Drupal (core)

Write Better Code with Typed Entity Editor Wed, 02/09/2022 - 11:24 Drupal allows you to fulfill even the most sophisticated desires of site owners, but at the same time provides a challenging experience for those ... [More] who implement these tasks. You get unlimited flexibility to create multipurpose and large websites and projects. But you need to master certain specific knowledge to reveal and show the full power of Drupal CMS. It requires an understanding of modules, entity code, Drupal services, content types, hooks, plugins, and so on and so forth. The complexity of Drupal lies in knowing when, what and how to use them. The coding process does not require much effort, but it requires maintenance. Let's discover how to organize your Drupal entity code and avoid any problems! [Less]

January sure flew by us super fast! Here’s an overview of some of our favorite Drupal-related reads written in January. READ MORE

Drupal Mentoring: The Best Way to Build Community Gurpreet Kaur Wed, 02/09/2022 - 10:13 To learn is to grow, this is probably the truest statement I have ever come across. Since learning is equivalent to the acquisition of knowledge ... [More] , an upward learning curve enables us to open new doors of opportunities and grow with them.  When we think about learning and actually doing it, almost always there is one person we find ourselves relying the most on. This is the person that guides us throughout the learning process. It could be our teacher, our friend, colleague or even a sibling. And if we had to give this person a name, the most suitable would be that of mentor. A mentor helps us transition into a more skilled version of ourselves and in every field skills are integral. Coming to Drupal, with its myth of being extremely difficult, acquiring new skills becomes all the more important.  This compels me to thank the Drupal community, which thrives on its mentors and continues to grow each passing day. And that’s what this blog is going to be about. We will discuss each aspect of Drupal Mentoring and how you can contribute to it. However, before getting into that, let’s accentuate mentoring in general.  The Power of Mentoring: In Numbers  If we go into definitions, a mentor would be described as someone with more experience and knowledge, who teaches, nurtures and helps in the development of someone with less knowledge and experience. The ultimate goal often is to influence the personal and professional growth of the mentee.  In an organisational setting, mentoring has immense potential. From improving employee career outcomes to retaining them and keeping them engaged, mentoring can accomplish a lot. The Mentor Coach Foundation’s findings would make you believe in the power of mentoring even more. 71% Fortune 500 companies have a mentoring program; 97% consider the programs valuable;  89% existing mentors plan to go on mentoring others;  79% millennials believe mentoring is crucial to their career success; 25% of employees who has mentors saw a positive change in their grade pay; 24% improvement was seen in the representation of minorities through mentoring programs; And it’s not just organisations who gain from mentoring, the youth in general do as well. The below line chart talks about the youth in America and how they fare with a mentor guiding them. Source: Youth Mentor More on the merits of building a culture of mentorship here. Mentoring is imperative, now we have proof of the same. This brings me to Drupal Mentors and discussing their importance in the community and for the community. Who are Drupal Mentors? “Drupal Mentoring and mentors inspire, enable, and encourage new contributors. They also work on the core tools, process, and community to make it easier for new contributors to get involved.” The above quote from Drupal.org pretty much sums up the essence of Drupal Mentoring or Drupal Mentors, if you may. These are Drupal developers, who have taken the flagship of maintaining and expanding Drupal.  Drupal Mentors come from varying backgrounds, some are technical experts, while some are non-coders. What unites them is their willingness to indulge in mentoring at organised Drupal events and collaboratively working with one another on the Drupal project. From resolving Drupal issues queues, be it related to smaller changes in the contributed modules or the rigorous Drupal core, to making improvements in the platform, Drupal Mentors achieve loads.  Do the mentors need support too? Yes, they do. The Drupal Mentoring team, a working group, supports mentors on an everyday basis. They manage mentoring in the community with the help of Drupal Association and go as far as organising follow-up activities along with pushing people to become mentors.   From my vantage point, Drupal Mentors are the backbone of the CMS, without them Drupal would lose all its amazingness and wither away. Why, you might ask.  The answer is plain in front of us. Since the mentors have the responsibility to encourage and bring in new contributors, if they do not do that, maintaining the open source CMS would become a daunting task that a handful of existing contributors would never be able to accomplish.  