This summer our digital agency announced a company-wide competition called Evolve Us. It challenged our team members to ideate, research, prototype, and pitch innovative ideas—all with the goal of elevating the way we work at Evolving Web. 

We formed six multidisciplinary teams, gave them full creative licence, and set them loose!

Four weeks later, the teams pitched their ideas to our entire organization. Everyone had the opportunity to watch, ask questions, give feedback, and vote for their favourite. The members of the winning team got a bonus paid day off.

Over the coming months, we’ll work on integrating some of these ideas into the way we work. I’m excited to see how it will help our staff take ownership of improving our organization as a whole!

In the meantime, we’d love to share the six ideas with you! We’ll be publishing a series of blog posts: one for each Evolve Us pitch. We do this in the spirit of open source… and because we feel like showing off a bit!

Take a sneak peek at what’s to come below. Plus, find out where we got the inspiration for Evolve Us and why things like this are a big part of our company culture.

Why We Asked Our Team Members to Evolve Us (Maybe You Could Too?)

The inspiration for Evolve Us came from DrupalCon Pittsburgh 2023 which 14 of our team members attended. They came away buzzing with excitement after hearing the Driesnote on radical transformation and watching people pitch ideas at the DrupalCon Pitch-burgh. 

A plan was born to hold our own internal ideathon at Evolving Web! We saw it as a golden opportunity to:

• Discover ways to make our projects more efficient
• Generate the ambitious, big picture ideas that clients come to us for
• Energize team members with the chance to try something different
• Allow people from different departments to connect
• Encourage employees to develop new skills and showcase hidden talents
• Show every team member that their input matters
• Let everyone shine and flaunt their creativity!
• Embrace the open source ideals that our organization was founded on: collaboration, knowledge sharing, and continuous improvement

Evolve Us is one of many initiatives that keep our team members engaged at Evolving Web. There’s also internal training, mentorship, weekly knowledge sharing sessions, and opportunities to attend events—to name a few! Learn more about joining our team. 

Just a few members of our 80+ strong team.

Explore the Evolve Us Pitches

Here’s an overview of the six amazing pitches presented by the Evolve Us teams. 

Over the coming weeks we’ll publish a blogpost on each pitch and reveal the winner! Sign up for our newsletter to stay in the loop. 

Creating a Unified Component Library With Storybook 

To be published

Component libraries help us hit the ground running and save us from reinventing the wheel each time we build a website. This Evolve Us team identified a gap between the components our designers see in Figma and those available to our developers. The team aims to streamline collaboration between our teams by creating a unified library of components with Storybook.

Doing More With SiteDiff 

To be published

SiteDiff is a tool that crawls plain HTML and is useful for comparing content. Our team currently uses it to validate migrations and upgrades, and to search a website for bugs. This Evolve Us team proposed improving and extending SiteDiff’s functionality. How? By making it pluggable! 

Developing an AI Research Tool for Proposals

To be published

Our RFP team works hard to understand and address a prospective client's needs. This Evolve Us team suggested streamlining the process using an AI-driven tool. They evaluated existing tools and pitched the concept for our own—a tool developed by RFP teams, for RFP teams.

“I enjoyed meeting with and interacting with other team members who I normally don't work with.” 

- Brittany Hambleton, Proposal Writer

Creating a Central Dashboard for Projects

To be published

Evolving Web uses an internal Wiki and Google Drive to store, share, and organize files. This Evolve Us team identified their need for a single source of truth for all stages of a project. They pitched a Project Dashboard that will bring together files, templates, and links in one place, provide clear progress measures and metrics, and allow for more accountability. 

Integrating Redmine, JIRA, and Slack

To be published

Our organization uses Slack to talk to each other and Redmine to track time usage and issues. Some of our teams also use Jira to better integrate with our clients’ development teams. This Evolve Us team proposed setting up integrations between these tools to help our team work and communicate more effectively. 

“Brainstorming was very cool. It was great seeing managers, testers, and developers working together on the development of the idea.” 

