Thanks to the hard work of our team this past year and stellar reviews from our clients, DesignHammer has once again been recognized with an esteemed Clutch Leaders Award, listing us as the 2nd best digital agency in all of North Carolina for 2021.

Linkit gives you an easy interface with an ‘autocomplete’ field to search for content on your site, and then link to it. In other words, it provides search functionality to find the content on your site and insert the corresponding internal link.

Using the same interface, you can also insert external links. So you can insert links, both internal and external, with the same interface.

It supports internal links to nodes, users, taxonomy terms, files and comments, etc. With this module, you do not need to copy or remember the target URL, or go back and forth to find out and verify the exact link. It provides a more user-friendly interface well integrated with the insert link function of the editor.

How to automate the migration testing you’ve been doing manually, using PHPUnit.

clemens-tolboom opened an issue in kivy-garden/radialslider Aug 24, 2021 Findings on first time use #2

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. (I'm a module noob and a python shavvy) I had a hard time finding import statement. …

clemens-tolboom opened a pull request in kivy-garden/radialslider Aug 24, 2021 Add import statement #1

It took me a while to find the correct import statement.

+3 -0

clemens-tolboom pushed to patch-1 in clemens-tolboom/radialslider Aug 24, 2021 1 commit to patch-1

• e9aba07 Add import statement

clemens-tolboom forked clemens-tolboom/radialslider from kivy-garden/radialslider Aug 24, 2021 kivy-garden/radialslider

The RadialSlider is an angular slider widget, which acts similarly to the kivy's native linear slider. The RadialSlider has two components: a track…

Python 1 Updated Aug 23

We want our websites to be able to reach as many people as possible. If done right, your site's visual design and theme will ensure that color contrasts work for the vast majority of people, that screen reader users and keyboard navigators can use your menus, and that other accessibility benchmarks are met. So, when all is said and done, remaining accessibility issues usually come down to the content that editors add to a site. This is where accessibility checkers prove useful. 

Today we are talking about Remote Work with Kaleem Clarkson.

www.talkingdrupal.com/308

Topics

• Chad - New dog and selling house
• Nic - Affogatos
• Kaleem - First covid test (negative) Speaking to United Airlines and Visa 8 -24 -21
• John - White water rafting
• How do you define remote work
• Fully distributed
• Hybrid remote
• Telecommuting
• How the pandemic has changed remote work
• How in person requirement affect companies
• How you onboard in remote
• Preboarding
• Onboarding
• Access to info
• What to prepare as an employee
• What to prepare as an employer
• Risk of isolation culture
• Remote work routines
• Net positive or net negative for companies
• Blend Me Inc

Resources

Who Wins In Hybrid https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/who-wins-in-hybrid-or-remote-5526642/ Blue Heeler (aka, Australian Cattle Dog): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Cattle_Dog Harvard business review hbr.org/2020/11/how-to-find-out-if-a-companys-culture-is-right-for-you Blend Me, Inc. https://www.blendmeinc.com Buffer’s Pay Calculator: https://buffer.com/salary-calculator

Guests

Kaleem Clarkson - kaleemclarkson.com @kaleemclarkson

Hosts

Nic Laflin - www.nLighteneddevelopment.com @nicxvan

John Picozzi - www.epam.com @johnpicozzi

Chad Hester - www.chadkhester.com @chadkhester

Drupal for Every Industry: Serving Needs and Fulfilling Demands Gurpreet Kaur Mon, 08/23/2021 - 21:41

Digital transformation has become integral for businesses that want to stay afloat today and that includes every organisation in every industry. A powerful online presence that can cater to whim and need that today’s dynamic business world can throw at you is imperative. 

To make that happen, you need an equally powerful software to strengthen the foundational aspects of your online businesses, so that you can constantly keep it evolving and up-to-date with the current trends. And that is where Drupal comes in. 

An open source CMS that is equipped to handle all your business requirements specific to your industry and geographic region makes Drupal the perfect fit for all businesses.

Source: Enlyft

In the twenty years of Drupal’s existence, it has taken over the world. The web development domain is more or less incomplete without it. The image above clearly shows Drupal’s presence in countries that are spread over 4 continents.

Source: EnlyftSource: Drupal.org

The Drupal Business Survey 2020 reported the top ten industries where Drupal operates.  The leading sector with the maximum respondents was education, accounting for 61.4% of all Drupal projects. While the telecom sector increased its use of Drupal, for arts and culture and charities and non-profit the story was the opposite.

It is an irrefutable fact that Drupal is a pro in identifying and providing features and opportunities that make an organisation stand out in its niche. That is why the CMS has spread its wings all over the business world, leaving no industry untouched.

And that is what we are going to be discussing today, how Drupal provides for every industry and how its versatility has garnered the most influential clientele in each sector. So, let’s begin.

Drupal Features: Catering to Every Industry

Drupal is one of the finest CMSs in the market, with features that are beyond reproach. However, that isn’t what makes it close to perfect. The reason for Drupal’s impressive success stories is its ability to provide for every use case. 

Yes, Drupal has flawless features, but it also has ample of them, making it a truly versatile CMS that can be used to cater to any and all needs an industry or business may have. 

Let’s look at them now.

Open source software community

Being an open source software, Drupal has a strong community to support its endeavours. And by strong I mean close to a million members. Much of the development of the software can be attributed to its community along with its security. 

