SystemSeed’s top picks from DrupalCon Europe 2022 in Prague

Our team member’s most memorable conference sessions, and why they liked them

Tamsin Fox-Davies Wed, 10/05/2022 - 11:10

Prague, perhaps the most beautiful city in Europe, was host to the annual Drupal conference DrupalCon this year! After two online editions because of the pandemic, it was finally time for an in person conference! What better place than the home of pilsener :D ? After a very long queue in Schiphol Airport, we were on our way... Day 1 The first day started with the traditional contribution session and then the conference kicked off with the Opening Ceremony and a keynote speech from the core initiative leads. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13hyoDAFP9EAfter an…

This year my session on the Form API workflow was selected for DrupalCon Prague. I was thrilled when I received the message that it had been selected, as to be honest, I have proposed the session at least four times (for Drupal Dev Days and the previous DrupalCons). Ever since I drew the Drupal 7 Form API workflow illustration years ago, I wanted to create a new one for Drupal 8, but I didn't find the time, so I decided to submit it to a Drupal event. Having a deadline is always a great push to do something.

The Drupal Form API illustration

As developers living in a Western Country, a lot of us are used to build websites for left-to-right languages only and, depending on your clients and their markets, chances are high you might never have to worry about any other directional concept – until you suddenly do.

Configuring the Drupal 9 Metatag Module - A Brief Guide Shefali Shetty 04 Oct, 2022 Subscribe to our Newsletter Now Subscribe Leave this field blank

Meta tags are often underrated. Sure, they are not visible on your page up front but they are those hidden ninjas that can elevate your SEO game. These modest snippets of text that describe your page can turn out to be invaluable. Information in the meta tags can appear in the search engine results, browser tab, and social media posts. The Drupal 9 Metatag module helps site builders dynamically create and manage these metadata (or meta) tags for each of their web pages through an interactive admin interface (and no code!).

With the Drupal Metatag module, you can provide structured metadata and even customize meta tag elements. Meta elements are tags used in HTML or XHTML documents to provide structured metadata about a web page. They are part of a web page's head section. Multiple meta elements with different attributes can be used on the same page. Let's dive in and learn how to improve your website’s SEO ranking by setting up the Metatag module the right way.

Configuring the Drupal 9 Metatag Module

Meta tags can specify a web page's title, description, keywords, and any other metadata not provided through the other head elements and attributes. You need to add meta tags in the head section of your Drupal 9 pages for the title, description, keywords, Twitter card, and Facebook open-graph - to make your website SEO friendly. Download and install the module here.

With the Drupal Metatag module, we can configure:

• Meta tags for the home page(front page)
• Meta tags for a Content-type
• Meta tags for view pages

Let’s discuss more on configuring the Metatag module for each one of them.

Configuring Drupal 9 Meta tags for the Home page

After installing the module, you can edit global configurations at /admin/config/search/metatags. Set the global configuration for the front page. Click on Edit to get into the details.

Drupal 9 Metatag - Configuration for Frontpage

Enter the Page Title, Description, Abstract, and Keywords.

Drupal 9 Metatag - Configuration for Frontpage

Page Title

This snippet is useful not only to search engines but also to your users. It appears in the title bar of your web page and should not exceed 55 characters. It also acts as a title for when your web page is bookmarked.

Description

Enter a brief description of your website. Make sure that the description does not exceed 150 characters because search engines won't display more than that on a results page. If you don't have either field filled out, Google will decide what to display without any input from you. It can be very helpful to write up a snappy description for your content here.

Abstract

Enter a brief Abstract (Optional). Again, keep it to fewer than 150 characters but instead of something snappy, try to be as plainly descriptive as possible.

Keywords

Enter a comma-separated list of keywords relevant to your website.

Advanced Settings and Custom Meta tags

There are some important elements here that were previously handled by code.

Drupal 9 Metatag - Advanced Settings

Robots

Normally, if you want to block or allow search engines from indexing a page or disallow search engines to display cached copies or descriptions of your page, you would edit the site-wide Robots.txt file. Here, you can control all of it and more with the Robots meta tag by checking/unchecking the various indexing options it provides.

News Keywords

This Meta tag is exclusively used by Google News, which uses comma-separated keywords as inputs.

Rights

Any details about copyright or trademarks that you might have, should go here.

Image

This one is also relatively new and can be handy for telling social networks which image they should use with a post.