- Iskandar Mamadnazaroc, Front-End Developer

Enhancing Drupal’s Layout Builder Module 

To be published

Layout Builder is a powerful module in Drupal core that provides a visual drag-and-drop page-building tool. But there are opportunities to make this tool even easier to use. This Evolve Us team pitched several solutions to take Layout Builder to the next level for content editors, developers, and the Drupal community as a whole. 

Find Out Who Won the Evolve Us Competition!

Stay tuned as we publish deep-dives into the individual Evolve Us pitches and reveal who won. Sign up for our newsletter to have them sent straight to your inbox, along with loads more valuable content!

Explore Careers at Evolving Web

We’re often on the lookout for talented, innovative, enthusiastic professionals to join our team. Could you evolve us and your career at Evolving Web? Find out by learning more about what we do and how we do it.

On today’s show we are talking about The Drupal Coffee Exchange, How it got started, and How it keeps going with guest AmyJune Hineline.

For show notes visit: www.talkingDrupal.com/413

• What’s new with AmyJune
• What is the Drupal Coffee Exchange
• How did it start
• Who started it
• Where was the first Drupal Coffee Exchange
• How do you participate
  • Live
  • Mail
• How is it live
• Does it have to be ground or whole bean
• Listener question: Stephen - How can it be added to a camp
• What was your favorite coffee received
• What was your favorite coffee given
• John’s first experience
• Brick of Shame
• When is the next Coffee Exchange
• Where is the schedule
• Favorite type of coffee

• Our friends at the Linux Foundation are offering Talking Drupal Listeners 25% off on any e-learning course, certification exam or bundle. Good from August 22-Sept 30, 2023. With discount code LFDrupal25 … Please note Bootcamps, ILTs and FinOps courses are excluded.
• Join the Quarterly Coffee Exchange:
• Coffee Exchange Slack
  • #coffee-exchange
• Equator Coffee
• Spinn Coffee Maker
  • Enter the coupon code at checkout, or follow the link below to receive $100 off your Spinn. SMDNI120337 (Affiliate link)
  • https://www.spinn.com/order?code=SMDNI120337
• Vertigo
• Dave’s Coffee
• Link to Brian Perry’s Video
  • https://drupal.slack.com/files/U24L61M26/F03DEUBDPJN/image_from_ios.jpg
• https://www.brickofsha.me/
• Next stops for the Coffee Exchange:
  • DrupalCon Lille
  • Your camp!
• Drupal Coffee Exchange Social
  • Twitter @DrupalCoffee
  • Mastadon https://drupal.community/@DrupalCoffee
  • Hashtag: #DrupalCoffeeExchange

AmyJune Hineline - volkswagenchick

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Andy Blum - andy-blum.com - andy_blum

Martin Anderson-Clutz - @mandclu Coffee

• Brief description:
  • Have you ever wanted to quickly search your Drupal admin UI for the specific page you need to get to? There’s a module for that!
• Brief history
  • How old: created in Nov 2011
  • Covered as MOTW back in episode #45
  • Versions available: 8.x-1.3 (D9 & 10), 7.x-2.3
• Maintainership
  • Number of open issues: 53 open, 13 of which are bugs against the 8.x branch
  • Does have test coverage
• Usage stats:
  • Almost 31,000 sites
• Maintainer(s):
  • Michaelmol, who appears to have created the module in his first year on drupal.org, now almost 13 years ago
• Module features and usage
  • With a simple keystroke, (option-d or alt-d) you can start your search, and then see suggestions as you type
  • Can use the arrow keys to move between suggestions
  • Listeners who have used Mac apps like Alfred or Spotlight will be familiar with the experience
  • A very fast way to move between different places in your Drupal admin
  • Also includes :add as a quick way to add content of a specific type
  • Provides a hook you can use to define your own commands
  • There is a Coffee Extras module that adds more commands, but it doesn’t work with Drupal 10 and is marked as no longer developed
  • Also worth noting that the Gin admin theme comes with built-in optimization and formatting for Coffee, so you can enjoy Gin and Coffee together

In a world that thrives on speed and efficiency, time stands as an ever-present force, guiding our days and nights. As we immerse ourselves in the frenzy of productivity, it’s essential to pause and reflect on whether we’re progressing purposefully or merely caught in a whirlwind of activity, as famously echoed in the words of Leo Tolstoy, “The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.”

