It's been a long couple of weeks...
... long...
Drupal Articles
Articles detailing Drupal-based web-work. There may be some overlap with other PHP-based content management systems. There may also be solid references to Linux based tools for use with DevOps and workflow management. Enjoy!
September 04, 2020
The upgrade from Drupal 8 to 9 has been hailed by Drupal.org as the easiest upgrade in a decade. The first steps in the upgrade process look to be getting your testing environment in order... for me, that means working through a couple of nasty headaches with Composer (self inflicted... of course).
July 23, 2020
The Fluid UI module for Drupal 8 is a great way to improve the accessibility and 508/ADA compliance of a website. The one problem I have with the module is that it renders it's "accessibility block" outside of Drupal's block system via hook_page_top(). What if you wanted to treat the block like any other? What if you wanted to assign it to one of Drupal's block zones?
Full disclosure -- I'm not a PHP developer. In all honesty, I am a front end dev who works mostly in SASS/CSS with the occasional foray into JavaScript and jQuery. So, I'll admit to starting this project with my feet firmly planted into the deep end of the PHP pool; I'm not really tall enough to keep my head above water. PHP, for me, is less about swimming and more about not drowning.
July 15, 2020
This is a rather otaku (nerdy) error you may find when using the Social Media Share module for D8: when trying to share by mail the browser opens the mail client with an incomplete title and body. Except, it only does it for certain articles. Sounds like a mystery; it's not.
A simple block allowing users to share an article by mail.
A little background: one of my clients recently put together a blog.
May 29, 2020
SASS/CSS can accomplish magic. Sometimes, however, its logic doesn't go quite far enough, and you need a little help from Javascript.
In Sass/Css, the rules of specificity allow us to create styling at a high level and then override it with minimal effort when it comes to more specific cases. For example, I could go into my site theme and write out a general rule: color all links red.
March 06, 2020
Juggling Git branches between a Production, Staging, Development and Localhost environment can make for exciting errors every now and then. Drupal often labels these errors as 'unexpected'--an obvious but often unhelfpul label. The culprit is often the database cache--here's a real life walk through of how it might be fixed.
Quick note here: I'm working with Drupal 8--although, the process documented here is more or less the same for Drupal 7 or even Drupal 9...
February 28, 2020
Here's an error I recently came accross in Git when trying to push a commit. If Git is giving you something about being unable to create the index.lock file, it's likely you have a git process running in the background that needs to be resolved before git can move forward.
I was doing some routine updates to Drupal modules today when I got a rather peculiar error: git was unable to create a file called 'index.lock'. I don't know what a lock file is, or why Git even needs to create one, so it caught me by surprise.
February 03, 2020
It seems counter intuitive, but sometimes the easiest way to bring your site down is to catch up with your updates.
Let me qualify that, slightly: the risk of bringing your site down grows considerably when you're not constantly keeping up with updates. If you've neglected your updates for more than a few months or so, you may be inviting the WSOD (White Screen of Death--a digital grim reaper, of sorts) the next time you run your updates. Even without months of neglect, unless you're paying attention, updates can still be deadly to your site. Here's why:
January 21, 2020
Part 1 in an ongoing series of blog posts discussing how you can bring your site down. Part 1 looks at an easily neglected element of development opperations: billing for things like SSL certificates and domain names.
Today I'd like to look at one of the most obvious, but least thought of, reasons for why sites stop working. Plain and simple--it's billing. Drupal may be free* (with an asterisk), but even with an open source CMS, you'll likely be signing up for any number of products and services in order to run your site. Your server, your domain, your SSL Certificate--these are all fundamental in your site's operations.
September 03, 2019
Which is a better fit for your small business? How do you choose between a content management system like WordPress or an online site builder like Wix?
It's a question I imagine a lot of small businesses run into: we need to get our business on the web--should we go with a WordPress or Drupal CMS (Content Management System), or should we go with one of those online, out-of-the-box solutions like Wix, or Duda?