Welcome back to “Skills Upgrade” a Talking Drupal mini-series following the journey of a D7 developer learning D10. This is episode 6.

• Review Chad's goals for the previous week

• Review Chad's questions

  • Array structures
  • accordion.html.twig
  • D7 to D10 migrations

• Tasks for the upcoming week

  • [testing_example](https://git.drupalcode.org/project/examples/-/tree/4.0.x/modules/testing_example?
  • Be sure to install drupal/core-dev dependencies using composer require –dev drupal/core-devref_type=heads) from Examples module.
  • Set up phpunit.xml file in project root - using this file to start
  • Run existing tests using command line from the project root. Something like: phpunit web/modules/contrib/examples/modules/testing_example/tests
  • Review test code in module.
  • Start with FrontPageLinkTest.php, then FrontPageLinkDependenciesTest.php, then TestingExampleMenuTest.php

Understand Drupal - Migrations 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

Authored by: Nadiia Nykolaichuk.

This blog post was written by DrupalCon Portland Higher Education Summit Committee members Megan Bygness Bradley and Michael Miles.

As a part of the landscape of higher education web technology, many of us are navigating the digital realm somewhat disconnected from one another. We’re solving similar problems, but do not often have the opportunity to talk to others about the whys, hows, and the gotchas of implementing within the sphere of higher ed. DrupalCon Portland's Higher Education Summit is tailor-made for you! It's not just another conference; it's an amazing opportunity to connect, collaborate, and elevate your expertise in Drupal with your peers in the higher education sector.

Why Attend?

The Higher Education Summit at DrupalCon isn't just about listening to speakers; it's about engaging in meaningful discussions, sharing experiences, and building valuable connections within the higher education community. 

Dive Deep into Drupal Best Practices

Whether you're a seasoned Drupal user or just getting started, this summit offers a wealth of knowledge and expertise tailored to the higher education sector. Learn about the latest Drupal developments, strategies for site management, effective documentation and training techniques, and more.

Connect with Peers

Connect with fellow web developers, content creators, designers, strategists, and managers from universities and colleges around the world. Share insights, learn from each other's experiences, and build a network of like-minded professionals who understand the unique challenges and opportunities within higher education.

Gain Insights from Drupal Experts in Higher Ed 

From lightning talks to sponsor presentations, the summit features a lineup of industry experts sharing their insights and experiences. Learn from speakers who have successfully navigated the intersection of Drupal and higher education. See the Summit schedule here.

Participate in Interactive Discussions

The summit format is designed to be relaxed and informal, fostering open discussions and collaboration. Engage in small group discussions after every talk and Birds of a Feather sessions focused on topics such as site management, documentation and training, design and UX, AI, and more.

Collaborate and Network

In a rapidly evolving digital landscape, staying ahead of the curve is essential. Discover how Drupal can empower your institution by collaborating and networking with people just like you from across the world.

Don't miss out on this unique opportunity to expand your knowledge, network with peers, and gain insights from industry experts at DrupalCon's Higher Education Summit. Whether you're looking to optimize your Drupal workflow, enhance the user experience, or navigate the challenges of higher education, this summit has something for you. Register now and elevate your expertise in Drupal within the higher education sector!

WordPress vs Drupal, which is the best CMS?

Yngve W. Bergheim

Sven Berg Ryen

Sohail Lajevardi

Stephan Zeidler

Content Management Systems (CMS) have revolutionized the way we build and manage websites. Drupal and WordPress are two of the most popular CMS platforms worldwide.

In Ramsalt we have many employees with experience from both CMSes and in this article we have gathered some reasons why Drupal could be a better choice for your needs:

Performance

• Drupal is a lightweight CMS that allows you to create fast-loading websites with minimal resources. You can also add website-caching plugins to improve performance.
• WordPress is a lot slower than Drupal. WordPress websites are often slower to load than Drupal sites, making speed a major shortcoming.(link is external)

Flexibility and Complexity

• WordPress is like Duplo, Drupal is like Lego. Drupal is known for its flexibility in building more complex websites. It’s ideal for users with technical skills or access to a developer.
• With the Gutenberg Editor, the editorial interface with WordPress and Drupal gets merged. so you can get the WordPress feeling combined with the strengths of Drupal.
• Drupal is often chosen for sites that require complex data organization and for projects that require precise permissions and workflows.

Security

• Drupal is considered to be the most secure CMS. Drupal has robust security measures, making it a popular choice for government institutions and other large, security-conscious entities.
• Drupal sites tend to get hacked less often than WordPress sites, which speaks volumes about its robust security measures.
• WordPress accounted for 96 percent of all hacked CMS sites in 2022.

