Drupal (core)

Firstly, I want to amplify the statement of Support for Ukraine that the Drupal Association sent last week. My heart is with the Ukrainian Drupal community, friends, colleagues and family #PrayForUkraine. The Drupal Association is the non-profit ... [More] organisation focused on accelerating Drupal, fostering the growth of the Drupal community, and supporting the project’s vision to create a safe, secure, and open web for everyone.  One of the main purposes of the Drupal Association is to organise DrupalCon events around the world. Events are essential for the community and are also a vital source of revenue to finance the hosting and maintenance of the Drupal infrastructure. Then the pandemic happened so fast, which meant we had to reinvent how we organise events and how we raise funds. It was not a small task for a rather small team at the Drupal Association who worked hard (but smart) to get through these challenging times. Big #Drupalthanks to everyone at the Drupal Association. For the past 4 years, I have served on the board, first in the Finance Committee and the last two years as the Treasurer of the Executive Committee.  On February 22nd, I accepted the nomination as the new Chair of the Board of Directors of the Drupal Association.  I want to thank Audra Martin-Merrick, who has been the Chair for the past 18 months, for her great work in the role. In 2018, Audra and I were nominated as new board members, and while working together, we have become friends. I have learned a lot from Audra, and we will miss her advice and guidance within the board's work. This transition is happening six months sooner than expected as the board term typically ends at the end of October. This accelerated transition allows me to oversee the search for a new Executive Director following Heather Rocker’s recent decision to take a new job. She will join Amazon’s Alexa AI team to scale their academic-industry collaborations with a focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Heather’s last day at the Drupal Association is on March 11th. Heather started as the Executive Director in 2019. I was involved in the search committee and interviewed her. I remember her strong background of leadership in technology and the nonprofit sector. Heather was the first executive director of the Women in Technology Foundation and the CEO of Girls Incorporated of Greater Atlanta. Since her first day, Heather has led the organisation through some challenging times and always found an answer to all the unexpected challenges that came our way.  We can probably all agree that her job description didn’t include words like “pandemic,” “covid-19,” and “coronavirus,” but that didn’t matter. Together with the strong leadership team, she always found a way to make sure the Drupal Community thrives and that we have a stable infrastructure.  Personally, I’ve worked very closely with Heather, especially regarding all matters related to DrupalCon Europe and the local associations. My personal highlight is how she executed the #DrupalCares campaign, which secured funding for the Association so the staff could focus on their most important tasks.  Heather will be missed at the organisation, and I’m very grateful for her great work. I wish her all the best at her new job at Amazon, and I’m confident that we will continue to hear more from her in the future. As a result of the good work of Heather, Audra, and all the staff of the Drupal Association, we managed to come out of the pandemic situation stronger than ever before. The Drupal Association is well funded, the infrastructure is stable, we can successfully execute online and in-person events, and we can focus on our other important strategic initiatives. While transitions of key roles like this are always complicated, the board will start the process of hiring a new executive director immediately. In the meantime, the Chief Finance + Operations Officer, Angie Sabin, has been appointed as the Acting Executive Director of the Drupal Association. Together with Tim Lehnen, the Chief Technology Officer, and Ashlee Noland, the Chief Development Officer, she will lead the team until the new Executive Director has been appointed.  I’m confident that the organisation is in good hands. I’m looking forward to seeing part of the community again in person at DrupalCon North America in Portland, which takes place on the 25th - 28th of April. [Less]

Today we are talking about Discover Drupal with Angie Sabin. www.talkingDrupal.com/336 Topics Drupal 10.0.0-alpha2 was tagged Describe Discover Drupal Importance of Discover Drupal Roles in DD Trainee Mentor Supporter Mentor’s responsibilities ... [More] Time commitment Mentor Trainee Mentor application closed North America only and plans to expand Other ways to support the program Number of trainees Plans to join with EDU Resources Discover Drupal Gwendolyn Anello AmyJune Allison Manley Guests Angie Sabin - https://www.drupal.org/u/angiesabin Hosts Nic Laflin - www.nLighteneddevelopment.com @nicxvan John Picozzi - www.epam.com @johnpicozzi Martin Anderson-Clutz - @mandclu MOTW Search Overrides What the module does Allows editors to specify “featured results” for specific queries, using a capability built into modern versions of Apache Solr What versions are available 2.0.3, works with Drupal 8 and 9 What you like about the module and how you use it It provides an admin page for creating and managing overrides, but you can also create overrides and exclusions for a node while editing it What you like about the module and how you use it By default works with nodes, but can be configured to pull from a search Dependencies to thinks about Requires using Apache Solr for search [Less]

