Welcome to our latest newsletter, where we embark on an exciting exploration of creativity and its transformative influence. Creativity is the spark that ignites innovation, shaping our world and driving positive change. This edition delves into how embracing creativity can enrich our personal and professional lives, fostering problem-solving skills, adaptability, and resilience. Whether you're an artist, a business professional, or a developer, tapping into your creative potential can unlock boundless opportunities for growth and excellence.

Creativity knows no boundaries, and fostering a culture of innovation is vital for businesses and organizations. We'll share insights on creating a work environment that encourages out-of-the-box thinking, collaboration, and the pursuit of visionary ideas. Witness the magic unfold as creativity becomes the cornerstone of your success, propelling your team to new heights of achievement.

At the heart of this newsletter lies the powerful content management system, Drupal. Drupal empowers developers to craft exceptional digital experiences, giving them the canvas to bring their creative visions to life. Discover how Drupal's flexibility and versatility allow businesses to unleash their creativity and create websites and applications that captivate audiences and drive growth. From seamless user experiences to visually stunning designs, Drupal is where technology meets creativity.

As we celebrate the wonders of creativity, we also pay tribute to inspiring innovators and visionaries who have left an indelible mark on humanity. Throughout history, creative geniuses have reshaped the course of our world with their groundbreaking ideas and inventions. Their stories serve as a reminder of the incredible impact that creativity can have on society.

Let's delve into the news stories from TheDropTimes from the last week and explore how creativity meets technology with Drupal.

In the past week, TDT published two exclusive interviews that shed light on inspiring individuals in the Drupal community. The first interview features Jeremy Chinquist, where we delve into his project management expertise and dedication to fostering the Drupal community. The second interview introduces Nico Grienauer, CEO of Acolono and lead organizer of Drupal Developer Days 2023, Vienna. In this interview, Nico discusses the importance of non-code contributions and what to expect from Drupal Developer Day 2023.

In the pursuit of knowledge, Drupalize.me shares a comprehensive tutorial that equips Drupal site administrators with an overview of various contributed modules commonly used to monitor the performance of Drupal websites. Sparkfabrik's CTO shares insightful solutions to strengthen software supply chain security in JavaScript, Python, and microservices-based projects.

For those eager to be part of the Drupal community, DrupalCon Lille 2023 announces recipients of scholarships and grants. Learn more about the event and its exciting opportunities by clicking here. Exciting events await! Design4Drupal Boston celebrated its 15th anniversary at Salem State University from July 20-21, 2023. Click here to learn more about the event.

Pronovix shares valuable insights on the effective management of third-party dependencies in their latest blog post. Additionally, Chromatic introduces an open-source Drupal module and PHP library for seamless integration with Orange DAM. Be ahead of the curve with these game-changing innovations. Click here to know more.

Palantir.net unveils the revolutionary Drupal 10 Collaborative Text Editor, empowering developers with unprecedented customization and accessibility. Embrace the future of Drupal development with this cutting-edge tool.

Join the Spiceworks Partner Webinar on August 01 to learn how Bird's digital transformation with Drupal and Acquia revolutionized the customer experience - Click here for more information about the webinar.

Mark your calendars for D-BUG's monthly meetup in Bangalore on July 29, 2023. Explore Drupal and web tech, and network with like-minded professionals - Click here to learn more about the event.

Lastly, don't miss the insightful Future Zone Interview: Drupal Austria Chairman's Insights on Open Source Development. Embrace the spirit of open-source collaboration and gain valuable insights from industry leaders.

That's all for this week's newsletter. Stay inspired, stay creative, and let Drupal empower your innovation journey!

Kazima Abbas
Sub Editor, The Drop Times

Drupal is a great platform to create communities of users where you can allow users to create their own content and interact with each other. One way of keeping users engaged on the site is by letting them know when other users are interacting with content they have created.

This is quite a common occurrence on sites like LinkedIn or Facebook, where you will receive a notification when a user comments or likes one of your posts. The same thing can be put together in Drupal with just a few modules (and a few lines of code).

In this article I will look at how to create a notifications system that will tell users about important events that they might be interested in. We will be using as many contributed modules as possible to do this, although there will be a small PHP class involved to tie some components together.

Installing The Required Modules

The following modules are required in order to get everything working together for the notifications system.

Read more

Introducing The Dashboard Initiative

Last year, during DrupalCon Prague, Cristina approached me with an idea to include Dashboards in core. We met with Sascha, and since then a team emerged and we have been meeting more or less regularly defining how this would look like, and creating some proof of concepts.

What are we trying to solve?

