fidzu : Drupal

28 Feb 2015 4:49am GMT

28 Feb 2015 12:17am GMT

Grass roots enthusiasm, D8 teen spirit, much needed long absent leadership and community courage facing up to critical issues should overflow into DrupalCon Los Angeles in May

An incredible DrupalCon, DrupalCon Latin America, ended a couple weeks ago and I haven't seen any cool DrupalCon wrap-ups capable of really sharing with the rest of the Drupal community what an extremely well-organized and just plain special community experience it was. I am sure I'm not the only one who felt completely invigorated by it all. Let's take a look at why, and see how we can make it contagious.

Great Venue
Attendees from all over
Quality of presentations
Drupal 8 properly positioned
Now we know when to start switching to D8
Much Needed Drupal leadership
Huge participation in the Sprints and beyond

read more

27 Feb 2015 10:13pm GMT

If you are playing around with Drupal 8, you may want to install version 7 of Drush on your computer. However, Drush 7 is currently only available as the master branch at github, and you may not like to throw out your existing Drush 6 in favor of the Drush development version, which is not...

The post Install Drush 7 for Drupal 8 without throwing away Drush 6 appeared first on X-Team.

27 Feb 2015 9:43pm GMT

27 Feb 2015 9:10pm GMT

• Drupal Console Project Website
• Drupal Console Project Repo on Github
• Drupal Console Documentation
• Drupal Console Translations
• DrupalCon Bogotá Slides
• DrupalCon Bogotá Presentation Recording (Spanish)
• Drupal Console on Twitter
• Extended notes and resources from the podcast

27 Feb 2015 2:05pm GMT

27 Feb 2015 2:05pm GMT

27 Feb 2015 1:04pm GMT

One of the key benefits of using Drupal as a content management system (CMS) is the flexibility and agility it allows for your content.

I've had the experience of using DrupalGap to take this to the next level, applying the same level of ease to creating mobile apps.

DrupalGap is an open source application development kit for Drupal websites.

Essentially, it allows developers to create mobile apps which communicate with their Drupal websites.

An intuitive and clean system, it's also perfectly geared up for use with headless Drupal.

Agile and seamless

One of the advantages of using DrupalGap was the speed and ease with which I could use it to create a mobile app using web tech.

This can be an unseemly process using some of the other tools on the market.

It may seem obvious, but another key advantage was the fact that it talked seamlessly to the Drupal CMS.

This means that content could be reused in population of the mobile app.

It also makes it simpler for content administrators to update content in one place and have it displayed on the website and mobile app.

A smaller learning curve

Some technologies provide a great output at the expense of usability. But with DrupalGap I particularly like the way that 'views' can be used to display content.

There's also a relatively easy learning curve if you're familiar with Drupal and JavaScript. You can simply jump right in and get creating.

After using some CSS3 techniques and the GreenSock animation library I was able to create a smooth, native looking application quickly.

Product optimisations

As with any open source project, there are constant improvements and optimisations taking place.

For me, the frustrating part of DrupalGap is that it's tied to the jQuery Mobile library which doesn't allow much room for customisation.

I found myself having to overwrite jQuery mobile classes to make the app look exactly how I wanted. This could be an area for change and improvement as the product evolves.

So if you're already using Drupal and are thinking about a mobile app, then DrupalGap's well worth considering. My colleague Simon wrote a blog post recently about when an app is a good idea, so that's worth a look too if you're not sure if an app is the right tool for you or not.

I'll be writing an introductory guide to using DrupalGap in the near future, so stay tuned for that as well.

27 Feb 2015 12:22pm GMT

The open source content management framework Drupal is at the heart of our work here at Deeson. We use it every day, contribute code and enjoy participating in the global Drupal community.

With the new Drupal 8 release on the horizon and a few of our dedicated Drupalers participating in this weekend's DrupalCamp London, we thought it was a good time to look at the benefits of using Drupal 8 for both marketers and technologists.

So as the ever so polite marketer that I am, we'll let the technologists go first. Read on further to find out more about Drupal 8 and marketing.

I'm an IT or technical specialist. Hit me with Drupal 8.

How would you sell Drupal 8 to me in one sentence?

"Use Drupal for the developer experience."

Drupal 8 is built using the Symfony framework which makes use of best practice object orientated paradigms.

This allows for easier code completion and better integration into development environments - put simply, programming is less stress and more fun.

What makes it different to the CMS I'm currently (and successfully) using?

There are several major changes to Drupal 8 which address some of the shortcomings of previous versions of Drupal.

A clear winner here is the ability for developers to track changes in configuration using version control, The means there's a much more reliable process to update a production site cleanly.

Drupal 8 drops some of the custom built libraries used in previous Drupal versions for best-of-breed industry standard alternatives from beyond the Drupal ecosystem.