As we enter our 14th year of operations in 2022, PreviousNext is taking a bold step into employee ownership, utilising a groundbreaking approach that’s only recently become possible in Australia. by Owen Lansbury ... [More] / 28 February 2022 Founded in 2009, PreviousNext has always looked for innovative approaches to ensuring employee work-life balance and retention. This has included initiatives like full support for remote staff a decade before COVID made working from home the new normal; directing up to 20% of working hours towards open source software contribution; self-managed flexibility around working hours; automatic salary increases in line with the cost of living and early long service leave after five years of tenure. As a result, the company enjoys very high rates of employee retention that are close to triple the tech industry average. In turn, the benefits of a stable team translate into a sustainable and profitable company. While PreviousNext has always provided a staff profit share program, this is very different from actual ownership of the company. Likewise, Australian tax law has only just started to grapple with the complexities of employee share ownership and until very recently, staff would be taxed up-front for any shares they were granted before they’d even vested!  It piqued our interest when a company we’ve long admired in the USA, Lullabot, adopted an employee ownership model in early 2021 that ticked a lot of boxes we were keen to emulate. With a bit of investigation, it turned out that a similar model of using an Employee Trust had recently become possible in Australia, spearheaded by design firm Meld Studios. We then engaged a specialist firm to establish PreviousNext’s employee ownership model. The main benefits of the Employee Trust model that were attractive to PreviousNext included: An Employee Trust can be established as the third owner of the company that is solely for the benefit of staff. This avoids the complications of having multiple minority shareholders. The purchase of shares in PreviousNext by the Employee Trust can be funded by company profit share and doesn’t require staff to “buy in” with their own funds as they would if purchasing shares directly. This also means that the Employee Trust can gradually acquire shares in PreviousNext over a defined time period. In our case, we expect the Employee Trust to be the majority owner of PreviousNext within 5 years and for the co-founders to maintain a minority shareholding or divest completely to the Employee Trust at the point of their retirement from the company. With all eligible staff being unit holders within the Employee Trust, it provides a lot of flexibility in terms of onboarding new team members and rewarding long standing staff. In PreviousNext’s case, all employees will grow their unit holdings in the first five years of tenure, followed by an equity vesting schedule over the subsequent five years. This model provides staff with full benefits of ownership after a decade of employment from the time of the trust’s establishment, combined with the growth in value of the company through that time. As unit holders, employees are paid annual dividends from PreviousNext, which is far more tax effective than paying profit share as a salary bonus. In the event an employee ever leaves PreviousNext, they’re also eligible for a payout of their equity in alignment with their vesting schedule. This model means that while the focus for the team is on sustainable growth and performance, the conventional focus on needing to sell a company to a competitor for anyone to benefit from an exit event is vastly diminished. With the shift to Employee Ownership, PreviousNext will also provide staff with deeper financial insight into company performance. While we won’t be adopting full open book accounting in order to keep individual salaries confidential, we will be sharing detailed data on financial targets and performance with opportunities for all staff to ask questions and have input on broader company strategy. This will include employee representation alongside senior management and co-founders on a Governance Team, more independence for the Operations Team to manage day to day issues and a schedule of full team catch ups and off-sites throughout the year.  While we’re at the beginning of this journey ourselves, we’re also at the forefront of a move towards employee ownership that we expect will be attractive to other companies in similar industries to PreviousNext.  Sound like the kind of place you'd like to work? Check out our current career opportunities. Tagged employee ownership [Less]

I had great fun on the Talking Drupal podcast, where myself, Will, and Finn shared thoughts and experiences of the LGD distribution that we've been working on.

