It’s less than two weeks to DrupalCon Portland 2024, and the excitement is building! If you’re gearing up for the biggest Drupal event of the year, we’re here to help you maximize your travel experience to Portland. Let’s dive right in!

Hotel Bookings at Great Prices

You still have a chance to book your DrupalCon Portland hotel within the official hotel block. By staying within the hotel block, you'll get the best proximity to the conference center as well as the chance to run into other Drupalists on your floor! Book now:

• Hyatt Regency Portland 
• DoubleTree by Hilton - book by Sunday 28 April

When and where is DrupalCon’24 happening in Portland?

DrupalCon North America 2024 will be held from 6th to 9th May 2024 at the Oregon Convention Center (yes, in-person!). Located right in the heart of the city, it is a perfect hub for exploration. You'll find hotels, restaurants, and shops just around the corner. It's also super easy to get to fun stuff like entertainment and hiking. With endless possibilities, you're sure to find something that suits your fancy.

Things you should NOT miss out on in Portland

May is a delightful time to be in Portland, with spring in full bloom. Enjoy the sunny weather and mild temperatures, making it the perfect season to explore the city's vibrant outdoor scene. There are several must-visit places that capture the city's unique charm.

1. Governor Tom McCall Waterfront Park

This is the perfect place to enjoy Portland's beauty while watching the river flow by. Visitors to the park can enjoy a variety of recreational activities, from leisurely strolls and picnics to jogging and biking along the paved pathways. The park also hosts numerous events throughout the year, including festivals, concerts, and outdoor markets, adding to its vibrant atmosphere.

One of the park's highlights is the Salmon Street Springs Fountain, where children and adults alike can cool off in the refreshing water jets during the warmer months. The park also features several monuments and public art installations, adding cultural and historical significance to its landscape.

Image Source: https://www.travelportland.com/attractions/governor-tom-mccall-waterfront-park/

2. Powell's City of Books

Powell's City of Books is a literary wonderland located in downtown Portland, Oregon. As the world's largest independent bookstore, Powell's spans an entire city block and boasts multiple floors filled with books of every genre imaginable. One of Powell's most unique features is its rare book room, home to a collection of rare and out-of-print titles, first editions, and signed copies that will delight bibliophiles and collectors alike.

In addition to its vast selection of books, Powell's hosts author readings, book signings, and other literary events, fostering a sense of community among book lovers from near and far.

Image Source: https://www.travelportland.com/attractions/powells/

3. Portland Art Museum

Founded in 1892, the Portland Art Museum is the oldest art museum on the West Coast and holds a rich and diverse collection of artworks spanning various time periods, cultures, and mediums. It is located in the heart of downtown Portland. One of the museum's highlights is its extensive collection of Native American art, which celebrates the rich artistic traditions of indigenous peoples from the Pacific Northwest and beyond. 

In addition to its permanent collection, the Portland Art Museum hosts rotating exhibitions that showcase both established and emerging artists, offering visitors the opportunity to engage with cutting-edge contemporary art and explore new perspectives.

Image Source: https://www.travelportland.com/attractions/portland-art-museum/

4. Voodoo Doughnut

Voodoo Doughnut is more than just a bakery; it's a Portland icon, a symbol of creativity, and a culinary experience like no other. It was founded in 2003 by friends Kenneth Pogson and Richard Shannon and has gained international fame for its wacky doughnut creations.

It is located in the heart of downtown Portland, Voodoo Doughnut draws long lines of locals and tourists, eager to sample its unique offerings. Some of the must-try snacks: Voodoo Doll doughnut, pretzel stake and raspberry filling, Bacon Maple Bar topped with crispy bacon strips. If this has got you drooling (like me), make sure you head to this place while you’re at Portland.

Image Source: https://www.travelportland.com/attractions/voodoo-doughnut/

5. Oregon Museum of Science and Industry 

The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) is a beloved institution in Portland, Oregon, dedicated to inspiring curiosity and fostering a love of science through engaging exhibits, interactive displays, and educational programs. Located on the east bank of the Willamette River, OMSI's sprawling campus encompasses a variety of attractions that cater to visitors of all ages. 

OMSI's planetarium is a highlight, where visitors can explore the wonders of the night sky, learn about astronomy and astrophysics, and take virtual journeys through space. The museum also features a state-of-the-art IMAX theater, where visitors can experience immersive films on topics ranging from nature and wildlife to history and technology.

Image Source: https://www.travelportland.com/attractions/omsi/

Find more information to plan your trip here.

One of the most impactful things to do in preparation for any migration project is to understand the source site. The more insight you gather into how the current site was built, the better equipped you will be to perform the migration.

Authored by: Nadiia Nykolaichuk.