If you are a Drupal developer, you can easily leverage upon the knowledge and solutions curated by others in the community. Any question that you may have would be answered by the community. In simple words, the Drupal community is equivalent to perpetual support for Drupal projects.

Learn more about open source here:

• Perks of being an open source contributor and the merits of contributing to Drupal
• Open source licensing
• Open source leadership
• Open source security
• Open source diversity
• Open source sustainability
• Impact of large companies on open source
• Open source being recession-free
• Impact of open source during Covid-19 pandemic

Strong stack foundation

Drupal works on the LAMP stack, which is Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. All four of them are individually powerful, but together they are more than that. This robust stack can guarantee you that your digital experiences would be flexible, agile and fast moving, so much so that they might seem future-proof.
Security

There isn’t a CMS that can beat Drupal in terms of security, some have come close though. Drupal’s out-of-the-box ability to counter the most detrimental vulnerabilities on the web that too with ease makes the previous statement true. From providing you the means to gain secure access, to control your user permissions and to implement data encryption, all account to a more secure site. To know more, read about the open source security and the must have Drupal modules for all your website security needs.

Scalability and performance

In terms of scalability and performance, Drupal manages to shine as well. Performance is usually associated with lesser load times, and a software that can make that happen even with a massive proportion of traffic spikes is what any industry should look for. And Drupal does just that. 

From traffic spikes to content growth, Drupal can handle it all because it is built to scale. You wouldn’t ever have to worry about any down time owing to heightened traffic. To know more, read performance optimisation techniques and the scalability provisions offered by Drupal.

Accessibility

WCAG 2.0;
ATAG 2.0; 

These are the two standards set by the world wide consortium that need to be followed to the T to make a site universally accessible. And guess what? Drupal adheres to both of them, and that too quite stringently. Its default features like alt text and drag and drop functionality are examples that are bound to convince you of the accessible nature of the CMS.

Learn more about accessibility here:

• Comprehensive guide to Drupal accessibility
• How to plan for web accessibility
• The business factor of web accessibility
• Cognitive accessibility in web design
• Design considerations for accessibility

Content workflow

Be it content authoring or content architecture, Drupal aces both of them to provide a seamless content workflow for you. Features like the WYSIWYG editor along with a stronghold on permissions and authentications, you can rest assured that your content authors, publishers and site admins will have access to the things they need and not the ones that are beyond their clearance level. 

The flexibility provided by the content architecture equips to create it both programmatically or using an admin interface. Views and other display mode tools only add to the flexibility, making the inclusion of every kind of media type a breeze. For an advanced content editing experience, read Drupal’s Layout Builder module and Paragraphs module can help.

Headless

Drupal’s headless architecture is another game-changer. It lets you separate the development of the backend content from the frontend presentation layer. While the backend would be pretty much all Drupal-centric, the frontend could be anything you like, be it JS frameworks such as Vue, React or Angular or static site generators like Metalsmith or Gatsby. 

You can choose to not use any of the Drupal features with a fully decoupled architecture, however, if you want to keep some Drupal functionality on the frontend, you can choose progressively decoupled Drupal architecture to get the best of both worlds. 

Learn more about decoupled Drupal here:

• Everything you need to know about decoupled Drupal
• Decoupled Drupal architecture and its comparison with monolithic setups
• Should you go for decoupled Drupal
• When to move from monolithic to decoupled architectures
• How to decouple Drupal
• The best frontend technologies for your decoupled Drupal architecture
• The right skills for your decoupled Drupal project
• Drupal web services and all the different alternatives
• Success stories of decoupled Drupal

Third party integrations

Drupal out-of-the-box has plenty of features to keep you satiated, but it cannot compensate for every tool in the market today, hence the need for Drupal integrations. The CMS is efficient at integrating itself with other tools and technologies, so that you can work with the best tools available today. 

Mobile-first approach and mobile app delivery 

Another one of Drupal’s fortes is being mobile-first. What this means is that Drupal always prioritises responsive designs that can adapt to the screen size they are being viewed on, so that you users receive an optimal user experience.

Drupal is equipped to build mobile applications to support smartphones, tablets and feature phones as well. You can build them using Drupal’s inherent toolkit and work with HTML5/CSS or you can work from Javascript. In both cases, the developed web would be fully responsive in design, however, the JS approach would lack the integration with Drupal’s theming layer; it’ll be like developing a native mobile app. To know more, read about mobile-first design approach and mobile apps like that of Flutter-powered delivered by Drupal.

Multilingual

Businesses and industries aren’t bound by geographical regions anymore, they have a global reach today. And a global presence usually comes with multilingual needs for local sites. Drupal provides 90+ languages you can choose from to create translations that are not only restricted to the content, but also transcend to configurations, so that your local admins can work efficiently. Read more about Drupal’s multilingual capabilities here.

Multisite

Like a business isn’t bound to one language, it is also not bound to one site. With multiple business branches and departments, organisations often have a site for each of them. These sites usually look alike with similar features and aesthetics. And that is where Drupal’s multisite feature comes in. You can create hundreds of sites using the same with a single codebase for easy management and minimal development time. The sites would be similar, but they would have a unique individuality too. Read this complete guide on Drupal multisite to know more.

Personalisation

Geolocation; 
Behaviour taxonomies;
Device types; 
User personas; 
Browser history; 

All five of these help an organisation understand its consumers better and provide them an experience that is personal to them. And Drupal can capitalise all five to help you apprehend your user’s and give them a personalised digital experience. 