Multilingual Support

• Drupal supports multilingual websites by default, which can be a crucial feature for global businesses.

Developer Experience

• WordPress has a “hacky” architecture and the developer experience is worse than Drupal.
• Drupal has a clean open source mentality, everything on drupal.org is free to use. WordPress has a more commercial model where modules and themes etc you might have to pay for.
• Drupal has very good migration tools, so it makes it easy to migrate from existing CMS to Drupal.
• Drupal has a granular role and permission handling whereas in WordPress you have to go through hoops to get anything besides a few predefined roles.

Other

• WordPress was originally made for the blogging community and is struggling to solve bigger challenges.
• WordPress plugins are “monsters” containing “everything and the kitchen sink” and are not always designed to be expandable through hooks.
• There’s mainly professional development agencies offering Drupal. While there are a lot of companies offering WordPress services they tend to be freelancers and advertising agencies without professional developers, which make the websites often suffer with bad architecture choices and buggy code, leaving them vulnerable for hackers.
• Some of the “free” themes and modules constantly nag you to buy into the premium version and there’s no way to turn off the noisy notifications.
• Plugins in WordPress often don’t work well with each other, if you enable one plugin, it might cause conflict with another.
• Layout builder - make it possible for an editor to make landing pages fast and easy.
• Drupal is packed with tools for multichannel publishing, digital asset management, and SEO.

While WordPress is a great platform for beginners and bloggers, Drupal’s flexibility, robust security, superior user access control, multilingual support, scalability, and development opportunities make it a powerful solution for most websites. 

Remember, the choice between Drupal and WordPress depends on your specific needs for website you intend to build. Both have their strengths and cater to different types of projects. 

Contact us for a free talk about your requirements so we can find the best solution for you. 

Today we are talking about The Drupal Bounty Program, How it supports innovation, and how you can get involved with guest Alex Moreno. We’ll also cover WebProfiler as our module of the week.

For show notes visit: www.talkingDrupal.com/445

• What is the Drupal Bounty program
• How and when did it start
• What issues and tasks are included
• Has the bounty program been successful
• Why was this program extended
• Do you see any drawbacks
• Can anyone participate
• How are issues for the second round being selected
• What do you see the future of the bounty program looking like
• Could this become like other bounty programs with cash
• Do you think the bounty program will help maintainers get sponsorship

• Introducing The Bounty Program
• Bounty Program Extension
• Bjorn
• Talking Drupal #425 - Modernizing Drupal 10 Theme Development

Alejandro Moreno - alexmoreno.net alexmoreno

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Matt Glaman - mglaman.dev mglaman

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu

• Brief description:
  • Have you ever wanted to get detailed performance data for the pages on your Drupal sites? There’s a module for that.
• Module name/project name:
  • WebProfiler
• Brief history
  • How old: created in Jan 2014 by Luca Lusso of Italy who was a guest on the show in episode #425
  • Versions available: 10.1.5 which works with Drupal >=10.1.2
• Maintainership
  • Actively maintained, latest release on Feb 1
  • Security coverage
  • Test coverage
  • Not much in the way of documentation, but the module is largely a wrapper for the Symfony WebProfiler bundle, which has its own section in the Symfony documentation
  • Number of open issues: 36 open issues, 13 of which are bugs
• Usage stats:
  • 477 sites
• Module features and usage
  • Once installed the module adds a toolbar to the bottom of your site, within which it will show a variety of data for every page:
  • Route and Controller
  • Memory usage
  • Time to load (with some additional setup)
  • Number of AJAX requests
  • Number of queries run and the total query time
  • Number of blocks visible
  • How many forms are on the profile
  • Lots of other detailed information available through links
  • Reports are saved into the database, so you can dig through additional details such as:
  • Request information like access metadata, cookies, session info, and server parameters, in addition to the request and response headers
  • All of the queries that ran, how long each took, and even a quick way to create an EXPLAIN statement to get deeper insight from your database engine
  • You can also view all the services available, and with a single click open the class file in the IDE of your choice
  • A handy alternative to other performance monitoring tools like XHProf (either as Drupal module, or installed directly into your development environment), or commercial tools like Blackfire or New Relic
  • Discussion
  • Luca’s book Modernizing Drupal 10 Theme Development actually provides a great deep dive into this module

DrupalCamp New Jersey unites hundreds of attendees with varying professional backgrounds to share their knowledge, ideas, and passion for the Drupal project. My first DrupalCamp NJ was in 2023 and it was also my first experience of presenting at a conference! It was a nerve-wracking but fun experience—and since then I’ve delivered 9 conference presentations across Canada, the U.S., and France on topics like accessibility, caching, migrations, and discovery.

