Recently we published a written introduction to Drupal 8 called, "The surprising thing about Drupal 8 is how unsurprising it is".
Last month, I gave a live version of that introduction at the Atlanta Drupal User's Group. Here's a video version of that presentation.
In this video, I'll give you a tour of the new features and admin interface changes in Drupal 8.
Panels and Display Suite are two very popular Drupal modules.
Both Panels and Display Suite allow you to control the layout of your Drupal content without any code.
Last month we did a 2 part video series with Acquia, introducing both Panels and Display Suite.
In this tutorial, I will walk through the steps for adding a region to Drupal's Bartik theme. There are a couple ways you can do this.
"I downloaded Omega and Delta at the advice of an expert, but I'm really confused about how they work."
We hear a lot of support requests like this.
Themes can be confusing for Drupal beginners. We often speak with beginners who visit the theme page at Drupal.org and find the most popular themes at the top of the screen. They install Zen, Omega, AdaptiveTheme or Fusion and wonder why everything is so difficult.
Over the last few weeks we've been working on a project to show the growth of open source around the world.
The project will show the spread of open source events from 2006 until today.
However, we've been stuck on DrupalCamps. Almost no lists of DrupalCamps existed from before 2011. Both WordPress and Joomla have full lists of past events but nothing similar existed for Drupal. Until today.
For large sites with large numbers of users, permissions can become a difficult issue.
One common situation is that site owners want to allow some users to control the permissions of other users.
In this tutorial, I'll show you Drupal's default user control permissions. Then I'll show you 5 modules for creating more sophisticated user control permissions.
As with so many of the tutorials we write, this tutorial started as a question in our support forums.
One of our members wanted to set up three image fields and then re-use them across multiple content types.
Our solution was to recommend the Field Collection module.
Field Collection allows you (as the name implies) to collect some fields together into a group. You can then re-use those fields for multiple content types, users, comments or really whenever you add fields.
Here's how to use the Field Collection module.
One of the great things with Drupal is the ability to over-write just about anything!
We had a question in our support forums this week which put that ability to the test.
Our member wanted to provide a way for her clients to upload a PDF into a node and allow her users to easily download them. However, instead of a PDF icon and the title of the PDF, she wanted the link to say "Download PDF".
We often recommend the Views Slideshow module as a powerful way to create slideshows in Drupal.
However, Views Slideshow requires quite a lot of Drupal expertise. You need to understand Views, image styles and you often need some theming skills too. Our Views Slideshow class is over 20 videos long.
Nivo Slider is an alternative to Views Slideshow. It's less flexible, but is far simpler to use and looks great straight out-of-the-box.
Nivo Slider is a hugely popular jQuery slider that's been downloaded more than 2 million times. Originally designed for WordPress, it's available as a Drupal module.
This week, an OSTraining member had a question about translating Drupal sites.
They installed their site in English, but then wanted to change to a different language.
This is our answer for that member. This tutorial will walk you through the process of changing the language used on your Drupal site.
It's not unusual for people to tell us that their Drupal sites run slowly.
Part of the reason that Drupal sites run slowly is that Drupal will load around a dozen CSS and Javascript files by default.
And, if you haven't noticed, each time you add a module to Drupal, there is a chance you are adding even more files.
The image below shows a fairly normal Drupal site and it's loading 31 files!
Before you move on to our recommeded solutions, go to your site and check the source code. If your source code looks like the image below, keep reading and we'll show you how to fix this problem.
I started writing this blog post with a different title in mind. I intended to write a list of the things that would actually surprise new users of Drupal 8, but I ended up with a very short list.
Everyone talks about Drupal 8 as being an enormous change from Drupal 7. Yes, it does bring a radical overhaul codebase. And yes, there are some visual changes such as a new admin toolbar and a new content creation screen. We've covered those changes in previous posts.
However, I'm going to argue for ordinary users, the most surprising thing about Drupal 8 is how little has changed.
Have you ever seen an error on your Drupal site that says:
"The website encountered an unexpected error. Please try again later."
There are over 700 people who have reported the same problem on the Drupal.org forums.
If you have this error or similar errors and are thinking, "OMG! Now what?", then hang tight.
We're here to help with this tutorial. We'll show you how to diagnose and solve errors that appear on your Drupal site.
We're going to show you how to create an event calendar in Drupal.
This tutorial is ideal for people who want to show a monthly, weekly or daily list of upcoming events.
First, we'll show you how to set up a basic Calendar and then we'll modify it to the needs of your content.
One of our members came to us with a question about usernames.
After installing the Advanced Forum module, they noticed that Drupal was posting usernames. The same thing was happening for comments and elsewhere on the site.
Our member wondered if it was possible to replace these plain usernames with people's real names. Yes it is, if you use the Real name module.