When you log in to your Drupal site, you land on the /user page. There you can see how old your account on this site is. Useful, huh? Unless you have customized this behavior with contributed or custom modules, now you need to think about why you logged in, and go to wherever you can do what you wanted to do, which usually will take you several steps.

There's a big chance that this journey will start at the Content page, if you are a content manager or a content editor, but you might be a site builder, a site admin, or be responsible for other duties on your website. So we need a landing area where the content shown makes sense based on your recurring tasks. This is where customizable dashboards come into play.

Wearing multiple hats

Users often have multiple roles, or they might want to perform different tasks which might be unrelated to each other. The initial idea was to have a dedicated dashboard for each role.  That evolved into the idea that a user should have access to different dashboards, where groups of tasks and information might be grouped by their nature, not neccessarily by their role. You might wear your content manager hat one minute, and later you might need to perform some SEO duties.

So nothing should block you from having unlimited dashboards, and use the permissions system to give access to them to different roles.

Is this aligned with Drupal core goals?

Drupal Core Product Manager Lauri Eskola recently stated the three tracks were most efforts are concentrating in Drupal Core: 

• Reduce the time it takes for site builders to become proficient with Drupal.

• Empower site builders to deliver engaging editorial experiences.

• Reduce the cost of keeping Drupal applications secure.

Adding dashboards helps with the second track, enabling site builders to make editors´ lives easier by providing customized dashboards based on their editors´ needs. There would be benefits to the other two tracks as well. Having clear journeys on some common tasks for different roles will help site builders to become proficient in Drupal; and can reduce the cost of keeping Drupal applications secure if we surface the need for security updates on the dashboard and make it easy to get up to date with security updates or news from the Drupal project and the Drupal Association.

How to get this into Drupal core

When new ideas go into core, usually they are introduced as Experimental modules, and that's also our aim. Similar to other existing admin tools (like the content listing admin page) in Drupal core, our approach is based on progressive enhancement. This translates to:

• If you don't enable dashboard, you will be redirected to /user as of right now. Drupal core Standard profile cannot depend on an experimental module, so it won't be installed by default (for now).

• We will ship Dashboard module with default dashboards for common tasks in core. 
• If Layout Builder is also installed, you will be able to customize the layouts and blocks of those dashboards on the UI. 

How to get involved?

For now, we've been working in a sandbox, and we also have a GitHub project that contains an easy-to-evaluate site with some demo content, and triggers a Tugboat that we can use as demo or to manually test changes. Thanks to Tugboat.qa for providing that, and James for helping out setting it up!

If you want to help, we welcome you at the #dashboard channel on Drupal Slack.

Thanks to Gábor Hójtsy, Lauri Eskola and Cristina Chumillas for reviewing this blogpost.

Tags

• Drupal
• Drupal Core
• Drupal planet
• Dashboard Initiative

It’s been an interesting path to finding professional and personal fulfillment for the decidedly bold and curious Cindy Garcia. She graduated with a degree in biomedical engineering from Florida International University in 2012, landed a job as a Quality Assurance Engineer in the medical device industry shortly thereafter, and then realized she was more interested in, and really well suited for IT; specifically web development.  

This time of transition was not just one of wrestling with her professional journey, as she was also starting to pivot her athletic interests, explaining, “I started participating in an adult wrestling class because I wanted to enhance my jiu jitsu.”  She had been competing in Brazilian Jiu jitsu during and after college, and was preparing for additional competitions. 

She was also readying herself to move into the web development space, and so enrolled in an application architect program, which led into her first foray in web development using WordPress; quickly becoming a Wordpress site builder/SEO strategist. Turns out Wordpress, according to Cindy, has limits that made her realize it was, for her, a stepping stone and not a career destination. She was still on the hunt for the platform that would satisfy her interests, provide a challenge and offer a fulfilling career. 

 Concurrently, she explains, “a friend of mine who I practiced jiu jitsu with and was a college wrestler asked me to become a referee with her.“  She completed that program, worked and gained experience, and quickly earned a spot refereeing for USA Wrestling at venues all over the United States. 

After some considerable research, she found Drupal, and realized she had also found her professional passion, but admits “I found it very difficult to learn Drupal on my own…”  She heard about the Drupal Association’s Discover Drupal program, applied and so began her formal Drupal training when she applied and was accepted to DrupalEasy’s 12-week Drupal Career Online certificate program. 

 In addition to devouring the Drupal Career Online materials, fully engaging in class and religiously attending the DrupalEasy office hours, she connected with several Drupal mentors, for whom she clearly has boundless appreciation. “...I would have never grown as quickly as I did without their help,” she muses of Ryan Price, Darren Oh, Phil Frilling, Matt Obert and Mike Anello, who all mentored her during her Discover Drupal experience.

