Hello Readers,

Hope everyone had an amazing week! While casually scrolling through social media, I stumbled upon a random post featuring the timeless wisdom of Nelson Mandela: 

 "It always seems impossible until it's done."

 Reflecting on this, I couldn't help but relate it to my own experiences. Often, when I embark on a new task, it feels daunting and insurmountable. Yet, as I push through and complete it, I realize it wasn't as challenging as I initially imagined. I'm sure many of you can resonate with this feeling.

Often, our hesitation to take on responsibilities stems from a fear of making mistakes. This brings to my mind the words of Ruth Cheesley, the Project Lead of Mautic. 

"The hardest thing to do is to raise your hand and say 'I’d like to help,' so jump over that hurdle and see where it takes you!"

Ruth engaged in an email correspondence with me prior to India's first and APAC region's largest Mautic Conference, MautiCon India 2024. The interview delves into her journey from beneficiary to influential contributor within the open-source community. Sharing insights into her path, she recounts pivotal moments that led her to Mautic and discusses the project's evolution, community engagement, and future aspirations. 

As someone who lives with disbility and has gulped down many harsh experiences, Ruth with her ethos motivates us to challenge ourselves to overcome this fear and embrace opportunities to contribute. You never know where it might lead you!

Now, let's shift our focus and explore some of the latest news stories and articles we covered last week.

Alka Elizabeth discussed the newly developed Contribution Health Dashboard with Alex Moreno in a comprehensive interview. Alex discusses CHD development, technological underpinnings, and potential impact on the global diversity of the Drupal community. Discover the challenges faced, future steps, and how the Drupal community can contribute to the dashboards' enhancement with this conversation.

The DropTimes is embarking on a special project aimed at gathering insights directly from individuals within the Drupal community and its users. Your perspectives will play a crucial role in shaping a series of articles titled "Drupal's Innovation and Future: 2024 and Beyond." In our inaugural article, authored by Kazima Abbas, we engage with a variety of experts to delve into the challenges and opportunities present within the Drupal ecosystem.

An article by Irina Zaks, Co-Founder & CTO of Fibonacci Web Studio, published in TDT, delves into the topic of managing ambitious projects with limited budgets, specifically focusing on the transition from Drupal 7 to Backdrop CMS and streamlining the migration process for site-builders.

Kazima Abbas reached out to the organizers of the upcoming Drupal Delhi Meetup Group scheduled for February 24, 2024, to delve into what participants can anticipate at the event. Additionally, this weekend features one more notable gathering: Florida DrupalCamp 2024, happening from February 23rd to 25th.

Drupal enthusiasts are invited to participate as Scholarship Mentors for DrupalConPortland, offering support and guidance to scholarship recipients throughout the DrupalCon experience. Stay updated with this week's Drupal events by checking the published list here.

Victoria Spagnolo's blog underscores a noteworthy proposal within the Drupal community: the elimination of support for Windows in production environments in Drupal 11. Learn more here. Tim Doyle, CEO of the Drupal Association, unveiled substantial improvements to the Drupal Certified Partner program, slated to be implemented on April 1, 2024. Announced on February 9, 2024, nominations are now being accepted for the 2024 Aaron Winborn Award, presented by the Drupal Community Working Group. Learn more about this here.

In a notable development, Piyush Poddar, currently leading Sales and Partnerships at Axelerant and renowned for his open-source advocacy through foundational work with the Jaipur Drupal User Group and key contributions to the Drupal Association of India, has been appointed as the newest member of the Drupal Association Board, signaling a new era of global collaboration, as confirmed by the Association earlier this week.

Alex Moreno, announced the extension of The Drupal Association's Bounty Program, which aims to foster innovation and progress within the community by streamlining contributions in essential areas and addressing long-standing challenges.
Announcing a collaborative effort, The Drupal Association and Cloud-IAM are working together to enhance Drupal.org's user experience through the implementation of a secure, GDPR-compliant KeyCloak single sign-on (SSO) system. 

Selwyn Polit's latest update to Drupal at Your Fingertips introduces a revamped interface and improved functionality, utilizing the VitePress Vite & Vue Powered Static Site Generator. To delve deeper into this update, click here.

We acknowledge that there are more stories to share. However, due to constraints in selection, we must pause further exploration for now.

To get timely updates, follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Also, join us on Drupal Slack at #thedroptimes.

Thank you,

Sincerely
Elma John
Sub-editor, TheDropTimes.

MidCamp Needs You!

We need you!

If you've been looking for non-code opportunities to give back to the Drupal community, we have the perfect solution! Volunteer to help out at MidCamp 2024.  

We’re looking for amazing people to help with all kinds of tasks throughout the event including: 

Setup/Teardown

• For setup, we need help making sure registration is ready to roll, getting hats ready to move, and getting the rooms and walkways prepped for our amazing sessions.

• For teardown, we need to undo all the setup including packing up all the rooms, the registration desk, cleaning signage, and making it look like we were never there.

Registration and Ticketing

• We need ticket scanners, program dispersers, and people to answer questions.

Session Monitors

• Help us to count heads, introduce the speakers and make sure they have what they need to thrive, and help with the in-room A/V (by calling our Fearless Leader / A/V Genius)

Choose Your Own Adventure

• We won't turn away any help, so if there's something you'd like to do to help, just let us know!

Every volunteer will receive credit on Drupal.org, so be sure to include your profile name when you sign up to volunteer.

If you’re interested in volunteering or would like to find out more, please reach out to the #volunteers channel on the MidCamp Slack.

There will be a brief, online orientation leading up to the event to go over the volunteer opportunities in more detail. 