The paradox of our modern age is that while we may appear constantly moving, our destination often remains obscure. We equate being busy with making progress, but true accomplishment lies in the harmony between our actions and aspirations. It’s a poignant reminder that our relationship with time should be one of mindfulness and intention.

Like the need to infuse meaning into our daily lives, Drupal empowers creators to craft online experiences that align with their goals. Its versatile toolkit allows individuals to shape websites and applications with clear intent, ensuring that each digital endeavour serves a greater purpose. Drupal is thus a platform that embodies the philosophy of purposeful progression.

As you navigate the river of time, consider the currents that propel you forward. Amidst the relentless flow, remember that finding purpose is paramount. Every tick of the clock offers an opportunity to steer your journey in the desired direction. And just as the river finds its way to the sea, let Drupal guide your digital aspirations, ensuring that your online presence reflects the values and visions you hold dear.

Now, let’s dive into the latest stories covered by The Drop Times regarding Drupal.

Today, we published a long overdue interview with Drupal Commerce Guru and President & CEO of Centarro, Ryan Szrama. From the humble beginning of Ubercart to the very ambitious e-commerce distribution of Drupal Commerce, Ryan inspired us and gave confidence to premier merchants to fall upon Drupal as their desired online marketplace. He walks us through the days of Commerce Guys, the birth of platform.sh and the refocusing on the distribution itself through the establishment of Centarro. Ryan Szrama is also a member of the Drupal Association Board of Directors. Read the interview here.

Alka Elizabeth wrote a brief rundown about a 2007 forum posting on yesteryear's Drupal Modules that resurfaced on LinkedIn. It is fun to read.

We reported on a few case studies on Drupal upgrades last week. Valuebound is talking about a migration to D9 in an educational eCommerce space. Meanwhile, ImageX posted a blog compelling higher education marketers to migrate from D7 at the earliest. Another case study is from Specbee, where they write about a real estate developer in the US upgrading to D9 from D7. Specbee also shares a case study on a leading manufacturer of embedded computing systems for the defence industry transitioning from D7 to D9. A migration story that Morpht shares is but from another CMS, TRIM WCMS, to a Drupal distribution: GovCMS

The case study of Joinup becoming the first official European Commission website to move to D10 is phenomenal. They had to migrate 88 Drupal-related packages, including the essential “core-recommended” and Drush. In addition, 67 integrated and patched packages were indispensable for their operations.

A case study from Triplo is about a wedding photography service that used the Domain Access module, allowing them to handle content for multiple sites within a single Drupal database while maintaining individual custom domain names for each site.

Chromatic’s podcast on D7 EOL urges the adoption of necessary D7 modules if you are still running a D7 site. It delves into strategies for identifying high-risk modules and taking immediate action.

An important story from the past week involves updation of ModuleInstaller and ThemeInstaller in Drupal’s Core to address a burning issue: Module and Theme name conflict that would break the system.

Vardot writes about UA parting for GA4. They also introduce the Google Analytics Module in the blog post. Did you know that Drupal 10’s core system includes 52 modules, providing essential functions while permitting the integration of optional modules to extend features, such as forums? Arocom’s blog post is about D10’s extensive module library that simplifies website expansion.

In mid-July, 1xINTERNET spoke about the Content Templates Module; we missed that story then. Solucionex specifies the importance of the Token module for personalized and automated content experiences. Lukas Fischer has a video on the upcoming release of Drupal Content Planner 2.0. Velir, a digital marketing agency, has written about the Views REST Serializer Extra module designed to revolutionize decoupled search experiences.