Thank you to all the Drupal community members who reviewed our announcement about the timeline for decisions on Drupal's platform requirements and especially those who participated in our community survey on PHP 8.0 and 8.1 availability. Since our ... [More] post, the Symfony framework announced that Symfony 6.1 will require PHP 8.1. Drupal 10 uses Symfony 6, so that means Drupal 10 must also require PHP 8.1. Requiring PHP 8.1 now will also help us provide a longer support lifetime for Drupal 10, as well as more stability and predictability in our dependency requirements. We're keeping our community survey open to continue gathering data on how sites in our ecosystem are hosted and what PHP versions are available to them, in order to provide the best support we can for adopting PHP 8.1. If you haven't taken the survey yet, let us know about the PHP 8.0 and 8.1 availability for your sites and projects. When will Drupal 10 be released? We recently announced that Drupal 10's PHP requirements will be finalized at least 5 months before Drupal 10.0.0. We also announced that our new target release date for Drupal 10.0.0 is in August 2022. This means organizations now have approximately six months to get their platforms ready for Drupal 10. What if my web server or hosting service provider does not support PHP 8.1? If your hosting provider does not support PHP 8.1, we suggest submitting a support ticket. Sample messages, as well as information on Linux distribution PHP version support, are available in the PHP 8.1 change record. See our PHP 8.0 and 8.1 hosting service provider tracking issue for information on specific services, and add information for your service provider there if it is not already listed. [Less]

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The Drupal Association strongly condemns the Russian government’s attack on Ukraine. It is an act of aggression with a real human cost. We stand with all affected populations in Ukraine, and our hearts are with our Drupal Ukraine community. As ... [More] individuals, it is often difficult to see how we can make a positive impact during a crisis. As part of a global community, you can take concrete action to help. Here is a list of organizations* accepting donations to help people directly affected by the events in Ukraine: Nova Ukraine, a Ukraine-based nonprofit, provides citizens with basic needs resources. Donate here. United Help Ukraine receives and distributes donations, food, and medical supplies to internally displaced Ukrainians and anyone affected by the conflict. Donate here.  People in Need provides humanitarian aid to over 200,000 people on the ground. Donate here.  The Ukrainian Red Cross undertakes humanitarian work, from aiding refugees to training doctors. Donate here. UN Refugees Agency supports refugees. Donate here.  UNICEF Ukraine is repairing schools damaged by the bombings and providing emergency responses to children affected by the conflict. Donate here. In coordination with the Security Working Group, the Drupal Association is taking steps to ensure we are prepared for any cybersecurity implications of the conflict. If you have concerns about Drupal security, you can reach out to [email protected]. As always, our global Drupal community is better together. We stand in solidarity and hope for peace to come soon.  *List of resources originally compiled by Global Citizen [Less]

There are plenty of resources in the Drupal community for learning how to build a module. This article is not about building a custom module. My goal is to provide a guide for auditing and reviewing a Drupal module. In doing so, I'm aiming to help ... [More] you achieve your goal to understand, document, clean up, and hopefully improve a Drupal module.Prerequisites before auditing and reviewing a moduleMaybe it goes without saying, but before you examine a module, you should know how to create one from scratch. I recommend looking at some Drupal core modules and maybe a few popular contributed modules.One expert tip is to experiment with the `drush generate` command, which provides starter code for every possible feature and aspect in a module. The help text from the `drush generate` command serves as a table of contents of sorts for what is contained in a Drupal module.It’s essential to understand the typical uses of a Drupal module so that you can conceptually categorize what the code is doing. For example, if you see a form alter hook, you should assume that the module is enhancing or tweaking another core or contributed module's form.Generally, Drupal modules will: Extend core and other modules. Enhance a contributed or custom theme. Create new functionality. Integrate with external systems. It is also important to note that a Drupal module should have a well-defined purpose with clear objectives. A good Drupal module developer leverages the Drupal community's best practices, making it easy for other developers to understand and improve the code.Steps to audit and review a moduleStep 1: Play with...Read More [Less]

Drupal 7’s End of Life has been extended again to at least 2023. We’re here to tell what this means, and why it's still important to plan to rebuild your site if you're still in Drupal 7. 

We are looking for a Senior PHP Developer to join us at 1xINTERNET.  Our team consists of sixty ambitious people that work together to create top digital solutions for our clients. If you are interested in joining our team and becoming part of the 1xINTERNET family, don't hesitate to apply!