So,  If mentors do not regularly inspire aspiring contributors;  If mentors do not engage in dedicated contribution events;  If mentors do not answer questions from budding contributors in text chat channels;  Drupal could get in trouble and there won’t be a way to learn new skills and scale the contributions of young Drupalists. Here is a video that would enlighten you a bit more about Drupal Mentoring. What Does Drupal Mentoring Entail? If you ask me whether the job of a mentor and that of a teacher are the same, I would have to say yes, to a  great extent, but not all the way. The prime job of a mentor is to instil confidence in the people who are seeking help, the novices to be more precise. A mentor would be providing a direction to him or her by working hand in hand. For the same, being competent at instruction, guidance, leadership and assessment  is essential, which is a lot similar to teaching. However, Drupal Mentoring entails a lot more.  Being a role model to the youth;  Being a contributor to the Drupal project;  And being a dedicated employee in your workplace. Of course, Drupal mentoring goes beyond these three in terms of the roles and tasks assigned to the mentors.  Discover Drupal Mentor  Drupal Core Committer  Drupal Core Initiative Coordinator  Drupal Meetup Organiser  Major Issue Triage Lead  Community Tools Lead for Mentoring These are merely a few roles out of a long list of duties and tasks that Drupal mentors have to undertake to fulfil their contributions. Discover Drupal Mentor takes on the responsibility of sharing his or her experience and expertise with an underrepresented student in the Discover Drupal Program, while the Drupal Core Committer would perform the final review and commit on community-suggested improvements to Drupal core. Providing feedback to novice contributors along with mentoring leads and coordinators is another significant part of the duties of the Drupal Mentoring team. Do You Need to be an Expert to be a Mentor? The words mentor and expert are independent of each other. Not all experts are mentors, likewise not all mentors can be experts and it is perfectly acceptable for a Drupal mentor to not be an expert or know-it-all. If I had to describe a good mentor, I would say that,  It’s someone who is excellent at sharing what he knows;  It’s someone who isn’t hesitant in letting his mentees know how he acquired the knowledge;  It’s also someone who is open and frank about the things he doesn’t know and is willing to learn. Nowhere, from these three attributes do you get the hint of a mentor being an expert. So, if you do not know everything, it’s perfectly fine and you can still be a mentor.  This is why there are three categories of mentors.  Learning Mentor Demonstrating some degree of knowledge about your area is the essence of a Learning Mentor. This incorporates a certain understanding of an issue or task and being able to explain the same. It’s important because you would have to show novices where to start a task and ask them to complete it. Having a basic knowledge such things would enable you to assist them if and when they get stuck. Skilled Mentor  Where the job of Learning Mentor ends, that of a Skilled Mentor starts. As a skilled mentor, you would have to ask novices to complete a task, identify and aid them with blockers and guide them towards the next steps. Demonstration is key too for skilled mentors, you have to show your mentee the how, relating their current situation to yours in the past and the way you overcame it is also needed. You have to act as a role model and you can only do that by setting an example and showing them that they can take your place one day. Expert Mentor  The Expert Mentor does all of the things that Learning and Skilled Mentors do, however, they perform some additional tasks as well. Since they are experts, they not only have to be role models for novices, but also for mentors. They provide peer reviews to mentors, recruit novices and experienced contributors as mentors and celebrate the wins of mentors and contributors. So, yeah, you do not need to be an expert to become a mentor, but if you are that’s always welcome too. What are the Expectations from a Mentor? Being a Drupal Mentor in the Drupal Community is a humongous responsibility and you have to be able to fulfil it to the best of your ability. This would require you to maintain certain standards as a mentor, which would make you an ideal fit in the community.  Here are some suggestions that could help. Focusing on the Outcome  Contribution participation is what makes the job of Drupal mentors fulfilling and not how much you accomplished in a day and certainly not the number patches you fixed. The goal is to make new contributors have fun and be inclined to contribute again at home or on another contribution day. You have to remember what the end goal is. Feeling the pressure of failure isn’t going to help with achieving the same. Contributions are a process, a long one, so you won’t see the results overnight. That’s why you need to focus on the outcome, that’s the bigger picture. Getting Acquainted  Mentoring is all about interactions, you have to connect with your mentees or mentors, welcome them and get to know them. It doesn’t have to be in person always, if 2020 has taught us one thing, it’s that relationships can work smoothly online. Drupal groups like Mentoring are a great way for mentors to post and chat anything they like. Events are another way, putting your make and drupal.org and chat usernames on your name tag makes you more identifiable. Setting Expectations by Building Relationships  Setting goals and expectations is an important part of mentoring and without a healthy relationship between you and your mentee that would be highly unlikely. Focusing on building a relationship with each other goes a long way in mentoring. By sharing tidbits about yourself with one another helps your personality come out in the open. You need to ask new contributors questions about their motives. Something like knowing what they want to contribute with, a skill they already have or they want to learn something new.  