I was recently reminded of a Drupal core feature that I hadn't used in a long time - and was pleasantly surprised at how useful it is.

The Combine fields filter Views filter allows a site-builder to quickly and easily set up an exposed filter that searches multiple fields for a given search term. Think of it as a way to combine multiple exposed search filters into a single search box.

Setting it up is quite easy - just include all the fields that you want to search in the Fields section, marking them with Exclude from display as necessary (Unfortunately, Combine fields filter doesn't work with view modes.)

Then, add and expose a Combine fields filter to the view, and configure it to use all the fields you want searchable in the Choose fields to combine for filtering section of the filter's configuration:

I created a simple example of a Movie content type with example fields including Title, Image, Plot summary, Spoilers, Year of release, Short description, Taglines, and Trivia. I added all of these fields to the Fields configuration of the view - with all of them hidden except for Title and Image.

Next, I added a Combine fields filter as described above, selecting all of the fields to be combined for filtering. Finally, I added a few sample Movie nodes.

To test things out, I searched for terms that were added as part of the various Movie content type fields (but purposely not words in the Title fields). The results were exactly what I was expecting!

In the first example, the word biff appears in the Plot summary field for Back to the Future. 

There are a few caveats when using Combine fields filter with one of the more impactful being that when utilizing a multivalued field (as the Trivia and Taglines fields are in the previous example), the Multiple field settings configuration cannot utilize the Display all values in the same row option. Fortunately, these fields are usually excluded (hidden) from search views like this. 

Network, Learn, and Collaborate - The three key motivations for individuals and organizations to participate in conferences. Every regular conference has a theme or niche that serves as a focal point for discussions and advancement. These events serve as stages for personal branding and business promotion, with attendees aiming to gain insights and contacts that directly benefit their individual goals and organizational interests. 

Although open-source events rely on these key motivations too, they have a unique flavor of community spirit and collaboration that’s not found in traditional conferences. Open source events like DrupalCons thrive on shared knowledge, transparent innovation, and a sense of collective growth.

What is DrupalCon? 

DrupalCon is an annual open-source conference that brings together open-source enthusiasts, developers, designers, and end users for networking, learning, and collaboration, all under one roof. This is where you can meet the people who made the software, get inspired, and actively contribute to the project. The next upcoming DrupalCon North America event is being held in Portland, Oregon, from 06 May 2024 to 09 May 2024. We’ll give you some reasons why you should attend open-source events like DrupalCon 2024.

Benefits of Attending Open Source Conferences 

An open-source enthusiast knows that events like DrupalCons are celebrations of community-driven innovation. The energy is contagious, the ideas are limitless, and the camaraderie extends beyond the conference halls. 

Spirit of Open-Source

Open source is almost synonymous with collaboration. Collaboration by contributors who are the heartbeat of any open-source project. These events provide a platform for individuals and organizations to come together, contribute to the community, and drive the future of open source. It aligns with the open-source commitment to empowering innovation through the collective efforts of a vibrant and engaged community. In an event like DrupalCon, you get a chance to meet people who are passionate about Drupal and driving it forward. 

Career Boost

If you're launching your career or contemplating a switch to something more fulfilling, few experiences rival the rewards of joining an open-source community. And there’s no better place to kick off this journey than an open-source conference. You’re not just exploring job opportunities but also gaining the knowledge you need from training sessions and meaningful interactions with seasoned experts. You can also upgrade your skills through hands-on workshops and interactive sessions at the event. At DrupalCon, you can always find support if you’re new to the world of Drupal or Open source. A mentor will help guide you through your entire experience by suggesting what sessions you should attend for your professional development. You can even learn to make your first contribution to the project through your mentor.

Spot the Trend

Want to know what’s new in your area of interest? Open-source conferences are the best places to identify emerging trends, innovations, and shifts in the industry - much before they become mainstream! You come out well-equipped with insights into upcoming technologies and initiatives. This will not only help you in your professional development but also enable you to contribute meaningfully to innovative projects. All of this ultimately leads to improved user experiences and future-ready applications. At DrupalCon, immerse yourself in firsthand insights as Dries Buytaert, the founder himself, shares the current state of Drupal in his keynote (DriesNote). Discover upcoming initiatives and innovation on the horizon, and get a sneak peek into the exciting developments set to launch. 

The Power of Open Source Networking

We all know how powerful networking can be for your career or business development. But for an open-source community, networking is an indispensable aspect. It's impossible to have a successfully operating community without networking. Open-source events let you connect with like-minded individuals, developers, agencies, and contributors, fostering potential collaboration. Get mentorship, guidance, and exposure to new opportunities to aid your professional growth. Attend DrupalCon to connect with thousands of open-source enthusiasts and build meaningful connections with professionals just like you. Programs like BoFs (Birds of a Feather) at DrupalCon let you exchange information and share best practices around a common topic of interest. Make DrupalCon your opportunity to grow.

Real-World Learning

Learning from real-world scenarios truly refines your understanding of technology and innovation. Attending industry summits at open-source conferences is a great way to gain practical insights from industry leaders. It’s a chance to understand the real-world challenges faced by them and the practical solutions implemented. Through live demos, case studies, and applications, you can see the ropes in action. Industry summits often highlight the methodologies that are proving successful in the current landscape, providing actionable takeaways. DrupalCon has a full day dedicated to industry summits like the higher educational summit, non-profit summit, government summit and community summit. 

Final Thoughts

Whether it's networking opportunities, hands-on learning, or trend forecasting, open-source conferences offer a holistic approach to staying on top of ever-changing technologies. They contribute to the collective growth of the entire open-source community. It's an investment in continuous learning, professional enrichment, and the boundless possibilities of open collaboration. Did we mention that DrupalCons aren't just about coding and tech talk? There's a ton of fun to be had too! Take a look at the social events from last year. 