Learn more about personalisation here:

• The complete web personalisation checklist
• Audience segmentation techniques
• How customer data platform supports personalisation
• Why leverage machine learning for personalisation
• UX in the age of personalisation

SEO 

The SEO trends in 2021 are not going to be similar to the trends in 2020, do you agree? So, for optimal results in the SEO domain, you have to be able to get the most out of the present scenarios. And Drupal does just that. Of course, the CMS has umpteen SEO modules that would cater to most of your needs, be it links or sitemaps. However, its ability to adapt with changing trends pertaining to search intent or web automation takes the cake here. To know more, read this definitive guide to Drupal SEO in 2021.

Migration and upgrades

To be honest, up until recently Drupal migrations and upgrades were a pain, a pain that could suck the life out of you. But no more! With the roll of Drupal 9, upgrades have become as easy as easy can be. With a few simple tweaks here and some minor updates there, you can click on the update.php button and be done with the upgrade. This kind of ease is needed for businesses which cannot afford to be distracted by an upgrade for a longer span of time.

Learn more about Drupal 9 upgrade here:

• The definitive guide to Drupal 9
• Burning questions on Drupal 9
• Drupal 9 upgrade FAQs
• Web development planning and strategies with Drupal 9
• How to migrate from Drupal 8 to Drupal 9
• Must have modules to start Drupal 9 website
• Configuration management strategies in Drupal 9

Marketing automation

Marketing automation, like the name suggests, is a great tool that allows marketers to automate their job. For Drupal, marketing automation equates to real-time sales alerts, the management of consumer data, the tracking of your site’s traffic and streamlined workflows amongst other things. And tools like Marketo MA, Pardot and Hubspot with the integration with Drupal help the CMS provide much more advanced features in this realm.

Read our blog Understanding marketing automation in association with Drupal to get a better understanding of this feature.

Support for emerging technologies

On top of all of these, Drupal also supports the use of emerging technologies to provide even more astounding digital experiences. We’ve discussed marketing automation, which is one of these technologies, other than that modern JS testing, search and visualisation, design systems and a foray into augmented reality and virtual reality are trends that Drupal has been increasingly following. To know more, read about macro trends in technology and the web development trends in 2021 and where Drupal stands.

Here is an example of virtual reality at work with Drupal.

Industry Rundown

Now that we know everything Drupal can accomplish, let's take into account the same features and more in regards to the various industries Drupal provides for. We’ll be looking at the different business sectors individually and see if there are specific Drupal features that make it ideal for that particular sector, followed by examples from the same industry where Drupal has worked its magic.

Ecommerce and Retail 

The best place to start the industry conversation has to be the online retail therapy. Yes, I am talking about the ecommerce, retail and distribution sector. Although they might be considered different, they function in much the same way and it is a sector that is valued in trillions.

So, what does Drupal have to offer that is unparalleled?

Well, four things actually.

• First is Drupal Commerce, it's a tool unlike any other, which acts as a one stop destination for all things ecommerce. From payment gateways and tax calculations to unique product pages, it can do it all. And ecommerce sites are thankful for it.
• Second would be the headless integrations. Drupal allows you to use Drupal commerce along with JavaScript to build our frontend through decoupling. 
• Third is Drupal’s ability to scale with ease, which comes in handy when ecommerce sites experience traffic spikes during sale season.
• Finally, the delivery of content on multiple channels with easy content authoring experience even on mobile devices only adds to Drupal’s compatibility with ecommerce platforms.

Along with these, Drupal’s proficiency at SEO, multilingual support, secure architecture and even multiple currency management make it the perfect choice for every ecommerce and retail business. Here are two of the most famous ecommerce platforms on Drupal. Read about Drupal’s provisions for ecommerce websites and the benefits of implementing content-driven commerce to know more.

Eldum Rett

Eldum Rett is a leading food delivery and subscription service provider in Iceland. With an annual turnover of 7 million USD, it needed to provide exemplary service to its thousands of consumers to maintain its momentum and grow simultaneously.

The brand needed flexibility to enhance its user experience and with Drupal that was pretty convenient. It was transitioning into a new native app that could handle the complexity it wanted to build on. Drupal provided a ton of functionality out-of-the-box and you could add on it as well and that’s what Eldum Rett wanted. It leveraged Drupal’s impeccable ability to extend itself through its APIs and Eldum Rett was able to launch itself. 

King Arthur Baking Company

When you think about baking, your mind instantly moves to recipes that could help you a great deal during family events. These recipes are what King Arthur Baking Company wanted to prioritise. With a history of over 200 years, the brand wanted itself to be associated with making people fall in love with baking. 

So, Drupal was chosen to help the business realise its goal as the CMS checked all the right boxes. It prioritised recipes, so that the experienced bakers could browse, save and print any of the 2000 recipes and the new bakers could get a step by step on a clean recipe page without any confusion. 

Furthermore, Drupal also provided scalability and better performance along with an innovative flair for the future. 

Fintech, Banking and Finance  

If there is an industry that needs the most heightened level of security, I would say that it is the banking sector. Amongst all of the open source and even proprietary CMSs, Drupal’s robust security measures are almost unmatched and for sensitive financial data, you cannot settle for less than that. 