Canonical URL

Canonical URLs are very useful for dealing with duplicate content issues. This is something that is often a problem on e-commerce sites where product listings are duplicated on multiple pages. The Metatag module does a good job of handling this by default.

Shortlink URL

This element acts as an alternative to link shorteners. In Drupal they usually come out looking something like this:

Original Source

This tag is also something that Google came up with, this time to help identify the original source of content. This one may be particularly useful for news sites, but can be safely ignored by most.
Once you have updated all the fields, save your settings.

Configuring Drupal 9 Meta tags for a Content type

To configure meta tags for a content type, you will need to edit global configurations at /admin/config/search/metatags and set the global configuration for Content. Click on Edit to get into the details. If you want to add different metatags for different content types, click on the “Add default Meta tags” link on the top left corner of the page. Select the content type you wish to add metatag to and click on Save and configure.

Drupal 9 Metatag - Configuration for Content types

 

Drupal 9 Metatag - Configuration for Content type: Article

The content type will be listed in the Meta tags screen. The above screenshot shows the content type ‘Article’. Click on Edit to add metatags.

Enter Page Title, Description, Abstract, and other necessary settings. Follow the same procedure as mentioned above in configuring metatags for the front page.

Configuring Drupal 9 Meta tags for View pages

Enable “Metatag: Views” module which is a sub-module of the metatag module.

Drupal 9 Metatag - Configuration for Views

Edit global configurations at /admin/config/search/metatags. Click on override to get into the details.
To add the meta tags in view go to the views edit screen and click on the meta tags link.

 

 

The above setting is the default setting for the view page.

Final Thoughts

The Drupal 9 Metatag module is a powerful amalgamation of various individual modules that aims at lowering manual coding to configure meta tags. Modules like the Page Title, Open graph Meta tags, Easy Meta, Refresh, and more are now merged into the Metatag module. It also provides multilingual support, can override meta tags based on entity objects, supports editorial workflows, and much more. As a leading Drupal development company, we implement best practices both in strategy and coding that can help you achieve project success. Starting a new Drupal project? Talk to our Drupal experts today to find out how we can help.

Author: Shefali Shetty

​​Meet Shefali Shetty, Director of Marketing at Specbee. An enthusiast for Drupal, she enjoys exploring and writing about the powerhouse. While not working or actively contributing back to the Drupal project, you can find her watching YouTube videos trying to learn to play the Ukulele :)

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This year, the BADCamp is hosting two training sessions. The first day will see 'Getting Started with Drupal' by Tearyne, and the next day will see Decoupling Drupal using GraphQL & Gatsby: A Crash Course by Jesus.

This year, BAD Camp is hosting five different summits, one being a virtual summit.

Today we are talking about Not Gaming the Credit System with Tim Lehnen.

For show notes and more information visit: www.talkingDrupal.com/367

Topics

• Episode 361
• Who governs credit
• What is “Gaming the System”
• What is the motivation to game the system
• What are the penalties
• How is the Credit System used
• How big of a problem is this
• Why is this a difficult problem
• Mike Herchel’s blog post
• First time contributions
• What to do if you see issues

Resources

• Helping Maintain High Value Drupal Contributions
• To participate in the discussion
• Talking Drupal - 361 Drupal Credit System
• Talking Drupal #265 - People Powered

Hosts

Nic Laflin - www.nLighteneddevelopment.com @nicxvan John Picozzi - www.epam.com @johnpicozzi Tim Lehnen - @hestenet

MOTW

Facets The Facet module allows site builders to easily create and manage faceted search interfaces. In addition to the UI components that come out of the box, themers and module developers can build their own widgets that can optionally be contributed back to Drupal.org. Facets work with Drupal Core Search and Search API, meaning that code and configuration can be reused as-is with the most popular search solutions available to Drupal.

Building websites for universities and colleges comes with a unique set of challenges. Unlike most organizations, higher education institutions are not singular entities but constellations composed of faculties, institutes, departments, administrative units, and ad hoc entities and initiatives. Many of these distinct components have their own set of audiences and functional requirements as well as a shared need for brand uniformity.

Furthermore, a post-secondary institution’s web presence is as important as its campus grounds in terms of how the world perceives it, and its websites need to be up-to-date and modern-looking to compete effectively in the global marketplace.

Higher education websites also pose unique challenges from a content management standpoint. University and college websites typically have significant legacy content that needs to be carried over from previous sites. They also may have dozens or even hundreds of people, from instructors to support staff, who need to create and post content every semester – people who may have had minimal CMS training.