The agenda of mentoring becomes streamlined by knowing the mentees as you would be able to match their skillset and intentions to appropriate tasks. Checking-in Regularly  Regular check-ins are important for both your and the mentee's growth. Let’s understand how. For instance, you have given your mentee a task to accomplish and it’s been a couple of days since you checked-in with him. He could be struggling to understand the task, finding it a tad too complicated, now you wouldn’t know that because you didn’t check-in earlier. To avoid such scenarios, we prefer open-ended questions that give enough room to the novice contributor to tell you what is happening. ‘How are things going?’ is one such question. I remember the last time my mentor asked me that, I all but gushed out every problem I had.   Saying that, you have to give a chance to your learners to figure things out by themselves. At the end of the day that’s what we want, right? Reviewing Contributions  Being a good mentor comes with a lot of accountability. You are responsible for your contributor’s contributions, so reviewing them is key here, especially when they are just beginning and it’s their first contribution. Ensuring that all the steps have been followed and competed; Ensuring the comment added is constructive; Ensuring the code adheres to the coding standards, usability standards, accessibility and documentation standards. You have to look for differences that are visible to how you would have done things. After finding them, you have to rectify them and your review will be done. Talking Publicly  Mentoring conversations need to be public at all times. This is because it’s not just your mentor who will benefit from your interaction, but others who overhear your conversation may also learn from it.  So, private chats are a big no. Much like the platform we are working for, the conversations need to be open source too.  This is also important because you might not always know the answer and with a public chat, someone who knows the answer can chip in. What’s the How, Where and When of Mentoring? We’ve discussed pretty much everything about Drupal Mentoring, so what more is there for me to talk about. The ‘how,’ that’s what. Knowing how the process works is as important as knowing it’s benefits. The working model of Drupal Mentoring includes certain facets that highlight the how, where and when. Here is the gist of it. Discover Drupal Program There are so many people who are underrepresented in the open source community. These people need mentors to guide them and commit to their journey. Therefore, the Discover Drupal Program enables them to unlock opportunities in Drupal with the help of a mentor over several months. Impromptu Mentoring Also known as ad-hoc mentoring, this is a pretty common way of mentoring that’s instant and subsequently happens over instant messaging tools like Slack or DrupalChat.me. Signing up is all you need to do. Scheduled Mentoring on Drupal Channels  If you are not a fan of the impromptu sessions, there are also organised slack meetings that take place on every 2nd Wednesday of every month at exactly 8PM UTC. This happens over the #mentoring channel. And when DrupalCon is around the corner, it becomes more frequent taking place on the 4th Wednesday as well . @drupalmentoring on Twitter Following @drupalmentoring on Twitter is always an option to be aware of the office hour times and other mentoring events. Drupal Groups The Mentoring Group on groups.drupal.org helps you stay connected with other mentors. The blog section on Mentoring Group in the Community Section is helpful too. Knowing about the calendar of mentoring-related events can come handy as well. Do You Wish to be Involved? Becoming involved in the Drupal project by helping it grow and being maintained to the utmost standard is a great feeling to have. Encouraging new contributors to take the flag from you to the next level is even more fulfilling.  So, if you are looking to gain that fulfilment, let me tell you how.  Being an experienced contributor, but new to mentor, what you can do is; Start volunteering to mentor at upcoming Drupal events. Drupal events always come with contribution days, where coordinated mentoring happens. Join the channel on Slack, participate in meetings and engage. Meet up the right people at every DrupalCon; you’ll find them at the Contribution Mentoring Booth, that’s where all the Contribution days are planned. Participate in Birds of a Feather (BoF) sessions. The Contribution Mentor Summit 2021 was one such innovative event that solely focused on increasing the number of contribution mentors. The aim was to help novice contributors take the first step towards aiding the Drupal project with their contributions. Finding unique and intriguing issues to tackle;  Contributing with testing, code, documentation, design and UX;  And learning the way to pass on the knowledge to new contributors. The event had it all.  So, if you are looking to contribute to the Drupal project or becoming involved in mentoring and guiding new Drupalists, the opportunity is waiting for you, all you have to do is connect. Articles Off Being a willing mentor: Build a culture of mentorship [Less]

Learn about the state of SEO today and follow our checklist for increasing organic traffic to your site by making the most of Drupal’s core features and SEO modules.

