Your website needs a major redesign, and you decided to put out a Request for Proposal (RFP) for a more formal approach to vendor selection.

Mike Gifford, Drupal's Core Accessibility Maintainer and a Senior Strategist at Civic Action talks to TDT about his extensive and deep-rooted involvements with digital accessibility.

Today we are talking about Semantic Versioning with Mike Miles.

For show notes visit: www.talkingDrupal.com/397

Topics

• What is Semantic Versioning
• Why is it important
• How does Drupal 8 map to Semantic Versioning
  • 8.x
• What about betas, alphas, rcs
• How does it help dev teams stay organized
• When did you start thinking about Semantic Versioning
• Talk at NERD Summit
• Benefits of Semantic Versioning
• Other than the basics, how does your team use Semantic Versioning
• How do you move existing projects over to Semantic Versioning
• If someone wants to start using Semantic Versioning where should they look

Resources

• Drupal.org issue: What could Drupal implement from other CMS or content editors to improve its Admin Interface?
• Blog: Drupal Admin UX Study: What We Can Learn from Contentful, Craft CMS, Squarespace, and WordPress
• Managing Releases Using GIT Tags and Semantic Versioning
• Semantic Versioning Docs
• Mike’s NERD Summit talk
• Rands in repose
• Art of leadership - Lopp

Guests

Mike Miles - mike-miles.com @mikemiles86

Hosts

Nic Laflin - www.nLighteneddevelopment.com @nicxvan John Picozzi - www.epam.com @johnpicozzi Jordan Graham - @jordanlgraham

MOTW Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - @mandclu Same Page Preview Shows your content authors what their content will look like, while they’re creating it.

The Drupal Association and key partners have committed to investing $70,000 into projects selected for investment as part of the DrupalCon Pitch-burgh contest!

DrupalCon Pitch-burgh is an innovation contest loosely inspired by Shark Tank. Members of the Drupal Community are invited to submit a short video pitching an innovative idea with a request for funding. A panel of judges will select the winners, and Dries will present the top ideas during his keynote at DrupalCon Pittsburgh! Learn more and submit your ideas.

The Drupal Association will be investing $30,000, and to date, seven Drupal Certified Partners have committed $40,000 in matching investment. This funding will make an incredible impact in moving the winning pitches forward!

Additional investors are welcome - we will be accepting investment commitments right up to DrupalCon Pittsburgh.  Please contact Kelly Delaney (kelly@association.drupal.org) if you’re interested in investing.     

The current investors are:

• Drupal Association 
• Acquia 
• 1xINTERNET 
• Palantir.net
• Digital Polygon 
• Zoocha 
• Skilld 
• ImageX 

Thank you to our Certified Partners for their investment in Drupal’s future. We cannot wait to see what the Drupal community comes up with for Pitch–burgh!

Got an idea you want to pitch?  Check out this page for all of the information you’ll need. We can’t wait to see all of the pitches!

Did you know that out of the 117 domains of the UN and World Bank organizations, 78 rely on Drupal? Seems fascinating, doesn’t it? With its ingenious features, Drupal validated its worth and earned the trust of a majority of the prestigious organizations in the world. It established itself as the leading content management system long ago and continues to maintain its stature even today. If you are getting inclined towards Drupal Web Services too, you might wish to analyze the websites it already supports to make an informed decision.

As a website owner/admin, you may be tempted to put off Drupal module upgrades for your website. And as a provider of Drupal Support and Maintenance Services, we understand you. Who has the time to keep up with the latest modules and updates when everything seems to be running smoothly anyway? This may be a hard pill to swallow–failing to upgrade your modules can lead to severe consequences, such as security vulnerabilities, outdated functionality, and poor performance

The article will teach you why it's important to upgrade modules regularly and give you some best practices to keep your Drupal website secure, reliable, and high-performing.

At Evolving Web, we love sharing knowledge and empowering professionals to do what they do better, faster and with less resistance. Our Design Team often publishes useful resources to share their expertise, best practices, and insights from projects. We’ve rounded up our pick of the best ones below. 

We’ve rounded up these resources that’ll be useful for anyone on your team, from designers and content creators to strategists and web editors. 

Jump to the sections below:

1. How to Build a Design System
2. How to Leverage Your Platform’s Existing Design 
3. How to Optimize Images for Your Platform How to Make Your Images Accessible 

Big brands such as Airbnb, Shopify, and Atlassian use design systems to build better digital products. Image credit: Balázs Kétyi.

How to Build a Design System

Good if you want to:

• Improve consistency across assets
• Increase designers’ productivity 
• Free up time for complex, high-value tasks

Share with: 

• Designers
• UX strategists
• Project managers

Design systems go beyond asset collections and pattern libraries. They’re a set of standards, style guides, and components that increase efficiency and unify your brand experience. Think of it as combining a pantry with a cookbook: you don’t have to grow your food from scratch, nor do you need to experiment to make a meal. Instead, you have a collection of ready-to-go ingredients and tried-and-tested recipes. 

With a good design system, there’s no need to create and implement digital components from scratch. This allows your designers to focus on hierarchy, flow, and more complicated features. 