Fast forward to March 2024: I returned to DrupalCamp NJ to present another session and deliver training.  Eight of our team members piled into a minivan to make the 700 km road trip from Montreal to New Jersey. The event was held in Princeton University’s Robertson Hall—a stunning piece of architecture set in a beautiful plaza. We joined more than 150 participants for the three-day event, which featured 23 incredible talks and three days of training.

Read on for our highlights! Plus, learn what to expect from your first DrupalCamp.

What We Presented

What Non-Developers Should Know About Content Migration

I co-presented this session with my colleague Marien Regnault, Drupal Developer. We shared insights that our team has gained from dozens of complex migrations over the years, including Drupal 7 to Drupal 10 migrations. We helped a non-technical audience understand the process at a high level with a focus on planning, preparation, dealing with common challenges, and collaborating with developers. 

Watch the talk. 

Harmonizing Creativity and Code: Collaboration in Design Systems

This session was delivered by my colleagues Bryenne Kay, UX/UI Designer and Robert Ngo, Solutions Architect. It looked at building and maintaining a design system from both a developer’s and designer’s perspective. Bryenne and Robert dived into creating libraries of reusable Single Directory Components (SDCs), streamlining workflows, and improving collaboration between teams. 

Watch the talk. 

Use Drupal as No-Code Content Platform for Your Next(.js) Decoupled Project

Our Director of Technology, Simon Morvan, talked about the core principles of a decoupled Drupal architecture and why it improves performance, user experience, SEO, and security. He demonstrated that this approach doesn’t require back-end development, making Drupal a low-cost alternative to other no-code options like commercial cloud SaaS solutions. Simon used our collaboration with Planned Parenting Direct (PPD) as an example. Interestingly, the co-founder of Pantheon—which hosts the PPD website—was in the audience! This led to some interesting additional questions and answers at the end of the session. 

Revamp or Redesign: Navigating the Crossroads of Website Evolution

Evolving Web has a long-standing relationship with Princeton University, so I was delighted to co-present this session with the institution’s Assistant Director of Web & Digital Initiatives, John Cloys, along with Alex Dergachev, Co-Founder and Technical Lead at Evolving Web. We explored the ever-changing nature of the digital landscape, and addressed the challenge of deciding when to update your website, how, and how much.

Watch the talk. 

Drupal Site Building & Tools for Digital Asset Management

It was so much fun to deliver this training session with my colleague Marien and Acquia’s Senior Solutions Architect, Martin Anderson-Clutz. It was my first time providing training in-person since I started at Evolving Web, and I really enjoyed the advantages of being physically present; I was able to see people’s reactions and give more personal support than is possible over Zoom. The course gave participants a run-through of the Drupal site building process—including creating an information architecture in Drupal, and leveraging media management and Acquia DAM on top of Drupal. 
 

“This was my first DrupalCamp. It made me realize that the Drupal community isn’t just a source of modules I can use—it’s a community of people with common goals who collaborate with and support one another.”

– Marien Regnault, Drupal Developer, Evolving Web

What We Attended

Intermediate Drupal Front End Development 

Led by Ashraf Abed at DebugAcademy.com, this course shed light on some of the most powerful aspects of Drupal's front-end system, including render arrays, caching, and twig. It was fascinating to discover how powerful render arrays are for piling on properties all the way down the stack. We heard about useful tools like Twig Xdebug, which allows you to use Xdebug breakpoints with Twig templates. And we learned some best practices for security, such as only translating hardcoded strings to avoid exploits from user-generated content. 

Watch the talk. 

Navigating The Migration Landscape: Lessons Learned From Princeton University’s Migration of Over 1000 Drupal Websites To A Single Platform 

Led by Mandee Englert and Jill Moraca, this talk provided an impressive example of a highly complex migration and the planning, organization, and post-migration processes that made it a success. We left with plenty of useful ideas to implement and recommend to clients. 
 

Drupal be DAMed

Ray Saltini and David Hernandez explored key reasons and considerations for adopting a Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution. We really enjoyed their practical insights into preparing, optimizing, and scaling a DAM solution, as well as an exploration of alternatives. Overall, a DAM good session. 

Watch the talk. 