Once she completed the DCO, she fed her ongoing desire to learn more and advance by registering for DrupalEasy’s Professional Module Development program. It was just the course she needed to feed her hunger for coding challenges, interest in module development, as well as her love of networking and connecting with other developers. She also believes community is another key to her success, citing DrupalEasy office hours, virtual meetups, and attending a DrupalCon once a year as the most important elements of community that those new to Drupal should prioritize. 

 Additional advice she has for aspiring Drupal developers considering applying for Drupal Career Online is “Don't be afraid to ask questions; reach out to your mentors as much as you can. Network as much as you can and build your Drupal profile on drupal.org,” she says. She added, “Having good communication skills is important to be successful in Drupal. Being able to explain what the problem is, how to solve it, and how long it will take is crucial.” 

She also feels a positive mindset, even when things are tough, is a huge contributor to learning and building a Drupal career. Which, she is doing with a part-time gig at Ironistic, a full service digital agency that assists organizations with strategy consulting, website design and development, integrated marketing and hosting and maintenance services. She hopes to get into module development, with a long term goal “to write a module, get it published on drupal.org and be a module maintainer,” she explains.  

Meanwhile, through her other passion, she also now travels all over the country for USA Wrestling as a referee in the Fall/Winter season for Folkstyle and women's college Freestyle Wrestling, and during the Spring and Summer season for mostly freestyle and Greco wrestling events.

She looks back on the journey and contemplates where she is now, and can’t help but reflect on the connections that becoming a referee and her career shift to IT & Drupal have. She explains, “Wrestlers are grinders. They never quit no matter how hard something gets, and I have used that mindset to overcome my feelings of imposter syndrome.” She continues, “In less than 10 months I have worked on 4 professional Drupal sites, have two contribution credits on drupal.org and meeting credits and have attended a DrupalCon!” 

Her full schedule of sessions and events at DrupalCon Pittsburgh included DrupalEasy’s alumni-community lunch bash. Asked about her favorite part of DrupalCon, she quickly responds that it was the code sprint with “My favorite was contributing to open source because I was able to enhance my knowledge of writing single directory components.”  Adding, “I look forward to traveling to DrupalCons all over the world and deepening my knowledge of Drupal.”

Like Drupal, refereeing wrestling continues to inspire her and enrich her life. “I like that it challenges me physically, mentally, and emotionally. It challenges my decision making as well, as I always have to make split second decisions in regard to how I score the bout. I get to travel all over the country and some of my closest friends are referees.“

Her gratitude to everyone who has helped to guide her along the path to becoming a Drupal developer is evident as she adds about Discover Drupal and Drupal Career Online, “Thank you for creating this program. It added so much value to my life and changed it for the better.” 

The next Professional Module Development Course Full and Lite sessions begin soon, register here. To Learn more about the PMD join us for a mini-webinar! 

The next semester of Drupal Career Online begins soon. To be considered, apply to Drupal Career Online, and if interested in any scholarship that are available, be sure to add to the application.   

We talk with Jordan Powell about Cypress, an open-source, javascript-based testing framework.

URLs mentioned

• Cypress (open-source project) home
• Cypress.io (company) home
• Cypress Cloud
• Learn.cypress.io and getting started video 
• Jordan Powell (LinkedIn)
• Test Your Drupal Site The Easy Way: Use Cypress (Drupal session video) 
• Test-driven development with Drupal & Cypress.io (Drupal session video)
• Why Cypress Is the Core of Our Speech: Mark Shropshire | FLDC (blog post)

DrupalEasy News

• Professional module development - 15 weeks, 90 hours, live, online course.  
• Drupal Career Online - 12 weeks, 77 hours, live online, beginner-focused course.

Audio transcript

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Are you running your website on Drupal 7 and contemplating a migration to Drupal 10? As technology rapidly evolves, it's essential to stay up-to-date with the latest software versions and security enhancements.

A short video demo showing how I quickly created 4 LocalGov Drupal Microsites themes.

Join us TOMORROW, Thursday, July 20 at 1pm ET / 10am PT, for our regularly scheduled call to chat about all things Drupal and nonprofits. (Convert to your local time zone.)

In this month's informal chat, we'll be continuing last month's discussion about the Drupal 10 upgrade. Feeling stuck? Got successes or challenges to share? Got something else entirely on your mind? Feel free to share ahead of time in our collaborative Google doc: https://nten.org/drupal/notes!

All nonprofit Drupal devs and users, regardless of experience level, are always welcome on this call.

This free call is sponsored by NTEN.org and open to everyone. 

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