Drupal 7 was released 13 years ago, during the Jurassic period in the world of modern software. However, as of April 2024, there are 322,700+ websites officially listed on drupal.org as still running on Drupal 7, which sadly makes it the #1 installed Drupal major core version but, luckily, this number is steadily reducing.

Welcome back to “Skills Upgrade” a Talking Drupal mini-series following the journey of a D7 developer learning D10. This is episode 8.

• Review Chad's questions

  • What is the process of creating a new issue, reviewing automated tests, and creating a merge request for review by the project maintainer?

    • https://www.drupal.org/docs/develop/git/using-gitlab-to-contribute-to-drupal
    • https://www.drupal.org/docs/develop/git/using-gitlab-to-contribute-to-drupal/creating-issue-forks
    • My example issue: https://www.drupal.org/project/smart_date/issues/3432819
    • My example merge request: https://git.drupalcode.org/project/smart_date/-/merge_requests/94

  • If we're not using Composer to pull the contrib module, how do we make sure that all dependencies are handled?

  • How can someone navigate so many complex issues without getting lost or "barking up the wrong tree"?

• Tasks for the upcoming week

  • Work toward getting the merge request accepted.
  • Document learning bullet points for this journey.

Chad's Drupal 10 Learning Curriclum & Journal Chad's Drupal 10 Learning Notes

The Linux Foundation is offering a discount of 30% off e-learning courses, certifications and bundles with the code, all uppercase DRUPAL24 and that is good until June 5th https://training.linuxfoundation.org/certification-catalog/

AmyJune Hineline - @volkswagenchick

Chad Hester - chadkhester.com @chadkhest Mike Anello - DrupalEasy.com @ultimike

While preparing the recent Markdown Easy 1.0.1 release, I utilized a couple of tools that I hadn't used before in order to help improve code quality as well as the quality of the release notes.

cspell

cspell is a Node.js spell-checker for code that was made available to the default Drupal GitLab templates in February, 2024. There is a new SKIP_CSPELL variable that can be set if you'd like your project to completely ignore cspell (it is enabled by default.) Documentation on using cspell in Drupal GitLab pipelines is available. I'd wager that most Drupal contrib maintainers will have the need for a custom word list (as I did,) so I took a few minutes to learn a bit more about it.

Cspell uses its default wordlist along with a few add-on dictionaries related to Drupal development (anecdotally, words like "mglaman," "gloop," "skynet," and "vampirize" are included) for checking the spelling of both variable names as well as code comments, but luckily, additional words (and patterns) can be added on a per-project basis in order to achieve a clean cspell report in GitLab pipelines. While there are several methods to add a list of custom words, the way I felt was most elegant (and easy for me to remember in the future!) was to add a .cspell-project-words.txt file on the project root (in this case, the contrib module is the project.) This file then includes a list of words that cspell should not flag as misspellings. For the Markdown Easy project, I went with "Anello," "~commonmark," and "~ultimike" (possibly for obvious reasons.) The ~ modifier indicates those words are case-insensitive (additional modifiers are available.) With that change, Markdown Easy now earns a passing score from the cspell pipeline. 

drupalorg CLI

drupalorg is a command-line interface maintained by (who else?) Matt Glaman. I actually learned about this tool a few years ago after Matt blogged about it, but for whatever reason, I only thought about installing and (finally) using it recently. The general idea is to provide a command line tool for contributors to interact with drupal.org. It's available commands are:

The maintainer:release-notes command is especially helpful to automatically generate release notes for a new version of a Drupal contrib project. Here's how I installed and used this tool to generate the release notes for Markdown Easy 1.0.1:

1. I downloaded the drupalorg.phar to a new ~/sites/drupalorg/ directory on my local, and renamed the file to just drupalorg.
2. I then gave execute permission to this file via chmod u+x ~/sites/drupalorg/drupalorg

3. I use zsh, so I added the following to my ~/.zshrc file and then restarted my terminal:

   # drupalorg command line tool export PATH="/Users/michael/sites/drupalorg:$PATH"
4. Here's the important part - I then navigated to my local, working copy of the Markdown Easy module. In my case cd ~/sites/d10/web/modules/contrib/markdown_easy 
5. I then ran the following command to generate the release notes: drupalorg maintainer:release-notes 1.0.0  

I assumed at first that I should use the current release (1.0.1) as the argument, but after reading the documentation, I discovered that the command will generate release notes from the tag provided in the argument.

I also originally assumed that the command would take a contrib module's machine name as an argument, but after a few minutes of poking around the documentation, I realized that the command must be run from the module's directory.

You can see the automatically generated release notes here.

Summary

Both of these tools were rather easy to implement (once I read just a little bit of documentation) and seem like they'll be useful for just about any Drupal contrib maintainer.