Read the guide: Building a Unified Design Language System.

The Design System Efficiency Curve. Productivity dips while a new design system is ramped up, but exceeds standard levels once the system is firmly in place. Credit: Callahan (2021.)

How to Leverage Your Platform’s Existing Design 

Good if you want to:

• Help colleagues leverage your platform’s design
• Promote UX best practices in your organization
• Reduce poor practices that break the design

Share with:

• Web editors
• Content creators
• Site admins

This guide is packed full of actionable tips to help you harness the full potential of your platform’s design and avoid common pitfalls that weaken the user experience. We explain how to create new pages using web components, develop compelling content, and use WYSIWYG for unique content needs. It’s a must-read for anyone who has admin permissions to update your site. 

Read the guide: Maintaining and Growing Your Digital Platform: UX/UI Considerations.

Images have a considerable impact on user experience. Everything from subject matter and tone to quality and composition will make an impression. Image credit: Fotis Fotopoulos. 

How to Optimize Images for Your Platform

Good if you want to:

• Optimize images to create a more valuable user experience
• Discover the best tools for sourcing and editing images
• Fix common issues such as blurriness and slow load-times

Share with:

• Designers 
• Web editors
• Content creators

Images are a powerful tool for enhancing the user experience, communicating your message, and connecting with audiences. The catch? They have to be spot-on. Done wrong, images can leave a poor impression, alienate users, and slow down your site. 

Read and share our guides:

• Picture Perfect: Selecting and Preparing Images for the Web
• Troubleshooting Blurry SVG Icons With Sketch and Adobe Illustrator

Accessibility standards apply to everything on the web, including PDFs and images. Image credit: CURVD®. 

How to Make Your Images and PDFs Accessible 

Good if you want to:

• Comply with accessibility standards and regulations
• Improve the user experience for people with disabilities
• Reach a broader audience with your content

Share with:

• Designers 
• Web editors
• Content creators

Your digital platform may have been designed to meet accessibility standards, but what about the content that you upload to it? The standards apply to images and PDFs too, but these assets often get overlooked. 

Learn about common accessibility issues, such as using the wrong PDF rendering tools and hiding important information in images. Our guides offer tips, tools, and examples to help you provide a more inclusive digital experience to all. 

Read and share our guides:

• How to Improve Accessibility on Your PDFs
• How to Use Alt Text and Accessible Images

Need Design Support on Your Next Project?

Evolving Web has spent more than 15 years empowering organizations to create deeper connections through valuable digital experiences. 

Our Design Team harnesses research, strategy, and innovation to unleash the creative potential in every project – no matter its size. We give you the confidence, wisdom, and support to take your digital platform to the next level.

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+ more awesome articles by Evolving Web

Drupal makes the 'easy' tasks more difficult, and more difficult tasks much easier. That dynamic makes Drupal perfect for more ambitious projects that would otherwise be quite complex.

According to a report, if your website leaves a bad taste in customers' mouths, they're unlikely to return - and 88% of online consumers agree. Bad experiences usually occur due to an outdated website. If you operate such a site, it's time to upgrade to Drupal, a powerful CMS utilized by leading organizations and businesses worldwide. With Drupal migration services, you can upgrade your website's functionality, security, and overall performance, giving your business a competitive edge in today's digital world. But let's face it, migration is complex and requires technical expertise, planning, and execution.

Drupal, Tulips, and a Beer Snake: My First Journey to MidCamp mherchel Sun, 04/30/2023 - 21:30

Join us at Stanford WebCamp on May 11 and 12, 2023

Quant is excited to participate in Stanford WebCamp 2023 in May and talk about decoupled and static website solutions!

kristen.pol Sat, 04/29/2023 - 12:48 April 28, 2023

Thank You For Making MidCamp 2023 A Success! Thanks to everyone who helped make MidCamp great!

MidCamp 2023 is a wrap, and we couldn't have done it without all of you. Thanks to our volunteers, organizers, contributors, venue hosts, sponsors, speakers, and of course, attendees for making this year's camp a success. 

Replay the Fun

Find all of the sessions you missed, share your own session around, and spread the word. Videos can be watched on the MidCamp's YouTube channel or on drupal.tv.

Please note, professional image editing captions will be made available within two weeks.

Share Your Feedback

If you didn't fill it out during camp, please fill out our quick survey. We really value your feedback on any part of your camp experience, and our organizer team works hard to take as much of it as possible into account for next year.

Also, don’t forget to rate any sessions you attended (these can be found on each session node).

And now announcing... MidCamp 2024!

Mark your calendars: next year MidCamp will be late March 2024. The final dates will be coming soon.

Explore other Upcoming Drupal Events

Need more Drupal Events to tide you over to next year? Head over to the Drupal Community Events page!

One Last Thanks

MidCamp wouldn't be possible without our amazing sponsors. See the entire list of 2019 sponsors on the site, and think about adding your name to the list next year. (2020 prospectus coming soon!)

Keep the madness going all year by joining in the MidCamp Slack! We look forward to seeing you at MidCamp 2024.