Drupal exposes its data in a RESTful manner using web services - making it much easier to create and maintain integrations with other systems.

The language translation systems have been completely rewritten making multi lingual websites a pleasure to build - compared to some of the pain that developers have experienced building multi-lingual sites on previous Drupal versions.

What benefits could I bring to my company from adopting Drupal 8?

For the developers, Drupal 8 is better architected. This means it just makes more sense to developers and technologists.

There's less need for what is known as "tribal knowledge" - specialist knowledge about Drupal itself.

For the business this means less need to employ Drupal specialists. Employers can look to recruit and develop good computer programmers who will get up to speed with Drupal 8 faster than they would have done with Drupal 7.

Enough tech talk. I'm a Marketing Manager​. What's in it for me?

Why should I be bothered about Drupal 8?

In the past marketers have too often seen the choice of website content management system (CMS) as a technology decision that belongs in the IT department.

But reaching the multichannel consumer needs multichannel marketing. And that means that the CMS needs to play an active role in delivering an effective marketing mix.

The right CMS can enable sophisticated personalisation and integration with wider digital marketing infrastructure.

The wrong CMS can lead to ineffective campaign workarounds, problems with handling customer data and unnecessary complexity.

Drupal 8 has been created with marketers in mind. It allows you to easily integrate your choice of CRM, email marketing and marketing automation systems with your Drupal 8 website. It enables marketing teams to easily deliver segmented campaigns by audience, language and device type.

How can I align Drupal 8 with the everyday demands of my job? Can it actually be part of campaign planning and strategy work?

In modern digital marketing content doesn't just sit on a website. It's at the heart of effective marketing across every digital channel.

Drupal 8 is built to combine power with flexibility for marketers. This potential doesn't come at the expense of user complexity though.

Common administrative features that marketers will use every day have been redesigned with easy of use in mind in Drupal 8.

Content can be edited in-situ, easily previewed so you can see what users will see and a new drag and drop image upload feature makes image management easy.

This power to effectively manage content combined with the integration of Drupal 8 with other parts of your marketing infrastructure means marketing teams can deliver better campaigns with Drupal 8 at the heart of their day-to-day marketing planning and execution.

How do I sell the idea of using Drupal 8 to my boss?

A good question. I think the answer is that selling Drupal 8 to your boss is the wrong move.

Understanding the limitations your current CMS places on your marketing is probably a good starting point.

Once you've worked this out, you'll find that many of them will probably be solved in Drupal 8.

Allowing you to deliver better and more effective campaigns is where the business benefit of a move to Drupal 8 comes from - and so that's the basis on which you can build a business case.

Don't forget that the benefits of Drupal 8 are wider than just marketing. So your business case needs to make sure it takes account of the technology and management benefits for your organisation too.

Whille we've only covered a few of the many reasons to use Drupal as a CMS, it's important to understand how it can align with your goals as a marketer or an IT specialist within your business.

If you're attending DrupalCamp London and you'd like to have a coffee or simply spy on us as we investigate each talk, follow and tweet us @deesonlabs.

27 Feb 2015 7:59am GMT

This weekend sees the annual DrupalCamp London 2015 and Deeson team members will be there in force.

As a co-director of the event I've enjoyed seeing DrupalCamp London grow and thrive over the years.

Launched in 2013, the event is a place to gather with like-minded Drupal developers and those who'd like to find out more about the benefits of using an open source CMS.

This year promises to be extra interesting, with the impending release of Drupal 8.

We've already discussed why this is highly relevant to both tech specialists and marketers, but we think it's also important to note how valuable DrupalCamp is to the evolution of the technology.

People over product

Not only is DrupalCamp exciting in the technology it showcases, but also in the 'process' it hosts - the focused collaboration of great minds in building an even better product.

With such a 'people based' approach to building the product, it's impossible to ignore the personal issues developers may face.

That's why keynote speakers are focused both on the product itself and the art of bringing people together to solve complex issues and the questions arising for the people behind Drupal.

Saturday sees a huge range of topics covered, both from the perspective of a website user to the often-overlooked issue of the CMS user and how to make their experience better within the system.

While the schedule focuses on the practical issues developer might face when using Drupal, it also provides guidance for developers who may be experiencing difficult working situations, including the wonderfully titled 'Team working for megalomaniacs' session.

The event's a unique opportunity to gather the people who contribute to and use Drupal on a daily basis. It's a sounding board to find out what makes them tick, steering the product development in a direction they're happy with.

Two heads are better than one, hundreds are unbeatable

Getting people in a room together to thrash out issues and debate usability over the same table is second to none in catalysing progress.

Some of the brightest, most unique brains in the land use the technology, each putting their own spin on things.

Sitting these people down together creates new and amazing ways to drive Drupal forward in to its next phase.