Add in budgetary constraints and timelines dictated by the rhythms of the academic year, and you have a recipe for a challenging environment in which to run digital projects.

Which CMS is Best for Higher Education?

In our work with universities and colleges across North America, Evolving Web has focused on two content management systems: Drupal and WordPress. As the CMS of choice for 71% of the world’s top 100 universities, Drupal is best suited to the complexities that often exist in the post-secondary context. We address how well Drupal is suited to higher education websites in this blog post.

Institutional websites like those used in higher education typically need robust and customizable search interfaces that can integrate third-party systems such as those used for course catalogues. They also often require a multi-site architecture and integration with third-party marketing and identity management tools. For such sites, Drupal is the clear choice for a CMS. Among its advantages are:

• Security 
• Composable solutions
• Out-of-the-box search engine optimization functionality
• Built-in functionality for content editing, search, user access, multilingualism and contact pages
• Design flexibility that gives authors quick page building and editing tools
• Ability to customize the integration of a wide range of third-party APIs including single sign-ons, course catalogues and more

However, for simpler sites with less robust current and future requirements, WordPress’ simplicity and ease of use are advantageous.

WordPress has block editing tools that enable users to easily create interesting content layouts. The CMS is intuitive for site authors and editors, and widely used, therefore requiring only minor training. 

Both platforms are open source, meaning that best practices tend to be shared amongst higher education institutions, which provides a huge advantage over proprietary options.

Have you Outgrown your CMS?

Institutions change. They expand, become more complex and outgrow their original digital homes. So what might have started as a simple site befitting WordPress might come to benefit from Drupal’s features. 

These are some signs that the CMS you are using might no longer be fit for the job you’re asking of it:

• You’ve reached a point where your technical maintainers cannot push the system further.
• Your site lacks accessibility or fails to hold up to increased SEO expectations. 
• You cannot update your content in real-time.
• You have form but lack functionality.
• You have functionality but lack form, leading to a lack of consistency and brand compliance.

How To Get The Most Out of Your CMS

Higher education institutions ask a lot from their content management systems. Your typical university or college website is an amalgam of new and archival content aimed at a wide range of audiences – current and prospective students, faculty and staff, administrators, alumni, donors and others – and often maintained by a large team of content creators.

Higher education CMSs are liable to get messy quickly unless the right structures are established at the start.

At Evolving Web, we build websites with the expectation that they will continue to be relevant for years after they launch. The philosophy is that the client team will have the ability and tools to update the content and structure as needed throughout the website’s lifecycle. However, most websites don’t last that long, with research showing that the average site lasts around two years and seven months according to Orbit Media. Whether or not your site outlives this average depends on the robustness of the original design and whether it’s set up in a sustainable way.

Optimization Strategies

Here are six strategies that higher education institutions can use to get the most out of their CMS and ensure the longest possible lifespan for their investment:

1. Have a short- and long-term management and maintenance plan for keeping information current and relevant. Planning a content strategy in parallel with the site solution is an invaluable investment of time and energy. Crafting a digital marketing and communications strategy that encompasses the web and other digital tools can help outline roles and responsibilities and organize the types and categories of new content. For more on this, read our blog post on content governance.
2. Involve the people who will be using your website early on in the process. The people who will be updating and using the site should be involved in the conversations on design and user experience right from the start. In addition to empowering them early on with knowledge of the CMS, it will also give the web management team a sense of ownership and encourage sound management of web resources.
3. Ensure your software is always up to date. Falling behind on CMS upgrades means guaranteed headaches down the road, costing organizations time and money. Regular updates will keep your site safe, secure and running smoothly.
4. Minimize custom code. The flexibility of Drupal, in particular, means little need for custom coding. As a rule, the most customization you put into a site, the harder it becomes to maintain. If you require customization, it is advisable to turn to the original developer rather than to improve an in-house solution that will make the CMS more complex.
5. Ensure that content is properly and consistently tagged. Universities and colleges have a wide range of audiences, and these audiences have particular content needs. A failure to properly categorize content within the CMS through tagging is a guaranteed path to a messy site that fails to deliver content to its intended audience. It also limits your options for creating dynamic search and personalization features in the future.
6. Hire a team that is reputed to deliver quality solutions. Since 2007, Evolving Web has helped organizations big and small unlock the full potential of their content management system. This includes many higher education institutions, including Princeton, Emory, McGill, Waterloo and many others. 

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