Add to this Drupal’s ability to integrate with other platforms for marketing and payments and you would be left with an ideal answer to your need for a fintech and banking website. Here is further proof for that. Read about Drupal’s provision for the fintech industry and the significance of digital transformation for the fintech segment to know more.

The Carlyle Group 

A leading name in the fintech industry and one of the top five equity firms in the world, the brand needed an equally powerful companion for its online presence. As a fintech company it needed two things; 

• An easy and natural editorial experience; 
• And bulletproof security; 

Both of which rank quite high on Drupal’s repertoire of features. With the successful fulfilment of the project, The Carlyle Group was able to attain more leads, heightened session durations and increased organic traffic.

Eastern Bank 

One of the oldest and largest mutual banks in the United States, the Eastern bank needed a solution to revamp its brand among other things and Drupal could provide them all. 

The bank chose Drupal for several reasons. 

• Being a banking institution, it had a lot of sensitive information and Drupal offered a semblance of a guarantee in terms of security along with testing prior to an update.
• The bank had a number of campaigns that were being managed in several different microsites, Drupal’s multisite feature resolved that too. 
• The need for flexibility in content editing and control over user access were also provided by Drupal.
• Finally, the site had to be accessible, and Drupal’s accessibility features ensured that the project got an AA level clearance.

High Tech 

I say high tech, but I mean technology that is constantly updating and evolving. Do you agree? And for everything that is dynamic, there can’t be a better choice than Drupal. 

The CMS is synonymous with concepts of flexibility and scalability, making it provide for the business sector that is focused on advanced technologies. These two examples will tell you why. 

Olympus Learn Center 

Olympus is a world leader in creating digital and optical solutions that make our lives healthier, safer and more content. Having been founded over a century ago, the business is still a pioneer in the high tech sector. 

It needed a consistent and flexible technology to provide an enhanced user experience that was a sumtotal of its modern design, stability and an elevated performance. 

Hence, Drupal was chosen. The platform was highly scalable and mobile first, with thousands of modules that were continuously enhanced and improved by its open source community, which meant whatever the solution was, it was definitely going to be long-term and it was.

CloudHealth 

CloudHealth Tech is known to manage entire cloud ecosystems for businesses and that too cost-effectively. It was intended to be a massive source of lead generation for its clients. So, to be efficient it took to Drupal. 

Drupal is as agile as it is flexible. This ability makes supporting marketing initiatives quite handy. Add to this, the CMS’ offerings in the form of high developer velocity and an pretty convenient editorial experience, the result is nothing short of exemplary. 

CloudHealth was able to transform its blog completely with more than 100% increase in pageviews and users. That’s the power of Drupal. 

Government 

What is the first thing that comes to your mind when thinking about a government website? For me that is security. If a government site isn;t secure, the repercussions could be colossal. Don’t you agree?

The next thing is accessibility, the government is for all the citizens. So, it needs to take account of its disabled citizens too and that can only be done by complying to the web accessibility standards. 

Of course, features like scalability and flexibility come quite handy for a government project. More about Drupal’s exceptional capabilities for powering government sites here.

Let’s take a look at the one such government site having built on Drupal.

City of Boston 

The City of Boston site was quite old and way behind time and it needed a major revamp. Drupal was chosen as the CMS for the rebuild for many reasons. 

• Drupal’s open source community was one of the major reasons, as the massive developer pool could help the site in maneuvering the changing environment. 
• Drupal also religiously complies to accessibility standards, making the boston.gov get to AA compliance on accessibility.
• Drupal’s iterative approach towards development was also a parameter. 
• Drupal’s mobile first approach made it quite responsive to all devices, since that was a priority, Drupal became the ideal choice.

The site owners also wanted the website to be interactive and engage its audience in future developments and that is exactly what Drupal made possible. With over 600 emails received from the constituents, about 88% of them suggested ways to improve the website.

The City of Boston website has come a long way with Drupal at its back.

Sports, Music, Arts and Entertainment 

This is a pretty diverse sector, but one that has pretty much the same needs and requirements with a tendency to experience massive traffic spikes.

• For one these websites need integrations, and bucket loads of them, to provide features and experience one software alone may not be able to. 
• And second, they need content capabilities that are beyond average with editorial workflows that help content creators instead of burdening them.

And Drupal can fulfil both of these requirements. Read about Drupal’s provisions for digital media and sports industry to know more. Here are some success stories.

The Beatles 

A profound sense of flexibility; 
And the adaptive ability to add on any possible feature through an API framework; 

These two pretty much sum of the project that led to the development of The Beatles Official Website. It needed just the right controls of content curation and user registration along with aesthetically pleasing themes that also served well on the technical front, plus the addition of a suitable hosting architecture; all of which Drupal was pleased to provide. And the site turned out to be pretty amazing. 

Sport England 

Being scalable; 
Being content-rich; 
Being secure; 
And being able to easily manage assets; 

These were the requirements of the Sport England website and Drupal excelled at fulfilling all of them. The layout builder module helped with the content and custom solutions, the API integrations added further functionality and the ability to manage the site without much technical assistance made the site owners quite happy.

Travel, Tourism and Hospitality 

When you go to a travel and hospitality site, what are the things that you look for? For me, there are plenty of different aspects that need to suit my palate before I settle, call me picky if you have to. 