If you design, develop, or manage websites or create digital content, you've probably asked yourself at some point: what is Drupal? After all, this name pops up constantly in discussions with developers, content editors, and other professionals ... [More] in the digital industry. In this article, we'll look at some of the basic facts about Drupal: its main features, benefits, uses, and terminology. Drupal as a Digital Experience Platform Drupal at its core is a content management system (CMS), meaning that it gives you the tools to structure and manage your content. It also allows you to build flexible content publishing workflows and all kinds of dynamic features around that content. For organizations that are looking to transform and expand their digital presence, Drupal also acts as the central component of your digital experience platform (DXP). This means that you can integrate it with payment gateways, CRMs, analytics tools, social media, and marketing automation platforms. The take-away is that Drupal really shines for projects where you want to combine high-quality content with a full range of features and marketing tools. And there are many ways to prioritize content strategy when you use Drupal as a DXP. 📖 A beginner's guide to Drupal: Download our ebook and get started with your next DxP! Why Use Drupal? When you think about it, most websites share a common set of features. They typically have navigation menus and lists of content, content pages with nice URLs, a logo in the header, a footer with contact info, the ability to search content, etc. At the same time, each website has some components that make it unique. Websites often have their own custom information architecture, a unique set of content, a particular visual design, and sometimes customized features. Drupal is perfect for both the default features and the customized ones. It provides you with the most common functionalities any website needs but is also flexible enough to allow you to create a unique, customized experience. Here are some of Drupal's key benefits: Flexible, easy-to-use content authoring tools "Create once, publish anywhere" approach to content management Highly customizable features Powerful API-first architecture Numerous, freely available modules (add-on functionality) Constant innovation powered by a massive, engaged community To accomplish that, Drupal provides numerous out-of-the-box features. The more you can learn about how Drupal works, the more you'll be able to leverage its full range of features: WYSIWYG authoring and editing tool that allows editors and admins to easily search for, draft, edit, preview, archive, publish, and update content Layout Builder - A powerful no-code solution to easily build engaging pages with templated layouts and drag-and-drop UI for placing content on the page Customizable workflows and approvals, as well as revisions, so that you can track every content update and revert to a previous version Media supports local audio, video, images, files, as well as remote content from YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter, etc. Media Library allows users to add existing media assets to a site as well as upload new items directly into the library Performance-optimized caching mechanisms Theme system enables you to create a completely custom, responsive front-end according to brand guidelines and using your framework of choice Recommended add-on (contrib) modules Easy-to-use form builder to create anything from a simple contact form or survey to complex, multi-step application forms Schedule when your content is published in advance Customizable, user-friendly URLs and configurable metatags for every piece of content Robust search experience and integration with enterprise-grade search engines (Elasticsearch or Solr) Migrate system allows you to feed data into Drupal Multilingual content & user interface Accessibility compliance (WCAG AA) What Is Drupal Used For? So now you can answer the question "what is Drupal?" But you might be wondering, given its flexibility, what types of projects is Drupal typically used for. All these out-of-the-box features make Drupal a favourite for large, complex websites. And the fact that Drupal is open source makes it the platform of choice of many universities and colleges, government agencies, healthcare institutions, and non-profits. The reason that so many large organizations select Drupal is that it has one main advantage over other content management platforms: flexibility. While most other CMSs focus on serving specific use cases, Drupal has evolved to accommodate almost any use case that involves digital content. Drupal powers a wide range of digital experiences, including: Corporate and institutional websites - Distributed publishing workflows, corporate branding Intranets - Private content, custom workflows for internal processes, listings of internal content, single-sign-on Online directories - Advanced search interfaces, related content listings, integrations with third-party content Interactive websites - Features for logged-in users, multi-step forms, content personalization, custom JavaScript to create dynamic interfaces like maps and visualizations, decoupled front-ends Marketing portals - Landing pages that drive SEO and user experience, integrations with marketing automation tools, taxonomy and metadata management A Quick Drupal Glossary When you do your research trying to make sense of how Drupal works, you'll come across some