Drupal has done something unique with contributing to open source. Our community has made contributing to the open source project a marketing opportunity for organizations using Drupal. Generally, contributing to open source projects reflects at the individual level. There isn't a great way to reflect if the individual did it out of some intrinsic value to improve open source or by sponsored work with their employer or a customer. As far as I know, Drupal is the only open source project providing this kind of attribution.

The React team proposes a new way to improve page load speed and reduce TTI—the time it takes a page to become fully interactive.

***

One of the ways to improve website performance is to reduce traffic from the server to the user’s (client’s) device. The client-server architecture is essentially the queue of requests and responses between the client and the server, which in turn accesses the database.

Gradually, web development began to take on other tasks, such as where and how to cache the page or mark it up for SEO so that it could later go live and work for the user, or what part of the page rendering could be done by the client or by the server.

Eventually, there were developers who took the React library, built the Next framework around it, proposed the principle of Server-Side Rendering (or SSR) along with the framework.

Not all choices are created equal. On a web development project, leaders are faced with thousands of decisions, but only a handful of those fundamentally impact the entire project and post-launch success of the website. As a digital project manager, I serve clients by focusing their attention on highly impactful choices and offering informed guidance to achieve their goals. One key choice on every Drupal website redesign project is how editors will build pages on the new website, and my consistent guidance is to go with Mercury Editor.

What is Mercury Editor?

Mercury Editor is a drag-and-drop content editing module that we built for Drupal 9 and 10 websites. It allows Drupal site managers the freedom to implement anything from standardized, form-like content types to blank canvas pages with dozens of component options.

Why is Mercury Editor the best option for Drupal projects?

What you see is what you get

Have you ever had to work through sheer guesswork? Trying to envision in your mind’s eye how something is going to line up, but never able to see it happening in real time? If you manage content in a Drupal site, the answer is probably yes! Mercury Editor finally gives editors a way to see what they’re building as they’re building it, on both desktop and mobile scales. Honestly, if the list ended here, it would still be enough for Mercury to be my go-to recommendation.

It’s easy to learn

Clients commonly underestimate how much effort is required to get their new site’s content ready for launch – it is truly a second major project running in parallel to the site build itself. Not only does it take time for a team to create, translate, and build dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of pages of content, but it also asks the client team to learn a new page-building tool at the same time.

Mercury Editor relieves this pressure simply by being easy to learn. Once you see how to add any new component, that immediately scales up to any other component on any content type. Using the plus button to add new components or dragging them around the page just makes sense. Choosing an intuitive tool means that instead of struggling to know how to do their important work before launch, they can just focus on doing it.

It creates a sustainable post-launch site

Mercury has little-to-no ongoing maintenance needs, no licensing fees or restrictions, no limits on pages created, and it removes the need for developers to help make new pages or page edits down the road. A single, non-technical user can realistically maintain an entire website’s content after a short primer on how to use Mercury.

Flexible or formulaic – it supports the right level of complexity for you

A robust technical application like Drupal needs a page-building tool that can hang with it. Mercury offers a lot of knobs we can dial up or down to give different teams the level of flexibility that is right for them. Want to avoid decision paralysis or differing layouts across similar types of content? Go simpler. Want to give more creative freedom to editors? Expand the options. Mercury can do both within a single design philosophy.

For large teams that want a consistent look across editors, Mercury Editor allows us to:

• create predefined layout templates as an instant starting point for editors
• dial back on multi-column layout options
• restrict which components can be placed on a content type

For small teams that want more creative freedom, Mercury allows us to:

• create different components for use in different contexts
• let editors select rules and filters for dynamic components within the interface without needing a developer
• offer complex section and multi-column options
• use components in unexpected ways without breaking the look and feel of the site

Streamline your Drupal project with Aten

I’m a project manager. I know how choices impact the time, budget, and success of a website redesign project. Choosing a page-building tool that the Aten team is intimately familiar with is going to save your project time and money and will result in a design that leans into the tool used to implement it in the end.

Our team speaks Mercury – Aten’s clients benefit from our team’s experience working with this Drupal editor, and they begin to learn the editing experience themselves early in the project. Our design team knows what Mercury can do and how to create the best post-launch editor experience from the very first conversation of the project.

It’s a reflection of Aten’s values

Values matter to our clients, and they matter to us. My colleague Kathryn Sutton spoke about Aten’s organizational values in a recent webinar. Mercury Editor is another manifestation of those values in tangible, product form. It obviously embodies values like creative, productive, and collaborative. A tool that enables creative page editors to build to their vision is a natural, almost inevitable, conclusion to Aten’s core values.

What may be less obvious at first glance is how Mercury is shaped by other values like trustworthy and thoughtful. Mercury Editor is not just a tool but a commitment from Aten to the Drupal community – to support and grow Mercury Editor for years to come, with plans through Drupal 12 and beyond. By adopting this module, you adopt the assurance that we have your back.

We are not mercurial when it comes to Mercury. It matters to us, we stand behind it, and we invest heavily in its accessibility, reliability, and constant improvement.

As for the final Aten value, eager? We made Mercury Editor, and we would love to make it work for you. Get in touch about your next Drupal project, and we’ll make it happen.

Authored by: Nadiia Nykolaichuk and Leonid Bogdanovych.

Zoom is a key player in the sphere of online meetings. They have the power to dissolve geographical barriers, uniting individuals and teams across vast distances for communication and collaboration. What can be more convenient than using a robust video conferencing platform? Using it in the comfort of your own Drupal website!