• The site has to have to right content, some even personalised for me and my needs; 
• The site has to be one of the top ranking ones on Google because I am not going to scroll all the way down and book the last result, so being SEO friendly is needed; 
• The site has to be easy to navigate, so that I can see it in all its glory without getting lost in the maze; 
• The site has to be mobile friendly, I would not always open it on my laptop; 
• The site has to have secure payment gateways; 
• And finally, the site should be multilingual, I must be able to read what’s on there to get dazzled by it. 

These may seem too much, but trust me all of these are necessities in the travel and hospitality industry. Can Drupal provide in this segment? Know more about Drupal’s offerings for the travel and tourism industry here. Here are some success stories. 

VisitTheUSA.com 

VisitTheUSA.com is a site under Brand USA. It needed to come out of its proprietary software’s limitations and test Drupal without any licensing costs and a boundless scope of development. And Drupal did not disappoint. 

The project, upon its completion, had everything it had set out to accomplish. 

• It was able to optimise the frontend performance as well as build the majority of the features outside of Drupal. 
• It was able to capitalise on Internationalism and get seamless translations without any hassle of writing a new code. 
• It was able to get the right trip planning tools from integrations with Instagram and TripAdvisor.
• And it was able to provide interactive features to its audience. 

Lonely Planet 

Lonely Planet is a renowned travel company with a multitude of resources, ranging from guide books to web content and mobile apps; it even has its own travel community. 

With that kind of presence, the brand had bucket loads of content that it needed to be managed. And when content management is in question, you do not have to look further than Drupal. And add to that Drupal APIs and its decoupled nature, you have a winner on your side. 

• Drupal provided an impeccable control over content architecture; 
• Drupal as a content repository is pretty much perfect and synced marvelously with React in this case; 
• Drupal also provided a versatile migration API. 

Manufacturing and Energy  

There aren’t any specific features that need to be in a manufacturing and energy business. For manufacturing, the features usually coincide with ecommerce and retail because if you are to build, you are going to sell. And energy companies are usually more on the lines of being informational, so the needs usually pertain to content workflows being flexible.

American Council for Energy-Efficient Economy

As the name suggests, the company is bi-partisan non-profit that promotes energy-efficient solutions and strives to fight climate change. 

For its website, it needed to provide a mobile-friendly experience to its audience. Since Drupal 8 is all for being mobile-first that was an easy win. It also needed content features that were flexible and incorporated imagery, and Drupal can provide that too. Using the CMS, ACEEE was able to achieve easy content filtering for searches, have topic pages and share events, both from the present and the past. All in all the user experience improved by a substantial amount.

First4Numbers 

The brand is renowned for printing bespoke numbers for sporting events and being the supplier of the London 2012 Olympics.

Their site was already built on Drupal 6, all they needed was to get the site upgraded to Drupal 7 and a few additional functionalities. 

• One of them was the automation of the ordering process, which had to be intuitive for novice users and be an advanced version of the somewhat antiquated process they already had. 
• And second, they planned to go global, so the site was to be built to scale to accommodate the hike in traffic going global would entail along with additional languages for the better reach. 

Real Estate and Urban Planning 

Real estate and urban planning, both are associated with infrastructure, but the former is self-owned and operated and the latter is government run. So, their needs tend to be a little different. 

While real estate sites are all about aesthetics, minimal themes and more importantly, a massive image gallery, urban planning focuses on people and tries to hear them and make them feel heard. Let’s find how Drupal caters to these two.

Talk London 

Talk London does just that, it allows Londoners to talk with the authorities at the City Hall and do their part in formulating urban planning strategies. 

The goal was to create a secure and engaging site and that was easy with Drupal. The user generated content functionality was enhanced along with adding email notifications and flexible content layouts. And the result was an increase by a third in subscriptions in 2021.

Domu 

Domu is a website that offers real estate listings to rent in the Chicago area. From lofts, houses, apartments and condos, it has a pretty wide selection.

Domu wanted simplicity and ease for people looking for rental space and the landlords looking to post their properties. So, it decided to overhaul it existing design for a more breezy one. 

Emphasis was placed on; 

• Adding more functionality for landlords; 
• Providing previews to them: 
• Making listings more informative, with area, neighbourhood and property names;
• Making updates to existing listings easy; 
• And giving tutorials for posting images of the properties.

Beauty, fashion and blogging 

Not to sound like a broken record, but there aren’t any specific features pertaining to these sites that would make them different from the rest of the sites. The beauty and fashion industry may align with the retail and ecommerce sector. However, the blogging sites are a different story, they are considered one of the simplest, if not the simplest, site to build.

Estee Lauder 

If you are into beauty, you must have heard of Estee Lauder, being a high-end cosmetic brand. And it chose Drupal for its decoupling ability, so that it could use the CMS to separately build its learning management system. As a result, its learning platform could create resources without conducting classroom sessions and train people at different locations and not have to repeat anything. The availability over online and offline mediums removed any further restrictions. 

The brand also took advantage of Drupal’s multilingual properties, built the site to scale and found a resolution to monitor user performance.

Bond Lifestyle 

This is a blogging site solely dedicated to everything associated with 007, from his apparel and accessories to his adversaries’, you can know everything about the Bond movies. 

With Drupal, the site was able to gain all the right functionalities needed for a successful implementation. These included;

• A picturesque homepage; 
• A product overview page with a content list for easy perusal; 
• A detailed product page; 
• And organised content with Drupal taxonomies.