terms that might seem peculiar. Don't worry; you'll get used to Drupal terminology in no time. For now, here are some terms you can learn right away: Node - A template for a specific type of node (blog post, event listing, landing page, etc.) Usually, each content type has a set of fields that authors use to create it. A piece of content. Usually, every node has a unique URL. Content type - A template for a specific node type (blog post, event listing, landing page, etc.) Typically, each content type has a set of fields that authors use to create it. Taxonomy - Vocabularies and terms used to organize your content. For example, this allows you to tag and categorize blog posts or news items. View - A list of content (a simple news list or a more exciting list like a map or a calendar) Module - Code that you can add to your Drupal website to enable new functionality Theme - Defines the layout and design of the user interface Block - Container for displaying anything on a page (the search form, the logo, the copyright notice in the footer) Permission - A task that a user can do (e.g. viewing content, posting a comment, editing an event) Role - A type of user (e.g. author, editor, or member) Drupal core - The out-of-the-box features and functionality that Drupal provides Contrib module - Add-on functionality, made available by the Drupal community Custom module - Add-on functionality, built in-house to address the need for a specific project (e.g. a module that integrates with a custom CRM) Some Fun Facts About Drupal Dries Buytaert created Drupal in 2001, which makes it one of the first open source CMSs ever created. The word Drupal comes from druppel, which means "drop" in Dutch. It was picked after Dries tried to register the domain "dorp.org." (Dorp means "village" in Dutch.) He mistyped it as "drop.org," and the mistake stuck. Drupal's logo is a stylized drop. The Drupal community also widely uses the Druplicon, a cartoon-like drop that is, in the spirit of open source, adopted by local communities around the world. Drupal's most recent version is Drupal 9, released in June 2020. Drupal 10 is scheduled to be released in June 2022. As of February 2022, 1.3 million people are using Drupal, including developers, designers, content writers, sponsors etc. And what language is Drupal written in? It's PHP, the programming language that powers nearly 80% of all websites. The latest version of Drupal uses modern, object-oriented code techniques and takes advantage of the Symfony framework. More than 120,000 users contribute to the Drupal community, resulting in more than 46,800 free modules available and over 1,000 commits per week. There are over 1 million Drupal-based websites out there. Drupal is one of the most popular CMSs among higher education institutions. Also, the larger the school, the more likely it is to use Drupal: it's the most popular CMS for universities and colleges with more than 6,400 students. Digging Deeper Into Drupal Now that we have covered the basics of what Drupal is, you can dig a little bit deeper and see how it can change the game for your digital experiences. Below you'll find some links with details about Drupal and what you can accomplish with it. Also, check our upcoming Drupal training courses to learn more about it! Download our free ebook and learn how to get started with Drupal Webinar: Build Accessible Websites Out-of-the-Box with Drupal Video: 5 Keys to Success for Using Drupal in Higher Ed How Drupal Fits Into the Landscape of Digital Experience Platforms Ebook: Building Business-Friendly Intranets with Drupal Building a More Inclusive Drupal Website: Your Accessibility Guide Your Drupal 9 Migration: Agency or In-House? Want to learn more about the benefits of moving to Drupal? Get in touch! Loading form data... hbspt.forms.create({ css: '', cssClass: 'hubspot-form form-ac00be8f', target: '#filter-hubspot-forms-ac00be8f-a3db-4c6d-a2b7-15d29ef95f6c', portalId: '2935247', formId: 'ac00be8f-a3db-4c6d-a2b7-15d29ef95f6c', onFormReady: function (form) { window.onHubspotFormReady && window.onHubspotFormReady(form); }, });   + more awesome articles by Evolving Web [Less]

How can you choose the right Drupal 9 development partner? Maitreayee Bora Tue, 02/08/2022 - 14:11 In order to create excellent web experiences, you need a team that is well-focused and specialized in offering good quality digital ... [More] solutions to your clients and customers. Some organizations are fortunate enough to have an in-house team while others may not. Well, this can be because the skills required for such a team are not really core to their production activities or even the activities involved do not assure a full-time in-house team. This is when the development partner steps in. But it takes a lot of time and research to find a trustworthy partner upon whom you can completely depend for a successful collaboration. So, when it comes to your Drupal 9 development partner, along with their expertise, they should also be honest and maintain full transparency right from the beginning. Apart from trust, honesty, and transparency, there are some additional pointers to look upon in your Drupal 9 development partner which I will be discussing in this article today.  