Questions?

tweet: @midcamp
email: info@midcamp.org

Do volunteers still need a ticket?

Yes. While we appreciate your help, we still ask volunteers to purchase a ticket. We have flexible ticket options for you to choose from. As a volunteer you'll also get dibs on the MidCamp Archives... our seemingly endless box of vintage swag.

Crafting the digital landscape has never been more intuitive than with Drupal's Entity API. Developers wield the power to forge bespoke content types and intricately weave data relationships for these types, all effortlessly. 
This is not just a system; it has a lot of capabilities and a comprehensive API that makes the art of form creation, data validation, configuration, and even the orchestration of routes. The web realm becomes a canvas for innovation, and Drupal stands as the master artist's palette, inviting exceptional content and curating unparalleled web experiences. 
For enterprises seeking the zenith of scalability, adaptability, and impregnable security, Drupal stands tall, its architecture a bastion of strength, integration as seamless as an artist's brushstroke. Ready to embark on your digital odyssey with us, the Golems team? 

Note: this is a refresh of an old article I wrote in my previous life as a Technical Solutions Manager in Acquia. The old approach uses Drush, while the 2024 version is much faster to set up and easy to use through the Drupal UI. Read the old article in Acquia.com (Thanks Jenn Shramek, Sylvie Tse and Randy Fay to help me find this lost content)

Are you ready to bid adieu to Drupal 7 and embrace the possibilities of Drupal 10+? The transition may seem daunting, but fear not, because I'm here to guide you through the process of migrating from the aging Drupal 7 to the modern Drupal 10+. 

While there are countless technical articles detailing the intricacies of migrating, I'm here to shed light on a crucial aspect often overlooked - building the infrastructure to seamlessly transition from Drupal 7 to Drupal 10+.

I´m assuming you already have a Drupal 7 site (what are you doing here if not?). The first step in this journey then is to create a new Drupal 10+ site that will serve as the destination for your migration.

Let´s create your new Drupal 10+ site

First, let’s create the Drupal 10+ site, where all the content, content types, and configurations from Drupal 7 will eventually reside. Follow these steps:

• Create a new directory for your Drupal 10+ site, for instance, alexmoreno-drupal10.
• Navigate to this directory.
• Use DDEV to configure the project, specifying the project type as Drupal 10+ and the document root as web. 
• ddev config --project-type=drupal10 --docroot=web --create-docroot

Next, we’ll install Drupal 10+ using Composer. If you have questions or you get stuck here I would recommend you to visit the excellent quickstart guide at https://ddev.readthedocs.io/en/latest/users/quickstart/#drupal. 

Install the modules you need to execute the migration

Now, visit http://drupal10.ddev.site/admin/modules to install the necessary modules:

• Migrate Drupal UI, 
• Migrate Drupal, 
• and Migrate.

Connect the machines (Drupal 7 and Drupal 10+ containers)

To connect to the Drupal 7 database from within the Drupal 10 container, you are going to need the urls of the Drupal 7 container, and in particular, the database url. While  ddev status will give you those URLs and passwords, what is not telling is the url to connect from an external service, in this case, another Docker container.

The good Randy Fay pointed me in the right direction. The trick is described here: https://ddev.readthedocs.io/en/latest/users/usage/faq/#can-different-projects-communicate-with-each-other So, in order to connect from outside of the container you just need to use this as the url: ddev-projectname-db

For example, in my case my project is called alexmorenotdotnet. Then the database url will be: ddev-alexmorenotdotnet-db

Migrate

That's it, let's do it. Now simply quick off the migration and, evoilá, in a few minutes you should have a shiny brand new Drupal 10+ site.

While this migration process may seem straightforward, as the Drupal 7 site that I used was pretty simple, it lays the groundwork for more complex migrations. For those seeking advanced options, tools like Acquia Migrate Accelerate, now open-source, offer additional capabilities.

Wrapping up

Ready to take the leap? The decision has been made. You're moving on from your trusted Drupal 7 site to embrace Drupal 10+ with enthusiasm. But how do you manage two sites in parallel to test your migrations? Enter DDEV.

DDEV simplifies the process by allowing you to:

• Start one instance: Spin up your Drupal 7 and Drupal 10+ instances concurrently.
• Run the migration: Execute and test your migrations on the Drupal 10+ instance while keeping the Drupal 7 site running for reference and comparison.

With DDEV, transitioning from Drupal 7 to Drupal 10+ becomes not just manageable but efficient.

In conclusion, as you bid farewell to Drupal 7 and embark on the journey to Drupal 10+, remember that the process is not just about migrating data but also about setting up the infrastructure that supports seamless migration and testing.

This technique allows you to communicate between two containers, Drupal 7 and Drupal 10+. However this can be applied to a lot of other scenarios, like for example building a decoupled site where you need to connect two boxes with your frontend and your backend.

Are you ready to make the move? Share your thoughts in the comments below or contact me through Linkedin, Twitter or Mastodon.

Related links

Acquia Migrate Accelerate
https://www.acquia.com/products/drupal-cloud/acquia-migrate-accelerate

Acquia Migrate Accelerate tutorial
https://ddev.com/blog/drupal7-drupal9-migration-ddev-acquia-migrate-accelerate/

Retrofit
https://mglaman.dev/blog/protect-your-investment-drupal-7-retrofit-drupal
 

We embark on a journey, guided by a Tugboat, through the evolving landscape of Drupal development. This episode of the Lullabot Podcast dives deep into the world of Tugboat's seamless integration on Drupal.org. It's a pivotal tool that's redefining the paradigms of building, testing, and deploying Drupal projects.