Startups and small business 

Startups and small businesses have one thing in common and that is the fact that they do not have large amounts of cash rolling out. They usually work on a limited budget and Drupal can handle that pretty well. Since it is open source, there are minimal costs and zero licensing fees. If you have certain knowledge of the CMS itself, you can build a site for free.

Here are two small businesses that are pretty close to being startups with very different reasons for choosing Drupal.

GoIntro 

GoIntro is an online platform that allows students and employers to connect with each other through an online career fair. The site is an example of decoupled Drupal with Angular on the frontend. 

The project was primarily divided into three segments; 

• The organisers
• The employers 
• And the students

All three had their own ecosystems and functionalities. For instance, the students got to create their own profiles, which would display their skills and personal information and they can choose to attend only the events they are interested in. On top of this, Drupal’s ability to handle any kind of content and could be scaled to any limits made it an even more perfect fit for GoIntro.

Cannabis Yukon 

The legality of cannabis is still a contentious issue all over the globe. Therefore, when the Government of Yukon had to build their cannabis retail, their paramount concern was to protect the privacy of its users. That is why Drupal was chosen, to have total and complete control over the consumer data. This along with Drupal Commerce and the fact the Government of Yukon website was already on Drupal, the decision was final.

Healthcare 

The healthcare sector is an important one, given COVID, you could say it is imperative for each one of us. In terms of its online presence, the healthcare industry mandates three things. 

• It needs to be able to protect patient data through better security; 
• It needs to be able to new functionalities with easy integrations; 
• It needs to be able to provide customised user experiences.

Has Drupal been able to provide these?

Yes.

Aster Hospitals 

A leading healthcare provider in the Middle East and India, Aster Hospital wishes to provide healthcare within the reach of millions more. And it wanted all of its sites to showcase the same brand identity and provide the same kind of experience.

With Drupal, it got to work with customisable themes that meant a number of things for the brand; 

• It could enable faceted search features; 
• It could now streamline content authoring; 
• It could build pages based on individual components;
• And it could have autonomy over creating and updating region-specific pages. 

The Claro theme, layout builder and paragraphs helped in successfully developing their Drupal 9 site.

Higher Education

What do you think a website for a university would need to have to provide a great experience to its users and admins? 

The answer lies in four things: 

• One, it is to be multi-functional. From students publishing their work online to teachers being able to integrate with zoom to conduct an online session, the website needs to check all the right boxes for education.
• Two, it needs to be scalable to handle high volumes of traffic, your website cannot crash on the last day of the admissions, otherwise students would be very upset.
• Third, it needs multiple sites for multiple departments with a sense of individuality for each of them. The content for the geology department cannot be the same as physics, am I right?
• Finally, a university site needs to be secure, it has tons of information of both the faculty and the students and it needs to be able to protect the same.

Do you think Drupal can provide all of this? I think, yes and pretty conveniently too. To know more, read about Drupal’s offering for elearning platform and how you can devise a content strategy for higher education sites with Drupal. Following is once such success story:

Princeton University School of Public and International Affairs 

Princeton is a name we’ve all heard and awed at and Drupal was chosen by the esteemed university to create the online persona of its School of Public and International affairs. 

What did Drupal achieve?

• Drupal made the staff work less because it could showcase courses, events and news amongst other external data without manual updates. 
• Drupal reduced the development time because it was able to reuse themes, modules and UI patterns to create a pretty consistent experience throughout the website. 
• Drupal provided a heightened level of flexibility in design and layout because of tools like layout builder.
• Drupal also made it quite convenient for the content editors to create and manage data. 

The outcome was a site that both the site owners and users were satiated with.

Conclusion 

Remember the 16 features we discussed in the beginning of this blog, it is those 16 features that make Drupal competent to cater to any need a user may have. All the industries we discussed and the solutions they were able to create were built using those 16 Drupal attributes and not all of them to be honest, but still the result was never in dearth of functionalities, being as close to perfection as possible. And that is why Drupal is always going to be ready and willing to serve every industry.

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Progressive Web App Core Features: The Future of Web Development Using a Progressive Web App can improve mindshare among the audience. So be aware of how progressive web app features can help. This article will give you an idea. Tanjeet Mon, 08/23/2021 - 14:10 Progreesive Web Application Drupal Planet Progressive Web App Development

clemens-tolboom commented on pull request NixOS/nix#1349 Aug 23, 2021 clemens-tolboom commented Aug 23, 2021

If I wanted to learn what the options mean, I'd look into the corresponding man page. And when I type into console I almost always use the short o…

As a back-end developer, I’m used to building stuff that people interact with every day but never actually see. I create that layer beneath the surface that makes things work the way people expect them to — and I’m the one who gets called in when something goes wrong. Either way, I spend a lot of time unraveling puzzles and reimagining solutions, forever pushing the limits of what software can do. I make things work; that’s what I love about my job. It’s also the reason why I like being part of the Open Source Software (OSS) community. OSS offers nearly infinite opportunities to solve…

If you've been building websites sites for a while you will realise that no site lives in isolation. Almost every site you build integrates with some form of API, and this is especially the case for the more enterprise sites where data is often synchronised back to a CRM system or similar. Drupal's hook and service architecture means that you can easily build integration points to that API to pull in data.

Pulling in data from an API into a Drupal site means installing an off the shelf module or creating a custom module to provide the integration. What route you go for depends on the integration, but for enterprise sites the API is quite often very custom to the business. I have even seen APIs being built at the same time as the site that it needs to integrate with, which is especially the case for startups and new businesses.