Herchel discusses websites’ shared challenges in maintaining optimal user experiences, regardless of the underlying content management system, in an article he wrote for Smashing Magazine. It is about refining the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) metric within the Umami profile. Akabia writes about eco-design, a greener web future, which Drupal pioneers. The accessibility guide from Clarity Partners is not Drupal-specific. All PHP-based CMSs can take a lesson from the web hosting provider Duplika, where they speak about PHP X-Ray functions to pinpoint lethargic plugins, sluggish database queries, tardy functions, or lagging external calls. Five Jars has a blog on automated testing using Codeception.

Discover how Acquia’s prowess in low-code, global content delivery, and extensibility secured top honours in The Forrester Wave™ for Content Management Systems.

That’s all from the past week. Thank you.

Stay motivated, Drupalers!

Sincerely,
Kazima Abbas
Sub Editor, TheDropTimes

A few people in the Drupal community have expressed difficulty getting started with the Schema.org Blueprints module for Drupal. A while back, I created an installation guide for the Schema.org Blueprints module. The installation guide is helpful, but the Schema.org Blueprints module is a comprehensive solution for leveraging Schema.org’s content models to create the ideal content authoring experience to provide an API-first and SEO-friendly website. The Schema.org Blueprints module includes many sub-modules that can create confusion and trepidation. Most sub-modules manage integrations with other contributed modules, but they are all optional. I’ve found that the best way to help people understand the module is to walk them through a specific task or feature.

Training and walk-through videos can help supplement documentation and examples. Please watch the below walk-through of installing the Schema.org Blueprints module.

The Upgrade Status module is a free and open-source Drupal module that helps you assess the compatibility of your Drupal site with Drupal 10. It does this by checking your site's configuration, modules, and themes for any potential issues preventing you from upgrading to Drupal 10. Let’s understand what the Upgrade Status module is, why it is important for upgrading to Drupal 10, and how to use it. We will also provide some tips for using the module to ensure a smooth upgrade process. 

What is the Upgrade Status module?

The Upgrade Status module, often called with the machine name  "upgrade_status" module, is a crucial tool within the Drupal ecosystem. It is a comprehensive reporting system that evaluates a website's readiness to migrate to a new version of Drupal. 

The world of technology is constantly evolving - striving to create new solutions and improve the old ones. Consequently, the life cycle of any software sooner or later reaches its inevitable end. Such a fate awaits the distinguished and still popular Drupal 7 with the end of its official support by the developers. This is the perfect moment to recall the novelties it brought in relation to the previous versions and shed some light on what's next.

General information about Drupal 7 

Released on 5 January 2011, Drupal 7 was the successor to Drupal 6, obviously. It brought many awaited and, above all, necessary changes. Learn about some of the most important ones.

• The concept of entity was introduced, known from many other solutions. Hereafter, entities can be anything – from a user profile and a node to things like a comment or a taxonomy term.
• Support for multisite appeared
• Content Construction Kit (CCK) became a module in the Drupal 7 core.

In addition, there were many smaller but no less essential improvements, such as: improvement of performance and security, changes in hooks and API, reduction of system requirements, ability to create shortcuts, scheduling tasks using cron, and many, many more.

Drupal 7 end of life - change of date

Originally, Drupal 7 end of support was planned for November 2021. Then, this date has been changed to 28 November 2022 and to 1 November 2023. The Drupal team justified this latest change because many companies and institutions were still using Drupal 7. For this reason, the CMS developers and maintainers didn't want to leave so many websites without security updates.

Recently, the Drupal team has announced the new date of Drupal 7 end of life - 5 January 2025. With this update also came the information about the reduced support for medium critical Drupal 7 issues. Such tasks will be added to the public issue queue (if only they aren't mass-exploitable) for resolution. Also, in the situation when - from the beginning of August 2023 - some contributed module or theme is marked as unsupported, it won't be available for the new maintainer.  

Drupal 7 specification

Drupal 7, compared to its predecessor, is distinguished primarily by a more thoughtful approach to content management, which translates into changes in how data is stored, structured, and entered. Entity is an element that has remained with us to this day until Drupal 10.