The book will guide the readers through Drupal 10 module development towards becoming a pro in it. The book is not only for experienced developers.

Drupal 8 Security Best Practices & Hardening Modules Editor Fri, 04/28/2023 - 14:35

Security is one of the most important considerations for anyone creating a website. Any site needs a reliable security system with a minimum number of vulnerabilities. Personal data must also be protected. Sometimes it is too expensive to deal with the consequences of avoiding an unpleasant situation. 
It is not the purpose of this article to discuss how useful and convenient Drupal is. We'll talk about steps you can take to improve your security. And now, let's look at some Drupal features that will help you to avoid various threats and security vulnerabilities.

Did you know that more than two billion websites are powered by Drupal globally? This implies that a majority of sites have chosen Drupal as a companion in their continual process of business growth. With Drupal's upgrade and migration services, you can easily keep your website up-to-date and take advantage of the latest features and security updates. If you have also tapped into the enormous potential of the powerful CMS, you already know the magic it can create.

With its relentless pursuit to elevate itself further, Drupal persistently releases higher versions that are equipped with cutting-edge technology and top-notch features. Drupal 9 is the latest version of the CMS which boasts its innumerable ingenious tools and features capable of introducing quantum leaps in the world of content management.

Let’s call her Jane. My friend Jane was to leave on a '4:00 pm' bus. She was traveling to another state for work and wanted to have one last visit to a friend who lived 2 minutes away. Given the proximity, 2’O clock in the afternoon seemed ideal for a visit, and leaving at 3:15 would give her sufficient time to get to the bus station. And so she did.

She got to the station but then found herself arguing with the bus driver on the Phone because she missed the bus. Jane was LATE. After that embarrassing argument, she confirmed the timing to realize that; She WAS LATE.

The bus had left at 3:30 pm and was waiting at the next stop, 30 minutes away. So they drove, not hoping for traffic which, of course, was inevitable.

Cause implies Effect. If I wake up late, then I eat breakfast late. If I eat my breakfast late, I will miss the bus, and if I miss the bus, I will reach school late. The equation goes something like this;

C ⇒ E ⇒ C ⇒ E ⇒ C

It was probably Plato who first stated the principle of causality

“every­thing that becomes or changes must do so owing to some cause; for nothing can come to be without a cause” (Timaeus 28a)

Aristotle then had 4 types of explanations for the theory of causation. Many others, like Immanuel Kant, followed up on or added to the theory of causality.

Long story short, if I started writing down this newsletter much later, it wouldn’t write itself, and I would be slightly panicked as my lateness would lead to a series of delays.

Or simply C ⇒ E

Wake up late (C) ⇒ Reach school late (E)

Similarly, in the Case of Jane, She missed her bus because she misread the timings?!

Miraculously, Jane made it to the bus and sent me a detailed voice message of all the running around she did. It was probably because of another one of Aristotle’s theories of causality, the definite works of “The Uncaused Cause.”

So, I will let my efforts pay off and list a few selected stories TDT covered over the past week. Mind that, I have prepared this on Friday and it will be despatched on Monday. 

Our major story for the week was an interview with Matt Glaman, ‘The Boy Who Built His Website, at 11. In it, he speaks about the importance of documentation and what consists of documentation. The interview was held as part of MidCamp 2023. 

We have an interview with Kalaiselvan Swamy, a speaker at Midcamp 2023. The interview is titled ‘Assess Current Needs and Take Websites to the Next Level.

Gitlab’s 7-Day Online Hackathon took place, and ticket sales opened for DrupalCamp Asheville. DrupalCamp Poland has called for Birds of a Feather sessions as well as DrupalCon Lille had their Last Call to Submit Sessions.

We also picked a few blogs to narrow down your search for Drupal knowledge

Why Drupal Is the Best for a Mobile Friendly Website, Is Drupal the Best Choice for Non-Profits, Key Benefits of Using Open Source Software, 7 Points Why Drupal Is the Best for Healthcare Institutions, and lastly, Zyxware Lists Down 4 Must-Have Drupal Modules.

That's for the week. 
Sincerely,
Alethia Rose Braganza
Sub-Editor, TheDropTimes

Drupal 7's end-of-life comes with more questions than answers. Chris and Mark discuss the complexities that come with retiring Drupal 7 and outline the basis of the communication gap between the Drupal Association, the Drupal 7 Soft Landing Initiative, and its users; taking a hard look at the possible steps to come.

Apart from having a composable and modular model, it provides a secure and accessible platform for websites. Healthcare Institutions have their own specific needs and interests. Here, we list down 7 main points why Drupal is considered the best choice for building web infrastructure for healthcare.

Machine Learning has a lot of applications in Drupal, particularly for editors. The community is already using many modules, the latest being the integration of ChatGPT. 

My talk "Lessons learned from helping port the top contrib projects to Drupal 10" from MidCamp is now on YouTube. You can also download the slides. In this session, I talked about lessons learned from Acquia's Drupal Integration Team (my team) effort to track 180 contributed modules for Drupal 10 compatibility.