One of the biggest issues in getting things working with a site that relies heavily on an API is testing. Both in terms of behavioural testing and user testing you need to be able to have a repeatable set of items that you can use and having an active changing API makes this a little bit tricky. If your API is still being built then you literally have no API to integrate against and so you can't build your site yet.

This is where stubbing comes in. Instead of directly asking the API for data we can swap out the API integration for a different data source. In other words we redirect the API calls to a local file or database table so that the functionality still exists but the data source is different. This is possible to do in Drupal thanks to the modular and extensible way in which services are used.

Read more.

clemens-tolboom commented on pull request NixOS/nix#1349 Aug 22, 2021 clemens-tolboom commented Aug 22, 2021

Not sure how to trigger tests :-/

Creating a website is a very labour-consuming process. It requires quite a lot of time and resources. However, the people involved in building webpages and applications noticed that some elements repeat at times. In order not to reinvent the wheel, they began to isolate the repeating elements as components. In this text, I'll present how the components can be used based on the example of the Drupal distribution Droopler and the Bootstrap library.

What are components?

Components are elements that are reusable in different parts of the website. They allow for fairly quick creation and easy maintenance of pages and applications. The additional advantage of components is that if a change is required, you don't have to modify every element of the page, you only need to make the correction in one place. The change will automatically appear in other parts of the site that contain this component.

Bootstrap library

Bootstrap is a set of tools and components that simplify the creation of websites and applications. Using this library may speed up your site building as Bootstrap includes ready-made solutions for creating adaptive templates, forms, tables, navigations, etc.

This library mainly contains the CSS and JavaScript files that implement various ready-to-use components. After connecting the library, by using specific CSS classes you can quickly and easily modify the elements on a page.

There are several ways to use the Bootstrap library in Drupal. One of them is to use a base theme on which you can build your own. The most popular base themes are Bootstrap – which is based on the third version of the library, and Barrio – which was built on the basis of Bootstrap 4/5.

Bootstrap components in Droopler

Droopler is a Drupal distribution designed to quickly build webpages. It differs from other distributions in that it provides a ready-made website out of the box. You just need to add your own content to it.

Droopler is built on the basis of the Barrio theme, so it has all the benefits of Bootstrap. There are several ways to use the components of this library in Droopler. The first and easiest is adding the necessary elements to the content of the blocks.

When adding a new block, you should place the HTML code with the classes specified by the Bootstrap documentation in the section for entering the content. In order for the entered code to be recognised by Drupal as HTML, before entering the content you must activate the "Source" mode using the button in the field panel. After adding the HTML code, you need to turn off the given mode.

 

In this case, after saving the block, we get two buttons. The shape of the given buttons was determined using the "btn" class, while the background and text colours were assigned using the "btn-primary" and "btn-secondary" classes.

 

The second way to use Bootstrap components in Droopler is more difficult. It consists of adding your own theme based on the Droopler theme and modifying the source code. To do this, you need to use one of the starter kits found in the Droopler base theme directory, and then you can create your own solutions using the Bootstrap components.

I've shown you how to add basic buttons using the Bootstrap library. Now I'll present a few more examples of advanced components.

Dropdown menu

A dropdown menu is a very useful component for a website. It allows you to store and display information and links in a fairly compact block, which makes it possible to efficiently use the web page's space and allows you to include more information. This component consists of two parts: a block with elements, which is hidden by default, and a button, which – when pressed – makes a particular block appear.

 

In the block itself, you can put headers, links, which in turn can be active or disabled. These parameters can be set using CSS classes provided by the Bootstrap library.

Progress bar

A progress bar is another useful element of a website. It allows the user to immediately see the progress of the performed activity, which improves the user experience.

 

As with other components, you can modify the style, colour and other parameters of a progress bar.

Tabs

Bookmarks are one of the menu types used on a website. They are useful for switching between the contents of pages, allowing the user to see more information in a smaller space.

 

The bookmarks created with the Bootstrap library may contain active and disabled links, as well as the already mentioned dropdown menu.

Bootstrap Components - summary

Using the Bootstrap library components to build a webpage is a very effective approach, because it allows you to easily build and maintain the pages. I've shown a few examples of using components in Droopler, a Drupal CMS distribution. You can find more information about the available components in the documentation on the Droopler demo page.

End-of-life (EOL) software is a very real problem. Whether your business is using ecommerce and customer relationship management systems across multiple platforms or relying on basic scheduling and accounting software, you will at some point reach a technological expiry date.

What are the risks in running end-of-life software?

1. Compromised security
2. Lack of reliability kills innovation
3. Higher operational costs

 

Listen to this post by using the player, or subscribe using Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Google Podcasts.

Acro Media has developed a 6 step action plan for handling software end of life. View it here >>

When a system reaches end-of-life, the creator/owner of the software/technology no longer delivers support services for the product. That can include technical support, hardware or software upgrades, bug fixes, security patches, or feature development. In short, the system gets abandoned by its owner. 

Software becoming obsolete can cause all sorts of problems. Here are a few of the  risks to your business in running EOL software:

1. Compromised security

If you hold people's information and data, you are responsible and liable for it.

End-of-life technology receives no security updates. No bug fixes. No patches. No monitoring. Your technology is dead in the eyes of the creator. That means your security is completely compromised, not only for the platform that is EOL, but also potentially for any others that connect to it.