Firstly, know your purpose It is very important to be clear about what you want. So, your top most priorities will be to decide whether you want to build a new Drupal 9 site, or would want to upgrade from Drupal 7 or Drupal 8 to Drupal 9. Once you’re sure upon this significant decision, you can then move on with the other aspects of your expectations. Since your prospective Drupal 9 development partners should know your requirements, for instance, what kind of features you are looking for, with what you want to start with and how do you want to measure success. Before hiring a development firm, you need to prepare a strong Request for Proposal (RFP) with your team specifying the specific requirements and project expectations.  Learn More: Web development planning and strategies with Drupal 9 Upgrade paths from Drupal 7 Upgrading from Drupal 8 to 9 Does your partner have good work experience and expertise? It is convenient to quickly research upon the company whom you’re planning to opt for your web development in Drupal. Since a portfolio tells a lot about a company. So, it's important to check the company’s portfolio, the websites that are being mentioned in the developer’s expertise. You can compare your project requirements and the projects which they have worked upon to get a clarity about their work nature. Feedbacks can be taken from the companies that are mentioned in the portfolio as well.  It is preferable that the company has extensive experience in working with a large variety of businesses. You can ask the companies for some case studies that will help in addressing the challenges which they came across and how they handle it. So, basically the challenges could be regarding traffic, stakeholders, specific third-party integrations, or may be some other aspects. You need to partner with a company that has undoubtable and proven experience upon Drupal.  Along with that the company needs to have a strong technical team where developers are well-rounded and have a wide perspective on best practices and development that will enable them in successfully completing your project. Also, a potential development firm gives much emphasis to the user experience (UX) as it is the most fundamental requirement for any website. Therefore, you can go through the user reviews for websites which your Drupal 9 development partner has created, and also have a query on what steps the development firm takes to create the best possible user experience. According to Dries Buytaert’s annual blog, Who Sponsors Drupal Development? In the 2020-2021 edition, OpenSense Labs succeeded in earning 4th rank in regards to organizational contributions by impact and 10th rank as Top organizational contributors by quantity.  Also, in the year 2021, OSL achieved the 2nd Rank in Drupal Marketplace Globally and earned the 1st Rank in India and held it for a quarter of the year. Have they understood your project scope? It is very essential that your Drupal 9 development partner understands the scope of your project, only then can they implement and deliver your project in the desired way. The most convenient way to know if they have understood your project scope or not is to ask them to prepare a scope of work and observe if it aligns with what you exactly want from your project. For this, you will need to have a detailed discussion with your team and then go for it. Is your partner offering specialized services? Some of the web development agencies provide a huge variety of services which includes multi-platform web development, app development, UI/UX design, SEO strategies and many more. A good Drupal web agency needs to have much more expertise and should be able to display their exceptional work. They need to treat the various different elements of the procedure as one interdependent digital ecosystem. And, also provide high-quality Drupal services and cross-team collaboration.  OSL’s excellent staff augmentation and white-label offering helps deliver the expertise and specialization required to allow them to succeed and retain profitable clients. Our model enables businesses to select candidates that meet their requirements and to cut or extend their team whenever they need to. Let me here also talk about our Agency ++ Partnership Program that offers our clients services over and above usual staff augmentation engagements. Through this program, we aim on giving ample flexibility to our clients in terms of managing resources while ensuring quality and time bound deliveries. The key features of this partnership program are:  Involvement of leadership at all the critical junctures of the engagement with on demand consultancy.  Allocating a Project Manager as a 24/7 POC to ensure timely delivery and proper communication.  Custom Overlap time and Leave management process. Resources working under white label with client’s partners.  Immediate Option to increase resources as per project requirements within a week’s notice.  Adapting to client’s project management protocols and DevOps processes.  Are you satisfied with your client’s Proof of Concept (PoC)? While partnering with any of the development firms, you tend to invest money, time and resources hoping to get the desired business outcome. Since so many things are at stake, you need to be very careful with every step that you take towards choosing the right Drupal 9 development partner. Asking for a Proof of Concept (PoC) can be really helpful in not just recognizing the team’s performance but also you can check if the end result matches with your expectations and requirements. It is advisable to request the team to create a PoC, for example, you can ask them to prepare a vanilla Drupal release with some specific features and functionality which can be completed in 1-2 weeks’ time. Then you can take a look at how well they perform and check if the manner in which they communicate during the PoC reaches your expectations.  