Why do you need to perform a Drupal 7 migration?

Migrating Drupal 7 to a higher version is essential for many reasons. Here are the most important ones:

• The end of support for Drupal 7 - in practice, this also means no security updates. Consequently, this exposes the website owner to the need to accept a higher risk of hacking attacks and deal with their possible consequences. It also involves incurring additional costs of buying paid services from companies offering support to work on security vulnerabilities.
• Complying with the new SEO standards of higher Drupal versions - search engines have changed their algorithms over the past ten years and promote content differently than they used to. If you want your website to appear higher in search results, a Drupal update will help. New versions of Drupal handle the latest SEO standards much better. This is because they stand out with improved performance over older versions, better support for mobile devices, and improved website accessibility for people with disabilities.
• A more pleasant content editing process after the migration - although content editing was user-friendly in the years following the release of Drupal 7 (especially compared to Drupal 6), the UI world has moved on, and over the following years, the approach to working on content in this system version has become less and less in line with the latest trends and editor habits. Upgrading to Drupal 10 will optimize the content creation process, especially with the new Claro skin or contrib solutions such as Gin.

Drupal 7 vs. Drupal 10 and other system versions 

You cannot compare Drupal 7 with Drupal 10, not to mention intermediate versions. The introduction of Drupal 8 was a tremendous and significant change in the direction of system development. Let's look at some of the most important changes and improvements over the previous version.

• Drupal has been rewritten using the Symfony framework. For those unfamiliar with the topic, Symfony is one of the most popular PHP frameworks. Therefore, from the very beginning Drupal could boast that it gets a lot of support from the community and creators associated with Symfony. This change is actually so big, because the earlier Drupal versions weren’t based on any such powerful frameworks.
• A new engine for creating templates has been introduced - the well-known and popular Twig (this is the result of switching to Symfony, where this engine is also used). This streamlines the work when creating templates, and brings the way of implementing them closer to modern standards, abandoning the previous themes and PHP templates.
• The lack of a sensible text editor in Drupal 7 has been solved in version 8 with CKEditor - an extremely powerful and multifunctional tool for working with content.
• The Views module has become a part of the system's core.
• Drupal 8 brought almost 200 changes and patches that you can read about on Drupal.org.

You may also be interested in: 10 tricks to work efficiently with the Composer in Drupal 8

How does the matter look in further versions? Moving from Drupal 8 to Drupal 9 allowed updating dependencies and removing code marked as deprecated. So, migrating an application written in Drupal 8 to version 9 involved removing deprecated elements from the code and updating modules.

Drupal 10, on the other hand, introduced more significant changes that required more community involvement to make modules and skins compatible with this system version. Drupal 10 swapped the default admin skin from Seven to Claro, the skin from Bartik to Olivero, introduced CKEditor 5, updated Symfony to version 6, removed some JavaScript components using jQuery, and replaced them with more modern versions.

So, is the change from version 7 to version 10 a good idea? To put it simply: YES! 

From the very beginning, the transition to Drupal 8 seemed like a necessary move. The number of innovations and possibilities that version 8 introduced at the time was staggering, and the already outdated solutions known from Drupal 7 were beginning to be a crutch when juxtaposed with the rampant development and progress in web development. Versions 9 and 10 only widened the gap.

Then what is the cause of such a large number of websites (about 380 thousand active installations - as of August 2023) still operating on Drupal 7 and of the many years of support from the developers provided for such an old software version? It's all the result of how great a revolution Drupal 8 was and what significant changes have been made to the very logic that underlies the entire system. The introduction of Symfony as the base framework for Drupal was a double-edged sword. Although it actually brought only good changes, it led to practically no compatibility with the previous versions.

Upgrading from Drupal 7 to 8 couldn’t be done automatically, and sometimes even required rewriting the entire page from scratch. As you can imagine, this could be very problematic for systems maintained over the years, not to mention the cost that such a change could generate.