The Go module (also called GoTwo) is a relatively simple Drupal module that allows you to track how many people have clicked a link.
It also allows you to conceal the destination of a link and to provide visitors with a disclaimer after they click.
Here's how the Go module works:
By default, the fields in a content type are displayed from vertically, one field after another. For simple content types, this might not be a bad thing, but if you want some variation in the way your content fields lay out, you have options.
When selecting a strategy for managing content layout, your first decision is 'to code or not to code.' If you are like me, you'll choose not to code. The next decision is which module do you want to use?
There are three popular modules that allow you to arrange the fields in your content such that not all fields are stacked on top of each other:
The problem with many software applications is you can't make them your own. With Drupal, however, you have the option to override how Drupal does things. From altering a form to customizing the way your pages are displayed, Drupal provides options.
The concept of overriding something in Drupal can be made reality in several ways: Drupal's APIs, theme overrides, as well as overriding default configurations in modules. Whatever it is you need to do, the number one rule you should endeavor to follow is: don't hack the core (or a contributed module). Don't open the code files in Drupal and change them to meet your needs. There are better ways.
In this tutorial, we will focus on overriding themes.
A time consuming task for all software users is testing.
It takes time to find all the download links, to set up a test environment and to install all the additional software you need.
Simplytest.me is an ingenious solution for Drupal. Simplytest.me will install Drupal sites for you, as well as modules and themes that you want to use. Here's a brief introduction to this very useful site.
Moving a Drupal site to a new location on your server is surprisingly easy.
There is a simple 3 step process to move a Drupal site from one folder to another. In this tutorial we're going to show you those 3 steps.
If you'd like to move a Drupal site to new folder, we recommend using the Backup and Migrate module.
A lot of things are simple in Drupal ... once you know how.
The Search module is a perfect example of something that is initially confusing to set up, but simple once you know how to do it correctly.
This week we had several questions from our members about the Search module, so we wrote this tutorial to help them out.
There are several confusing elements to the Search module. Let's address them one-by-one:
The most important file on your Drupal site is the settings.php file.
The settings.php is unique to every site and contains all of the important information that Drupal needs to run.
Inside settings.php you'll find everything from your database type and login details to your URL and multisite options.
This tutorial is your guided tour of settings.php. If you run a Drupal site, here's what you need to know about this vital file.
Here are two of the most common questions we get from Drupal newcomers:
Because the answers are not easy to find, these kinds of questions can be confusing.
Here's a clear explanation of what happens when you delete a content type or field.
If you're moving to Drupal, there's a good chance that you'll need to import data.
The Feeds module is the most common way to import content and user data into Drupal.
In this tutorial, we're going to answer a question from one of members, "How do I import RSS feeds into Drupal?" As we answer his question, we'll give you an introduction to how the Feeds module works. whether you want to import from an RSS feed, a CSV file or another format.
One of our students is learning Drupal and trying to master Views. They wanted to know how to style different areas of each Views. We wrote this tutorial as an introduction for them to templates and theming for Views.
As our example, we're going to use the "Front page" view, which is on the defaults available when you first intall Views.
With all the software we teach, some tasks almost always confuse beginners.
With Drupal, re-ordering fields is one of those confusing tasks.
Learning how to re-order Drupal fields is easy. You can re-order fields using an easy drag-and-drop interface.
What's confusing is learning where to re-order fields.
By default, there are 3 ways to re-order Drupal fields and none of them are easily marked.
In this tutorial, we'll show you both how and where to re-order your fields.
We first blogged about Drupal Commerce in late 2011.
Since then, there have been some huge changes in the Drupal Commerce world.
Version 2 of Commerce Kickstart was recently released, and it provided a complete redesign. So we decided to take a look.
At the beginning of February, Australia held the first ever DrupalCon outside of Europe or North America.
All of the DrupalCon Sydney sessions were taped and put all online, saving you the cost of airfare, hotel and food, although Sydney would have been really nice in February! In fact, the DrupalCon team did an extraordinary job. Not only did they record every session, but they posted videos online within hours of each session ending.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is often at the top of the to-do list when planning a site.
There was a time when the <meta> tag had been considered one way to help your pages rise to the top of a search engine result. Although that is not always the case anymore, it can still be useful to meta tags available to search engines so they can use it if they choose.
In this tutorial, we'll explore the Meta tags module, a fast and easy way to add metadata to your nodes, terms, and users.
Over the last year, we've been covering the Drupal community's progress towards releasing Drupal 8.
Planning for Drupal 8 started years ago, but new features were added up until this weekend when "Feature Freeze" finally arrived.
In our first update in November, we showed that the core file structure has changed, plus there were over 15 new modules including Views.
In the second update in December, we pointed out a new toolbar, inline editing, cleaner interfaces and improved multi-lingual features. Now that the feature freeze has passed, let's take another look at the state of Drupal 8.