How actively are they contributing to the Drupal community? If your Drupal 9 development partner tends to be an active community member and contributor, then they will not only focus on skill and expertise, but also will prioritize contributing back to the community. It can be a good way to check on how active they are in the community. Therefore, you can go for quick research on Drupal.org for the company which you have selected for the Drupal development. By doing so, you can get the project details that the company has completed so far and also their contributions towards the community, like the modules that they have worked upon, their profile and developers’ profile as well. It is very imperative that the company which you opt for must be very active in the community.  OSL ranks among the top contributors of the Drupal community. We have always prioritized making significant contributions which can be beneficial for the entire community at large. OSL has justified the fact that Drupal is important for them with their active participation and involvement in the community.   Who sponsors Drupal development 2020-2021 | Source: Dries Buytaert’s blog Are the developers certified Drupal technocrats? While partnering you need to check that the developers of the company are acquia certified or not. Acquia’s Drupal development, site building, frontend development and backend development certifications also come under the essentials.  OSL has a smart development team who is well certified and are Drupal technocrats. By looking at the developers portfolio, you will be well convinced that your project is in safe hands. Our developers have a good knowledge of public oriented programming in PHP that acts as an added advantage since Drupal 9 has shifted to procedural from object oriented programming. We also have an Acquia Certified Drupal 9 developer, Pritish Kumar, who is a Technical Lead and also an excellent performer of OpenSense Labs.  Are they providing good support and maintenance? For the best Drupal implementations also, you need support and maintenance. It is very essential to partner with a development firm that delivers quality response, support, either with full-time support or by cooperating with your internal dev/IT team. Support must not be only restricted to security updates and release management; it should also prioritize the roadmap of what consists of Drupal’s current and future releases. We at OSL provide you with robust Drupal Support and Maintenance models to help you achieve your desired goals through our proactive and reactive approaches that suit your needs. Are you and your partner on the same page in terms of budgeting? You will find that it is difficult for a small company to deliver a big project since it lacks procedures and experiences to coordinate a larger team and skillfully track progress for a longer time span. On the contrary, a huge agency will face a tough time fitting its procedure into a smaller budget. Therefore, you will have to make sure that both you and your agency are on the same page in terms of budgeting. So, it isn’t required that you will have to pay a concrete amount (which you might not yet know), but if you have an idea about the overall level of acceptable cost in mind, then it will help you in choosing the right Drupal 9 development partner for your enterprise. Also, a well experienced agency will never waste their and your time as well if there isn’t a proper alignment of expectations regarding the size and budget of the project. Learn more about Drupal 9 here: The definitive guide to Drupal 9 Burning questions on Drupal 9 Key modules to start Drupal 9 development Drupal 9 upgrade tools: Complete list Configuration management strategies in Drupal 9 Conclusion It is essentially important to find the perfect Drupal 9 development partner for your company’s desired projects and ambition. And, OSL can help you with its advanced Drupal 9 development skills enabling your business to set up a user-friendly web presence, and accomplish your business goals and objectives. So, if you’re waiting for the right Drupal 9 development partner, let’s connect.  Articles Off Web development planning with Drupal 9 Leading you towards the right upgrade from Drupal 7 Upgrade From Drupal 8 to Drupal 9: Complete Guide The definitive guide to Drupal 9 Drupal 9: All questions answered here Key modules to start your Drupal 9 website Every Tool You Could Need for the Drupal 9 Upgrade How to implement Configuration management strategies in Drupal 9? [Less]

