Acquia sent an email which said "This email is to inform you that we emergency upsized your storage from 200GB to 300GB FS in Case #[redacted]. The cost to keep this upsize in place [is..]"

ashrafabed Fri, 07/19/2024

Join The DropTimes (TDT) for its milestone 100th interview with Dries Buytaert, the innovative founder of Drupal. Interviewed by Anoop John, Founder and Lead of The DropTimes, this conversation explores Drupal’s rich history and transformative journey. Dries shares key moments that boosted Drupal’s adoption, insights on community growth through events like DrupalCon, and the impact of the Drupal Starshot initiative. He discusses strategies for making Drupal more accessible, integrating AI, and effective community communication. This interview captures Drupal’s evolution and future aspirations, offering valuable insights for both seasoned users and newcomers. Don’t miss this engaging discussion celebrating Drupal’s ongoing impact and future.

Here's what I've been working on for my LocalGov Drupal contributions this week. Thanks to Big Blue Door for sponsoring the time to work on these.

The Drupal Starshot initiative has been making significant progress behind the scenes, and I'm excited to share some updates with the community.

Leadership team formation and product definition

Over the past few months, we've been working diligently on Drupal Starshot. One of our first steps was to appoint a leadership team to guide the project. With the leadership team in place as well as the new Starshot Advisory Council, we shifted our focus to defining the product. We've made substantial progress on this front and will be sharing more details about the product strategy in the coming weeks.

Introducing Drupal Starshot tracks

We already started to break down the initiative into manageable components, and are introducing the concept of "tracks". Tracks are smaller, focused parts of the Drupal Starshot project that allow for targeted development and contributions. We've already published the first set of tracks on the Drupal Starshot issue queue on Drupal.org.

Example tracks include:

1. Creating Drupal Recipes for features like contact forms, advanced search, events, SEO and more.
2. Enhancing the Drupal installer to enable Recipes during installation.
3. Updating Drupal.org for Starshot, including product marketing and a trial experience.

While many tracks are technical and need help from developers, most of the tracks need contribution from designers, UX experts, marketers, testers and site builders.

Recruiting more track leads

Several tracks already have track leads and have made significant progress:

• Matt Glaman is spearheading the development of a trial experience.
• The marketing team, led by Suzanne Dergacheva, is crafting product marketing documentation.
• Martin Anderson-Clutz has been appointed as the track lead for event management.

However, we need many additional track leads to drive our remaining tracks to completion.

We're now accepting applications for track lead positions. Interested individuals and organizations can apply by completing our application form. The application window closes on July 31st, two weeks from today.

Key responsibilities of a track lead

Track leads can be individuals, teams, or organizations, including Drupal Certified Partners. While technical expertise is beneficial, the role primarily focuses on strategic coordination and project management. Key responsibilities include:

• Defining and validating requirements to ensure the track meets the expectations of our target audience.
• Developing and maintaining a prioritized task list, including creating milestones and timelines.
• Overseeing and driving the track's implementation.
• Collaborating with key stakeholders, including the Drupal Starshot leadership team, module maintainers, the marketing team, etc.
• Communicating progress to the community (e.g. blogging).

Track lead selection and announcement

After the application deadline, the Drupal Starshot Leadership Team will review the applications and appoint track leads. We expect to announce the selected track leads in the first week of August.

While the application period is open, we will be available to answer any questions you may have. Feel free to reach out to us through the Drupal.org issue queue, or join us in an upcoming zoom meeting (details to be announced / figured out).

Looking ahead to DrupalCon Barcelona

Our goal is to make significant progress on these tracks by DrupalCon Barcelona, where we plan to showcase the advancements we've made. We're excited about the momentum building around Drupal Starshot and can't wait to see the contributions from the community.

If you're passionate about Drupal and want to play a key role in shaping its future, consider applying for a track lead position.

Stay tuned for more updates on Drupal Starshot, and thank you for your continued support of the Drupal community.

Redirecting all your traffic from HTTP to HTTPS with or without WWW using Drupal can be a complex and frustrating task. Fortunately, there is a relatively simple solution that can help you achieve this in just a few steps.

Resolving merge conflicts is a great advanced part of Composer’s documentation, but we’ve found that it leaves many readers more confused than confident. If there is a composer.lock conflict, all you get is this error message:

Series Overview & ToC | Previous Article | Next Article - coming July 24th --- Our last article explored the syntax and structure of migration files. Today, we are diving deeper into the most important part of a migration: the process pipeline. This determines how source data will be processed and transformed to match the expected destination structure. We will learn how to configure and chain process plugins, how to set subfields and deltas for multi-value fields, and to work with source constants and pseudo-fields. Let’s get started. ## From source to destination The process section in a migration is responsible for transforming data as extracted from the source into a format that the destination expects. The collection of all those data transformations is known as the migration process pipeline. The Migrate API is a generic ETL framework. This means the source data can come from different types of sources like a database table; a CSV, JSON, or XML file; a remote API using JSON:API or GraphQL; or something else. The destination can be as diverse including databases, text files, and remote APIs. Because the series focuses on migrating from Drupal 7 to 10, most of our discussion will revolve...

Read more mauricio Wed, 07/17/2024 - 08:23

Wouldn't it be cool if we could get around our LocalGov Drupal websites by using keyboard shortcuts?