Today, however, we are already richer with years of experience. Upgrading from 7 to 8 doesn't have to be as titanic a job as it initially was. There are many tools on the market that can help us with the migration and make it easier.

Drupal 7 EOL - professional help

Since we have already established that moving to the latest version of Drupal is actually a necessity, and we’ve gained some additional time with the move of the planned end date of support, we’ll introduce you to this process. If you don't feel up to it, we recommend that you contact the professional Drupal support team for help. Using the services of specialists experienced in this type of migration can significantly shorten the entire process, as well as dispel any doubts related to it.

Drupal 7 to 10 migration - how to conduct the process?

Migration is a multi-stage process that includes time for preparation, implementation, and post-migration activities. Let’s discover the following steps. 

How to prepare for Drupal 7 to 10 migration?

When preparing, you should first determine which functionalities are essential to you and must be maintained. Elements can be sorted by priority. Here, it’s important to remember to keep dependencies between functionalities so that you don’t exclude some critical parts. Dependency mistakes will most likely be caught during the migration process but can then introduce confusion, which can be avoided by conducting a solid planning stage. 

The preparation stage is also a great time to plan for additional functionality you have always wanted to introduce, but for some reason, it wasn’t possible in the old system version. In this case, even potential functionalities should be discussed during migration planning, as they can affect the process going forward. 

In addition to functionality, you should also determine which content should be migrated. Migration is also an excellent time to refresh the look of your website - the skin will have to be rewritten anyway due to its almost complete lack of compatibility with newer versions of Drupal. Therefore, the additional outlay of resources will be less than if you postpone this investment until after the migration.

On the technical side, it's a good idea to review the available modules and ensure that everyone you have uses them. For contrib modules, make sure they support Drupal 10. Custom modules must be rewritten, so choosing only the necessary modules will save you time and money. 

It’s also crucial to plan the infrastructure on which you’ll run your website. The infrastructure must be compatible with Drupal 10 requirements, and it should allow you to easily scale your resources to accomplish your task in case of higher demand.

How to implement Drupal 7 to 10 migration?

After decent preparation comes the implementation stage. It’s worth ensuring that your Drupal 7 is updated to the latest possible version. This should minimize any difficulties in moving the configuration. Next, we usually start by moving the entity structure to prepare a place for data import. 

If the Drupal 7 application will continue to be used throughout the rewriting process, then you should consider implementing incremental content migration, a way to determine which data has been migrated and which has not yet. Typically, this is done by recording the export date of the content of a given type and comparing it to the date the content was last edited to export only those items whose last modification occurred later than the previous export. 

On the technical side, modules such as Migrate, Migrate Drupal, Migrate Upgrade and Migrate Plus will help you with the migration. 

Importantly, before each data import, you should make security copies so that you can make the appropriate corrections and try again in case of failure. 

After data migration comes the stage of installing and configuring the remaining contrib modules and skins and rewriting custom modules and skins. This stage requires (in the case of custom modules and skins) several steps. The first is to understand the Drupal 10 architecture to be able to rewrite the code correctly and according to standards. It’s also crucial to update the documentation so that the purpose and use of the module are clear to both developers and website administrators.

What should you keep in mind after Drupal 7 migration?

After the migration (in the case where the Drupal 7 website is active), it’s necessary to determine the moment when the so-called content freeze occurs, that is, the time when no content is added to the site. This is when we import the last content increment to the new web page on Drupal 10 and update the modules. 

Drupal 10 is a rapidly developing system. Module updates are released every day. Staying up to date allows you to eliminate as many bugs as possible and also enables you to use the system's latest features.

Drupal 7 end of life - summary

Migration to the latest version of Drupal is essential for many reasons. Depending on the website's characteristics, size, popularity, and several other factors, the process of preparation, implementation, and post-migration activities vary significantly. 

If your website needs to be migrated to a higher version, get help from professionals. Our team of developers specializing in Drupal 7 to 10 migration has experience in processes carried out with complete success.