There's also the opportunity to socialise with like-minded Drupal enthusiasts at the pub. Where better to discuss Bootstrap, Panels and all things content management?

Open to all

Whether you're a hardened Drupal expert or a curious brand manager who has never experimented with the system, the event is inclusive, welcoming and enlightening.

One thing's certain, you'll leave with plenty of answers and a lot more questions than you came with.

There's truly no better place to witness the excitement and pace of collaborative development.

Why not come and join us?

27 Feb 2015 7:15am GMT

Create the WOW Factor with Drupal - Part 5 of 5

27 Feb 2015 7:04am GMT

Drupal, Symfony and friends

Introduction

There are thousands of situations in which you do not want to reinvent the wheel. It is a well known principle in Software Engineering, but not always well applied/known into the Drupal world.

Let's say for example, that you have a url that you want to convert from relative to absolute. It is a typical scenario when you are working with Web (but not just Web) crawlers. Well, you could start building your own library to achieve the functionality you are looking for, packaging all in a Drupal module format. It is an interesting challenge indeed but, unless for training or learning purposes, why wasting your time when someone else has already done it instead of just focussing on the real problem? Especially if your main app purpose is not that secondary problem (the url converter).

What's more, if you reuse libraries and Open Source code, you'll probably find yourself in the situation in which you could need an small improvement in that nice library you are using. Contributing your changes back you are closing the circle of the Open Source, the reason why the Open Source is here to stay and conquer the world (diabolical laugh here).

That's another one of the main reasons why lot's of projects are moving to the Composer/Symfony binomium, stop working as isolated projects and start working as global projects that can share code and knowledge between many other projects. It's a pattern followed by Drupal, to name but one, and also by projects like like phpBB, ezPublish, Laravel, Magento,Piwik, …

Composer and friends

Coming back to our crawler and the de-relativizer library that we are going to need, at this point we get to know Composer. Composer is a great tool for using third party libraries and, of course, for contributing back those of your own. In our web crawler example, net_url2 does a the job just beautifully.

Nice, but at this point you must be wondering… What does this have to do with Drupal, if any at all? Well, in fact, as everyone knows, Drupal 8 is being (re)built following this same principle (DRY or don't repeat yourself) with an strong presence of the great Symfony 2 bundles in the core. Advantages? Lots of them, as we were pointing out, but that's the purpose of another discussion

The point here is that you don't need to wait for Drupal 8, and what's more, you can start applying some of this principles in your Drupal 7 libraries, making your future transition to Drupal 8 even easier.

Let's rock and roll

So, using a Symfony bundle in Drupal 7 is quite simple. Just:

1. Install composer manager
2. Create a composer.json file in your custom module folder
3. Place the content (which by the way, you'll find quite familiar if you've already worked with Symfony / composer yaml's): "require": { "pear/net_url2": "2.0.x-dev" }
4. enable the custom module

And that's it basically. At this point we simply need to tell drupal to generate the main composer.json. That's basically a composer file generated from the composer.json found in each one of the modules that include a composer themselves.

Lets generate that file:

drush composer-rebuild

At this point we have the main composer file, normally in a vendor folder (if will depend on the composer manager settings).

Now, let's make some composer magic :

drush composer update

At this point, inside the vendors folder we should now have a classmap, containing amongst others our newly included library.

Hopefully all has gone well, and just like magic, the class net_url2 is there to be used in our modules. Something like :

$base = new Net_URL2($absoluteURL);

Just remember to add the library to your class. Something like:

use Net_URL2;

In the next post we'll be doing some more exciting stuff. We will create some code that will live in a Symfony bundle, completely decoupled but at the same time fully integrated with Drupal. All using Composer magic to allow the integration.

Why? Again, many reasons like:

1. Being ready for Drupal 8 (just lift libraries from D7 or D6 to D8),
2. Decoupling things so we code things that are ready to use not just in Drupal, and
3. Opening the door to other worlds to colaborate with our Drupal world, …
4. Why not use Dependency Injection in Drupal (as it already happens in D8)? What about using the Symfony Service container? Or something more light like Pimple?
5. Choose between many other reasons…

See you in my next article about Drupal, Composer and friends, on the meantime, be good :-).

Drupal, Symfony and friends was originally published by Capgemini at Capgemini on February 27, 2015.

27 Feb 2015 12:00am GMT

Create the WOW Factor with Drupal - Part 4 of 5

26 Feb 2015 11:32pm GMT

This past Saturday was the second annual Drupal Drive-in event in Charlotte, North Carolina. Somewhere between a camp and a meetup, the Drive-in was conceived as an informal and ad-hoc gathering by its organizers, Thomas Lattimore and Mark Shropshire.

26 Feb 2015 9:44pm GMT

26 Feb 2015 9:35pm GMT