At a minimum, your system can be accessed and your content or records edited, stolen, or deleted. If you have any user data, financial data, or sensitive information, you could have a major problem. The monetary and reputational costs could kill your business.

A survey of 2,600 CIOs across the U.S. found that the number one concern was keeping systems and information secure. By being proactive and not letting your systems reach their end of life, your company is better positioned to ensure that your data and your customer’s information remains secure.

2. Lack of reliability

If you were a taxi driver, would you willingly drive an old car that is no longer maintained and has sporadic issues? Of course not. That’s because your livelihood relies on the economics of your vehicle. 

But that is what you are doing if you continue with EOL software. Old software is less reliable and more prone to failure. 

Maintaining EOL software is complex and expensive, and integrations into other systems require even more time-consuming and expensive workarounds. 

Regular updates, bug fixes and support, in general, goes away at EOL, which makes system maintenance much more difficult. Instead of spending your resources on new tools or building better customer experiences, you are stuck paying top dollar for fixes and updates no longer covered by the software creator.

This brings us to our final point...

3. Higher operational costs

EOL software costs more, whether it’s through lost/stolen data, updating and maintaining with third parties, legal liabilities, or lost revenue from downtime or issues. 

The sticker price on a new system can sometimes seem large and prohibitive from a business point of view. But, consider the consequences of a security breach or a major bug. The peace of mind that comes with having a fully secure and supported system that won’t arbitrarily go offline is worth its weight in gold.

Another benefit from moving away from EOL software is the opportunity to review your company's entire technology stack/architecture. If you have software moving towards EOL, it's essential to look at not only replacing the single system but also assessing your whole technology landscape for opportunities to make larger improvements.

Conclusion

Ultimately, EOL technology is costly to your business in multiple ways. Most technology providers give lots of notice when one of their products is going to be unsupported. That gives you time to assess your options and determine the path you should take. 

To help you assess your options download our 6 step action plan for handling software end of life.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on June 2, 2020, and has been updated for freshness, accuracy and comprehensiveness.

Drupal patches: how they work and why they matter Editor Thu, 08/19/2021 - 20:52

“An open-source CMS” is one of the key things people first hear about Drupal. This means access to the source code and the freedom to cooperate on making it better. But the true benefits and spirit of a wonderful and diverse open-source community become clear to you when you work as its part.

Developers and other contributors unite their efforts to help Drupal shine brighter, and every contribution matters in the end. It’s amazing to see how drupallers in different corners of the globe come together to suggest new features, implement improvements, write documentation, review, and test the code of Drupal projects. In most cases, this is volunteer work in which people are willing to invest their time and effort — and, most importantly, they do it with great enthusiasm. Who can doubt this community is wonderful?

As you may know, Drupal 8 is reaching end-of-life this year, and Drupal 7 will follow suit by November 2022. For this reason, Evolving Web and Pantheon will join forces for a free technical training called Best Practices for Higher Ed Drupal Migrations on September 2.

Register Now for the Free Training

In the training, we'll walk you through the mechanics of migrating your website to D9, porting your themes and modules to this new version, and the importance of planning thoroughly to implement a large migration at scale. By the end of the 3-hour training, you'll be ready to scope and prepare your upcoming migration.

This training targets mainly developers, project managers, and project leads in the higher education sector, but it also applies to any organization with Drupal-based websites. It is especially helpful if you need to migrate a big website with hundreds of pages but fear you might lack the budget or the resources to do it.

The webinar will consist of 3 sections:

• What It Means to Migrate
• The Mechanics of Migration
• Plan and Implement a Large Migration

The Value of Migrating to Drupal 9

Migrating to Drupal 9 is not only a necessity, given Drupal 7 and 8's end-of-life. It also provides managers, editors, and users with a richer experience both in the front- and back-end while retaining the features and flexibility that made Drupal the base for more than 1 million websites.

Remember: D9 is not an upgrade. Drupal 9 is still Drupal, so there's nothing to be scared of!

Besides, migrating to Drupal 9 is an opportunity to rethink and clean up your website structure, make better architectural decisions and improve user experience. And if you're a content editor, you'll find a much better editing experience with Drupal 9, with a more intuitive, user-friendly interface that takes Drupal's WYSIWYG approach to the next level.

During the training, Evolving Web will share its recent experience of completing a large Drupal migration for the University of Waterloo. Alongside Pantheon's Eric Michalsen, Evolving Web's Dharizza Espinach will discuss how the agency approached the project, the lessons they learned, and share practical advice that will simplify your Drupal migration projects.

About the Training

• What: Best Practices for Higher Ed Drupal Migrations Training Webinar
• When: September 2 @ 10am PT | 1pm ET
• Duration: 3 hours
• Cost: FREE

What You'll Learn:

• How to streamline the process for migrating hundreds of sites
• How to plan and execute a large migration project
• How to migrate themes/modules to be D9-compatible

How to Register

Sign Up Here

The Trainers

Dharizza Espinach - Drupal Trainer & Senior Backend Developer at Evolving Web

Dharizza is a Senior back-end developer with 6+ years of experience building successful Drupal projects. She also has a long-standing passion for knowledge sharing and empowering others to learn new things by providing Drupal training and speaking at international Drupal Camps.

Eric Michalsen - Customer Onboarding Manager at Pantheon

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