Protecting your site with Automatic Updates

We were excited to hear updates from Acquia’s Ted Bowman on his almost-complete work to bring automatic code updates to Drupal deployment. Ted  gave a refresher on the Automatic Updates module, including how to determine if your hosting is compatible and ensure your site is configured to run it securely. 

Watch the talk. 

See what you missed at DrupalCamp Florida 2024, too!

“It was my 9th visit to Drupalcamp NJ so one of the best parts is seeing old clients, collaborators, and dozens of other amazing Drupal community members who have become friends.”

– Alex Dergachev, Co-Founder & Technical Lead, Evolving Web 

What to Expect From Your First DrupalCamp

DrupalCamps are regional, community-driven events that foster innovation, collaboration, and skill enhancement within the Drupal ecosystem. Each has its own style and flow, but they all have consistent themes at their core:

1. Knowledge sharing. DrupalCamps are a great place to swap ideas, gain skills, and learn best practices. Sessions, workshops, and trainings provide more structured learning, but there’s also a treasure of wisdom to be found simply by chatting to fellow participants at lunch. Success stories and case studies also serve as valuable inspiration for future projects. 
2. Community building. DrupalCamps encourage professionals to connect, collaborate, and develop valuable relationships. The organizers emphasize inclusivity, welcoming the participation of diverse groups and finding ways to lower barriers and increase accessibility. 
3. Volunteerism. DrupalCamps are organized and run by volunteers, making them a sustainable model and a true reflection of the Drupal community’s interests and values. Volunteering opportunities are also a great opportunity to gain exposure and experience through speaking, training, or organizing. 
4. Collaboration. DrupalCamps often feature hackathons, collaborative workshops, and contributions days focused on improving open source projects such as Drupal core, modules, and themes. These activities foster team-work beyond the event, too. More than one Drupal initiative has started out as a conversation at a DrupalCamp or DrupalCon. 
5. Innovation. Participants are encouraged to collaboratively solve real-world problems, and informed about new technologies, trends, and challenges. It’s a chance to not only get ahead of the curve but also to help shape open source innovation. 
6. Feedback. DrupalCamps serve as platforms for gathering UX feedback on community-driven initiatives that support Drupal’s growth. As a Drupal user, this is an opportunity to ensure your needs and priorities are considered. 
7. Professional development. DrupalCamps are a friendly space where you can connect with potential employers, find mentorship, and gain insights from peers and experts. There are sessions where you can develop your technical, strategic, creative, and leadership skills. Also, volunteering to lead a session or workshop can help you gain industry exposure and carve out a niche. 

Interested in attending? Visit drupal.org to find a DrupalCamp near you. 

If you’re looking for an event that covers a wider variety of  topics, with fewer simultaneous talks, check out EvolveDrupal! This unique summit fosters open source innovation and digital transformation with sessions on technology, UX design, digital strategy, content, marketing, higher education, and much more. The next EvolveDrupal summit is taking place in Atlanta on April 12. We hope to see you there!

Custom Entities are a powerful tool for building complex web applications and content management systems. Entities in Drupal provide a standardized way to store and manipulate data. Custom entity types in Drupal empower developers to define custom functionality, enhance performance, and maintain full control over data structures, supplementing the numerous built-in entity types.

Here are the steps for creating a custom entity.

Drupal 10 Custom Entity Development in easy steps:

Step 1: Create a custom folder for your module.

Choose a short name or machine name for your module.

Dear Readers,

The DropTimes [TDT], as you know, is a news website with the vision of contributing to the growth of a vibrant community of users and contributors around Drupal through the process of covering and promoting everything happening around Drupal. To borrow our founder, Anoop John's words, 

"What we are doing as TDT is not just running a news website but we are trying to mobilize a whole community of users toward revitalizing the community."

 We are working towards improving the technology, driving the contributions back to the Drupal community, and ultimately contributing back to society at large. We are driving towards something bigger than all of us. 

The growth of such a venture certainly will be slow, like a writer adding a few words to their novel each day, a runner slightly extending their distance each week, or a business steadily enhancing its customer service. These small steps may seem insignificant in isolation, but they compound into significant advancements over months and years. These seemingly minor improvements compound over time, accumulating smaller strides and preparing for the dramatic leaps. The DropTimes has, day by day, accumulated the strength to make bigger leaps.