Getting Started with Lando and Drupal 9 Ravikant 08 Feb, 2022 It’s easy, it's portable, it's fast and it can run anything, anywhere. We’re ... [More] talking about Lando and it is slowly turning into our go-to Devops tool that has helped us standardize our development environment. Lando simplifies development and has been battle tested by more than 12,000 users. In this article you will learn to get started with Lando and set up Drupal 9 easily with it’s support. What is Lando? Lando is a free, open source, easy and powerful local development environment and DevOps tool that is built on Docker. It simulates your production environment locally and can run on OSX, Windows and Linux. Different types of services and tooling can be set quickly and painlessly. You can set different services per project and these will not affect other Lando projects. System Requirements for Lando Lando works on a wide range of computer devices with following requirements: Operating System: macOS 10.13 or later | Windows 10 Pro+ or equivalent | Linux with kernel version 4.x or higher Docker Engine: Docker is required for Lando. Hardware: 8-core processor | 16GB+ RAM | 100GB+ of available disk space. Installation MacOS Install DMG via direct download: Download .dmg file from github and install by double click on .dmg file. Install via HomeBrew (third party):  brew install --cask lando Linux Install the Docker Community Edition Install Docker Compose Download the latest .deb, .pacman or .rpm package from GitHub Double click on the package and install via your distributions "Software Center" or equivalent. Windows Download the latest Windows .exe installer from GitHub Double-click on lando.exe Go through the setup workflow Drupal 9 setup with Lando You can install Drupal in different ways. For example, manually by downloading or using the composer command. The current version of Drupal uses composer dependent modules and libraries, so it is better to set up a project using the below composer base command. composer create-project drupal/recommended-project lando-demo Initialising Lando Now, let’s switch to the Drupal root directory and follow these steps : Step 1: ‘Lando init’ command - After running this command you will see the below option. Step 2: Choose recipe - After choosing “Current working directory”, the recipe list will show up. Choose the Drupal 9 recipe. Step 3:  Web root - After choosing the recipe, you will now see the web root option. Select “web” option. "Web" folder is generated during Drupal installation using composer. Step 4: App name - After choosing the Web root folder, you will see an option for app name. For this example, let’s name it “First Lando”. After successfully completing the above installation steps, a “.lando.yml” file will be generated with the above basic details. The Lando file will always be in the app root. The Lando file is the heart of every Lando app. It tells the Lando app about services and tools that need to be run for this lando app development. Drupal installation After setting up Drupal and initializing Lando, you will now need a local development URL. So let us use the "Lando Start" command. After running this command you will get the URL as shown in the below image.   You will now need the database name, database password and host name. For that, let’s run the "Lando info" command.   Now you can complete the Drupal installation as usual with the above information. With Lando, you don’t need to manage local services and it is extremely easy to install and set up. If you’re quite familiar with Docker, customizing your setup with Lando will be very simple. This article will help you get started on working with Lando and Drupal 9. A more advanced article on Lando will be coming up soon in our blogs. Stay updated with the latest in technology and open source by subscribing to our weekly newsletter here. Drupal 9 Drupal Development Drupal Planet Leave us a Comment   Recent Blogs Image Getting Started with Lando and Drupal 9 Image Top Drupal 9 Modules You Absolutely Need For your Drupal Project Image Personalizing the Website Experience for Visitors Using the Drupal 9 Smart Content Module Want to extract the maximum out of Drupal? TALK TO US Featured Success Stories Upgrading the web presence of IEEE Information Theory Society, the most trusted voice for advanced technology A Drupal powered multi-site, multi-lingual platform to enable a unified user experience at SEMI Great Southern Homes, one of the fastest growing home builders in the United States, sees greater results with Drupal 9 View all Case Studies [Less]

In this article, we are going to learn when to use hook_update_N and hook_post_update_NAME. In general, I was using hook_update_N for any database-related changes or with any configuration additions or updates. And I was using hook_post_update_NAME ... [More] for any content creation or updating or for the creation or updating any taxonomy terms etc, sometimes for clearing site caches as well. But, let’s h [Less]

Today we are talking about Behat with Chris Burgess. www.talkingDrupal.com/333 Topics Nic - Wordpress subtheme Abby - Wix site – Game of the Week Sable Chris - OSA Role appointment and suumer holidays John - Squid Games – Snow Description of Behat ... [More] How it works Managing Expectations Where in the development cycle How to write tests for Behat Best Practices How far do you get out of the box? Favorite Addons Getting Started Resources Migrate Visualize module TFW you learn to graph Behat goodies: Common Drupal step definitions Additional Drupal step definitions Capture screenshots Mailhog for capturing emails Chrome driver without Selenium Read the docs! Behat docs Behat 2.5 docs while outdated may be an easier intro Drupal config & steps Demo Drupal project with Behat & Gitlab CI Guests Chris Burgess - https://chris.bur.gs @xurizaemon Hosts Nic Laflin - www.nLighteneddevelopment.com @nicxvan John Picozzi - www.epam.com @johnpicozzi Abby Bowman - www.linkedin.com/in/arbowman @abowmanr MOTW SVG Image This module changes default image field widget and formatter to allow use SVG image with the standard Image field. [Less]

We are seeking 2 more community members, ideally with event experience, to join the DrupalCon Europe Advisory board.