In digital innovation, embracing new directions and challenging conventional norms often leads to remarkable discoveries. Just as the Drupal community continuously strives to push boundaries and advocate for the principles of openness and community-driven development, we are likewise urged to delve into diverse domains with immense potential for creativity and impact. The DropTimes model is one based on resilience, fosters a culture of continuous learning, and ultimately transforms modest efforts into significant accomplishments. This method underscores the importance of the journey, teaching patience and discipline and proving that steady progress can lead to remarkable success.

While grateful to all the readers and loyal supporters of TDT, we seek your continued support in building something impactful and helping contribute to Drupal and open-source. With that, let's revisit the highlights from last week's coverage.

The DropTimes Community Strategist, Tarun Udayaraj, had an opportunity to converse with Tim Doyle, the first-ever Chief Executive Officer and the appointed leader of the Drupal Association. In this exclusive interview, the CEO of the Drupal Association shares his perspectives on the future of Drupal and the open-source community at large. Read the full interview here.

Preston So is a dynamic figure in software development. He showcases a rich career spanning diverse roles within the tech industry and emphasizes a leadership philosophy rooted in empathy and adaptability. Beyond his professional endeavors, Preston's commitment to the Drupal community is notable, having been a significant part of it since 2007. Learn more about this multifaceted individual and his contributions to open-source with an interview by Elma John, a sub-editor at TDT, "Navigating the Currents of Change: The Multidimensional Journey of Preston So."

In an interview with Kazima Abbas, sub-editor of The DropTimes, Adrian Ababei, the Senior Drupal Architect and CEO at OPTASY, shares his extensive experience in web development and Drupal architecture. He discusses overseeing full-cycle project management, conducting technology research, and leading a team of developers at OPTASY.

The third part of the hit Page Builder series by  André Angelantoni, Senior Drupal Architect at HeroDevs, came out last week. "Drupal Page Builders—Part 3: Other Alternative Solutions" discusses alternatives to Paragraphs and Layout Builder. This segment navigates through a variety of server-side rendered page generation solutions, offering a closer look at innovative modules that provide a broader range of page-building capabilities beyond Drupal's native tools.

March has ended, and TDT has successfully concluded its "Women in Drupal" campaign. As the series ends with the third part of Inspiring Inclusion: Celebrating Women in Drupal, The DropTimes reflects on the powerful narratives and insightful messages shared by women Drupalers from around the globe. 

In exciting news, TDT has been announced as the Media Partner for DrupalCon Barcelona 2024 and Drupal Iberia 2024 as a testament to the platform's growth and resilience. We are also seeking volunteers from the members of the Drupal Community to help us cover the upcoming DrupalCon Portland 2024. 

The Regular Registration window for DrupalCon Portland is now open. Registration for DrupalCon Portland will unlock an additional $100 discount on your ticket for DrupalCon North America 2025, in addition to the Early Bird discount during the Early Bird registration window. 

Every week, we will have some events somewhere around the world. A complete list of events for the week is available here.

In other news, Drupal 10.2.5 is now available, featuring a collection of bug fixes. This patch release addresses various issues to ensure stability for production sites. Janez Urevc has reported a 10% improvement in Drupal core test suite runtime, attributed to Gander, a performance testing framework part of Drupal since version 10.2. The latest WebAIM Million report reveals insights into web accessibility, with Drupal holding strong in the CMS rankings. Discover the subtle shifts in WCAG 2 compliance and the strategic decision to exclude subdomains for improved analysis. 

In another interesting update, Mufeed VH, a 21-year-old from Kerala, India, and founder of Lyminal and Stition.AI, has created Devika, an open-source AI software similar to Devin. Devika, conceived initially as a joke, can understand instructions, conduct research, and write code autonomously.

We acknowledge that there are more stories to share. However, due to selection constraints, we must pause further exploration for now.

To get timely updates, follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Also, join us on Drupal Slack at #thedroptimes.

Thank you,
Sincerely
Alka Elizabeth
Sub-editor, The DropTimes.

Given the variety of tools and techniques Drupal offers, it is a must to estimate your business needs first. AI, VR, AR, blockchain, and other technologies will keep reshaping industrial processes, so your task is to ensure the overall Drupal site’s scalability and versatility. 
Businesses of any calibre won’t achieve excellent results if they don’t align the server-side and client-side aspects of website development. Expanding website capabilities with Drupal integration will help you keep the momentum and improve online experiences for your audiences. 
The demand for mobile-first designs, as well as emerging technologies and e-commerce growth, make surviving in the niche without implementing innovative methods of performance and communication impossible. Stay tuned to explore the palette of tools and techniques to level up the standards of website architecture and efficiency for your business.